A Locavore Party

Kim and I are celebrating 30 years of marriage this April. I am also turning 50! We decided that we'd celebrate this at Easter time, so that there was plenty of time for people to travel - my family is spread from Central Qld to Northern NSW, and Kim's is as far as Western Qld and Western Australia, so people need a little time to travel.

Because it was my party I decided to do a themed party - no colours or costumes - Local Food would be the focus. I'm not going to be a Nazi about it, but I am going to endeavour to have all the meat and produce as local produce. I can source quite a few vegies locally and of course we have all the meat you could want, so it's not too hard really.

The menu, very loosely (because it will depend on what I can get this weekend) will be spit pig, roast beef and roast turkey. Sides will be potato bake, tossed salad and a roast vegie salad. Nibblies of prawns, salami and cheese etc.

Some of the usual suspects for these things will be hard to source locally so I have to allow for a few things.

• Potatoes aren't available locally at the moment, so I will be subbing sweet potatoes. Luckily our local guy has had white sweet potatoes, so I think I will fool the kids!
• There is not much in the way of salad greens around at present, except hydroponics, which I don't normally like to eat. However, this weekend I will just have to suck it up and buy some hydroponic lettuce - at least it supports a local farmer. I have been trying to grow lettuce for months now and every time I plant seedlings, the heat just kills them. I have finally managed to get some endive to survive, and so along with some Ceylon spinach I might have enough for a few salads. However people are staying all weekend, so I need some back up stuff too.
• Roast veggie salad is easy, as I can get zucchini and tomatoes  and I have eggplant growing. I also still have some local onions and local garlic.

Desert will be pavlova, fruit salad, cheese (quark) cake and choc macadamia cake and my cream, so 80% of the ingredients will be from here or the local markets.

Bread will be homemade. My brother is coming from Gunnedah so I've asked him to bring some bread flour - it's milled in Gunnedah - that's local to him. My sister is bringing the prawns - they are local to her. Another brother (if I remember to ask him) is bringing cheese from the Sunshine Coast - that's local to him. I also have two brothers bringing home made cheese and I have a little bit of homemade cheese too. We will be making our own dips - from my quark and other local and homegrown things.

Anyone who is travelling is encouraged to stop at any road side stalls too - but that is another topic for another day.....roadside stalls are my favourite stop when travelling!

So eating locally is not hard, it just requires thought.....and staying away from supermarkets. To shop local, you need to go to the local markets, local butchers or greengrocers may also support local farmers. Remember to ask when you are shopping. The more we ask for it, the more likely shopkeepers will take notice.

Day 2 Locavore Challenge

I was very lucky to get given a big bag of fresh peanuts (raw) the other day. These were picked up on a road side stall by a friend.  I'll shell them all and use some to make peanut butter and we'll use some for snacks, plus party nibbles.

Tonight's dinner which was frightfully late.....Due to many and various reasons - I did spend quite a bit of time in the garden this afternoon, perhaps that had something to do with it!

Chicken wings and USA ribs cooked in the oven in a sesame, soy, ginger, garlic (etc) sauce, with rice (not local) and veggies (all local) baked in the oven. This wings and ribs were home grown.

What did you eat today that was locally produced?

Locavore Challenge

I am hosting a Locavore Party over the Easter period. There are a couple of significant events that I want to celebrate and Easter weekend is a good opportunity to get people from far and wide together. I decided to have a theme of "Locavore" as to me that means, supporting local business, local farmers and local communities - they are all connected. Too few people realise the interconnectedness, and as that's my main philosophy, why not emphasize it. So.....I had a brain wave tonight while eating my dinner, that our main food is Local and leading up to the party I will highlight my local food choices

Tonights dinner was delicous!

