The gift this week brought us was rain and it was so badly needed. It meant we stayed in the house, or at least on the verandahs, for three days but it was beyond wonderful to watch it fall, to see the green landscape return and to sleep as it fell on the metal roof. Simple things give so much. And now we have all that moisture back in the soil, it's the ideal time to do some weeding, relocate plants and get a better idea of what needs to be done to get the cottage garden up and running again.  In years to come, the garden will take care of itself for the most part, with just some weeding and watering from me so it's important at this stage to get everything in the right place, have taller plants that create shade for tender ones and not only get the colours right, but the structure too. Gardening and just being in the garden plays a big part in my mental wellbeing. I wonder if it's like that for you too. Maybe I should write about that. Hmmmm.🤔

I was pleased to read a post about teabags on nannachel's blog yesterday as a follow up to my link to how tea bags are made.  Chel wrote to Neranda, the maker of the tea she buys. You can read here what they wrote back. This tied in well with my planned post today because a few readers wrote and asked what's the best way to make tea using loose eat instead of tea bags.  They've all been tea baggers in the past, have never made loose tea, and want to change.  So here goes.  

There are many different tea balls and baskets of varying shapes and sizes, the ones I have here are just a few of the vast variety.  Buy what you think will work best for you. I can't tell you which shops have these things but you'll probably find them in Kmart and Target as well as the kitchen shops.  You'll also need some loose leaf tea.  Like Chel, I buy Neranda tea.  I buy the 250 gram pack for $3. It's always cheaper to buy loose leaf tea and it's usually better quality tea.  This pack will last us 4-6 weeks. How much you use will depend on how strong or weak you like your tea, how big your cups or mugs are and how many people you're making tea for. Don't buy too much at a time. A 250gram pack is good for a single person or a couple, 500 grams for a larger number. 

Of course you could always pay much more for organic black loose leaf tea - it's at least double the price but I'm happy with Neranda. It's grown and processed in Australia, it's insecticide-free, it's very tasty and I can get it locally at a very good price. I'm also fond of Earl Grey tea, which is just black tea with the essential oil bergamot added. However, a 125 gram pack of Twinings Earl Grey loose tea costs $7, so it's an occasional buy, not a frequent one, here. I used to buy King tea but I haven't seen it in any store lately.  Another one bites the dust.

The traditional way to make tea is in a tea pot.  I have a large tea ball (above) in which I put three teaspoons of tea and cover with boiling water. I let it brew with the lid on for about three minutes.  Large tea balls are very handy because they'll retain the tea leaves and you won't have to strain them through a tea strainer when you pour the tea.  However, you can easily just throw the loose tea into the tea pot, cover with boiling water and let it sit for a few minutes to brew.  If you make tea this way, you can either use a tea strainer or carefully pour the tea into the cup. If the tea is brewed properly and you don't shake the pot, most of the tea leaves will remain at the bottom of the pot and you won't need a strainer.

A pot of tea is ideal for a group of two or three, or more.  If the tea is for you alone, use one of the little tea balls, or a tea basket hooked over the side of the cup or a basket inside the cup.  One teaspoon of tea, pour over boiling water and let it sit for three minutes. The crucial element here is time.  Tea needs time to brew. The boiling water will soften the tea leaves and leaving them to steep for a few minutes will give you a full flavoured cuppa. You can then add milk, honey, sugar or lemon, depending on your taste.

Tea can be reused a few times before all the flavour goes. If you've got a few people to make tea for, make up a pot, pour the tea into all the cups you need, then add more boiling water to the pot. Allow it to steep for four minutes, remove the tea ball from the tea pot and put a tea cosy on the pot to keep it hot for a second cuppa for everyone.  And when the tea leaves are discarded, throw them into the compost where they'll decompose with the organic matter already there. The leaves will break down just like fruit and vegetable peelings do.  You can also use tea leaves on your blueberry bushes. They add a bit of acidity to the soil which the bushes love.

