Loads of Legumes

With Christmas over our credit card is a little beat up, not too bad, but enough to make me question what I'll be spending of the next couple of weeks while it recovers.

Step 1: Give credit card to hubby to hide - then I can't be tempted to use it.  I have to check my bank balance to be sure I can afford something before I buy it - which means tallying up what I'm spending at the supermarket. I tally up my shopping most of the time anyway, but now I'll have to be more accurate.

Step 2: Clear out the cupboards, larder, fridge and freezer.  I've found loads of beans and lentils in the larder, fruit and a few part packs of nuts in the freezer and pasta and coconut milk in the basement storage area.

Step 3: Only buy absolute essentials for the next 2 weeks (maybe even 3) and live of what we already have.

Step one was completed on Monday - I have no idea where my credit cards are. Done.

Step two is in progress.  I have done a quick rustle around in my larder, store cupboards and shelves and the freezer.  I will dig beeper next week.  I found loads and loads of legumes that need using.  Beluga lentils, dahl lentils, puy lentils, soy beans, haricot beans, chickpeas, pinto beans and red beans.

I soaked the large bag of pinto beans over night, rinsed and then simmered gently today while I set up a new run for the 9 roosters that are arriving today.  Once they were tender I left to cool in their juices.  I have just packed up containers for the freezer, perfect sizes to feed Mumma, Pappa and Baby Bears.  I find this a much better way of doing beans now, I used to just measure out what I needed for meal, soak and cook - then have to do it all over again for the next meal - no wonder I still have so many beans.  Now I do them in bulk and all I need to do is grab a box of beans from the freezer in the morning and they'll be ready for use for dinner.

Beans are so cheap, tasty and easy to make.  If you're on a budget they are a great way to add protein to a meal at a fraction of the cost.  For example, my 1kg bag of pinto beans from a bulk Indian food store cost me $5.50.  Once soaked and cooked they have been divided into 6 meal portions (for 2 adults and 2 under fives).  That's under a $1 for a meal, around 20c per person!  Bargain!  When it that cheap you can afford to splash on a little bacon to make my awesome baked beans, Boston baked beans to be precise.  I will be making them tomorrow so watch this space.

For step three I will make sure have my cell phone or calculator with me when I go to town next so I can note down the price of things on my shopping list and add them up.  I always visit my green grocer before the supermarket too, there's a bit more guess work in what I'm going to spend with everything being sold by the kilo.  Then I know exactly what I have to stick to at the supermarket where is everything has fixed prices.  I think I can get away with only spending $20 this week, I only need a handful of things, mostly sugar and spices for pickling my huge crop of gherkins and dish liquid to clean up after.

Second Hand Goodies

At the weekend Pappa Bear and I took our our boys for an 'adventure'.  It was really just a shopping trip for a few essentials with some non-essential stops on the way.

Our first stop was a garage sale where we meet some friendly locals, one set being the father and son team who deliver our local paper and another being the owner of the village cafe.  I found some stainless steel BBQ kebab sticks, 3 large baskets perfect for bread at our next BBQ and a nice big glass baking dish.  As we were about to leave and pay for my armful of goodies I spotted an old lounge suite.  A couple of two seaters and an arm chair.  After a bit of 'umming and aring' we decided to purchase the suite, for the bargin price of $45 - including delivery by the friendly locals no less.

The rest of the morning was spent collecting a massive pile of books from the Public Library, visiting our fruit and vege shop, the local supermarket and then having lunch and a play at the park beside Lake Hakanoa.  After we got home Pappa Bear went to help load up the new furniture to bring home.  I was ready and waiting we they arrived, vacuum and upholstery cleaner set to go.  After two hours of applying serious elbow grease and a couple more hours in the sun and wind they came up soft and clean - but not any prettier.

I have plans on posting how I make sofa covers but first I need to save up my housekeeping money to buy fabric.  No more flicking money around willy-nilly like we used to on 2 wages, it's super thrifty living for us now.  That's why it's taken me 9 months to get furniture for the sunroom in the first place, trying to find the right size and price for our room, and budget.

In the mean time I will have to live with the faded fabric and 2 small holes that came with the suite.  We've already made good use of the new furnished cozy corner in our sunroom which used to be home to toys, tents and quite often a big mess.  We've had an evening with our new library books, a few snoozes, story times, a cuppa with family passing through and today my boys have sat and read for ages.  As much as I want my dream of fresh coats of white paint, linen fabrics and splashes of my favourite blues, pinks and teals thrown around I am happy that we are comfortable, warm and cozy living with our second hand, side of the road and gifted furniture.

