Bottling Beetroot

Cook beetroot and slice (slow simmer until you can put a fork in. Aprox 1hr)
Cool beetroot and peel
Slice into jars

Put the following together, then boil stiring regularly.
When boiling pour in jars of beetroot then seal!

1/2 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar (if spiced vinegar 1/2 and 1/2)
1 cup water (water from cooking the beetroot above is best)
Salt and pepper to taste

Best ever 'Chocolate Brownie' recipe!

300g butter
3/4 cup NESTLE baking cocoa
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 packet NESTLE milk CHOC BITS

1) Preheat oven to 180*C
2) Line the base of an 18cm x 23cm slice tin with baking paper
3) Place butter and cocoa in a large bowl and heat in the microwave until butter is melted, then stir
4) Add brown sugar and mix well
5) Add eggs and flour - 1 egg and 1/2 cup flour at a time - making sure to mix well between additions
6) Add CHOC BITS and combine
7) Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean
8) Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack

PERSONAL TIP: I slightly under cook as its nicer when cooled and doesn't go as hard.

Brown Rice Salad

Boil:        2 cups brown rice (should be firm)

Soak:      ½ cup dark soya sauce.  (Should soak at least 2 hours - best overnight)

Chop:      3 spring onions, 1 red capsicum, ½ medium onion

Roast:     1 cup peanuts (or cashews), ½ cup sunflower seeds

              Mix with above.  Add ½ cup raisins, dried apricots optional

Whisk:     ¾ cup olive oil (or ½ cup cooking oil)  

              Juice of 1 lemon and 1 tsp grated rind, 1 crush clove garlic

Pour:       Oil mix over rice and mix well

Then:      SERVE AND ENJOY!!

Russian Fudge

675g (1 1/2 lbs) Sugar
1/2 cup Milk
1/2 tin Sweetened Condensed Milk
125g (4oz) Butter
1/8 tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Golden Syrup

Put sugar and milk into a saucepan, mix, cover and slowly bring to the boil.  Add condensed milk, butter, salt and golden syrup.  Boil until it reaches soft ball stage, about 30 minutes stirring occasionally.  Cool then beat until thick.  Pour into sponge roll tin or shallow tin, mark and cut when set.  Vanilla and nuts may be added if desired. OR MY OWN PERSONAL PREFERENCE... 3tsp Ground Ginger added to the mix!!! YUM

CHICKEN ENCHILADAS with SOUR CREAM

This is a recipe from one of the Indian reservations that I visited in the States, I change it a little but essentially this is perfect. Enjoy

CHICKEN ENCHILADAS with SOUR CREAM

12 TORTILLAS
2 cups cooked CHICKEN
1 pint SOUR CREAM
3 GREEN ONIONS, chopped
Shredded LETTICE
1/2 pound grated CHEESE

SAUCE for ENCHILADAS

2 cups TOMATO PUREE or SAUCE
2 cups WATER
4 teaspoons DRIED ONIONS
2 BOUILLON CUBES
1 1/2 teaspoons SALT
1 teaspoon GARLIC POWDER

1 teaspoon OREGANO

Combine sauce ingredients and simmer about 5 minutes in pan large enough to hold a tortilla flat. Fry tortilla lightly in a little oil (I avoid this step personally!) Dip tortilla in sauce, remove and fill with cooked chicken or other filling, onions and lettuce. Roll up and put in casserole, seam down. Repeat until all tortillas are filled. Spoon additional sauce over top. Dollop with sour cream and cheese and heat in oven at 350 about 20 minutes (makes 6 servings). (If tomato sauce is used, omit salt.)

Lotion Bars

I found this on http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/lotion-bars.html and am dead keen to give it a try

EVERYMAN’S LOTION BAR RECIPE

1 part vegetable shortening
1 part vegetable oil
1 part beeswax

Melt the shortening and beeswax a double boiler or a little pan in a bigger pan of simmering water. Stir in the vegetable oil. Pour into cups/molds and let cool. Pop out of “mold” and it’s ready to use. The beeswax will fragrance the bars with a nice, light honey smell, or you can stir in a little essential oil before you pour it into the molds.


LOTION BARS!
What exactly are lotion bars? They are solid, oil and butter based (anhydrous) bars made with beeswax, liquid oil, and butter. You melt, fragrance, then pour them into a mold or something like a deodorant container or tin and use them to seal in moisture wherever you need it. I think of them as giant lip balms for your body!