Steak,chips and salad (I do apologise for the half eaten picture, but the brain wave to record it only happened half way through when I realised how good it was)

Topside steak - our own and as good as any rump I've eaten anytime! Edmund BBQ'd this(while he was cooking the chips) while I chopped and mixed up a resting marinade - garlic, chili, parsley, basil, lime juice and olive oil - OO not local :(, the rest is mine or local.
Salad - Ceylon spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, shallots, fetta, lime juice, fermented carrots - carrots not local.
Chips, not local, but organic and cooked in goat tallow from our goats.......

I then had to bottle my kombucha and decided on using some lovely local ginger to second ferment.

What do you eat regularly that's local? Please follow along with my locavore challenge and see what you can find and eat that's either home grown or local.....it'll be fun and rewarding!

Happy 2016!

I was just reading another blog (Eight Acres) where Liz was talking about having a 5 year blogging anniversary, and I thought that I must be nearly five years of blogging too. I just looked and yes, 5 years exactly (3/1/2011)! So I thought I better do a post to mark the occasion.

My first post:
The purpose of this blog is to share my food philosophy and to hopefully help people to understand better ways of farming, gardening, cooking and eating. I am confident that the leading cause of disease today is our food. We need to eat healthy nutritious food to lead healthy lives. One way to ensure that we are eating healthy food is to eat food that is produced without or with minimal chemicals. You either need to buy it or produce it yourself. I do produce a lot of our own food but I know that not everyone can. What I would like you to do though is to think about where the food you buy has come from. How was it produced? How far did it have to travel to your local shop? These are the two main questions you need to consider, however when you consider how it was produced, you need to think about so many things: organic, biodynamic, pasture fed, chemical free, hormone free, free range, and the list goes on. Hopefully through this blog you will get a better understanding of these two questions and can then make your own decisions. The food we grow on our farm at the moment includes: beef, chicken, duck, pork, vegetables, milk and eggs. We aren't self sufficient, and it would be difficult to be so as I enjoy cooking too much and need ingredients that I can't grow. I am passionate about food - from growing it, to cooking it, to eating it. I will share my adventures in these endeavours - from sharing recipes to just sharing my experiences.

I don't think a lot has changed but I do think I post more about food than farming!! Ha Ha, anyone who knows me, knows that I am fixated with food. Especially home grown!

The original driving force was to share what I know and hope that readers get something out of it and if my posts help in some way to change for the better anyones lifestyle then I'm happy. I am a passionate supporter of a local food economy and I think that this is very important if one is to eat healthier and to engage with how food is grown and delivered.

Some of you may remember reading that I was going to post every day - that didn't last long and it's now been quite a while since my last post. Our life only seems to get busier, and will for the next year or so. Hopefully our free range pig business will continue to grow enough that we can employ a full time (if not two) employee so that we can take a deep breath and slow down a bit. That is probably our Number 1 business goal for this year. My number 1 personal goal is to have a productive vege garden for the ENTIRE year.

This year is a big one for us - Kim and I have been married for 30 years, I'm turning 50 and we have owned Anabank our property for 25 years. A big celebration to prepare for this year!

Happy Days

Today was one of the days that I love having.....most of the time I was in the kitchen! Our three helpers helped me make some cheeses - Mozzarella, Halumi and I still have quark hanging in the kitchen to drain. We made home made pizza for lunch with the mozzarella - 5.5 litres of milk for enough cheese for three pizzas.

Pizza with our chorizo,and the fresh mozzarella

Three lovely helpers - Gina, Marlene and Klara

Quark - we have two German girls so wanted to show them how nice my quark is.

I made a Herman the German carrot cake, which we had with fresh cream that I got yesterday from my dairy cows. Yum. Sour dough bread is still in progress.

I have racked my pineapple wine, but will do it again tomorrow, as there is still a little bit of sediment. It's very strong! More of a spirit than a wine I think, so it might have to be drunk with soda water.

