In the kitchen

...fermenting vegetables 

I've been making saurkraut for a while, but have really been wanting to make a mixed vegetable fermentation, but kept thinking.......oh too hard, don't have the proper jars etc.  I went to a workshop a few months back, where I watched and learned but still didn't take the plunge, just continued with the cabbage on it's own......and then the Farmer's Market at Blue Knob, a hamlet about half an hour south of here, had a Fermentation Festival, where I tasted the most divine mixed vegetable kraut imaginable.  It was made by a local woman who casually chopped and broke up a mix of vegetables, eyeballed the brine mix and stuffed it all in jars, talking and answering questions and telling anecdotes about her failures and successes, all at the same time.

Part of the crowd enjoying the various fermentation talks

This young Vietnamese woman gave a great demonstration of how to make miso paste, a very time intensive process. 

snapshots of Blue Knob Farmer's Market

So I thought...I can do that!  but still didn't quite get around to it....you know how it is, other things to do that take priority, oh and there was that fall I had off the ladder...painful to stand chopping vegetables......until today!  I've done it.

Lovely jewels

It was the local Farmer's Market yesterday, so off I went with my shopping list of veggies I wanted for my kraut, and came home with this bounty. It's all organic except for the cauliflower and cabbage, and they're no-spray.  All are grown within 20 kms of town, picked the afternoon before and brought to the market nice and early. 

I spent this morning washing and chopping, and I took some pics as I went along to show you how I did it, in case anyone else is thinking they just have to make vegetable kraut. Cabbage first, as it needed to be salted and massaged, this softens it, and releases a lot of the water, which is added to the jars later.  Blurry pic, sorry, but cabbage is cabbage.

A mix of vegetables chopped and ready to be loaded into jars and the brine added...........

Here I have cauliflower, which I broke into medium size pieces, carrots, quartered longways and chopped, zucchini, the same, there are beans and broccoli from a friend's garden, including the broccoli stems.  I added 2 large garlic cloves, smashed and a chunk of ginger, chopped roughly......these are both organic from the Farmer's Market..... and a half a home-grown chilli.  I could've added dill, peppercorns, cloves  or other spices of my choosing, but since I didn''t have any, I just used what I had to hand.

For my brine, I used 2 cups of filtered water .....not tap water, you don't want chlorine and other chemicals in your yummy vegetables.....and a tablespoon and half of coarse sea salt.  It must be sea salt, not iodized kitchen salt, as the iodine prevents fermentation and can make your kraut taste pretty awful. You can adjust the amount of salt to your preferred taste, using between 1 and 1 and a half tablespoons of salt...after trial and error with the cabbage I found this suits me...I'll see how it goes with the mixed vegetables and adjust next time if it doesn't suit.....some recipes suggest 2 tablespoons, but I found this too salty for me.

So then I spooned all the vegetables into jars that I'd washed and sterilised in the oven, and to one, I added some pieces of chopped turmeric, fresh from a friend's garden, just to see if I like it.  I know turmeric's good for us, but it doesn't mean it's going to make my kraut taste good.  I pushed the vegetables down to get rid of air bubbles, then poured the brine over, leaving a couple of inches space at the top for expansion.  Pushing it all down again, I put a cabbage leaf on top, pushing again, so the vegetables stayed under the brine.  The leaf acts as a weight to keep the vegetables under the brine.

I did a bit of research before making my kraut, just to see what sort of vegetables fermented well, and what to leave alone and some of the sites and blogs I looked at suggested using kraut-crocks...fancy ceramic pots with special weights to hold the vegetables down.....I priced these and at $70 + each, plus postage, I decided to give them a miss, and instead bought these 3 wide mouth jars at the cheap shop for $2.99 each, and the taller one I'd bought kraut in the previous week at the Whole Foods Store, so cleaned it up, and reused it. Costwise, that tall jar cost me $14 ..... the produce from the Farmer's Market was $18, but not all of that went into the kraut, as I bought eggplant, potatoes and avocados as well, and don't have a breakdown of individual items, but still excellent value I think.....the small jars filled weigh 1100gms and the tall recycled one holds just under that. Without being too precise, 4 jars for around the price of one.....not bad, since I eat this with every meal.  I haven't talked about the health benefits, but it's enough for me to know it's good for me, but there's lots of information out there if you'd like to know more, just google fermented food.  Here's a couple of my favourite places to get you started -http://www.nourishingmeals.com/2012/02/how-to-make-lacto-fermented-vegetables.html
and http://www.almostbananas.net/our-family-favourite-ferment-cauliflower/
http://thestonesoup.com/blog/2014/08/simple-sauerkraut-recipe-a-favour/

I'll now leave the jars on the kitchen bench, out of direct sunlight, and in a couple of days, will "burp" them, to let excess gases escape.  Then by day 4 or 5 I can have a taste and if it's to my liking, it can go in the fridge and I can start eating it, but if I want a stronger flavour, I'll leave it out longer, tasting daily until it's just right.  I can't wait!