A basic recipe for lotion bars...
33% beeswax
33% liquid oils
33% solid butter
1% fragrance oil


Weigh all three ingredients in equal amounts in a Pyrex jug, then heat until all the solids have melted. Add 1% fragrance oil (by weight) and pour into a mold or deodorant container. Let set. Use. Rejoice.


This is a fairly basic recipe and the lovely thing is that you can tweak it to your heart's content, using a variety of oils and butters. (Check out the posts on oils and butters to see what would work for you!)


For your first bar, try something really basic and use that as an example bar of what you want. Try sunflower, safflower, or soy bean oil (all available at the grocery store) with cocoa butter and beeswax. This will give you a good baseline for what a basic lotion bar feels like.


TWEAKING THE BAR!
The hardness of your butters is important here. If you use all cocoa butter in your lotion bar, you're going to have a very hard bar. If you use all shea butter in your bar, you will have a softer bar. So consider how soft you want your bar to be. A softer bar will be squishier, but will definitely melt at body temperature (great for a massage bar).


For an after bath bar, I'd choose...
sunflower oil - a great emollient (about 20% of the bar)
hempseed oil - I can use this in a lotion bar as I'll be using it quickly, and it is fabulous for my skin (about 13%). I will need to add 1% Vitamin E in this bar for sure!
cocoa butter - it lays down a protective barrier to trap in moisture
For a foot lotion bar....
avocado butter or avocado oil - a heavy oil great for really dry and chapped areas
mango butter - if I use 33% mango butter, it'll be quite soft, but very emollient
avocado butter & mango butter (equal amounts) - a quite soft, but emollient bar
For my lips...
olive oil - a great humectant (draws water from the atmosphere) about 1/2 the oils amount
aloe oil - a great healing oil (not making a claim here, but it is awfully good!)
aloe butter - the goodness of aloe in a butter - but very very soft (about 15%)
cocoa butter - to harden the bar and offer great emolliency
You can add anything you like to a lotion bar recipe, as long as it is oil soluble. So hydrosols, water, aloe vera liquid, and other water soluble ingredients are right out! Hunt around for butters and oils. I've recently picked up aloe butter and aloe oil, so I can have the goodness of aloe in an anhydrous bar.


MY FAVOURITE LOTION BAR RECIPE
28% beeswax - to harden the bar
10% fractionated coconut oil - this is a very light oil, very emollient
25% sunflower oil - conditioning for the skin
3% rice bran oil - high in Vitamin E
30% mango butter - creamy and emollient
2% IPM - (an ester) IPM helps greasy things feel less greasy and sinks in quickly
2% cyclomethicone - this silicone helps with the glide
2% vitamin E - to prevent rancidity and good for my skin
1% FO



Melt all but the cyclomethicone and fragrance oil in a heat proof container in your double boiler. When all the ingredients have melted, add the cyclomethicone and fragrance oil, then pour into a mold or twist up deodorant container. Let set. Use!


This is a bar intended to start melting at your body temperature, that's why I used all mango butter.


SOME TIPS
Packaging: Wrap them in foil and label them, then present in a nice cellophane bag.
Chocolate molds and silicone ice cube trays are great for molding lotion bars!
Packaging: Find some nice tins for portability!
Make sure you label your lotion bars so you know which one you loved best or so your giftee knows what they are getting! Please note on your labels that these are NOT EDIBLE even if they are adorable and smell great. (A co-worker tried to eat one I scented with pecan praline!)
Lotion bars are incredibly easy to make and wonderful to use. They're portable and non-liquid, so they're great for long flights or camping trips. Play with the butters and oils to find a recipe your skin loves!


This is the first in a series of posts about anhydrous products. What are anhydrous products? It means "without water", and they are products made with oil soluble ingredients. Because they don't contain water you don't need to use a preservative (although I suggest 0.5% to 1% Vitamin E to keep the oils from going rancid), and you can usually package them in something other than a bottle (like a chocolate foil, bag, or tin). You also don't have to worry about emulsification (bringing oil and water together) because all your ingredients are in one phase (oil being one phase, water being another).


Oil based ingredients are pretty obvious - oils, butters, essential oils, fragrance oils - and include silicones, as well. When buying an ingredient, check the INCI or the information from the supplier to see if it is oil soluble. Water based ingredients would be things like water, glycerin, aloe vera, hydrosols, and surfactants. So you can't include those things in your anhydrous products. (Again, you can find oil based aloe vera oil or butters, so that's not to say you can't find things that might work well with an oil based product.)