Good tea can't be rushed. Making tea like this and taking the time to slow yourself down enough to do it helps build slowness into your days. The urge to move through the day going as fast as possible is challenged by the process of making a cup of tea, especially if you make a pot and you go through the ritual of pouring tea from a pot. The ritual slows you down before you sit down to enjoy the tea. Surely in these days of multitasking and doing as much as you can in a day, the time you take to make a good cup of tea is an investment in your own mental health. 

We have so many visitors here that sometimes it feels like we're camping in the middle of Central Station. I'm a solitary soul and while I thrive with my family around me, I need silence and solitude as well. Hanno and Jamie went to the movies yesterday so I took the wonderful opportunity for some alone time. I spent some time in the garden pottering around and planning future projects and when I came inside again, went straight to the kitchen and made up two quick liquids that we'll enjoy in the coming days. I feel refreshed and full of beans now, so watch out. 😊

When I make salads, I prefer a no-oil dressing. I grew up long before the days of bottled salad dressing and olive oil. If we dressed salads at all, it was with vinegar. I remember my grandmother making salad by sprinkling a teaspoon of sugar, salt and pepper over the salad and then pouring in some vinegar. By the time the salad was eaten, the dressing was a mix of tomato, cucumber and onion juices mixed in with the vinegar and sugar. Grandma drank it straight down and taught the habit to my sister, Tricia. I drink it now too and have discovered there is nothing quite as bracing as a mouth full of vinegar juices.

I often have flavoured vinegar in the cupboard. I make it up ahead of time so it can develop flavour and add extra depth to potato salad, coleslaw, fish and quick pickles. If you add two tablespoons of this vinegar to mayonnaise, it cuts the creaminess back nicely and gives it a little kick.  I've been using flavoured malt vinegar recently so I decided on an apple cider vinegar this time.  It's a simple process that takes less than five minutes. All I do is place vinegar, sugar and spices in a saucepan and bring it up to a hot, but not boiling, temperature.  You can use any spices you fancy, I tend to use the traditional pickling spices of mustard seed - I have yellow and black here, celery seeds, pepper, chilli flakes and salt. I used two small fresh bay leaves too. I'm not giving you any set amounts because this is one of those things where you throw the recipe out the window and rely on your own taste to guide you. When it tastes right, it's right.  But as a little hint, I used 400 mls of cider vinegar and ½ cup raw sugar.  If the taste is too sharp and it's already sweet enough, add a little water to mellow it. When you have the base liquid to your taste, start adding the spices you like.

Pour it into a jar while it's still hot and let it sit on the bench while it cools. Stir it occasionally to bring in the flavour of the spices even more.  If you don't like the floating seeds in the vinegar, strain them out after a couple of days when the flavours have completely developed.  I always store this in the fridge. I'm not sure of the acidity level of the vinegar, it needs to be 5% to be stable in a cupboard, so it's safer in the fridge.

A great use for this is to do a quick pickled cucumber. Three to fours hours before using it, slice cucumber and some onion and place in a bowl. Sprinkle over about a tablespoon of salt and let the cucumbers sit for 45 minutes. This draws water from the vegetables so you don't get watered down vinegar when you fill the jars. Wash the salt off before placing the cucumbers in a jar. Pour over just enough vinegar to cover the slices and allow it to sit until you use them.

We're still working our way through the citrus. The orange tree has been picked, we have a jug of fresh orange juice in the fridge and the last bucket of oranges waiting to juiced.  There are still a lot of lemons on the trees and I had about 1500 mls of lemon juice in the fridge waiting to be used. I made more 100ml portions of lemon juice ice blocks and used the rest of the juice I had to make a small amount of lemon cordial.  It will give us a nice boost of vitamin C over winter.  This is my usual recipe for cordial.   It's delicious made up as a cold drink but you can also add it to hot black tea in winter.

