Meet Jabba my pet bacteria..

Well I know you've all been waiting for the unveiling of Jabba 
(son of Fred) and here he/it is:

This is after two weeks of using and feeding my little pet. I have a couple of ladies at pilates and a bloke at church after a piece of Jabba so I'm having to up the feeds.

Below is the before pic. I'd just taken some to make the rabbit bread (below) found in the Good Life Bread Book (starring me and mum). I'd added the same weight of water to it and double of organic unbleached flour. Over night in the fridge and it turned puffy and light (above pic).

It's definately a hand smushing job.

Side view of the over night rise pic. Nice and fluffy and stretchy. Done this way the starter only needs feeding once a week or even once a fortnight.

 This is rabbit bread that I converted to a sourdough. I find it so much easier to use the water from a recipe and smush and dissolve as much of the starter as I can in that, then add all the other stuff. I used about 1/4 cup (heaped) of starter sponge.

Here we have 2 grated carrots, 1 large grated zucchini, 2 handfuls of sunflower seeds, 2 handfuls of sultanas and about a quarter of a cup of honey.

Totally went overboard from the original recipe  (1 of each and no zucc) and so glad I had!

Risen for about 6 hours and plopped into an oiled and floured tin for another 2. Hottest oven ever and some water tipped into a tray at the bottom and a quick spray of water on top and the oven door closed. Then turned down to 180 for about an hour.

 

 It looked rather unimpressive and dense. BUT once I cut into it I found a soft, moist (but not too moist) tasty bread. I cut the loaf in half then sliced ready for freezing.. didn't get to the freezer.

 For the initial feed to the kids it had butter and honey drizzeld ontop. Then they didn't care about that.

Through our church meeting today they were like crazed and starved rabbits wanting their food.

The sunflower seeds and sultanas made such a difference and the smell of the sourdough was homely and actually sweet (not a honey kind of sweet).

My next experiment is a basic sourdough recipe that I'm proving over night. It's a cinnamon toast recipe made up my moi.

As you can see sourdough is alot wetter and stickier (actually so is french made bread Richard Bertinet's book is soooooo worth it. You'll never look at bread making the same again and you'll never knead as much or in the same way again.)

Ironically sitting over night to prove on top of my not so used bread maker and not so eaten loaf of shop bought bread :o)

ACTUALLY on the subject of sourdough in the bread maker. I tweaked Richart Bertinet's

jam doughnut recipe to make it with a sourdough starter and it was GREAT. The regular recipe is still good to eat the next day if not sugared, whereas the sourdough version needs to be eaten straight away.

LOW GI HEAVEN!!!  I used Tasmanian raspberry jam made by Sam Sullivan's Grandma's fair hand to stuff inside and vanilla or cinnamon sugar on the outside. MUST re-do that one and take pics.

Here's the basic recipe. This recipe is bread machine friendly.

New friends, Old Fred.

 I made some friends the other day. I was popping over to give the lady some samples for a new co-op bulk buy and ended up staying for hours and chatting our heads off. Her husband is in IT and has just started his own business.

 They're into organics, preserving, artisan bread making, growing vegies etc etc



 This is some lovely jam the lady gave me, it's organic peach.











 This is a slice of the regularly made bread by her DH. It was SO GOOD!










.....and this is FRED. The 12 year old sourdough starter culture. Hereby renamed Jabba (the Hutt). I must feed him at least once a fortnight.

Fred's owner will willingly do a class on artisan bread making or beer/wine making. I'm teetotal so that's so not up my ally. BUT he leant me one of his great books to have a go.

Beans, Toms and Dinner

Well last month it was my birthday. I had this humungo birthday cookie and had to slop the icing on in a rather 6 year old fashion to prevent the kids from eating it all!
Who cares?! It tasted yum.

 Butter beans from the garden. They grow so fast! I've been picking twice a day. They're the perfect thing for a kiddy garden and perfect to grow with runner beans as they take longer.

The boys tucked into Dad's massive roma tomatoes.

 These were the ones I planted. The big stripey ones are Russian Purple. So soft and tasty even with the green stripes. The little ones at the top are .. er.. forget the name but they're so gorgeously super sweet! Heart shaped on a truss. More on them later. The ones at the bottom are regular cherry toms from a tumbling bush I put in a pot. Same old.

We had leftovers for my birthday dinner - YUM! I put the ham and cheese with a quick white sauce into some puff pastry, the others are left over beef stew. 

All Natural Stain Buster that WORKS

"Well what do you know......Norwex carpet stain remover actually removed my 5 year old magically reappearing stain!! Quite amazing."

Katrina Gledhill, Teacher and babysitter extraordinaire 

So you know I'm a super skeptic about everything until researched and proven otherwise. 