What happens if you mix a water based thing into an oil based thing? You will get separation. Oil and water don't like each other (check your salad dressing to see this in action). If you add a water based thing - glycerin - to an oil based thing - shea butter - it will eventually seep out as the water and oil repel each other (this isn't exactly true, but it's easier to explain it this way...)


As I've noted above, you can include essential and fragrance oils into your anhydrous products without effort, but colouring can be a pain. (I'm doing a post on colouring in the future, but you will need to use oil based or powdered colours. Food colouring or icing colouring is right out!) So if you use water based colours, they will sit there in little watery balls in amongst your whipped butter or lotion bar - it's not pleasant to look at, and when the watery ball touches someone's skin, it's going to leave a big mark.

Homemade Toothpaste

I am curious to try this one from LuSa Organics

Homemade Toothpaste

2 tsp Natural Liquid Soap (try unscented Dr. Bronner's or similar. We've used our bar soap grated into water but it makes too thick of a toothpaste for my squeeze bottle.)

4 Tb Coconut Oil

1 Tb Water

2 Tb Xylitol (optional)

1/2 tsp Stevia powder

10-20 drops Peppermint Essential Oil

5-10 drops Spearmint or Sweet Orange Essential Oil

Boil a small pan of water. Measure out 1 Tb and stir into it Xylitol (optional). Stir to dissolve. Melt coconut oil and add to water mixture. Measure in soap and stevia and blend (a stick blender works well if you have one. Otherwise use your regular blender or whisk by hand like mad). Blend while the formula cools enough to stay combined. Add essential oils and transfer to a clean squeeze or pump bottle. Cool completely, shake well.

Braised Radish

Just love this recipe by Rachel Ray on Food Network. I reckon even Jason will try it, despite not having radish before, simply because it's from Rachel Ray's website :)


2 bunches radishes, about 1 pound, trimmed of tops and roots
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons butter, cut into bits
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper


Place radishes in a skillet with stock, butter bits, shallots, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper. Cover the pan and bring to a boil. Uncover the pan and reduce heat to medium. Cook radishes 10 to 12 minutes and if the stock has not cooked away, remove radishes and cook down to 1/2 cup, about 2 minutes.

Garlic Preserves

Courtesy of The Great Garlic Cookbook - by Sophie Hale


Garlic Puree or (crushed garlic alternative)

Takes away the acrid flavours that crushed garlic can have. Delicious spread on toast under eggs.

4 heads of garlic (50 cloves)
2T olive oil
salt and pepper

Simmer the unpeeled garlic cloves in lightly salted water for about 20 to 25 minutes, until soft. Drain and cool.
Peel or squeeze the garlic cloves out, cutting off the tough root end and any discoloured patches
Mash to a smooth paste with a fork (I did it in the blender)
Pack into a glass jar and cover securely

This puree will keep in the fridge for 4-5 days and can be frozen in cubes, using an ice-cube tray reserved for this purpose.


Garlic Pepper Essence

10 garlic cloves
5 small chilli peppers
Cooking Sherry

Peel and halve the garlic and prick the peppers all over
Mix them together and pack into a wine bottle.
Cover with the sherry and fill the bottle leaving room for th ecork.
Cork the bottle securely and leave, undisturbed, for a couple of weeks
the sherry can be topped up from time to time.

A few drops really perk up soups and stews, but because it is very intense, it should be used with caution.


Garlic Vinegar

8-10 Cloves garlic
coarse salt
2.5c / 550ml white wine or tarragon vinegar

Crush the garlic finely with the salt and put into a large, heat-proof jar.
Bring the vinegar to th boil and pour over the garlic
Allow to cool and then cover. Leave to infuse for 2 to 3 weeks.
Strain and bottle for use.

Variations - red wine garlic vinegar, for use in strongly flavoured marinades like those for stewing beef, pot roasts and game is made by saving red wine bottle ends and letting them 'turn. Use 10 cloves of garlic to 2.5 c of liquid, and warm the vinegar until hand hot before pouring over the crushed garlic.


Garlic Honey

30 cloves of garlic
2 cups clear honey

Put the garlic cloves in a large, screw-top jar an dpour the honey over them. There should be about 2.5 cm in between the honey and the top of the jar.
Cover the jar tightly and leave in a warm place for at least a week, turning upside down occasionally.
The juices released by the garlic will begin to turn the honey syrupy, and the goodness - not to mention the flavour of the garlic will pass to the honey.

This is great in salad dressings and marinades. Also a traditional remedy for coughs, cold sores and acne. Or try it over ice cream?!@#

BEST EVER BROCCOLI RECIPE

Broccoli is a favourite in my family, we usually have it simply boiled with cheese sauce. However, here is a REAL DELISH way - I doubt we will ever have it just boiled again.