Rotten Tomatoes

Along with a lot of success in my new garden I have had a few failures.  The biggest and most heartbreaking failure so far is my tomatoes.  I planted my usual cherry tomatoes which are doing 'alright' but the plants I had the biggest hopes for were a heritage variety 'Tigerella' and an acid free 'Roma'.

All of my tomatoes started out with wonderfully strong growth, happily setting out side shoots and flowers.  The trouble began when the plants began to set fruit.  The cherry tomatoes continued to grow at a slower rate but the 2 large breeds stalled, big time.  I thought I was doing everything right, a good long soak every 3 days, a weekly feed of smelly seaweed and none of my chicken poop tea which is too high in nitrogen.

They may look red and delicious but my large breeds of tomatoes are a disaster

The striped Tigerella should be "very sweet, rich and fruity tasting".  My dreams for these beauties were large bowls of tomato salads, sliced in sandwiches, fried for breakfast, chucked on the BBQ or even just gobbled up in the garden.  Mine are not sweet, rich or fruity.  They are dry and musky tasting, like they're going from unripe to bad in one foul swoop.  A disaster.

The Roma were meant for sauces, bottling and preserves but they are even worse, the foliage is turning brown and the fruit are succumbing to blossom end rot.  You can see the early stages below.  The soft spot at the base slowly turns from grey to brown, then black and rotten.  The tomato is pretty much inedible, the inside is dry, the seeds are black and the fruit tastes rancid.

The beggings of blossom end rot

There was a short sit and cry in my garden, my tomato plants adding to my pain, dropping some of their half grown fruit from the vine as I sat there.  I soon picked myself up again, deciding this is something to learn from.  Heck, this is my first summer in a new property and in a different zone no less.  No more sub-tropical Auckland for me - we're in the temperate foggy, frosty, windy Waikato.  And I have a huge paddock over my back fence, southerly winds have pelted over the hay field this summer, beating some of my vege patch within an inch of it's life.

After a little research I have found that blossom end rot is due to lack of calcium, needed for cell formation and strong tomatoes.  Next year I will spend more time prepping my soil with blood and bone, pot-ash and other goodies.  Fingers crossed we will reap the benefits with feasts of fresh tomatoes and a larder full of tomato sauces and preserves.

TK Fried Chicken

Sunday night is my night off so Pappa Bear made us some awesome chicken and chips (and because I can't help but be in the kitchen I made some coleslaw).  This method of making fried chicken is full proof because the chicken is pre-cooked and tender, it's lower in fat too with only the outside crispy coating getting fried.  You can poach the chicken right away like we did or leave it to sit in milk over night for extra soft and juicy chicken.  This meal for 4 worked out to be about $12, a high end dinner compared to our usual home kill meals.

TK Fried Chicken

To Poach Chicken
8 Freerange Drumsticks
About 1L Milk
2 Bay Leaves
Pepper Corns
Salt

Coating
1 Egg
1/2C Milk
1/2 C Plain Flour
1/4 C Fine Semolina or Polenta (use more flour if you don't have either of these)
1T Paprika
1T Ground Cumin
1t Tumeric
1/2t Chicken Salt
1/2t Ground Pepper
Plus oil for frying (we use canola)

Cover the drumsticks with milk (we used half milk, half water - it's cheaper).  Add bay leaves and peppercorns and leave overnight if you have time.  Just before poaching add a couple of good pinches of salt to the milk.  Bring to a gentle simmer and poach drumsticks for 10-15 minutes, till the juices run clear or internal temperature is 82C if you have a probe.  Drain drumsticks and cool on a rack (keep the poaching milk for making a white sauce, creamy chicken pie or something like that).
While chicken cools beat egg and 1/2C milk in one bowl and mix the flour, semolina, spices, salt and pepper in another.  When the chicken is cool enough to handle coat in egg then flour - then repeat giving the chicken 2 coatings.  Return the coated chicken to the rack to rest while you heat 1.5cm of oil in a heavy based frypan over a med-high heat and coat the rest of the chicken.  The coating becomes quite tacky as it rests, this is what gives you a perfect fried coating, so be patient.  Once the oil is hot add your chicken to the pan, turning every 2 minutes until all sides are brown.  Drain on a paper towel and enjoy.

