Using up the cupboard day 7

Languishing ingredients targeted today: yeast, treacle, flour

I have five days to use up two containers of yeast if I am to keep within the best before dates. Even if I don't keep within them, I think the signs are clear that I need to be making some bread.

I was very pleased with today's effort: oat bread. It comes from the New Zealand Bread Book by Browne, Leach and Tichborne.

1 C rolled oats
1 T treacle
1/2 C boiling milk
1 C boiling water
1 C white flour
1 t salt
1 T Surebake dried yeast
1.5-2 C white flour

Place rolled oats and treacle in a small bowl. Add the boiling milk and water. Stir to mix. Leave to cool for ten minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the fijrst measure of flour with the salt and yeast. Stir to mix. Add the very warm oat mixture and beat until well mixed. Leave to rest for 3 minutes. Add 1.5 C of the second measure of flour and add enough extra flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 7-10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Return to bowl and cover. leave to rest for 15 minutes.

Knead the dough for 1 minute. Shape to fit a round bread pot or loaf tin. Brush the surface of the dough with a little metled butter or cooking oil. Cover loosely with plastic. Leave in a warm place to double in size. Bake in hot oven, 220-230 degrees celsius, for 30-35 minutes.

I am shaving dollars off our shopping bill and using our cupboard ingredients much more efficiently, perhaps even wisely. But I seem to be in the kitchen most of the day. Which is not quite the same zen for me as being in the garden all day. When the rain stops, the cupboards may find themselves resting for a while.

I did escape the kitchen and go buy loads of sausages by our favourite country pub this afternoon. The stopping at the pub part was the best.

This morning I had intended to cook chickpeas in the slow cooker as I've managed to break my pressure cooker. But a discussion with Melanie about this gave me the idea that I should preboil the chickpeas first. I'd never heard this advocated for chickpeas before, only red kidney beans, but thought I'd include it. Only once I'd filled the stock pot and boiled it, I didn't fancy dirtying another pot (the crockpot) and I also realised I'd begun to cook such a very large amount, nearly 1 kg of dried chickpeas, that it wouldn't fit in my otherwise good-sized slow cooker. Now I have eight containers of chickpeas in the freezer. What a good girl I think I am.

Home again

Two days in Hanmer Springs with Fionn and Brighid and my parents at their home. Otherwise known to me as peak oil fortress capability A+++ rating. Nice time. Came back with pumpkins from Dad's garden, some raspberry canes from Dad's garden so I can grow my own next year and seven jars of home made jam from Mum - some blackberry and some apricot. I also brought back the blackout lining for the lounge curtains which Mum so kindly made. All wonderful gifts which I really appreciate. Bringing home grandchildren certainly has currency.

Then a night in Christchurch, catching up with friends who used to live on the coast. Where I got to be dual personality mum yet again.

Scene one: 11.30am Monday. Sandra in long flowing skirt, baby in ergo on her back, long haired and beautifully behaved son holding her hand. We are in Piko Organic foods cooperative choosing lentils and beans for the winter. Life is beautiful and we are beautifully organic. We cross the road and collect some natural medicine for Fionn's latest skin complaint and don't argue once that I can recall.

Scene two: 12.30pm Monday. Sandra and children in car, hungry. Sandra experiencing strong aversion to getting all children out of the car again in order to buy lunch and some fizzy and wine to take to our friends' house. So we buy KFC at the drive thru and I spend precious fossil fuel driving to a further away mall which has a liquor outlet where I can leave the kids in the car straight outside and dash in.

Today we met up with Favourite Handyman in Christchurch and all drove home again and I stood out the back in the rain as soon as I got home matching the spring planting plans I'd made while driving with the reality in front of me. Oh and also today I found some New Zealand grown, good quality looking shallots and bought some to break up and plant in the garden.

Remembering

Today is Anzac Day. Fionn and I collected my cousin Mary and we went to the 9.30am cemetery service remebering those who fought and died in wars. Then we spent time putting flowers on graves with Mary.

This afternoon we planted Fionn and Brighid's placentas. We've only been holding onto them for 5+ years and 15 months respectively. Each one has gone underneath it's own cabbage tree, surrounded by home made compost.

We also raked up leaves and put them in the leaf mulch container my father in law made for me in January. And pulled out the last zucchini plant. Too cold for growth on it now.