Two large heads of broccoli, cut into largest florets. (make sure they are dry, if you feel you must rinse them first make sure you dry them really, really well) Pop them in roasting pan and drizzle over about 5 T Olive oil, 1 big teaspoon salt, and half teaspoon black pepper, and 4 cloves peeled slice garlic. Now give them a good old stir up so they are evenly coated, then make sure they are pretty much singe layer and pop in preheated oven of 425. Roast them for about 20 minutes (they will caramelise and tips start to brown) When you bring them out, add the zest and juice of a lemon, another couple tablespoons Olive oil, and about a third of a cup of parmesan cheese. You can also add a wee handful of toasted pine nuts if you have them, and a ltlle fresh basil is good too, but still delicious without them.

Dog Food

After feeding our dog dry biscuits for years and watching her age has made her teeth 'soft' and getting overweight she has developed arthritis etc. we decided to try dog roll and she got eczema, and of course fleas are always a problem in the country. So after dog roll and dog tins didn't do anything for her, we decided to make home made dog food. Here is roughly what we do and it lasts almost 2 weeks. Not only has the eczema gone and she's lost weight but she is excited about being fed nowadays too :)

Chicken frames or necks - 3-4 (keep the ones from your roasts or cheap ones from the supermarket)
Any giblets if you are inclined
Veges (onions, left overs, tops of carrots, celery leaves)as much as you can
Rice 5 cups
Garlic powder reasonable quantity

Boil up the chicken, veges and garlic powder for hours
When you are close to finished throw in the rice

pack it in small containers and freeze until needed

Beef Olives

Kids love to roll these up and it gives you something else to do with weiner schnitzel.

Take one of each for each serving (kids may eat 3 of them - depending on size of schnitzel)
Schnitzel
piece of bread (crusts removed)
mustard
bacon or ham
mixed herbs

Method:
Lay schnitzel flat and put the bread on top. Spread bread with the mustard and layer in some bacon or ham. Sprinkle with mixed herbs. Roll it up and secure with a toothpick.

Put it in the crockpot and add a sachet of oxtail soup with half the stated liquid quantity.

Set crockpot to low and cook for approx 6-7 hours.

THE CHICKEN DANCE!@#?

Tania's View

It was a beautiful bright, sunny warm spring morning when Sarah and I arrived at Liz's place, in full support of the new, emotional, and admittedly just-a-little-bit-daunting experience that was soon to take place.

Twelve chickens, who were currently running about content and free with not a care in the world, were about to be 'prepared' for the cold depths of the FREEZER! Liz was very apprehensive, as to be expected, after tending to them for two years and havingnot done this kind of thing before!

Of course Sarah and I calmly 'distracted' the situation by suggesting we could celebrate later with RASPBERRY drinks, STRAWBERRY biscuits and CHICKEN chippies... much to Liz's disgust (amidst laughter)!

Then Veronique turned up! Boy was she ready for action! Chicken Commander V took control of the situation, as soon as her brand new black farm boots hit the ground. Gloves on, apron ready, strategy set and they were off... Liz's face still looking kinda pale... offers V a coffee first! ha ha stalling Liz - nice try... But V is now on a mission!

Sarah most kindly and conveniently offered to LEAVE and get some desperately required supplies from home (plastic bags, buckets, morning tea) and I, Tania, the ever-so-famous-Home Educator (loving my day job NOW... more than ever)volunteered to stay inside and look after the children! We even expressed our admiration and support of the two mummmies entering the brave battle ahead by performing... you guessed it... THE CHICKEN DANCE!

So as I sit here writing this, listening to the kids and watching them playing so nicely together I have come to the conclusion that we ALL make one fantastic team!...and that I truly did get the best part of the deal!  Happy Tuesday!

*****************************
Liz's view

It has taken two years to work through the horrors of converting my chicken flock into future dinners.

Originally I owned bantam chooks with pretty feathers at the feet. They were absolutely stunning and if I had had success raising them then this day would never have eventuated.

Two years ago my friend Sarah told me about this lady who lived up the peninsula who was selling 2 year old ORGANIC chooks for ultra cheap. The lady prefers to find 'good homes' for the hens instead of sending them all to the abatoir. At the time it sounded like a fantastically cheap option for getting eggs. This worked out swimmingly of course, in that I was able to supply my family (and friends) with eggs as well as sell some to cover the costs of keeping the birds.

