Tomatoes

Firstly, no I didn't grow these. They're from our local farmers market - $20 for an 18kg of big beautiful romas grown in nearby Shepparton. At that price, I'm completely happy to give over my garden beds to other veg that are easier to grow in our cooler climate. I do have a few cherry tomatoes and other salad varieties growing but they're not even close to being ready to pick yet.

This is the first time I've managed to deal with the whole box of tomatoes in one day. Because this year I kept things simple. No blanching, peeling, onions, herbs. Just chopped tomatoes, cooked until soft, put through the mouli, bottled and sterilised.

So I now have 15 litres of beautiful tomato passata, from local tomatoes bought direct from the grower (courtesy of my wonderful neighbour Jenny), in recycled jars, with no additives. And that's a whole lot better than cans of tomatoes from the supermarket that have travelled halfway around the world from Italy (and who knows from where or how far the steel for the cans, or the trees or ink for the labels, has come).

Happy days!

Next up... these little guys, which have travelled all of 300 metres from Jenny's garden to our house. I do love living here!

Slow Living :: March

My monthly update of the little ways that I am living more slowly, simply and sustainably. More links to Slow Living updates over at Slow Living Essentials.

MARCH

{nourish} With the arrival of some cooler days, soup is back on the menu - pumpkin, broccoli & zucchini, corn chowder... Best of all the kids love it! Plus it's great to be able to make a big batch and pop some in the freezer.

{prepare} Not so peachy in the preserving department here! I harvested several kilos of peaches from a roadside tree, however my decision to poach the peaches to remove the skins wasn't entirely successful (despite the pretty pictures). The skins slipped off only the perfectly ripe peaches, while the rest weren't at all cooperative. Then, after leaving the covered bowl of peeled peaches in the fridge for a couple of hours, I discovered that all the exposed surfaces had gone brown. Not so pretty! By the end of the day I only ended up with 3 fowlers jars of fruit. Next year I'll be trying a different approach!

{reduce} My revamp of an old daggy bookcase was a great success... in fact I was so inspired that I picked up a few more pieces of 2nd hand furniture to refurbish in the coming months.

{grow} The garden is still providing us with tomatoes, zucchinis, carrots and plenty of greens. The winter veggies are coming along nicely and I've just planted a big patch of garlic. Hubby has also been building some fences so that we'll have several small paddocks to allow us to rotationally graze our small flock of sheep.

{create} It's actually been a pretty crafty month around here!
I made a couple of cushion covers from two fat quarters of the my favourite Bird Textiles print, Vine Leaves in Red. I'm so sad that Bird Textiles have now closed their studio doors and their beautiful products are no longer available.
On my needles a Fluted Cowl is in progress. I'm in love with the Berocco Ultra Alpaca yarn that I'm using - so cozy and soft and the silvery grey colour is really lovely and should go with anything.
Best of all I finally had a go at screenprinting for the handprinted fabric swap, which was so much fun! I can't wait to do some more designing and printing!
There's also a few sewing projects I've started on... more about those soon.

{discover} I've discovered a couple of lovely magazines this month, both with a focus on simple living, sustainabilty, handmade and homemade: The Simple Things, a UK publication, and Good, from New Zealand. I do love curling up with a good magazine!

{enhance} I arranged a produce swap in our little community a couple of weeks ago. In a small community like ours it's such an easy thing to do - send around an email, pop a poster on the community noticeboard, and provide a table on the day. With the abundance of autumn some people brought along whole boxes of tomatoes, pears, and cucumbers to share. I feel very lucky to have access to so much fresh, local-grown food.

{enjoy} Weekend trips with friends (here, here and here) have been a highlight this month. Plus our little overnight trip for our wedding anniversary.

{breathe} Enjoying the early autumn sunshine and warm weather, lighting the fire on the first cool evening, walking barefoot in the garden, a slow coffee and a read at the corner cafe.

From garden to kitchen

:: Little Miss digging for potatoes in her preferred gardening attire

:: Collecting the daily autumn bounty from the garden

:: Another batch of passata in progress (this time from our home-grown tomatoes)

:: Yummy potato pancakes for lunch - recipe from here 

What's happening in your garden and kitchen?

Jam season

We're right in the midst of jam and jelly making season around here. Summer berries, apricots and plums have already made their way into jars and all the autumn harvest is still to come.