Went out to friends' place for dinner tonight, going away for a few days from tomorrow. Cupboard project on hold until we are back.

sewing progress

I liked this post from Eating the Seasons recently. While I am some distance from making my own outer clothes of the type which can then be worn to work not on funny clothes day, I have achieved a few small victories in the sewing department today. At 6am actually. You might as well do some sewing if you are up early with the five year old who is shouting with excitement because today is the inaugural rugby league practice day for the first time for him ever even though it is still at that point a) dark and b) 11 hours until league practice.

I've now replaced the elastic on two pairs of Fionn's pyjamas. I have also made myself an item of washable sanitary protection. When we lived in England, WEN (Women's Environmental Network) spent some time thinking up a snappy name for products which deal with menstrual bleeding but which are reusable. Back when our grandmas used rags, probably no one talked about it to require a name. 'Sanpro' was the best WEN could come up with at the time. Here in NZ I find washable fabric pads are often called 'mama pads' which strikes me as odd for a product by no means restricted to mothers in it's use. I started my project with part of a worn out baby bib, folded it in half and sewed it together and then encased it in the lower half of the baby outfit which I cut up to make this a few months ago. Then I sewed some domes on to do it up. Twice because I sewed the dome the wrong way up. There are some fancy machines called snap presses available these days which make lovely fastenings but I had domes in my sewing bag (snaplock Glad freezer bag) and I'm all about using what I've got at the moment.

I have plans for more items made solely out of things we already have in our home. No doubt I'll be skiting here about anything which makes it to functional stage, no matter the unpicking involved. I even had to unpick the pyjama trousers and I would wager that many a seamstress would think it impossible to muck up changing elastic. It's not impossible. I promise.

Lastin. Fancy title. You buy it from specialty online shops. I'd heard about it in home made nappy circles. You know what? Down at our local Bernina shop, where the staff are so lovely I want to adopt them to be some more aunties for me, they sell the same stuff, for a fraction of the price. No fancy names for it either. 'See through elastic' they call it. Buy local ladies and gentlemen. It has perks.

Using up the cupboard day 6

Won some, lost some.

Winning: found some couscous and made it into tabbouleh. I'm also trying to eat up the fridge and made progress with that by making butternut squash and feta cheese risotto. Hot for lunch, cold alongside the tabbouleh for dinner

Losing: this afternoon was to be cereal afternoon. I hauled every single item out of the cupboard which houses the cereal and various other items. Found where the mice have been partying finally! I gave up on the old cereals and also on the gf flours. They're all on the compost now. I just could not imagine living long enough to want to eat them. I know it's bad of me when half the world starving is turning into more and more than half every day at the moment. I have to face my badness some time.

Amongst the compost:
puffed millet
puffed rice
rice flakes
apricot and bran cereal
gf cereal
gf cornflakes
more expensive gf flour which doesn't make anything nice when you can't add egg to it either than I wish to quantify

Down the sink went some very old and odd smelling sushi sauces. I kept the four packets of sushi wrappers which I found because we do like sushi and I don't think they will have gone off. We must have had a phase of making it every week, but that was a long time ago now.

At least the cupboard is clean and you can actually see what is in it now.

Coal, petrol. A cheap shot or a good target?

Tonight's local paper reports our mayor's outrage at the NZ Green party's new catchphrase 'keep the coal in the hole', first mentioned I think in Jeanette Fitzsimmon's Earth Day speech. A cheap shot aiming at Auckland voters says Tony Kokshoorn, our local mayor. Maybe. This link gives some information but doesn't include the comment in our local rag which I found most compelling. Kokshoorn is mad that the Green Party has chosen as it's target an industry which is bringing a significant amount of money into our West Coast economy.

According to the Grey Star (23/04.08, p.2), "[Kokshoorn] said if the Greens were sincere in their convictions they would also call for a ban on petrol."

Well I don't doubt the sincerity of conviction of Jeanette Fitzsimmons. But I did wonder about the choice to focus on coal.

Perhaps I'm turning into a Coaster after all.

Not using up the cupboard day 5

Takeaway fish and chips. Chocolate. Cupboards ignored.

Maybe I'll be a good girl tomorrow. Maybe it will stop raining.

Consistency does not live at my home.