Such simple liquids, but they both transform any food they're added to. Do you have a favourite vinegar or juice recipe?

Hello my friends. I've had a busy week here working on Christmas sewing, mending, gardening and ripping out most of our tomato bushes, tidying up my workroom, cooking and baking. The main event though is preparing to drive to Wollongong to visit my dear friend Rose who is very ill.  Hanno will stay at home with Jamie and Gracie. Consequently, there will be no Weekend Reading this week because I haven't had time to do much reading. This will be my last post until mid next week.

The basic recipe is a mixture of: 

• 8 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese (or cheese of your choice)
• 250ml (one cup) cream
• crushed garlic
• salt and pepper

Into that mix add whatever vegetables you have on hand that you like the taste of or need to use.  I had some asparagus that sat on top of the egg mix. In the egg mixture, pre-cooked in a frying pan, were:

• 1 onion, chopped
• parsley, chopped
• 1 red capsicum, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 4 mushrooms, sliced
• 1 zucchini, chopped

but the choice of vegetables depends on what you have on hand. It will work with most vegies. Pour the mixture into an oven-proof container and bake in a 170C oven until it's golden brown on top and still has a slight wobble.

I also like to use cooked sweet potato or potato with a scattering of peas. It's delicious hot but I prefer it on the following days, cold from the fridge.  It would be an excellent lunch box meal because it travels well.  

Above is a photo of the last ginger syrup I made. I made an interesting discovery with this syrup. I left it on the stove top, covered in a saucepan, for 48 hours instead of the 24 hours I usually leave it. They were warm days. When I poured the liquid into the storage bottle I noticed a few bubbles and was pleased that it had started to ferment. After two days in the cupboard, there were more bubbles so I released the gasses in the glass bottle and moved it into the fridge to slow down the fermentation process. I always use plastic bottles when I make ginger beer. When I made it up and tasted it, it was delicious! It was smooth with a more complex, slightly alcoholic flavour than the ginger syrup I usually make. Now I have two bottles - one my usual syrup and one that has natural fermentation. I think I'll put in some more work on the next batch of ginger syrup and see where that takes me.

And finally, I realised a couple of days ago though that the second instalment of the Great British Sewing Bee wasn't shown here last Saturday, so I wrote to the TV channel and asked why.  Email back today says it continues this Saturday at 7pm. It will be followed by the Great Chelsea Garden Challenge. If you live in Australia, was it on where you live?

Don't forget, I'll be away for a week. I'll see you next Wednesday.

Ginger is one of those plants that fits easily into the kitchen for cooking or making drinks. Many of us use ginger in our cooking or to make ginger beer and ginger syrup, which are both healthy drinks for for summer or winter.  In summer drink we drink our ginger drinks with ice, in winter I add one or two tablespoons to black tea to add warmth and spice.

Ginger syrup is the easiest drink to make and it's a great addition to your drinks menu over the Christmas holidays. Simply grate or finely chop a large piece of ginger root, you'll need at least a cup full of ginger. Don't get too precious with the amounts - it doesn't have to be exact.

To 2 litres of water add two cups of sugar and bring to the boil. When the sugar has dissolved, add the ginger and simmer the mix for an hour.  Turn off the heat, put the lid on the saucepan, and leave it sitting on the stove overnight to develop flavour.

The next day, pour the mix through a fine strainer to remove the ginger pulp and store the liquid in a sealed, sterilised bottle. Use this mix as you would use any cordial - a small amount mixed with cold tap water or mineral water. Generally this is about one part syrup to four parts water but the amount you use will depend on your own taste. Experiment until you find the right balance. It can be stored in the cupboard or fridge.

Don't throw out the ginger pulp, you'll get a second batch from it.  Collect the used ginger, add it back to the saucepan and use half the amount of water and sugar you used for the first batch. The process is the same - bring to the boil, simmer for an hour, turn the heat off and leave the mix on the stove overnight. Bottle the following day.

