no, not snow, just frost! Yandoit about 8am.
It was quite a foody weekend with foraging, preserving and of course eating!
The weekend started with milking a cow. Edmund and his partner Katie, are in a milking co-op, which means there's a few of them that share the care and the milking of a lovely jersey cow. A bit of a challenge for me as the cow is not contained and when she has had enough she will just walk away! I was on one side and Katie was on the other side milking so she was fairly patient considering! We got enough milk to make some feta cheese.
Then Saturday morning started with a walk over the mountain to pick olives from a nearby olive grove. I'm hoping these will be better than the ones I did last year. I've got a bucketful of them so they better be. I'm also going to try a different method.
Katie is a baker and Saturday she went off to bake bread and came home that night with mushrooms! Someone had given her a huge basket of safron milk caps. I hadn't tried these before so that was something new. I suggested drying some to preserve them, but Edmund wanted to pickle some, so we did both.
They look like little fish!
Drying the mushrooms above the wood stove. Hearty veggie soup in the big pot and carrot tops cooking in the frypan - Edmund cooks these so well and where a nice crispy topping for the soup.
Mushrooms, brought to the boil in vinegar, drained and then packed into jars with herbs and olive oil.
Sunday morning we went into Daylesford markets - bought a cabbage which I krauted this morning. I haven't seen any cabbages around our markets yet and I'm not sure mine in the garden are going to amount to much! I need to make more but could only do a small batch as my big crock got broken travelling down here. Anyone know of a good place to get another one - maybe a locally made crock??
Monday found us foraging the tale end of hawthorn berries and rose hips. I'll dry them both for tea, but will also have a go at this spiced brandy - purely for medicinal purposes! I have a few persimmons left from a few weeks ago which I can use up in this as well. We also made some hawthorn and fejoa jam from some fejoas that had been gifted. Hawthorn have a lot of pectin so we thought that they would work well with the more pectin challenged fejoas. You can read more about the goodness of hawthorns here and rosehips here.
Fejoa and hawthorn jam
Hawthorns on the tree - the leaves have all gone but still plenty of fruit.
Rose hips - same deal, the leaves are all but gone.
I took some goodies and brought back so many! But the best part was spending time with such beautiful people! It's just a shame that it's an 8 hour drive.
