down to earth

It was one of those days yesterday when nothing much happened, yet everything did. My labours of love continued with the daily chores and catching up with odds and ends. We have a friends little dog, Iona, staying with us for a week while she is in Sydney. Rosie and Alice stared long and hard at her when she first arrived, but now they're settled into a respectful relationship and all is well in our doggy backyard.

One of my chores yesterday was to make bread and this is it - a quick sourdough made from the NY Times no knead recipe. It makes a great loaf and well worth trying if you haven't already done so.

I have been thinking a lot about baskets recently. Using my own shopping basket inspired me to make a very simple plaited raffia one. I love baskets and find pleasure in looking at them, looking after them, and now, making one. I don't know what it will turn into, my hope is for a small bench top basket I can put unripe tomatoes in. If this basket evolves into that, and there is absolutely no reason to believe it will, I will have a go at making a laundry basket.

Pigeon peas

Of course you'd know that I'd be watching the cricket yesterday - and in bits and pieces today as well, it's a five day test match. While watching, I shelled some pigeon peas, started another dishcloth for my gift stash and did some work on piecing the raffia basket together. It's a favourite time of year when the cricket is on. I wander in and out, work on projects and sometimes snooze in front of the TV. Hanno joins me sometimes and falls asleep too. If we're both sitting there and I wake and see him beside me, I have a little laugh to myself and think back to those days when sleeping during the day was the last thing we'd do.

There is a season for all things.

The sun is shining brightly outside and it's been a lovely summer of warm days and coolish nights. We usually have a very hot and humid summer, but this is very nice indeed. The vegetable garden has grown so fast, but so have the weeds, and although we welcomed the rain we had - and there was a lot - it's all but ruined the garden. Tomorrow Hanno and I will spend the day out there - with small cricket breaks, of course, to weed and tidy up. There are a few tomatoes still going, as well as the best capsicums (peppers) I've ever grown, lots of herbs, egg plants, lettuce and silverbeet. The potatoes are finished, along with the peaches and nectarines, so we've decided after we tidy up, we'll rest the beds for the remainder of the summer. Replanting will start mid-March. I'll write more about this tomorrow.

Our meal last night was tinned red salmon (from a long way off in Alaska) but I tempered that with potatoes and salad all from our backyard. Here is a picture of a yellow brandywine tomato we had in the salad. Brandywines are wonderfully delicious tomatoes that we've been growing for a couple of years. The flavour of the pinks is rich and very tomatoey, but these yellows lack the acidic taste of most tomatoes - the yellows are creamy and utterly delicious.

I hope you enjoy your weekend and have time to take care of yourself. To all those new to the blog, hello and welcome. I hope you find what you're looking for here. To all those readers who pop in most days, thank you for your lovely comments and encouragements along the way. I appreciate you taking the time to connect and I thank you for reading.

I've been experimenting with dog biscuit/treats recipes for a while now but finally have come up with one that suits all of us. I'm happy because they're healthy, easy to make and quite inexpensive, and the dogs are happy because they prefer these biscuits to the bought ones. I've tested this several times by putting a handful of their bought biscuits in a bowl next to one of the homemade biscuits and they always eat the homemade ones first. When I give them one as a treat, they follow me around for a while in the hope of scoring another one. Another bonus is that you'll be able to make these with what's in your stockpile cupboard and pantry.

Many of you know we've been feeding Rosie and Alice on homemade dog food all their lives. They're now 12 and 10 years old and are very fit dogs, still capable of running around like mad things. The recipe for my homemade dog food is here. We feed them twice a day. Once with biscuits in the morning and once in the afternoon with the homemade dog food. I have been buying the Omega 3 enriched dog biscuits over the years while I've experimented with biscuit recipes but I stepped this up a notch about a month ago when the price of dog biscuits increased by $5, making the normally $20 large bag from the produce store, $25. Hmmmm, it was time for real action.

If you decide to try this recipe, just make a small portion until you know your dog likes what you've made. When the biscuits pass the taste test, you can make enough for a month or two. I keep about a week's worth of biscuits out in a sealed container and have the rest in the freezer.

Homemade dog biscuits/treats
2 cups water mixed with 2 tablespoons Vegemite OR two cups beef or chicken stock. This can be homemade or from stock powder.
1 cup bread or plain/all-purpose flour
2 cups wholemeal or rye flour
1 cup rolled oats or instant oats
½ cup powdered milk
1 teaspoon yeast

If you want to add Omega 3, add 2 teaspoons of flax seed oil or emu oil to the mix.

Please note: The biscuits will get their flavour from the liquid you use. If your dog likes vegemite, use that, if your dog likes beef or chicken, use the stock option.

Please note: The amount of liquid you add will depend entirely on your flour, oats and how much humidity is in the air. Start with 2 cups, but you might need to add another cup - in small portions until the dough feels right.

You can make this in your bread machine or by hand. If using the bread machine, use the dough setting and add the ingredients in the order listed above. Feel the dough after it's been mixed to make sure it feels smooth and not too dry.

If making by hand, put all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix thoroughly. Remove the mixture from the bowl and knead for five minutes or until the dough is tender and smooth. It makes a lovely dough.