The afternoon found us outside where we killed 9 roosters. Fortunately I'd put dinner on in the oven before we went out. I didn't plan things very well, because dinner was a casserole of chicken thighs - with onion, garlic, dried mushrooms and then I topped it with some of my tomato pasta sauce than I preserved a while ago. I don't normally eat the same meat that we kill on the same day. The chicken liver pate can wait until tomorrow I think.  Usually if I don't do it straight away, it doesn't get done, but I will get it done tomorrow.....along with the peanut butter I didn't get done today. Cheese making is quite time consuming!

Chicken Dinner - I did top this with tomato sauce. Everything in it was either home grown or purchased locally. The more of a locavore I become, the harder it is to buy food from further away!

Dessert was a quick thermie icecream - fresh cream, banana and strawberries.......did I mention that it was a happy day!!!!

Photos - some of the reasons I live where I live

This is a little patch of scrub that was left standing when the remainder of the paddocks was cleared. I'm so grateful the previous owners left it. It's a lovely quiet spot!

These two photos are taken down the Anabranch. An anabranch is a branch off a river - where it comes out and then goes back into the river. This is permanent water. The tyre tube was left there in the last flood.

I love bauhinia trees (above). They are a native to this area. The photo on the left was taken at the end of winter when it loses alot of it's leaves and goes a lovely brown/autumny colour. Then the leaves turn green and we get beautiful flowers. The stock love to eat this tree and it's also a lovely shade tree.

Lime bush. It's very prickly when small and doesn't normally have fruit on it, although this year they did. The taller tree on the left is a normal mature tree. They've been loaded with lovely fruit. Normally we have a lot of fruit fly in them, but not this year.

My kombucha on the left and kefir on the right. Ginger and Bush lime.

Wildflowers.

I like to eat our own meat, milk, cheese, yoghurt.

And of course mushrooms come most years in spring rain. This is my mushroom and rosemary salt.

Attitude of gratitude

I've had several blog topics going through my mind and I've been taking photos that fit, but I just don't seem to be finding time to actually post anything! In between farm work growing and preparing food, and  no backpackers, I get to the stage that sleep is more important. Today I'm driving with Edmund to biggenden. Well I'm obviously not driving at present, I'm just the passenger. I thought I'd write today about gratitude because at the moment we are feeling very grateful for some lovely rain we've had, and that western Queensland also got some, as did a lot of other places.

It's incredible the change in how we feel and think when there's some green grass around. It's almost as if we have new lenses in our glasses. I don't suffer depression, thank goodness, but I do get down. I get down with the amount of work that we seem to continually have in front of us, I get down when I can't seem to find time to do the things I love (gardening, cooking, writing,reading) but when there's green grass around that "down ness" turns into anticipation - what can I do next?

I'm grateful for the rain, for making it green and for bringing mushrooms! For the last four days I've picked mushrooms, I've dried mushrooms, I've frozen mushrooms and we've eaten mushrooms. My latest last night was making some mushroom and rosemary salt.

I've also done a few other foodie things. This week we killed roosters and then I boned them out for freezing. It's bush lime season too, so I should be picking them to do something with them. In past years I used to make bush lime cordial but that has too much sugar so that's out. I have tried some kefir and kombucha flavoured with them. So far the kefir is good, but kombucha isn't as nice with citrus, so I'm not sure how it will go. Bush limes are beautiful things. They are tiny, less than 1cm in diameter, but look just like a tiny lime. This year there's been a bumper crop too. There's some in the pig paddocks and the pigs eat them as they fall to the ground.

Some days I just think how lucky I am to have all this food around me - especially when it's wild food and I don't have to do anything except pick it! I really do love living where I do and living they way I do. I'm so very grateful that Kim shares this passion with me. Or maybe he just puts up with it! The other day I was helping him feed pigs when I got distracted picking mushrooms. I saw him drive off and I thought " oh dear, he's got the s--ts and taken off and left me to finish it off." When I asked him where he went and was he cranky cos I was off foraging. His response was "how long have we been married?"

So I'm just grateful!

I will post some photos in the next day or so.....