Recipe Book

Something I have talked about for many years, is to write a recipe book. Well, I've finally taken the next step and set myself a Goal to produce one by December 2013! Yesterday I got some help from some great friends that set me on the right track - I now have a written, SMART goal. Unless you write goals down and action them, they won't happen.

This is the result of our collective brainstorm. My actual goal is "To produce a "healthy, unprocessed, lifstyle" Recipe Book by December 2013, targeted to time poor people wanting healthy nutritious food. So now that it's out there in the Universe, I'll have to make it happen. It might encourage me to be a bit more consistent with my blogging! I've been a bit slack lately - not from lack of things to write about, just the time to do it! We've been pretty busy on the farm - someone recently called it Old Macdonalds Farm, but I like to call it a Food Farm. We now have three hens that hatched some chickens. There were 17, but one hen has recently lost 2. We don't lock them up, as they live in the shed, so I'd say a hawk or something may have got them. They are only very young hens and not very smart. Chooks are pretty dumb, but these seem to be dumber than normal. They are Aussie Game and Indian Game Hens. We have 4 Aussies, and 1 Indian and they run with an Aussie and an Indian Rooster. 2 Roosters are a bit too much for 4 hens, so we'll have to do something about breeding some more! There are another 5 chickens from an earlier sitting - these are Aussie game (different rooster) and Rhode Island Red crosses. Unfortunately they are all looking like roosters. This is good for our kitchen, but not so good for producing more breeding females! We'll have ducks to put in the freezer very shortly. We've just recently killed a heifer, so we have a freezer full of beef, and we also have a little pork from our last lot. We got 9 killed and sold most of the pork, which is good for continued business health, but not variety in our kitchen! The last lot were quite fat, so we are working on trying to keep them a bit trimmer. Fat does equal flavour, but in this modern world, fat has a bad reputation! We've recently bought a Large White Boar to try and trim them down as well as finish the pigs a bit quicker. He's still only a youngster, so we will be introducing him to the girls slowly in the next few weeks.

Food alergy

If you are a diabetic or celiac or have a peanut or other food alergy, everyone understands when you can't eat certain foods. I think sometimes that people think my husband and I are just cranks because we can't eat junk and struggle with most coventional foods! We don't like the flavour and texture of conventional meats and vegetables and they do make us feel sick at times. So why can't people accept that we have special dietary requirements? Why can't we just say "we have a food alergy" and have it accepted as okay.

When I say conventional I mean foods that are grown using intensive farming practices and/or heavily processed.

The other thing that is really starting to concern me is the way the two big supermarkets are going. In the near future, it's going to be very difficult for the average consumer to buy anything but conventionally grown foods. It's an absolute joke when you see Coles/Woolies with "freerange" products. They manipulate the rules so much that you just have to question how geniune it is. They have a lot of power and knowing what they can do, I do't trust their versions of freerange. What they have done to the dairy industry is criminal. It won't be long when milk will have to be imported because the dairy farms just can't produce milk for the price they receive. Other industries will follow.

Consumers need to realise the true COST of food. As a primary producer, I know that the cost of production keeps going up while the price received either stays static or goes down. If you are buying milk for $1/L or vegies for $1/kg, the producer is going to suffer. And if you think you are on a winner when you buy produce for that price, have a look at what else is in your trolley and whether you are paying more for that. Coles/Woolies have to make up the difference somewhere!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Pay now or pay later. Buying good quality, healthy food now, will save you health care bills in the future. We spend more today on electronic toys and eating out, so there isn't enough money to buy good food!

Tomatoes

I got onto a source of local tomatoes recently. They have been lovely so I decided to buy a heap and preserve them. Today I've gotten out my Aunty Dora's vacola pot and bottles and have made 6 large jars of passata. It was pretty easy, just peel and deseed the tomatoes, process and put into the preserving jars. I then simmered them for about 2 hours.

My son thinks it would be easier to just buy it! But it was good to do and has just made me more determined to get the hang of growing tomatoes.

Growing Food

I worked something out the other day - I'm not really a very good Gardener! I want to be, but there just seems to be something missing. I'm certainly passionate about it but I think that stems from the fact that I'm passionate about producing food! I love being able to grow a plant that ends up on the dinner table - or an animal for that matter! There is something terribly satisfying in growing, preparing and eating food.

I have successfully grown vegies over the summer (so far anyway), which can be very challenging at times. It's either hot and dry or hot and wet! At the moment it's hot and dry, so it's a constant job keeping the water up to the plants. The weeds then take over and the bugs also seem to enjoy the heat! One thing I really WANT to grow lots of and seem to have trouble is tomatoes. If I could grow as many tomatoes as possible, I would bottle them, dry them, freeze them and make tomato sauce.

