Recent outputs

Ginger Beer

My first attempt at home brew - has now been bottled and I am (im)patiently awaiting the end of next week when it will be ready for tasting... 

Pretty straightforward, boil up a premixed kit with water, add yeast and leave in a warm place (20-30 degs celcius) for a couple of weeks until fermentation complete (ie it stops bubbling), add the ginger flavoring (sachet), + 2 days, bottle (I used PET Coopers bottles this time as they were easy) with 2 carbonation drops (but you can just use sugar). 










Grapefruit Marmalade

Home grown grapefruits, lemons and oranges

I used mostly grapefruits (yellow, not pink), and raw sugar in this batch and the result seems to be much darker marmalade, compared to the previous lot, which was mostly made of oranges (with grapefruit and lemon as the support act), with ordinary white sugar, see below:

The chooks


(don't worry, only eating their eggs!)

The Araucana "Chilli" laid her first egg today:

Keep em coming girl!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

the inaugural post

Hello and welcome to my blog: home...harvest...cook

It is nearing the end of our first winter living on the banks of Goulburn River in northern Victoria. Surviving the rat-race during the week, the weekends are the time to play in the garden and the kitchen.

Poached pear and vanilla bean gem cakes, Sunday morning 29/8/10

Albeit a long way from self-sufficiency, we grow loads of our own produce - the previous caretakers of this land planted an amazing orchard of stone and citrus fruits, so we are the lucky beneficiaries of their efforts.

We are experimenting with lots of different veges in the garden, as well as some foraging for bush-food (nettle soup and wild fennel have been some recent successes).

I plan to share my home harvest creations and other ideas to hopefully inspire you to grow your own, create your own and bake your own. Hope you enjoy :o)

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Twelve Favorite Tomato Recipes

My twelve favorite tomato recipes, a perfect dozen selected especially for the last few weeks of the very best summer tomatoes.

Never take a good tomato for granted. That's the lesson folks out east learned in 2009 when the late tomato blight struck tomatoes across the eastern half of the U.S., dooming the entire crop. I felt their pain, remembering the year four days of a late-spring hard freeze nipped the blossoms on peach and apple trees. That year? No peaches, no apples, for Missouri and Illinois.

But no tomatoes? Unthinkable. I vowed to never take good tomatoes for granted. So for a couple of months, it’s red heaven on a plate, tomatoes morning, noon and night. Sliced and salted. Sliced and sugared. Sliced and slivered with basil and slippery with mozzarella. Then grilled, broiled, roasted, sandwiched and then finally, souped. One night I even drizzled a little tomato syrup over ice cream! Don't let the tomato season pass without reveling in the glory that is the summer tomato!
Keep Reading ->>>

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Israeli Couscous Salad with Yellow Squash & Sun-Dried Tomatoes ♥

Today's latest summer salad recipe: Take sexy Israeli couscous and match it up with pretty yellow squash. What do you get? Summer in a bowl. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".

Aiii, culinary nomenclature can be so confusing.

First there's couscous, which we tend to think of as a natural whole grain and cook and serve like a grain, but is really just another form of dried pasta. But did anyone else love the word 'couscous' as a kid? I did. "Koos-koos, koos-koos, koos-koos" I'd try to say three times, failing except for the real point, which was to laugh out loud, that was a success.

And then there's Israeli couscous. It's still another form of pasta, toasted instead of dried, and shaped in perfect tiny pearls somehow way sexier than other itty-bitty pastas and their cousin, regular couscous. But Israeli couscous is as much a 'food product' as couscous, it's not a natural whole grain either, albeit one born of necessity and innovation. After the formation of Israel, both food and foreign currency were scarce so it was prudent to create a home-grown food source to substitute for rice.

So I love the word 'couscous' and the history of Israeli couscous – and truth be told, I love this salad too, it tasted so garlicky and summery and was oh-so-pretty to behold.

I used a Trader Joe's mix called 'Harvest Grains Blend'. (You see how the word 'grain' keeps showing up in the couscous neighborhood?) It's a mix of Israeli "style" couscous (hmm, what does 'style' mean in this context?), red and green bullets of orzo (the tiny Italian pasta), baby garbanzo beans and red quinoa. I like the mix alot, except that the garbanzo beans took way more time and way more water to cook than the rest of the blend.

But don't stress over finding the Trader Joe's blend, or even Israeli couscous. Any tiny pasta will do, American, Italian, Israeli, Martian or otherwise.

For that matter, don't stress over the summer squash either – think peas or green beans or sweet corn or olive as substitutes. I have a great source of relatively inexpensive no-oil sun-dried tomatoes (for St. Louisans, that's Dierbergs) but wouldn't hesitate to use cherry tomatoes (halved, to get the juices out, maybe with tiny balls of fresh mozzarella?) or chopped summer tomatoes.

Let the ingredient list be as stretch-y and as pleasure-inducing as, you know, koos-koos.

REVIEWS
"I used this recipe as an "inspiration" for a dish of my own: ... The verdict: DELICIOUS! " ~ Molly

Keep Reading ->>>

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

No-Guilt Grilled Corn with Chipotle-Lime Browned Butter ♥

Today's easy summer recipe for the grill: Grill sweet corn with the husks off to reveal corn's natural sweetness, then brush with just a touch of a bright and spicy butter. What a summer treat!

Sweet corn is one of the summer's most-anticipated vegetables, so worth waiting for, so worth savoring each and every kernel. But calorie-wise, corn gets a bad rap, one it doesn't deserve. Why?

FIRST An ear of corn has built-in portion control: one ear of corn yields about a half cup of corn kernels. Even for Weight Watchers, that's a small enough portion that it counts as, get this, 1 point (Old Points) or 2 points (PointsPlus).

NUTRITION ESTIMATE for CORN ONLY
Per Ear of Corn, assumes 1/2 cup kernels: 66 Calories; .84g Tot Fat; .14g Sat Fat; 0mg Cholesterol; 11mg Sodium; 14.65g Carb; 2.08g Fiber; 2.48g Sugar; 2.48g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 1, PointsPlus 2 (for the record, for Old Points, the exact points are .97, not 1.47 or something approaching 2 points and for PointsPlus, the exact points are 1.90)

SECOND Corn is often treated as a butter-to-mouth transfer vehicle – not that there's anything wrong with that, except that too much butter overwhelms the corn's own delicate deliciousness.

Grilling corn brings out the corn's own natural sweetness. We grilled corn without the husks twice last week. Subjected directly to the heat of the grill, some of the kernels get quite chewy, almost candy-like. (Toothpicks are useful, after!) Add just a touch of the spiced butter and oh my, what a treat.

It's about time we learn to love corn again, without feeling guilty, just for the few weeks in summer when it's fresh from the field.
Keep Reading ->>>

reade more... Résuméabuiyad