rice pudding

Is there no end to the number of items resident and ignored in my cupboards? I don't think I even had brown short grain rice in my original list.

So this afternoon I put the ingredients for rice pudding in the slow cooker. I remember my Mum making rice pudding for us when she cooked mince. Both in the oven slowly for several hours. My Mum doesn't have much time for environmental issues but she knew and knows a good bit about budgeting and that includes economical use of the oven. My best memory of rice pudding was when she used to put it + the mince on before she went to work and the oven on 'automatic' and my job after school was to stir them. The milk used to form a skin which I lifted off and got first dibs on eating. It was nicer than the pudding itself I think.

So hopefully we all like rice pudding here tonight and the brown rather than white rice part works okay. At least I haven't been foolish enough to fill the cupboards with tapioca or sago. Mum did them occasionally and I, not generally a fussy eater, used to wonder what misdemeanour we had commited to deserve such horrid food.

Before rice pudding we will be having leftover soup from last night. No special frills, just reheated. I've run out of home made bread and it's bought stuff to go with the soup as

...

I suspect I have chickenpox also. So I have energy for not much. Except feeling sorry for myself. And blowing my nose.

Outside I have put washing on the line. Did you know that that is such a dead practice in some parts of the world that some enviro group had a special day for encouraging people to use the clothesline? I don't know where the link for this is so you can either
a) google
b) trust me and we'll sigh collectively
c) wonder where I'm from 'cos you don't hang washing on the line at your place either
d) not trust me and not care. Or just not care. Iraq burns and Sandra is wittering about clotheslines for goodness sake.

Also outside I have been thinking about where to put next year's tobacco crop. Our tobacco experiment has been very successful. Favourite Handyman has dried the leaves from the rafters of our small shed and then he bought a pipe as the drag on a rollie paper wasn't sufficient. He reports that it tastes better than bought tobacco. So pretty flowers, easy to process and has saved us about $40 already. Of course,`a lack of any need to grow it next year would be nice, cancer risk etc., but if smoking is his demon for a while longer, then home grown is better than bought.

shallots, garlic and raspberries

are the things I planted today. Plus I did some weeding and I buried Bokashi and I planned more of the Summer garden. Where the tobacco and the one Echinacea plant were last season, I will plant early potatoes, more Echinacea and some peas. After harvesting the potatoes, I will replace with winter brassicas. The Echinacea is very pretty at the moment and after three years I can dig up the roots and use medicinally.

I planted the raspberry suckers on the spot where our special sea kelp has being resting. I brought this kelp back from Truman's Track the day of the funeral of our friend Rob in England. After I planted the raspberries, I arranged the kelp in a circle around it, like arms reaching around and hugging.

I pulled out one celery plant and one swiss chard plant to make room for the garlic and then cooked them up with other veg, herbs, split peas and barley for dinner. I made gluten free cheese scones again and still haven't used up the only gf flour I didn't throw out last week. I've got leftover soup as usual, in spite of us adults enjoying firsts and seconds. I am incapable of doing small pots of soup.





I did early potatoes last season in the punga raised bed and then followed up with winter greens.

The photo above is two weeks old and there has been growth since then. There is kale, mizuna, swiss chard, pak choy, one onion and purple sprouting brocolli. I tried the mizuna earlier this week and it didn't taste of much, just kind of green tasting. We've been eating and enjoying the kale, pak choy and swiss chard. When I do my next round of garlic planting (when the now late order from Koanga Gardens arrives), some will go in this bed.

window of sunshine

Nearly two hours without rain yesterday afternoon and I got outside for some of that time. Bliss. I held on to the experience throughout the rest of the day as I cared for my chickenpoxed children.

I tied up some of the falling over broad bean plants. Favourite Handyman has nailed some chickenwire to the fence for supporting the beans. The chickenwire doesn't spread the whole way along yet. Next time I plant broad beans, I must remember to stake with bamboo at the same time as I plant the seed so I get to stake up close without disturbing the root structure.

It was very wet underfoot, too wet to bury the bokashi or do much weeding. I pulled some docks and sent the dill to the compost.

I used up some more cupboard ingredients by making a double recipe of oat bread and a double recipe of orange and date muffins. Most of the muffins are now in the freezer for school lunches. WShat I really want is the satisfaction of some empty packets but I'm still not quite there. Making muffins is helping use up some white sugar, which we seem to have mountains of.

I don't know what I'll use up today. I still have bread and muffins left from yesterday. Too cold for sushi.

The sun is shining outside though and I can see the breeze, meaning the ground could dry out enough to bury some bokashi. The gardening experts would probably still say it is too wet to be digging, but here in wetville in Autumn/Winter/Spring, you've got to take your chances while you can. The soil moisture often doesn't ease up for for months on end.

I bought a great magazine yesterday called Grass Roots. It is an Australian magazine, with the focus on managing in drought which never quite works for me. But it is a very good magazine in ever other way. It seems to be aimed at self sufficiency enthusiasts, both in suburban and in larger contexts. Lots of reader contributions. This issue has an article on how to replace a zip in clothing, which I found really useful. We are trying to fix rather than replace things around our house. We don't have a subscription to the simplesavings website, but we are on the free mailing list and I notice that May is 'fix it' month there also.