Well, this is no exception. Norwex Carpet Stain Buster, I thought "pah! can't really do it all that well"

I was too nervous to try it as a part of my demonstrations as I hadn't tried it. But...

NOW I HAVE!

Check out my MONTHS old squashed banana stain that I found under the couch. Yes, granted my carpet is feral anyway (thanks landlord) but I do my best. 

I've circled the surrounding stains so you can see where it WAS in the after pic

 Because it's a very OLD stain I'm pouring on diluted Carpet Stain Buster as if I was going to put it in a carpet cleaner. I pour it on and let it go in.

 Then rub with an Enviro cloth.... what?! how fast did that take? Not long at all and hardly any elbow grease.

The carpet is still damp but as you can see, NO trace of banana!

AGAIN ON CARPET.. I thought I'd do it near another object to prove I wasn't just showing another bit of carpet. This one is between the cup and my foot

 Go on ZOOM IN on the pic and have a close look

AND FINALLY.. the chair.

Yes, old, yes stained... check out the difference.

 After I rubbed in the Carpet Stain Buster.. still wet

 Now dry you can see that the section I cleaned is SUPER CLEAN

CLICK ON IT AND ENLARGE!

Ok so here's what's in it. You won't believe it works until you've tried it. Looks way too simple.

Contains natural enzymes that naturally break down dirt, grease and odours. Works on a variety of organic stains.

 
Also Yucca contains compounds often referred to as a “natural detergent” because

of their foamy texture. The compound is a surfactant /foaming agent which, in our product,

is the primary cleaning ingredient. Its primary function is to produces foaming without the

use of synthetic surfactants. 

Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) - preservative

 

As this product contains friendly microbes to help remove stains and odours, it continues to work for up to several days after use and will leave no residue in the carpet once thoroughly dry. For carpet cleaning or steam, we recommend to use 1:20 with water

Another Anathoth (Yummy homemade heaven)

The best jam in the WORLD is made by Trevor my father in law. Cold weather raspberries kick butt and the year DH and I were married we gorged on the 2008 store of Trevor's home made raspberry jam.

What drizzly pulpy goodness! THAT is the summer I will never forget.

Now, I'm not in a berry growing area. The other side of the world and the opposite hemisphere... BUT what I do have on my side is New Zealand.

Anathoth jam is pure jam. No preservatives, colours and their range is mostly gluten free. They use locally grown produce and if not, they're open about it and name the countries of origin! How refreshing.

It TASTES like jam should taste - homemade!

the TEXTURE is how it should be - pulpy drizzly, thick enough but not a lump of IXL gloop

the TASTE is how it should be - FULL and deliciously surprising (after the usual supermarket gaff)

the COLOUR is how it should be - natural!

So it's my favourite.

These are the ones I'm trying next; Zucchini pickle and Blackcurrant jam. Mum says she has a teaspoon of Blackcurrant jam and with hot water it's the BEST drink when you're sick or just for a relaxing soothing moment. I'll try that Mum!

If we do start to bring in alot of imported food after the floods around the country, my vote is for NZ produce. Why get iffy from China when NZ's great food is just next door!?

It smelt odd - from personal blog

Here's an entry from our family blog that I just had to share.



At Christmas DH always buys me a utensil for the kitchen that I think "what the?!" and end up loving it.
This year was no different. It's bigger than it looks. It could lift an entire omelette, pizza or cake.

 I used it to make the kids some super-sized American pancakes (I totally kicked butt with the recipe)

 

What's the surprise you ask?  Well, after cooking and flipping the first side of the first pancake, something smelt odd.

DS2 (2year old) was up on the counter watching... I smelt him. Nope. I smelt me. Nope. I smelt the spatula and said, "oooh, this smells a bit odd" and DS2 replied, "I wee on it"

(me) "urgh! .... You WEEED on it?!"

(DS2) "Yeth"

(me) "Did you wee on anything else?"
(DS2) "Yeth"
(me) "what?... in the drawer?"
(DS2) "Yeth"
(me) "Did you pee.. in the DRAWER!?"
(DS2) "Yeaahhh!...(big grin).... No."

So even though it's only flipped one pancake (which was quickly binned) before being scrubbed in hot water, it was a good flip. Then off I went to smell the rest of the drawer's contents, just to check.

On My Mind..

An exciting thought at delivery time, "what's the honey comb going to taste like?", but now it's a bit of a worry. For months now I've been trying to source raw, organic, yellow box honey for everyone. So many anxious inquiries about the next honey order which unfortunately isn't going to happen.
While agonizing and researching for hundreds of kilos of honey.. I've been digging into my own store cupboard.
This honey I bought from the NSW South Coast 6 years ago. It's a red bark honey, it's gone dark over time but still tastes delicious.
Thank goodness for long term storage, thank goodness for honey, thank goodness that we're on an island and still have healthy bees.