And all those trimmings off the vegetables...the chooks enjoyed those.

till next time.........

Quilt finish and around home

It's finished at last. This quilt has occupied all my waking hours lately, and some of my sleeping ones too, as I'd wake and fret I wouldn't get it finished in time.  It's now in the hands of Mr Australia Post. It's a relief to have it done and away.

Just a little peek until it arrives at it's destination.

Around the homestead, the "new" chickens are no longer new, but part of the flock. Here they are dustbathing together, but since I took this photo, the new ones have been coaxed into sleeping in the big roost.  They were pretty nervous to start, and no wonder, with that big orange monster bearing down on them from above, and pecking madly.  All's well now, though, and spangly Lola now sleeps
happily under that monster's wing.

The girls have really grown up, as Brenna...in the middle next to orange Juno...started laying yesterday, and Lola produced her first egg today.  My last bantie, Goodie, doesn't lay anymore, and spends her days now standing quietly and very still, gazing off into the middle distance.  She still looks well, is very ready to let the young ones know when they've overstepped themselves, but I wonder if I'll have her for much longer....

I call this pair my yin yang cats....that's mother Molly on the right, and her "baby", Velvet Brown who's around 7or 8.  These two ended up staying with me when I was fostering cats for an animal rescue group.  They'd come out of a very nasty situation, and I couldn't bear for them to go through the adoption process, they were so terrified of people, so I kept them.  Even after nearly 4 years with me, they're still quite timid, and will come to me occassionally for an ear scratch, but mostly keep to themselves.  I'm more than happy to give them a safe haven and let them live out their days peacefully.

Until of course, this one showed up. This is Neesa, my feisty little princess.  She was treated cruelly as a tiny kitten as well, and has some "issues" too.  Here she's keeping an eye on Mirrhi...none of the cats have taken to Mirrhi, but she doesn't really care, she has me!

And to finish, here's the puppy herself, helping me in the garden. As you can see, she's quite the lady.

She's growing so quickly, and her legs are getting long and lanky.  She's a good girl, and no trouble, and has been quick to learn.....she waits for the magic word before she eats, she can sit, down and stay, she'll come most of the time, she sits and waits until I go through the door first.....she's also strong willed and is ready to argue if she's told 'no'! She's fun and wonderful company, and as I write this, she's napping on my feet.  It's hard work at times, but I have no regrets about getting her.

Have a good week everyone.

Settling In

I've had a new pen and coop built for my chooks.  The old one was pretty unsatisfactory....no protection from the rain or heat, or the wild birds that waited impatiently every morning for their free feed.  Dozens of them every day guzzling my good organic feed!  Not to mention the ibis that flew in and hoovered up porridge and scraps whenever they'd had enough of the rotten fare at the tip.   The coop was too low for me to get in and clean properly, and hot in the summer for the girls.  Time for a new abode.

I told the builder what I wanted, and he put the plan into action. 




Enjoying the early morning sun



Water tank is plumbed in

Girls exploring their new space



Shuttered window



Opens for a little breeze on a hot summer night



The ramp - new skills to be learned to get in and out




Edie - an Isa Brown, the querulous chicken, complains all day long 



Freya - a bantam and boss of the coop for all her diminutive size



Goodie, she's a quiet little bantam

and Big Juno - she's barely a year old, a buff Plymouth Rock, a gentle and sweet chicken

It's taken a few days of gentle coaxing and reassurance...and cake... to get the little girls to use the ramp, but they seem to have the hang of it now, and they use it at bedtime and in the morning, but haven't quite figured out they go back up there to lay....eggs left in all sorts of places so far.

And it's relieved a lot of stress for me, I don't have to let them out and put them to bed each day, or struggle to keep their space clean, and no worrying about the wild bird hoards descending.  They're let out of an afternoon to free range, usually while I'm working in the garden in the cool, as they sure do love my lettuce.

We couldn't be happier.