Last week Favourite Handyman went to buy us a new cold tap for the kitchen. It had been leaking for ages and the plumber told us when he last looked (he was over for some harder plumbing work) that we'd need to replace the tap next time. Turned out a new tap started at $120 (but mixer taps, which would mean throwing out the perfectly good hot tap started at $80), so FH bought a new washer for $4 and put it on to see if we could keep it going a while longer. Our tap is now working beautifully.

We don't have the ability to make a new grate for the fireplace though, so as ours is eroded away quite a lot, we'll have to shell out the $200+ required for a new one soon.

peak oil - no stashing here just yet

I've been swanning round internet tonight, in preference to cleaning the kitchen or reading a book but in tandem with knitting my upside down cardi and I was struck that many bloggers that I read are storing items for peak oil.

I'm not.

I'm trying to get rid of as much as possible.

Our house is full of stuff. So full of stuff we mostly can't find the useful things we need when we want them. Full of xanthan gum and potato flour in the cupboard and clothes that don't fit and are missing buttons and newspapers from ridiculous amounts of time ago. I could go on.

I don't think I'll be waking up tomorrow and unable to ever buy wool again. Or go to The Warehouse, though that sounds quite attractive, never being able to go to The Warehouse again.

My goal is to use everything in our house and streamline to things we use.

Then, if I ever get there, I might give myself permission to hoard again.

home insulation progress

Blackout lining is on the curtains of all three windows in the lounge. Now we need to finish the last of the ceiling insulation. I'd also like to enclose the front porch and have two doors to get inside at the front, like many houses had in England. Our back entrance has two doors and I find it very effective at minimising draughts.

Using up the cupboard day eight

Guess how many odd and previously unloved ingredients I used today?

xanthan gum
buckwheat flour
potato flour
dates
cannelini beans
sage

I made orange and date muffins from theNZ Food Allergy Cookbook. They turned out well and I was pleased to empty one packet of dates. Though in the past it appeared that I was so pleased that I was hardly eating the first packet of dates that I went ahead and bought more. So there are still dates to use up. nI had never used the xanthan gum before, despite paying about NZ$8 for a small packet. All specialty gluten free items atract price increases of about 400% it seems.

1 whole orange, chopped with pips removed (I used 3 mandarins)
3/4 C orange juice
125g dairy free margarine, melted (I used butter as dairy isn't a problem here)
1.5 C plain flour or equal quantities of buckwheat, barley, rice or potato flours (I used 1/2 C each of buckwheat flour, potato flour and wholemeal flour)
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
3/4 C sugar
1 t xanthan gum
3/4 C pitted dates, chopped.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Lightly grease (I cheat and use paper muffin cups inside the muffin tray) a 12 muffin tin.
Process orange and juice in a food processor until well chopped.
Add margarine/butter and mix.
Sift dry ingredients and add dates.
Combine the liquid ingredients and dry ingredients carefully.
Spoon into muffin tins and bake for about 15 minutes.

Cannelini beans aren't especially unloved in our house, but until now we haven't eaten them much. Tonight I took a can of cannelini beans and heated it up with a leaf of sage (which I virtually never use - we have it in the herb garden), chopped garlic, rosemary, kale and bacon pieces (the ends which I buy in packets at half the per kilo price of sliced bacon). Favourite Handyman and I liked it a lot. The cannelini beans picked up the bacon flavour beautifully and it reminded us of the Fabada stew which we adored when we travelled through the north of Spain. I'll be mucking round with cannelini beans and cured pig products like bacon and black and white puddings again this winter. Perhaps I can make a NZ version of Fabada. The kale worked well with it also.

Kings Seeds sell cannelini bean seeds so that will be on my summer growing list. Won't be getting too ahead of myself on expectations after the tiny borlotti bean harvest this season recently finished though.

Eight minutes in the garden

Better than no minutes in the garden. And this is what I did in that eight minutes, today. Killed four white butterfly caterpillars and one slug. Moved a container of thyme and feverfew into the porch where I'm expecting it will be protected from frost. I want to fill the empty end of the container with coriander, plus plant a pot of coriander on the kitchen windowsill and see which, if any, works at this time of year.

I moved two of the logs which were once trees in front of the garage and then logs in front of the garage awaiting a new life. The area which had one of the zucchini plants over summer is partly dug up and I've used the two logs to square the space off from the lawn. It is bordered on the other sides by the fence and by my summer 07-08 raised bed. The photo above, taken about a fortnight ago, shows the area - it's the corner made by Fionn's head and elbow. I need to do some digging and weeding and then I'll put garlic and shallots in this space. It already has some bokashi buried in it.

My main garden goals for next summer are to do with carrots and onions, neither of which were successful for me last year. We eat huge quantities of carrots and onions and would really benefit from growing our own, thus reducing pesticide load and financial costs.