We tried having them in the pen, but they ate all the grass and reduced the area to a mud pit. Then we tried having them out and despite the great thrill we first got in 'searching' for the eggs it fast became a 'loss' - finding some in nests they'd built IN the trees - not just under them - or my personal favourite, right by a german wasp nest (no we never retrieved these ones). Of course my all time favourite was all the fantastic black/white parcels they left on my deck... it was time to renew the flock by culling the 12 remaining birds.

The day approached with trepidation. Thankfully I had found friends to help me. Some with a little experience and others with sheer guts.

As Tania says V was fearless and bold. Adept with a knife and having Googled the process the night before she was keen to have a go. We worked out the best way to keep the old girls as calm as possible by using the lean-to next to the coop to string them up and perform the obvious task. The work has begun.

I have to say I was quite surprised that I was not horrified by the carnage', mostly because... there really wasn't any. V was lovely - apologising to each chook and telling them what great egg layers they were. Aside from the red pool beneath each and the odd 'extra' fluttering, they drifted off 'peacefully'.



We got the first seven started, then felt the need for that coffee I had offered V earlier. By this stage, Sarah had come back with the required buckets and biscuits.

Boiling water on the stove, we set up for the next part of the process. The remaining five birds 'put to sleep' and plucking to begin. Trina arrived around the time we finished off the final five birds and kindly offered to help with the next part of the process.

After dunking them in hot water for 12 seconds or so we started pulling feathers. Not too difficult a task but all felt it could be easier. "Let's get it hotter"... success... it was like cutting butter with a hot knife. Trina even announced that her in-laws have a plucking machine (which got us on the subject of doing it in bulk and saving all of our families a nice bundle of $)... lets face it, the idea of saving $12 for one chook is not that exciting, but saving $120 for 12 is a bit more of an incentive.

It was about this point in time when my daughter came around the corner - having seen a large number of feathers flying about. At first Tania tried to keep her away, but in the end I thought... nah, she'll be ok, she'll feed off my vibes anyway and I was by now rather ok with it all really. At first she was 'wary' and a look of 'what are you doing that for!', but after about 5 seconds she was more curious about having a go and decided she would pluck a few feathers out herself.

ANYHOW, it came time for the gutting stage, and everyone was starting to think of collecting their older kids from school. This did make me feel nervous again... I'm not the kind of person who likes to experiment with gross stuff on my own, so I very cleverly handed Trina the scissors (having made it obvious earlier that she was quite ok with cutting off heads, legs and wings) and said, how do you think the insides come out.

Initial disgust for the messiness subsided as sheer fascination of the chickens reproduction system took over.

I remember Jason's (my hubby) nana saying that this part of the process stinks... lucky for me I have a particularly poor sense of smell, which made this my niche.

After the first one, I was on my own, having asked Trina to pick up my two boys from school. By the time she found the eldest one in the play ground and managed to get him to get in the car to come home, I had burried most of the evidence.

All in all the process took six hours for 4 inexperienced and trepedatious mums to work through. It took one bucket of cast off body bits, a 3L pot full of unusable entrails (which the pigs got stuck into), 5 hard eggs delightfully discovered during the gutting stage and a 15L bucket full of dry feathers for the compost... although I did have designs for a feather pillow.

All in all, the experience reminded me more of an American Quilting Group than a chicken slaughtering session. Which just goes to show, anything can be made into a great time when done with friends.

For those of you who are interested... here is the video that was taken of our experimental time of gutting the old dears. Incidentally, this video was taken by Tania (our camera queen) who by this stage had worked up the courage to leave the house. :)

Enjoy - if you dare!

Liquid Soap

You can use this as shampoo, hand wash, body wash or in cleaning...

Grate 1 bar of sunlight soap (or castile)
Boil with 3L of water

Add glycerine 150ml

Set in the fridge. If it is too thick throw it in microwave and add a bit more hot water.

Still working on this recipe a wee bit, to get the water sorted, but 3L is what the current batch has, albeit not set yet.

Laundry Liquid

Thanks to Lin originally putting me on to this recipe, and a number of people who are interested in trying it... here's the recipe

Set aside 11 L bucket of warm water

In a pot put shaved soap and boil in 4 cups of water until soap dissolved

4 c water
1 bar grated/shaved sunlight (or castile) soap

When dissolved add:

1c washing soda crystals
stir until dissolved crushing any lumps

Add to bucket and leave to set over night

Tomatoes

For future casseroles all you really need to do to tomatoes is freeze them. When you want to use them, get out the required number and throw boiling water on them to get the skins off... or simply peel off as they cook.