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.

Floods, Food and You

With most of Queensland flooded and a massive amount of that being farm land, our fruit, veggies, grain, cotton and meat prices are set to hike. The poor people must be absolutely at their wits end! A dairy farmer shared his sheer dismay as he let the entire vat of fresh milk wash away through the fields. No-where for it to go as all the roads were blocked and no trucks could come and collect it.

Today I went to the supermarket and Frozberries to stock up on all the things my once full cupboards/freezer lacked, before the rush of people panic buying. Things like long life/tinned milk, butter, cereal etc. Not because I'm panicking myself.. just that I know the prices will get higher even though the Chinese imports are cheap, the demand will be an excuse to make the profit margins wider. This means pressure on my budget and so I'm buying back up food to ease some of that.

Already the Tropical mixed fruit was out of stock because of the floods. I don't know why that suprised me. So far the floods have just been something happening on TV, in another state. Flick to the next channel and it's kids shows - no problems there. We adopt the mindset that we're infallible, untouchable and these things will never happen to us.  Well, floods probably won't happen here in my part but I'm in a bush fire area.

I remember over a year ago now.. maybe two when DH was at work and bush fires felt close. I ripped apart my 72hr emergency kit realising most of it was unnecessary rubbish and got the kids and 3 wheeler pram ready to leg it. It wasn't close but it made me realise that I need to be prepared.

I wondered how those scoffing ladies at pilates would have fared in a fire situation.

So to all those affected in the floods and other natural disasters going on in Australia. Our prayers are with you. For all those sitting back and watching the drama, get prepared and stock up while you can.

Ooey Gooey roll/scroll/bun

In America it's "rolls"

In Australia it's "scrolls"

In England it's "sticky bun"

Whatever you call them, they're YUM! I shared the secret of my cinnamon rolls with a bunch of ladies from church a couple of years ago. They loved them and went to making them themselves straight away.

This week I tried a twist. I incorporated craisins into the bread dough and for the filling I used honey, brown sugar, raw cubed green apple and butter. For the icing I did something risky but healthy. I used Kombucha mixed in with the icing sugar. It gave it a weird sort of apple tang taste, but Maryanne my friend didn't notice and liked them enough to eat three in one sitting :o)

 They had lovely gooey caramel. (The pre-icing shots)

 They didn't come close to the originals - cinnamon rolls. The recipe given to my mum in the 70's by an American Sister Missionary (female, not related). It's not really a recipe as the amounts of sugar are just by feel. On this batch below I used slightly runny butter and didn't use as much as usual, mistake. They were really good, just not with that ooey gooey cinnamon caramel underneath. These are proving just a little longer before I stuck them in the oven.

I made these scrolls for my husband's birthday together with the strawberry flower pavlova.

Homemade Christmas Treats

This first pic was a real treat for us. The Garrett family came Christmas caroling one night. I was sooo good!! I couldn't get over it and I hoped they didn't think we too weird for asking them to sing on the driveway so our (hiding) neighbours could hear.(L to R Me, DS2 Nicole, Dad Garrett, Mum Garrett, Deardre, Emily, DH, front is Julia (?) and DS1)

Peppermint Fudge with crushed candy canes.  500g dark chocolate melts/other, 65g butter, 1 can of swt cond milk. Heat in pan and mix. Take of heat and add a tsp or two of vanilla and a tablespoon of peppermint ext. Pour into lined tray and sprinkle over crushed candy canes.
NEXT year I'll do chocolate thin cookies squished together with a crushed candy cane butter icing.

 Childhood treat, Malt Buttons (or I call them choco biccy balls). 250g biccies crushed, 1 can swt cond milk, 2 tablespoons coco (if you use organic or raw then use less, it's stronger), 1 cup desic. coconut and an extra half cup for rolling in at the end. Mix all and roll in extra coconut. Refrigerate.
*Tip, the rice cookies that are gluten free are easier to crush, need less swt cond milk (maybe half the amt) and taste yummy. Try not to crush the biccies to a powder, the odd crunchy bit is nice.

 Fruit Mince scrolls and gingerbread.

Candied Almonds. 2 Tbpns each of water, honey and oil (flavourless like grape seedoil) bring to boil in frying pan. Add 2 cups toasted and cooled almonds and 1/4tsp - no more! of cayenne. Stir until all liquid has reduced. Pour onto baking paper lined tray to cool.

Herbed Salt Rub. Crushed rock salt with thyme, bay, sage, parsley, lemon verbena, lemon zest... I think that's it. Great for chicken and fish.


All of them were loved!!!

Lettuce catch up

Har de har...
Anyway, here's DS1 with one of our oak leaf lettuces from the garden. We've had it coming out of our ears and I'm ashamed to say some went to seed as we couldn't eat them quickly enough. Re-planting as I go.

 A visitor on the Christmas tree, spot him?

 DS2's 2nd birthday and ginger biccy cream cake ( you know when you squish the g.biccies together with a bit of jam and cream, cover in cream, refridgerate overnight and then it's like a soft creamy cake? Well that was it)

 My FIRST ever time at growing flowers that are not for companion planting or edible purposes. Just pretty. We have lemon yellow, fuchsia pink and blushing white colours. So pretty!

 My precious little dwarf red shatoot mulberry tree is doing well in it's large pot. I was wondering how a fruiting tree didn't flower but produce fruit and then it answered my question. It has flower fluff! Great teaching moment for the kids, fun to tickle and exciting to watch them mature.

 Some of our tomatoes. These are little love heart shaped ones. They're so so sweet and even I (the tomato blase) love them. I ticks me off at the shops when they sell tomatoes on the truss, all ripe and ready, I doubt anyone buying them knows they're sprayed/gassed to ripen all at once like bananas. They ripen two at a time from the top to the bottom of the truss. So nice for a daily treat!

 The heady sweet, musky, curry leaf tree flowers.

 6 year old honey (or older). We're finally digging into this as our runny honey stash has depleted. I'm already a third through after making the honey almonds for Christmas gifts. It's so yummy, honey seems to get a stronger taste over time.

Nice catching up with you.
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