Nom,nom,nom!

Not much to report over the past week due to being ridiculously busy at work,so gardening has consisted mainly of me planning! :-)

Tonight however, I have collected eggs and picked broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus for dinner! Each of these 3 vegetables is incredibly easy to grow, needing little attention if planted into properly prepared soil.

You say potatoes....

This afternoon the Husband & I spent the afternoon planting potatoes with two of our grandsons (aged 4 & 3). One of the joys of being grandparents in your 40's is having enough energy to deal with boisterous boys! ;) Husband dug the trenches, the boys and I laid the seed potatoes (well, they laid a couple each and then spent the rest of the time collecting grubs & worms to feed to the chooks!) and then we lightly backfilled.

We planted out Snow Gem, Ruby Lou, Bintje, Kipfler and King Edward varieties-hopefully in a few months we will have enough of a harvest to handle our potato needs for the winter! After last years Great Bobcat Debacle we are optimistic about our chances of gathering more than 5kg this year!

Dreaming.....

Over the next few days we are getting a concrete slab laid just outside our kitchen window. The slab will be 3.3m x 5.6m and will have a freestanding timber pergola built on it.

The area faces North East so receives lots of sun and will be perfect to grow grapevines-providing Summer shade and allowing the Winter Sun to shine throughthe 2.4m x 1.2m kitchen window!

When we built the house we kept in mind passive Solar principles as much as possible and by finishing this project we are providing more food (yay) in a relatively small space and also minimising our heating/cooling bills!

I can imagine sitting under the grape laiden vine on a hot Summer's day with cold beverage in hand and husband flipping the meat on the BBQ! :-) OK, so it will be a couple of years before we have grapes-but a girl needs dreams doesn't she?

In the beginning.....

In the beginning there was a tree;and it was a good tree albeit a rather large variety of eucalypt. This tree caught the eye of the female of the partnership and she decreed: " I love that tree and I want to live near that tree, we must buy this block of land".

 So it came to pass that She & He bought the block of land graced by the majestic tree and made plans to build a shelter for their much loved friends and family. Behind the simple shelter they planned to grow food for themselves their loved ones; their own Utopia complete with a cornucopia provide from Mother Earth....

Of course, the story thus far hasn't really been that simple!

Lemon Butter anyone?

The ingredients:

 The kitchen helper:

The process:

 The result!

The recipe makes two jars this size, I doubled it because of the ingredient quantity I had on hand. A couple of hints if anyone decides to try this recipe (which is VERY easy!)-

Take the time to remove any pips that may get into your lemon juice-we don't want to be enjoying a lathering of lemon spread and bite into a nasty pip now do we?

Ensure that you totally whisk the ingredients BEFORE you start the cooking process...this will make sure that you don't get any cooked egg white showing up in your lovely, lemon butter!

The resulting spread can be used on toast, scones as a filling for a sponge cake (on my To Do List for next week!), whipped with some cream for a pavlova or combined with cream cheese as a filling for tarts! Enjoy!

When life hands you lemons...

With today being a little on the "cool" side I am not keen to be doing a lot in the orchard/vegie garden, so I have decided to utilise some of the eggs provided by our 4 hens ( Ruby, Rusty, Roxy and the high maintainence blonde Millie!) and make some microwave lemon butter.

The MIL gave us a heap of lemons on the weekend, so this will be a yummy way of using them up! We have a Meyer lemon tree near the back of the house (close to a 6m long brick wall which creates a nice little suntrap for it), but it will be another year before we expect much fruit. I have plans of adding an orange in the same area...

The recipe I am going to try (found at allrecipes.com.au):

Microwave Lemon Butter.

Ingredients

Serves: 16

• 250g (1 cup) white sugar
• 3 eggs
• Finely grated rind and juice of 3 lemons
• 125g unsalted butter, melted

 

Preparation method

Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 6 mins

1.

In a microwave-safe bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs until smooth. Stir in lemon juice, lemon rind and butter.

2.

Cook in the microwave for one minute intervals, stirring after each minute until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon.

3.

Remove from the microwave, and pour into small sterile jars. Store for up to three weeks in the refrigerator.

So we begin.....

It seems like an eon ago that the Husband and I decided that we would bite the bullet and make a tree change! Admittedly a small tree change-as we were already living on a quarter acre block in town...but after selling that house (the 3rd we had built) we initially put a deposit on a block in suburbia and planned a house to encompass our ever growing family and circle of friends.

However, we had seen these acre blocks and kept driving out to look at them. Finally, I turned to him one day and said "I want the acre. I want to be able to grow vegies and fruit for our family and have chickens and possibly a couple of lambs or pigs". The rest, as they say, is history!