And because we are the people we are, let's try to grow our own ginger.

Ginger is one of those plants that can be grown in almost all climates and although it's easy to grow, it  grows slowly. It will take almost a year to grow a crop. The most difficult part of growing ginger is finding the right spot for it to grow. Some of you will have to grow it in a pot but if you're in a tropical or sub-tropical area, it can be grown in the ground as long as it's protected from wind and it gets afternoon shade. You must plant the ginger in spring.

Find some fresh, plump ginger at the shop, if there are buds already forming, that's a bonus.  If the piece of ginger is a large one, you can break off segments as long as they contain at least one bud and have 4 or 5 cm of rhizome under the bud.  Soak the ginger overnight in a bowl of water.

Warm climate
If you're planting in the ground, prepare the soil by adding compost and digging it in. Plant each piece of ginger about 5 cm deep with the shoots facing upwards and water in.  Make sure the area you pick is protected from winds, has good drainage and gets afternoon shade.

If you're not in a warm climate or if you want to plant in a pot
To plant in a large pot, fill the pot with good quality potting mix and plant the ginger 5cm deep with the shoots facing up. Water it in. If you're in a hot climate, the pot will need afternoon shade, in a cold climate it might need to be placed close to a wall for extra warmth but it certainly needs to be out of the wind. When it gets cold, take the pot inside to a warm sunny spot.

Don't let the plant dry out but don't over water either - the ginger will rot if it sits in water for too long.  After a couple of weeks, when shoots start growing, apply seaweed concentrate made up according to the instructions, or a weak liquid fertiliser. Comfrey tea is ideal. Continue to fertilise with a weak mix every two weeks until the green shoots start to die back in autumn/winter. When the shoots are brown and shrivelled, it's time to harvest your ginger.

Good luck, ginger lovers. 🌿 

You can save quite a bit of money if you learn how to do some basic sewing. Sewing on buttons, mending a torn sleeve, taking up a hem, replacing a zipper and turning a collar are all skills that can be learned and put into practise when needed. By doing these minor repairs you'll be able to keep family clothing in service longer.

My favourite summer nightgown started fraying on the yoke a little while ago. There was a time when I would have seen that as a signal to go out and buy another one but I'm wiser now, I mended it and saved myself some money. I used a piece from an old cotton tablecloth that I'd used for other repairs.

This is the easiest kind of common sense sewing.  I just cut out the yoke and used it as a template to cut out the replacement fabric. I made it a double thickness so I could pin the bottom of the nightgown in between the two layers, tidied up the fabric where the new seam would be, pinned  and  sewed it together on the sewing machine. 

I had to make sure I had both sides of the new yoke sewn securely in place. I did that by pinning it together before I started sewing.

 The recipe for this elderberry tonic is in The Simple Home.

If you're in a warm climate, rosellas are a very useful and unusual plant to grow in the backyard. They're a wild hibiscus, grown in many places including Australia, particularly in the north, Africa, south east Asia, West Indies, Mexico and the US, I'm not sure about the European countries.  Let me know in the comments if you're growing it. 

We haven't grown rosellas for a couple of years but there was a time when they were regulars in our garden and I made jam and drinks with them every year.  It's an easy plant to grow if you have the right climate for it so that's why it's back in our garden; we want to grow simple plants that are useful in the kitchen. It takes about six months of frost-free warm weather to grow them to maturity. The red sepals, seeds and green leaves are all edible. Red Zinger tea contains rosellas, it's what gives that tea its red colouring. There are several health claims made for rosellas but I'll leave that for you to research because I don't know which claims are true.

One of the pleasures of a slow summer is having the time to make cordial. Drinking homemade cordial on a hot day is one of joys of the season for us so I make sure our favourites are ready for the hottest days. I love ginger cordial, Hanno loves elderberry cordial, so they are our mainstays. Made with fresh ginger and elderberries from our tree in the backyard, I just add lemon and sugar and that's it. Cordial bought at the supermarket is generally a concoction of water, preservatives, artificial flavours and colours. Making your own is easy to do and a much healthier option. I make up the drink with a small amount of cordial syrup and add cold sparkling mineral water and ice. Hearing those ice cubes clinking in the glass is one of the things I love about summer.