Beef Tongue

With the homekill half of a cow that we purchased last year we got a huge tongue.  I've been meaning to cook it up for ages and try the method that my mother in law had told me about.  I finally pulled it out and defrosted it to cook at the weekend.  It was quite easy really, a set and forget kind of recipe.  I was not one bit queasy cooking or peeling this odd peice of meat - but I can see how some would be.

Homemade bread, spread, tongue, pickles with tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber from the garden

Beef Tongue

1 Beef Tongue
Salt
1 Onion, peeled and halved
1 Carrot, scrubbed
2 Bay Leaves
8 Peppercorns
Gelatine Powder

Put tongue in a large pot and cover with water.  Add a good pinch of salt, onion, carrot, bay leaves and peppercorns.  Gently simmer for 4 hours or until tender (a knife will easily push into the thickest part of the tongue when done).  Keeping the cooking liquid, put the tongue into a bowl of cold water and peel away the leathery skin and any fatty pieces (the cold water makes it much easier to peel).  Find a bowl that the tongue will just fit into and squeeze it in.  Strain 2 cups of hot cooking liquid and dissolve into it 4 teaspoons of gelatine (better to have too much gelatine mix than not enough).  Pour gelatine mix over tongue to fill mold, place a plate over the top of the tongue and weigh down with something heavy (jug of water or tin cans).  Allow to set and cool overnight before removing from the mold.

This is great sliced thinly and added to salad or sandwiches.  Or fry up some butter, onion and sage - when the onion is soft add slices of beef tongue, heat through and serve on hot buttered toast - YUM!

Mid-Summer Garden

I have never grown flowers for cutting before - but now I can see the attraction.  I planted a dozen sweet pea seeds early in the spring and I am now being rewarded with beautiful fragrant flowers.  Everyday there are more to pick when I forage for vegetables at dinner time.  I will definitely plant more next year and I'll make a nice big frame for them too, the tee-pee they are on is much to small and crowded (too small for anything of use really - I think some up-cycling is on order).  And as a bonus, I've been told you can cut down and dry the plants when they've finished and make pea straw for mulching your garden.

Sweet Pea Flowers

I'm loving my garden, all the hard work in spring is paying off.  There is a steady supply of gherkins growing over our old umbrella frame for pickling, sweet succulent cherry tomatoes, silver-beet, spring onions, coriander, carrots, lettuce, spinach, runner beans and juicy apple cucumbers.  Every couple of weeks I bung a  few more seeds in around the garden when a crop has finished, mostly carrots, spring onions and fennel.  I think it's a bit too late now for fennel but I'm hoping I'll get some tender baby ones to roast with our back-yard raised chicken when they're ready for slaughter.

Sweet, tasty toms

A quick forage in the rain this morning, yellow zucchini for dinner and gherkins for bottling

I'm amazed how big the chicks are getting - in just the last 4 weeks they have tripled in size and have grown heaps of adult feathers - they are 9 weeks old.  We are thinking they'll be ready for slaughter late February at around 14 weeks old.  For this flock are trialing a 50/50 mix of a grain mix and formulated meat feed.  The meat feed is not as cheap as grains but I'm sure the added protein is making a  difference to their growth rate, which means they'll be ready for slaughter a lot faster and eat less in the long run.  Time will tell.

A few weeks ago we moved them to their own run, which is also our compost area and they are doing a great job turning over the heap and it keeps them busy hunting for insects and scraps. I plan to create a 3 bin compost system after slaughter when the area is empty.  Then we can have bins at different stages and leave one open for the the next flock to turn for me.  I love having chickens, they are great at clearing weeds, turning compost and their poop is amazing for the garden - plus we get eggs and meat.

Our 'baby' chickens, a bit muddy with all this rain we've been getting but very happy and healthy.

Baby chickens 6 weeks ago

I'm pretty sure I need a bigger garden....

After 8 days at the beach with my boys I came home to my garden looking fantastic (thanks to my lovely husband and the rain for keeping it watered).  We are getting a good serving of veges for dinner and salad greens for lunches each day which is fantastic.

But... what I'd really like to be doing is bringing in a few basketfuls of excess each week to blanch and freeze for winter to save on grocery bills later in the year.  Our garden is jam packed and just meeting our daily needs, so I think I need to look at an expansion for next year.  More silver-beet, kale, beetroot and zucchinis would be really appreciated right now - they are so versatile.  Beans too, they freeze really well.

I have the beginnings of a plan in mind for expansion, plus the addition of berries and other fruit.  In the mean time I am happy eating fresh, tender and delicious spray free produce from our lovely garden - the best I've ever grown.