Check out my buns lol.......

I recently bought a breadmaker and I'm gradually working my way through the recipes in it's manual. These buns started life as a fruit loaf, but guess who forgot to press the button to release the fruit into the mix? So I had to quickly salvage the dough and mix the fruit in by hand. They turned out pretty well after all, Braeden (13) ate most of them. Boys are just bottomless pits! Braeden has shot up by 5 cm (2") since Christmas!

Note my sneaky addition of the kitchen timer to the pic in the hopes that no-one would realise a bun was missing? Guess you know now lol... Had to show it off anyway, I loooove this timer. I picked it up at the op-shop a couple of weeks ago for $2. It is a 5 hour timer, made in great Britain by Smiths. Works a treat, and nice and loud too.

Bean burgers

Thought I'd share this recipe with you. I keep this in the cupboard for occasions when the carnivores in the family are having meat and three veg and I want something quick and easy for me. I always double the recipe....

Bean Burger Mix

Ingredients:
½ cup chickpeas
½ cup soybeans
½ cup raw peanuts or sunflower seeds
¼ cup toasted sesame seeds
½ cup rolled oats
¼ cup pea flour (I used soy flour)
1 tbsp dried parsley
1tsp salt

Method:
Measure first four ingredients into a bowl and mix together. Using a food processor grind ½ cup of this mixture at a time until it is the consistency of dried breadcrumbs. Be warned this is extremely noisy!!!
Combine ground beans with remaining ingredients. Store mix in an airtight jar until needed.

To make 2 large burgers:
1 cup burger mix
½ cup water
2 tsp dark soy sauce
1 clove garlic
1-2 tbsp oil to cook
Mix ingredients (except oil) together and stand for 15 mins. Cook over moderate heat for 5 mins each side, covering the pan to allow the burgers to steam and speed up cooking. Very yummy, especially on a burger with sweet chilli sauce and some sour cream...... yummmm.....

Well at least we'll be clean lol.....

Is it normal for one person to do so many different things? Most people seem to choose a hobby or three and concentrate on doing them well. Not me, I flit from thing to thing like a voracious honey-bee in a flower garden. I sew, embroider, spin, make soap and candles, do punch needle and rug hooking, make prim dolls, knit, crochet, make braided rag rugs, and so on. And that's not to mention the preserves, bread, pickles, jams, etc etc etc. I just love producing things with my hands. I may not be an expert at any one skill but I never get a chance to get bored! I am in full-on soap mode at the moment. It's becoming an obsession. First it was the olive and lavender soap with oatmeal and hemp. Now I have produced a massive 3. kg lot of canolive soap which I am in the process of hand milling, or re-batching, into different varieties. Merran (11) and I made chocolate and vanilla soap today, and tonight I made a batch of cinnamon soap. It has real cinnamon and cinnamon leaf essential oil in it. Yummo! I had no idea how long it would take to melt down the canolive soap, it took about an hour. The first batch we did in a saucepan over a low heat. I was stressed out thinking it was going to burn. So the following batch I did in the Pyrex jug over a saucepan of hot water. Took just as long but not as scary. Apparently it can be done by double bagging the grated soap and immersing it in hot water. I'll try that next time.
This is the canolive soap curing so it can be hand milled. Who ate the top of the bread? Hot bread is just soooo good.......If I can't get the hand milling process sped up I'll just make small batches of the gourmet soaps. I made extra of the canolive so I can use it to make my laundry liquid anyway. Hmmmm, wonder how long this phase of my creativity will last?

Well preserved.......

What a bad bad blogger I am.....I have finally summed up the energy to put up a post. Why am I so tired? It's fruit time! Thanks to good rains we are drowning in mountains of delicious fruit. We have figs, plums, apricots, and peaches in abundance. So I have had the old Fowlers Vacola unit out and been bottling madly. I have preserved around 40 bottles of peaches and 30 of plums, and I'm starting on the figs. I have made at least 70 jars of jam and 10 litres of spicy plum sauce. That's not to mention time spent blanching and freezing beans, pickling onions and zucchinis and making pickles. All our friends and family are loving all the home made goodies. Thing is that they keep bringing me more fruit! I wish they'd bring more jars, the op-shops are totally out of them. Oh and did I mention the home made yoghurt and cheese? And then there's the ginger beer plant I have started.... Along with all that I have decided that the most economical, healthy and environmentally friendly option for me is to become vegetarian, so I have been trying out loads of great recipes. We just have so many vegies it's crazy not to use them! Yes I'm knackered, no I haven't had time to do much craft (don't worry swap buddies, I'll be done soon...), but I am loving the pleasure and satisfaction of a well stocked preserves cupboard.....

Mmmmmmmmmm apricots..........

We are lucky to have a lovely neighbour who allows us to pick her fruit in exchange for a few jars of jam - thanks Nan!

After bubbling away on the stove for a bit I bottled 11 jars of jam....

The best fruit went to making dried apricots, gotta love the dehydrator! Lots of work but well worth it for the tart yummy treats.....

There's plenty more where that came from, we'll be picking apricots for weeks, and then there's the plums and figs, not to mention the peaches Mum grows...... There's something very satisfying about looking at a cupboard full of hand made preserves.....

A few bits and pieces

My fave food in the world is sushi, but living in a small town we don't get to indulge very often. For ages I've had a sushi-making kit and recently I took the plunge and had a go. Here is the result, not bad for a first try.... It was divine if I say so myself, the tuna was amazing!

Just a bit of eye candy for the prim lovers out there.

I have acquired quite a few cream stoneware pieces so I put them all together with a few cinnamon sticks and some antique egg-beaters.
These tags are great, my friend Ang made them and I have been trying to find a spot for them to show them off properly. I joined a few sticks together with the hot glue gun and some calico strips, and put them in a rusty tin with a rusty pie plate. I put in some gravel to give it stability.

Chickpea and Pumpkin Curry

I made this for tea last night and it was yummy... I pureed the leftovers with some extra coconut milk to freeze as soup.

Chickpea and Pumpkin Curry

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 kg Butternut Pumpkin, peeled, seeded and roughly chopped

1 onion, cut into wedges

285g jar of mild Indian curry sauce

1/3 cup coconut milk (I doubled this amount)

400g can chickpeas

50g baby spinach leaves(I only had silver beet and I used the whole bunch lol...)

Coriander leaves to taste

1/2 Lebanese cucumber

2/3 cup plain European yoghurt

1 tablespoon fresh mint

Heat the oil in a large non-stick fry pan over medium heat. Add pumpkin and onion and cook for 8-10 mins until softened.

Add the curry sauce, coconut milk and 1 1/2 cups of water. Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for 10 mins or until the pumpkin is completely tender.

Stir in the chickpeas, spinach and coriander. Cook for 3 mins to make sure the spinach is wilted, then serve with steamed rice and cucumber yoghurt.

Cucumber yoghurt

Seed and finely chop half a Lebanese cucumber. Mix with 2/3 cup plain European yoghurt ( I used Greek) and a tablespoon of finely chopped mint, and serve sprinkled with a little extra mint.

Pretty multicultural really - bit of Indian, some Lebanese and some Greek lol....... Is this what they call fusion cuisine?