Tumeric, ginger, potatoes

I finally got around to digging my roots! The plants had died off, so I had to remember where I had planted them! The turmeric and ginger were volunteer plants from the bits I missed last year, the spuds were just organic potatoes that had started shooting. The potatoes were very dissapointing - I got a lot more last year from the same number of spuds, but I used seed potatoes then. I haven't weighed the spuds, but it would have been about 3kgs from about 1kg potatoes planted. Last night I decided to process some of the turmeric. The method is to scrub the turmeric and then boil for about half an hour. This morning I sliced it into thin slices and put in the dehydrator for the day. Then when it's dry, grind in a coffee grinder. I did a couple of batches, but I have a huge jar and will probably do another lot yet, so I will take it into my sister who has a Thermomix and she will do it in a fraction of the time! (I suppose I should ask her first!!) Last year I did this and got a huge jar of ground turmeric, unfortunately by about October it had all gone mouldy. This time I will freeze the ground stuff in small bags so that it keeps. I will also peel and wrap some of both the roots in alfoil and freeze. Then when I want to use it, I just grate it. I've done this with ginger before, but not turmeric. I'm sure it will be simillar though. Tomorrow I will make some ginger ale with the ginger - actually, I will probably make some turmeric and ginger ale. I have 3 times as much turmeric as ginger! I will weigh them both tomorrow - I should do this just for my records.

Real Food Festival

Last weekend we went to the Real Food Festival at Maleny. It was a great turn out - well supported by the locals I would have thought. We did see one other couple from CQ, so there were a few outsiders also. There were quite a lot of interesting talks - I went along to some, but soon discovered that I know a lot more about real food than a lot of people so didn't learn too much new. I did however, learn about photographing food - something I need to think about for my recipe book. It's a lot more complex than I thought, so I will have to find a more professional photographer than me! One thing that was a little dissapointing was the the ready to eat food stalls. Thre was a fairly strict requirement on local business for the trade displays, but only some of the food stalls had local produce - or at least advertised that they were local. They certainly weren't what I would call "real food". Oh well, my family always acuses me of being too fussy!

Food and Sourdough

I don't seem to be finding much time for this blog these days. I've been busy at work and busy with our Free Range Pork business. This blog is my "down time" though, so I really want to post something at least each week. Kim thinks I should blog about what we eat each day, because he thinks it's worthing talking about.....he could be biased! We do eat well - tonight so far we had homemade pizza - very simple - homemade base, tomato pesto that we bought at the Cheese Dairy at Stanthorpe, my duck proscuito and mozerella cheese (I wish I could say it was homemade, but I haven't had time lately!) We also had some spicy beef soup and fresh bread! I've been making good bread lately - no not sour dough, as it's so temperamental! I get my organic bread flour from Kialla and it's LOVELY! Sour Dough - I was about to write a blog about it a little while ago, as I thought I'd cracked the code! But alas, it stopped working! I'm going to keep trying but it's just such a pain, because I waste flour everytime it doesn't work. My last starter was yoghurt, milk and flour and worked well initially - I've started another one, but it won't even bubble! I'll see how it goes and if it works, will monitor the progress and report on it with any successes and failures as I go along. I really don't think that you can follow ONE recipe - I think you need to use your gut instinct. Not always easy!

Weston A Price

I mentioned previously that I'm reading Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. It really is quite fascinating and really scary. Fascinating because the links he found between different foods and health is really interesting. Scary because he said this in the 1930's! Why didn't anyone (the powers that be) take any notice of him? Some things he found that can be directly related to modern/processed foods: - tooth decay - deformed dental arches - TB - certain vitamins need fat-soluble activators (these are found n animal products) to make them available - behavior, aggression and happiness are influenced by our diet. It's pretty heavy going at times, which is why I'm still reading it. It's also not the best book to read just before going to bed, although it does help to put me to sleep! It has reinforced my thinking that we need a diet that is genetically appropriate to us as individuals and most importantly, unprocessed.

A Food Weekend

It's been windy and cold outside, so perfect weather to spend inside in the kitchen. I find cooking very relaxing and relieves the stresses of my busy working week. As anyone who reads this blog would be aware, I fully support the slow food concept and love to cook things from scratch. If I've grown the ingredients myself, even better! So what have I done this weekend (and still finishing off):

• Yoghurt - 4 litres, so that there's enough for my Mum and Dad also
• Biscuits and slices for smokos this week
• Baked Beans
• Brawn
• Duck Stock
• Pea and Ham Soup and fresh bread (for lunch today)
• Fermented Tomato Sauce
• Marinated Sun Dried Tomatoes - I do buy the dried tomatoes and marinate them myself.

I had planned on a few other things - Salami and some kim chi. I'm not completely happy with the recipes I've looked at so far to make salami, so need to do some more research and I don't want to be rushed doing it either. The kim chi will have to wait also, as I need to help outside with some cattle work this afternoon.

Oh and I tested my duck breast proscuito today - I've had it hanging for a couple of weeks now. This is duck breast that has been cured in some herbs and spices for a few days, then wrapped in muslin and hung in a cool spot. The photo below shows my proscuito, sun dried tomatoes and some feta that I made last weekend. This is our pre-lunch snack.

Baked Beans

Winter = Banked Beans. I make several batchs of baked beans in winter - I'm not sure why I don't do them in summer, but it just seems more of a winter thing to do. I make a big batch and then freeze them in small containers or plastic zip lock bags. The easiest way that I have found is to make them in the Crock pot. I now have one that allows me to fry the onions first, so I do that, but it's not necessary. I always add some sort of bone or meat to my baked beans - I especially like the flavour that a bacon bone or even just a pigs trotter gives to the beans. Trotters are great because they add a lot of extra geletin which is really good for you.

Soaking the beans for 12-24 hours is important to improve the nutrient profile and digestibility of them.There is loads of stuff on the internet about the reasons for soaking beans, grains, nuts and seeds, so I won't bother going into detail now. Whole grains, nuts and seeds are really good for us if they are prepared correctly, otherwise the enzymes that are necessary for proper mineral absorption are blocked and we don't get the goodness we should.

Be warned: it's really hard to go back to canned baked beans once you've started making your own!
See the recipe page for my recipe.....

Leftovers

I love using up left overs. It's quite satisfying knowing that you aren't wasting food. I do sometimes freeze them, which grow into plague proportions in the freezer. Although recently I gave my son about a dozen containers, which he will take to work for lunches.

Today I had two meals using left overs.

Chicken and Mushrooms in a blue vein cream sauce. This was simply fried onion, garlic and mushrooms (fresh picked this morning), toss through some cooked chicken and some cream (I managed to get enough milk to separate and get some fresh cream the other day) and add some crumbled blue vein cheese. I bought the cheese on a recent trip to Stanthorpe - it was locally made there at the Granite Belt Dairy. They make beautiful cheese!

Anyway that was lunch served over some left over fried rice.

For dinner we had Corn Beef Pie. Cornbeef sliced and layered with onions in white sauce (with chilli and herbs for extra flavour). It too was pretty good. I've discovered lard pastry and it is so easy to make and a really nice pastry. It's short but easy to work with as it's quite flexible - not breaky like short crust pastry. I've put the recipe for the pastry on the Recipe page.