When the dough is ready, roll it out with a rolling pin and cut it into the shapes you like. Here I've used hearts, stars and a loaf shape. The loaf shape being the easiest. I can break the loaves up into pieces by making a knife cut into half the loaf thickness. Don't cut right through.

Place on a greased or paper lined baking sheet and allow to rise slightly for about 30 minutes. Bake in a slow oven at 170º C (325 º F) one hour. When all are baked, turn off oven and leave them in the oven overnight to cool. Then store in a container or the freezer.

Here are the loaves with some pieces broken up. As you can see by this photo, I didn't cut right through the dough but they're easy to break up. Preparing them as loaves made them crisp on the outside but with a softer interior. The hearts and stars dried out more as they're flatter and therefore much crisper. This amount makes 20 hearts, 6 stars and 50 loaf pieces. My girls eat either two hearts/stars or 4 pieces of loaf in the morning as well as their homemade dog food meal in the afternoon.

I hope your dogs like this as much as Rosie and Alice do. If you decide to make up the recipe, I'd like to know if your dogs enjoyed them. : - )

There is no rhyme or reason for this list of simple homemade recipes. If you are stockpiling, they're all recipes you could probably make with what's in your cupboard right now. If you've never tried cooking from scratch, these recipes are a good starting point. You'll find, especially if you taste as you go, that the results will be much better than the same thing bought from the supermaket. Please experiment. If you like more spice, add more, if you don't like it so sweet, add less sugar.

Peanut ButterPlace two cups of raw peanuts and salt (to taste) in a food processor. If the nuts are too dry, add a small amount of peanut or olive oil. Blend until smooth and store in the fridge.

Baked Beans

This is an excellent recipe for the slow cooker if you have one.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 chopped large onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 x 400g cans cannellini or navy beans, rinsed and drained. OR - if you use dried beans, soak overnight and drain.
2 x 400g cans tomatoes OR 800 grams (one and 3/4 lbs) of fresh very ripe tomatoes
2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon mustard
¼ cup molasses or golden syrup
1 tablespoon brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
Heat the oil and drop in onion and garlic. Cook on low heat until tender.
Add beans, tomatoes, molasses, worcestershire sauce, mustard and sugar. Add salt and pepper and stir until well combined. Bring to the boil. Cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer gently for about one hour, stirring frequently. This will taste better the following day, so make it one day ahead.

Condensed Milk - this is the sweetened milk
Place 1 cup powdered milk, 1/3 cup boiling water, 2/3 cup white sugar and 3 tablespoons butter in a blender and process until the sugar dissolves. This will make the equivalent of one can of sweetened condensed milk.

Evaporated Milk - unsweetened
1 ½ cups warm water
1 cup powdered milk
2 tablespoons butter
Mix milk powder and warm water together. Add the butter. Heat the mixture in a small pan. When thoroughly combined, beat with hand beater, cool and store in the fridge.

Quick Vanilla Ice Cream

250ml (½ pint) cream

Can condensed milk (see above recipe)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly. Put in the fridge to cool. When cool add to ice cream maker and make according to manufacturer's instructions. Or click here for instructions for making ice cream without a machine.

Baking Powder
Two tablespoons and cream of tartar to one tablespoon of bicarb will give you three tablespoons of baking powder. Don’t make too much at one time as the reactions between the two elements cause the powder to go stale in a few weeks. Just make up what you need at the time.

Pancakes1¼ cups plain or all purpose flour
1 egg
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 large teaspoon baking powder - see recipe above
¼ cup melted butter

Milk
Mix the above ingredients (except milk) together. Add enough milk to make the mix the consistency of heavy cream. Put the mix in the fridge for 1 hour (this will relax the gluten in the flour and make soft and fluffy pancakes). Pour the mix thinly over the base of a non-stick pan and cook until golden brown. Flip and cook other side.

Milk Kisses - a quick sweet biscuit/cookie

1 and 1/3 cups (1 can) sweetened condensed milk

3 cups shredded coconut

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine ingredients thoroughly. Place teaspoon portions of the mix on a greased baking sheet, making sure they aren't too close together. Bake at 180 C (370 F) for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Breadcrumbs

Finely crush water crackers, corn flakes or plain biscuits with a rolling pin, or crumb day old bread in the food processor.

Brown sugar

White sugar mixed with a little molasses or golden syrup.

Sour cream

Add the juice of a lemon to a cup of cream. Allow to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Buttermilk
Add one tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice to each cup of milk. Allow to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. OR a cup of yoghurt added to a cup of milk and allow to stand 30 minutes.

graphic from allposters.com

This is the little tote in a pouch I've put in my bag to take whenever I go out now. The little blue pouch unzips to reveal a full sized shopping tote. With this in my bag all the time, I can easily pick up milk or cheese from the local area and not have to bring it home in a plastic bag.

In the past couple of years we been able to decrease the amount of rubbish we dispose of to a fraction of what we threw out before. It really hit me one day that when we “disposed” of something, even though it was considered rubbish, that wasn’t the end of it. Whatever we threw out still had a life and in many cases would outlive Hanno and I by hundreds of years. We now make sure we dispose of most of our rubbish in an eco-friendly way and, more importantly, we try not to bring home excessive packaging. I am hoping our three gifts challenge will further reduce the load we place on our local landfill tip.