One of the things I love about country living is that I have supplies of fruits such quinces, cumquats, medlars and rosehips (mostly from friends & neighbours) that make wonderful jams and jellies... yet when is the last time you walked into your local supermaket and were able to buy these? I'm guessing never! What would winter be without a bit of quince jelly on toast?

For some great advice about all the ins and outs of jam making - pectin, setting point, sterilising jars, etc - pop over to this Q&A post over on cityhippyfarmgirl's blog.

Slow Living :: January

My monthly update of the little ways that I am living more slowly, simply and sustainably.

This idea is the inspiration of the lovely Christine over at Slow Living Essentials. Find out more on her original Slow Living Month by Month post.

At the start of this year I identified 4 areas of my life that I wanted to put more effort into: Grow, Create, Play, Breathe. Each of Christine's 9 categories fit into or overlap with mine, except perhaps Breathe - which is all about doing less, being mindful and looking after myself. Hence I'm going to include this as one of the categories as well.

JANUARY

{nourish} I've been making a big effort to cut out sugary snacks from my diet, eat more interesting and wholesome lunches (less sandwiches) and use some new ingredients. I've been trying recipes with quinoa (love this stuff!), I've swapped canola oil for coconut oil (see why here and here) and I'm trying out some low-sugar sweet treats. 

{prepare} We're lucky enough to live in a berry and cherry growing area, so for the past 6 weeks we've been visiting the pick-your-own orchards on a regular basis. I'm guessing we'd now have around 6 or 7kg of rasberries and blueberries in the freezer, a couple of kilos of pitted frozen cherries plus 10 jars of stewed cherries (one each month until the season starts again in December). I've also bottled around 10 litres of tomato passata and pasta sauce.

{reduce} As always, we've picked up a few secondhand bargains from op shops (kids clothes, shoes for hubby), garage sales (a fab Husky vest for hubby) and online trading sites (fencing wire).

{green} We received our electricity bill for the last quarter and were pleased to discover that our 2kw solar system has generated enough electricity to leave us with a $2 credit overall. Yay!

{grow} In the garden: Harvesting cucumbers, beans, basil, parsley, tomatoes (just!), kale, silverbeet and zucchini's. The sweetcorn is coming along nicely as are the potatoes. Just sown are broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, kale, lettuce, beetroot, tat soi, coriander and spring onions. In the paddock: 6 new sheep! Me: I've enrolled in an online course - Cert IV in Web-based Technologies.

{create} My main creative pursuit this month was starting this blog! I've been really enjoying taking more photos of day to day life too. Some sewing and knitting projects in the pipeline but with school holidays going on there hasn't been time for these!

{discover} I've discovered Pinterest and I think I'm addicted! 

{enhance} As part of my Landcare work I've started compiling information for a North East Local Produce Guide - the guide has the aim of supporting local farmers as well as reducing 'food miles'/carbon emissions.

{enjoy} Loved our relaxing family holiday time camping at Lake Cullulleraine near Mildura (as we do every summer). Lots of kids craft activities going on during the holidays. A night out for dinner, just hubby and I, while the kids had a sleep-over at their cousins. The excitement of starting a new school and a new kinder!

{breathe} Enjoying reading books outside in the late afternoon, while guarding the veggie patch from the chooks. Having a  couple of weeks off work and enjoying time without any schedules or routines... and a few afternoon naps. Looking forward to going to the gym each day (my 'me' time). 

Domestic arts in action

Feeling like domestic goddess's!

27kg of tomatoes cooked and bottled... and some gourmet scraps for the chooks.

Homemade passata

The past week has been hot, hot, hot here. So I was pretty chuffed to wake up to the sound on rain on the roof this morning. Nice. Perfect for cooking up my 9kg box of roma tomatoes actually...

I like the extra intensity of flavour that you get from roasting the tomatoes but I can only fit two baking trays in the oven and can't be bothered with multiple batches. Hence two trays worth are halved and go in the oven for about half an hour. The rest are quartered and tossed in my big stock pot to soften up.

Then everything goes straight into my fab vintage mouli mill - country markets and garage sales are great for picking up such useful items - to remove the skins and seeds. I love my mouli - avoids the need for time-consuming blanching and peeling. 

Then the passata goes into jars and is simmered in the Fowlers Vacola pot (can anyone tell me what the proper name for the actual pot is?) for an hour or so. 

My 9kg produced 4.5 litres of passata. I'll be processing a few more boxes of tomatoes this summer to produce enough to last the year.