Curds and Whey

Yesterday was another cheese making day.

Buoyed by the success of my Caerphilly from a few weeks ago I've been more adventurous and made Derbyshire. This is a cheese that will mature in 3 months rather than 3 weeks. Fingers crossed! It needs to dry for a few days then I'll wax it and pop it in the cheese fridge.

After making the cheese I had about 4 litres of whey left over. I could have used this to make some ricotta, but the yield is never that good, and I'm not a huge ricotta fan. Instead I fed 2L to the piggies, kept a litre to use in the chook mash, and used a litre to make 3 loaves of English muffin bread from Ricki Carroll's cheese book.

This bread is delicious toasted - a bit like a cross between a muffin and a crumpet. It also freezes very well. You can use milk if you don't have whey. The best part is no kneading!

Makes 3/4 loaves

• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/3 cups warm water
• 4 packets or 4 tablespoons active dry yeast
• Cornmeal (polenta) for sprinkling (I used wheat bran last time which I think was better)
• 12 cups bread flour or all purpouse flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda (bicarb)
  
• 4 cups whey or milk
• 4 teaspoons salt

Dissolve sugar in the water. Pour yeast into a large bowl, add the sugar water and let sit for at least 10 mins (it will froth up nicely).
Grease 3-4 loaf pans and sprinkle with cornmeal or wheat bran.
In another large bowl (large enough for 12 cups of flour plus mixing space!) put 6 cups of flour and the baking soda(bicarb).
Warm the whey and salt (or milk and salt) until just lukewarm, then stir this into the yeast mixture.
Pour the yeast mixture into the flour and stir to combine. Add remaining flour and work into a stiff, dry batter.
Preaheat oven to 200c (400F)
Spoon batter into tins, press flat, and let rise in a warm place until the dough is just at the top of the tin.
Bake for 30 mins

YUM YUM YUM

August Garden

Time for another stroll through the vege patch.

The hardenbergia over the gate is looking just stunning...laden with flowers and with bees most of the time! The other one by the fruit cage isn't quite as magnificent....but still very pretty and a welcome bit of winter colour.

(L)Parsnips, carrots, rocket, onions, leeks, garlic, silverbeet - you can find it all in the impatience bed! (R) Garlic and snow peas in the fruit cage bed.

(L) Garlic, onions, shallots and some self seeded parsley. (R) The green manure crop is looking good too.

(L) Broad beans and a couple of turnip varieties. (R) brassicas (kale, cauli, cabbage, collards)

Pretty respectable for winter I think :)

Sometimes a simple thing makes you really stop and think

Jerry's just started doing some volunteer work with a refugee resettlement program run by Vinnies. Each family that arrives - as well as their DOCS and other caseworkers - is 'given' a group of 5 or 6 volunteers who help them settle in to life in Australia. The volunteers do all kinds of things - from driving people to appointments, taking them shopping, helping explain the way different things work (the rental market, schools, shoping, eletricity bills etc etc) as well as just dropping in and helping them practice their English.

Jerry's been placed with a group looking after a Bhutanese family. They've already been here a few months. On Sunday Jerry and I went to the 'big smoke' (well, the little-big smoke of Albury!) for a bit of a get together with the family and the other volunteers. This was the first time we met them. We drove the father and eldest boys (in their teens) to the meeting place and on the way there Jerry asked the eldest what was the one thing they liked most about Australia so far. With no hesitation at all he said "It's peaceful".

I'm still really struck and quite moved by this, and the though of what their life must have been like in the camps to make this the first and over-riding good thing about being here. Intellectually we know that we are lucky and have a good life here, but it does take something like that to make you stop, think and really appreciate just HOW lucky we really are.

If you want to know more about Bhutan and the refugee situation try this link http://www.bhutaneserefugees.com/index.php?id=1

If it's the weekend...

...it must have been time to work in the garden again! We did a bit more roofing work on the chicken coop as well- it's about 60% complete now.

I also relocated 3 rhubarb plants from the raised bed vege patch to the front garden. They really didn't need to be in those beds, and they were taking up valuable space that could better be used for other things. In the new 'rhubarb patch' they will have plenty of room to grow, and will look decorative as well. I picked just under a kilo of rhubarb from the plants before moving them.

We also planted out our new strawberry plants (10 Milewa and 10 Lowanna organic runners from the lovely folk at Cornucopia Seeds - I can higly recommend them for great service and fab range). The Milewa plants went into a long section of excess large drainpipe we were given by a neighbour. He had even pre-drilled drainage holes and cut the top out!

We've put this outside the greenhouse, set on some bricks that are resting in trays of water. Why? To try and stop the dreaded millipedes - scourge of every in-ground strawberry crop we have tried to grow. The 10 Lowanna plants I've put in pots in the greenhouse - again a millipede management strategy. I am DETERMINED to be enjoying home grown strawberries this summer!

And finally Jerry has been installing some solar powered LED lights that we bought (1/2 price!) in various useful places around the property - by the front door for those times we forget to leave a light on and can't see to put the key in the door, by the gate, and one on a tree on the path up to the house.

So this evening I just have to cook the rhubarb, bake the sourdough bread, make lasagne (sauce simmering on the stove as we speak), do some ironing...and then put my feet up!!!!!!