We don’t throw out any wet garbage. There is a hierarchy of contenders for our kitchen scraps. At the top of our pecking order are the chooks. They get the choice scraps because they turn it into food. They get most table scraps, old milk, crushed egg shells, old bits of cake, old fruit or vegetables. They also get the outside leaves from lettuce, tomatoes with spots on them, cabbage and the celery tops. Any old bread is divided up between the chooks, the dogs and the fish – they all love home-baked bread. The worms get fruit and vegetables peelings, tea leaves, crushed egg shells, anything that had been too long in the fridge and eggs we find in the back yard that are not in a nest. The worms also get ripped up envelopes and old letters, cleaning cloths that have seen out their days.

I try to buy my dried foods like beans, flours, nuts etc in bulk. That gives me the option of taking my own containers and bags. Generally I use old flour bags – they’re strong and can be washed and reused many times. If I buy bulk bread flour, I sometimes get a 12.5 kilo bag and the worms take care of the bag and string closure for me.

Paper products like old telephone books, paper, newspaper etc can be composted. I stopped buying paper napkins and paper towels and use home made cotton squares. Most of our clothes are cotton, linen or wool, so when they finally wear out, they spend some time in the rag bag, and are then given to the worms.

Worms, chooks and compost don’t cope well with too many citrus peelings or onion skins, so I have a closed compost bin for them. It’s open on the bottom, closed at the top, so even though they take a long time to break down, they’re unseen and eventually do return themselves to the earth. Every so often I throw a handful of lime on them to hasten their decomposition.

At home we recycle glass jars for preserving, soft drink bottles (they’re as rare as hen’s teeth), newspapers – both the bought ones and the free ones. We put tin cans, beer and wine bottles and large pieces of cardboard in the municipal recycling bin that is collected every two weeks along with the regular garbage. We also have the option of have a green waste bin but we recycle all that at home.

I would love to be able to tell you that we have given up using cling wrap but I still have a roll in the draw. I do however, use it sparingly and only when I can’t find another method. I often cover food (like cheese) in the fridge with a clean moist cloth and cover other food with an upturned bowl.

I don’t wrap my lunch for work anymore and it’s worked very well over the past six months I’ve been taking small containers inside a larger one. If I fit all the boxes together, nothing moves and the food stays together. Here is an old photo of my lunch box. We often share food at work so it’s great to have the various containers to pass around.

If you’re just starting out on recycling and rethinking how you dispose of your rubbish in an environmentally sound way, take it one step at a time by concentrating on one area first – maybe the kitchen. Slowly work out ways of reusing and recycling that suit your circumstances and incorporate those ways into your regular routines. If you’re like me, you’ll have need to rethink at the supermarket too and try to bring home products that aren’t over-wrapped.

I hope you’ll all share your reusing and recycling ideas in the comments box so we can all benefit from the collective experience we have here, which I have to say I’ve been very impressed with and appreciate very much.

One of the things that will make your work easier in the kitchen is to have a good set of knives. I use a variety of knives from good quality German chef's knives to cheap Chinese choppers. They are all used for their own purpose. Generally knives are expensive but they will last a long time if they're cared for properly.

Store your knives so the blade doesn't hit or rub against anything. I use a magnetic strip, but you could also use a knife block or a non-slip tray in a drawer that keeps knives apart.

All knives will eventually lose their edge and need to be sharpened. You can do that with a whetstone. While a whetstone will sharpen a knife, a steel will maintain the edge of your knife. Generally you'd sharpen a frequently used knife about once a month and use the steel when you use the knife. I'm a bit slack doing that. I do sharpen my knives each month but I usually forget to use the steel before I use the knife. There are instructions below for using a whetstone.

The heat and corrosive chemicals in the dishwasher will eventually damage the edge of most knives. You should hand wash your sharp knives. Wash in warm soapy water and dry thoroughly as soon as you wash the knife.

Don't let your knives soak in the sink or sit on a wet sink. Wash and dry them as soon as you can.

Don't use the knife edge to scrape food from your chopping board. It will damage and dull the edge. If you want to use the knife, turn it over and use the other side of the blade.

Use wood or poly cutting boards as marble, glass or ceramic boards will dull the knife edge.

If you have wooden handled knives, apply some oil to the handle every so often. Make sure you don't allow these knives to soak in the sink or remain wet for long periods.

When you buy your knives, try to get good quality for your main work. As you can see from my knife strip above, I have some good knives and some very cheap ones. I use the cheap ones for chopping vegetables as I find a chopper easier to use. I need to sharpen these choppers more frequently as they tend to lose their edge quickly but they're a good knife for general work. If you can't afford to buy better quality right now, try the Asian choppers and knives. You buy them in Asian grocery stores and supermarkets for around $5 - $10. On the other hand, a good quality German or Japanese knife will cost around the $100 mark.

Whatever knives you work with, you will ensure their life and their usability if you look after them and keep them sharp.

Knife skills video.

How to use a whetstone.