Talking about drying - I've been drying mangoes for the last week. Every evening I cut up a load and put them in the deydrator. We only grow the common mangoes here and they aren't that nice fresh, as they have a lot of strings in them, which get stuck in your teeth. They are also quite small. They are delicious dried, so I'm drying as much as I can. I ran out last year - it's great to have a jar in the car for snacking on when driving. I also dried a couple of batches of beans. I've grown snake beans for the first time ever and they are prolific. I'll use them in soups and stews during winter.

An old fella in town gave me some guada bean seedlings - they are a large bean, averaging about a foot long and an inch in diameter. They are interesting and don't taste too bad. And they seem to like the heat. I just did a quick google and they aren't actually from the bean family, but the cucurbit. I'll have to keep some seeds as I've never seen them for sale anywhere.

This weekend and last have been real foodie weekends. Mozerella and feta cheese, killing ducks and a goat, cooking duck leg confit and pork rillettes, femented beetroot, fermented tomato sauce, yoghurt and some generally good meals as well. I've finally cracked the ice-cream code and have made some really nice stuff - raw ice-cream, using egg yolks, raw milk and raw cream - only had to buy the sugar and the vanilla essence. Need to get bees and then I could just make honey flavoured ice-cream. It really is a good feeling to be fairly self sufficient!

Gardening in the Tropics

Where I live, it's somewhere between tropical and sub-tropical - that's in summer anyway. In winter I think we may be more like temperate - trouble is, it's a really short winter, so while it gets very cold (I'm talking Australia cold here, so no snow or anything too extreme!)it is for such a short period of time, that I can't really grow anything designed for the temperate regions, but it's too cold for tropical fruit and vegies. We don't have too many frosts, so I can get away with a bit.

Anyway, today I was going to talk about summer growing. In past years, I had decided that you just couldn't grow anything from about November through to February in the vegie garden. Well this year I'm changing that attitude! What we do need is lots of water and shade in some areas, some of the time! I'm just starting to have a little trouble with shield bugs, but apart from that I'm doing okay. We are currently eating:
Beans (snake beans) I've got climbing and bush beans flowering, but no fruit yet.
Zuchini
Squash
Warrigal Greens
Brazilian Spinach
Water Spinach
Amaranth - the leaves are cooked like spinach
Silver Beet
Lettuce
Basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme - my parsley is really struggling
Spring onions and chives
Chillies
Perenial Capsicum
Cherry Tomatoes - romas and black krim still green
Asparagus - after the rain we had a few come up
Sweet Potato
Carrots - although I've just picked all my last ones and so have to wait for some more to get big enough!
Garlic - just starting to pull the last ones.
Pawpaw
Strawberries - only the odd ones now.
Not ready yet, but will be over the next couple of months - banana, mango and custard apples are flowering, cassava, ruhbarb, pumpkin are also growing.
So I suppose I need to revise my idea of being able to grow food over the summer. I just have to remember to water, water and water....and try and battle the shield bugs!

Whoops

I just discovered that I made a huge error in my last blog - now corrected. Thanks Bill.....It's a good idea to eat foods that have as little pesticide and herbicide use as possible. Growing your own vegies is the best way to make sure of that!

I've also go to work this blog out. Aparently people can't comment, so I'll have a look at that asap.....

The Cost of Bad Food

Something that has bugged me for some time is when people talk about the cost of organic food. But, I would question "What is the cost of good health?" I firmly believe that you either pay now or pay later! There have been numerous bits of research on the ratios now and in the past as to the amount that is spent on food compared to health. As we spend less on food, we spend more on health. Our children are the first generation that are expected to live a shorter life than their parents! This is a sobering thought!

Organic food is more expensive (sometimes) than non-organic, but the quality is usually a lot better. Especially if you are buying from farmers markets or an organic delivery business - these guys know their suppliers and know that they are fair dinkum! Unfortunately now that the big Supermarkets are in on the act, the quality is not as good. Funnily enough, they are only in the organic industry as they know that the consumer wants it, but they don't always play by the right rules. They actively try and change the rules or at least bend them, and usually it's the poor old farmer that cops it! Then you have the corporate growers, who have profit as their only motive, and they will find ways to get around the regulations.

Profit is important, which is why we need to support our smaller growers - however they also care about other things, like animal health, soil health, sustainablity of both and the good health that their customers will get from eating good quality organic food.

Some ways to make it less expensive to buy organic:
- go to farmers markets
- start buying some organic products or products that use very few chemicals
- eat less - organic food is richer in nutrients so you need less (this may also improve your wasteline!)
- find out what is grown close to where you live and buy direct
- buy the raw materials and cook at home - this is a another topic altogether!!!

You don't need to buy food that is certified organic if you know who grew it and what they did to it! Get to know what is grown near you and talk to the farmer.....we are a friendly bunch!