We've been stripping the tree of elderberries for the past couple of months and freezing them. I have a good stockpile of frozen berries now. I want to have the syrup on hand in winter to help us through any viruses or colds we do get. Luckily it's a rare event.

To make the cordial, add the berries with no stems, to a saucepan add the rind and juice of a couple of lemons or a lemon and lime (use whatever you have) and just cover them with water.  Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, simmer for 15 minutes and leave the pot on the stove to steep for about 6 hours. Then drain the liquid off through a fine sieve, or a colander with a muslin cloth in it. For every 2 litres of liquid, I add 3 cups of sugar, return it to the heat, and stir until the sugar dissolves. The amount of sugar you add depends on your own taste and how sweet the fruit is.

Pour the cordial into a sterilised bottle. It will keep for over a year in the cupboard but when you open it, store it in the fridge.

It's easy to make cordial using any fruit you grow in the backyard or if you see summer fruit on special at the shop, grab some and make it up. The cordial will keep perfectly well until you drink it so there's no problem making it up in summer and drinking it much later in the year. You could make cordial using any kind of berry, any citrus fruit, mangoes, pineapple, passionfruit or any fruit that you'll get juice from. The drier fruits, like berries and mangoes, are best cut up, boiled in water and steeped, before adding sugar to the strained liquid. With other juicier fruits, such as citrus, you squeeze the juice and add sugar syrup. Adjust the strength of the sugar syrup according to the taste and type of fruit, and your own taste for sweetness.

Normal sugar syrup is 1 kg sugar to 1 litre of water.
Weak sugar syrup is 500 grams sugar to 1 litre of water.

Juice whatever fruit you have and depending on what it is - the more mellow the flavour, the less sugar you'd add. So, for example, I'd use a normal strength sugar syrup for lemon cordial and a weak sugar syrup for orange cordial. So taste the fruit first and add the amount of sugar you think it needs. Sweet fruit will need less but keep in mind that the sugar not only adds sweetness, it is a preservative too.

If you haven't had homemade summer cordial yet, try to find some fruit during the week and make cordial this weekend.  It is one of those summer tasks that I'm sure will become a yearly ritual.

It's only a couple of days until Christmas and I hope you've got your menu planned and all your goodies ready, or almost ready. It's always a nice touch to give a nod to our frugal and food loving grannies by adding a couple of homemade items to your yule table. So here are two easy recipes, even for new cooks, that you can make now or over the holidays.

Pickled cucumbers is the easiest pickle you'll make and even though the flavour increases the longer you let it mature, if you made it today you could eat and enjoy it on Christmas day; it's not too late.

Quick pickled cucumber 

• 4 - 6 young cucumbers or about 15 - 20 baby cucumbers
• 1 onion
• 1 tablespoon salt

• 1 ½ cups of your favourite vinegar (I used malt vinegar)
• ½ - ¾ cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pickling spice OR ¼ teaspoon black peppercorns, ¼ teaspoon coriander seeds and ½ teaspoon mustard seeds.

Cut the cucumbers in halves lengthways, then cut each half into three long pieces. Leave the baby cucumbers whole. Place the cucumbers in a large bowl and sprinkle 1 tablespoon of salt over them, cover and leave for three hours. After three hours rinse the cucumbers to remove the salt and salty water. Leave them in a colander to drain.  If you don't do this step the cucumbers will release all their water into the vinegar and spoil it. You must remember to wash the salt off though.

Ginger cordial

• thick piece fresh ginger about three inches/8cm long
• 1½ litres/quarts tap water
• ¾ - 1 cup sugar
• rind and juice of one lemon