Not the evil cigarette kind of smoking, but the kind that gives food a great taste. For my first try, I overfilled the fuel, added too many woodchips and forgot to open the vent. But, after smoking out the house (is that really a bad thing?) I got it back all under control with only…
Category: kitchen
KSF… My favourite!
So what’s a KSF? It’s my name for one of my favourite, most economical dishes… ‘Kitchen Scrap Ferment’. It’s just chopped vegetable leftovers after a couple of meals fermented in a salt solution, but ‘KSF’ sounds pretty cool. So… How do I make it?… It’s an ‘anaerobic’ (without oxygen) process using anaerobic bacteria. That means…
How much can we fit into this corner?
We had a spare corner of the laundry and wondered what we could fit into it to provide food and anything else for us and the garden. The area is 1400 mm x 800 mm or 1.12 square metres. Here’s what we grow there… mushrooms (well, they’re coming) enough greens for a meal on rainy…
My super cheap fermentation indicator
Sometimes, you just don’t have the gear. I lost my airlock the other morning… It’s somewhere around but will probably turn up along with all those misplaced pens… I was making Beet kvass – a delicious, easy to make ferment. So… I got to thinking how to make an airlock, then realized I didn’t need…
My newest endeavour… Isopod breeding.
My newest endeavour… Isopod breeding. You probably can’t see them in the pic but these containers have 2 different types of Isopod in them. I’m trying to breed them for 2 reasons. First, because the chooks love them. Second, because they are crustaceans, not insects and are related to and taste like shrimp. Yes, they’re…
Not everything works #2
This is Part 2 of our ‘not everything works’ series (it was originally going to be called ‘we fu&$k up too!’ ). Here’s some sterilized wheat that was inoculated with Elm and Blue Elm mycorrhizae. Only the two batches in the front innoculated cleanly. These were done in the fridge. The others done at room…
Nettles…. Mmmmmm
Nettles… Fresh picked from our front yard and washed… Just delicious! These go in the dryer. Tomorrow’s lot are for compost tea. It’s much easier to pick the fresh, young nettles than it is to pick and process older ones. All you need to do is wash the dirt off of the roots and they’re…
Purple!
After the recent rabbit rampage and Amelia’s on again off again residency in the garden, we’ve got some replanting do! So it was off to Bunnings yesterday where Jelina fell in love. Not with me again , not with some handsome swarthy gentleman or woman, but with Brassicas! Her favourite colour is purple, so imagine…
The Money Tree…a plant with many names
Portulacaria afra is a plant found in many gardens. It’s hard to kill and asks so little that we take it for granted as an ornamental. It goes by many names in many places, often named the same as other plants, so it gets a bit mixed. I’ve heard it called ‘Money tree’, ‘Fortune plant’…
How to make a vinegar for stronger bones
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is a herb with some ancient history. I’ll be writing a post about it soon but for now, here’s another use for it – ‘strong bones vinegar’. Mugwort contains a lot of calcium and magnesium, making it useful for strengthening bones and improving muscle function. As the two often go hand in…
