Not Too Fowl

Welcome to the new chook yard, come on in and let me show you our latest project.

It's very rustic and recycled but the girls seem happy.

Our dear old ladies still have the run of the paddock but we will be getting some day olds soon and we wanted a smaller enclosure for them to grow up in and occasionally it might be handy to have the flock contained anyway.

Do you remember the falling down shed that we renovated? We have the fowl house located at the right hand side and the nesting box protruding into the main shed with an easy access lift up lid and vermin proof feed store. There is also a door for the human cleaners to enter and easily shovel and clean the nice new cement floor.

Adjacent to the fowl house is this quince thicket that provides the ladies with cool shade and shelter and they can dive for cover here when they feel threatened by overhead larger birds of prey.

At the moment it is in blousy pale pink bloom and a beautiful quiet retreat this human too.

We have literally made it from scrap, utilising the rolls of recycled wire we already had (which dictated the height!) and the reclaimed timber from many sources including an old picnic table set. In a couple of the photos you will have spied a plastic covered structure that we now call the "poly-tunnel". In it's previous life it was the "cat cage".

The previous owners had it attached to the side of the house for their dozen plus cats to have outdoor time. Above left is one of the first photos of the yard when we moved in. The tunnel is reinforced and covered and large enough to stand upright in and will be invaluable for bringing frost tender plants on to advancement for our short growing season.

It serves a dual purpose being incorporated into the fowl yard fence line. It is firmly screwed into/between the cemented fence posts making it very secure in high winds and it becomes part of the fence itself saving us more building materials. On the back of the poly-tunnel we are building compost piles.

I've been looking for the right building project for years to be able to use these reclaimed mouldings. A bit of whimsy and definition for the yard making it a little more decorative and less utilitarian.

I'm loving the views from my kitchen window and everything is finally taking shape, getting tidied up and finding it's place.

Pumpkin Fruit Cake

This fruit cake recipe I'm about to share with you is perfect for this time of year; it uses only two eggs (most chooks being off the lay) and pumpkin which is in glut now. For this recipe I choose a QLD blue which is a dryer style pumpkin and the rest of it I will use up roasting.

The pumpkin gives the cake moistness and a lovely golden colour. You only need a cup of mash. Just cook it up and mash it without any butter or anything else.

This cake is cooked for about 1 1/2 hours at 150C so choose a good tin and line with paper. You don't have to be as fastidious as when making traditional fruit cakes. This favourite tin of mine is quite thick and I lightly grease and simply pop an old pound butter paper in the bottom to line. 

This is great-grandma Murray's recipe and the only addition I make is grated fresh nutmeg - Mmmm goes so well with pumpkin. I'll write out the recipe below in metric also

Cool in the tin before turning out and store in a cool airtight container for a week. Use your own favourite combo of mixed dried fruit. 

I have in mind that I just might try this recipe next time substituting the pumpkin for mashed quince instead....

Pumpkin Fruit Cake

1 cup of mashed pumpkin

250g castor sugar

250g butter

2 eggs

2 tabs golden syrup

2 cups of Self Raising flour

500g mixed fruit

pinch of freshly ground nutmeg (optional)

Cleaning, Foraging, Divining

Our Living Better group met last week and we celebrated our first anniversary.

We had a speaker from the group talk about cleaning without chemicals. There are a number of ways to achieve this and each style suits different people, their lifestyles and methods.

There is the Enjo method which is reliant on just water and the micro-fibre of the cloths. There is also the home based methods of pantry items like bi-carb soda, vinegar and lavender oil for the very industrious. The third alternative that Elisha presented to us was by Nature Direct. It relies on the micro-fibre cloths AND different blends of essential oils and extracts, like pine, cypress, eucalyptus, clove and rosemary. It is an Australian company and nearly all the products are made in Australia which is important to us. Chemical cleaning manufacturers are not required by law in Australia to list their ingredients but they are required to list warnings....and there are plenty of those. The products from Nature Direct list all their ingredients and while you wouldn't want to ingest them, they are certainly not going to cause great harm. Check out their "Did you know...?" page here.

Our next guest speaker was Bridgette from Urban Farming Tasmania.

She runs a "market" on a Monday at the Tasmanian College of Arts and the idea is that people bring produce from their gardens or foraged along with any other trade items like music, artwork and design. Her group essentially wanted a community style market where no money changed hands and people supported each other by trading their surplus. They are passionate about seasonal living and not letting food go to waste, in fact they are wanting council to plant more food instead of ornamentals. They have produced a free food map of the area plotting figs, walnuts, apples, sloes, quinces and more about the greater Launceston area. We all received a gift from Bridgette (pictured above) of quince paste made from local foraged fruit. We were very excited by her project and many more tree sites were suggested 

BUT....

stay tuned for there is more to this story.

In the few days since we met Bridgette, Council has been made aware of the group through a newspaper article and they are coming down hard but I want to discuss this more fully in a day or so when we see their final stipulations. You can see this all unfolding on their facebook site. There is a can of worms here.

A very controversial point still in debate at the moment is the legality of foraging fruit from public land. They seem to have an issue with the food map. People on both sides are scrambling to find legalities. 

Does this mean fishing is not legal? To me that is foraged food from public land?

Anyway, we will have this debate in a day or two. In the meantime please show this group your love and support with kind messages.

Our last speaker introduced us to water divining. The image above from WikiHow is very similar to the rods we tried (as usual I got caught up in the moment and no pictures!)

Martin told us his story and demonstrated as he walked about the room how the rods moved and swayed. Each of us had a turn and were amazed at how the rods swerved and we were not able to control it. It is very hard to understand and though there is plenty of documented anecdotal evidence, I don't think there is any scientific specific evidence. 

It was a really interesting and fun way to top off our night. This is a new venue for us too and I am pleased to say that it was wonderful having a large quiet room all to ourselves. We would not have been able to have the cleaning demo or the water divining demonstration as well in the pub. The lighting is good and it is heated and we have our own toilet amenities too.  

Our next meeting is 27th June 7-9 at the Workers Club in Launceston

We'll be discussing winter remedies and bee keeping and possibly fruit tree pruning.

Traditional Family Cooking

The temperature has dropped and unusually we have snow on the mountains in May. 

Things seem a bit incongruous with the temperature so wintry but the leaves on the Mt Fuji cherry still holding on.

I love my friends who are always willing to come to dinner despite dark cold nights and it means I can cook meals normally reserved for family groups like roasts and corned meat pieces.

Tonight, old fashioned boil in the pot corned silverside. I soak the piece for an hour or two before cooking to remove some of the brine and then in the fresh water a put vinegar, brown sugar, clove, bay leaf, juniper berries, pepper and a cinnamon stick. The saltiness of the cured meat is lovely with subtle woody spicings and you can experiment to make this dish your own signature. You'll really notice the flavours the next day when eating the cold meat on sandwiches.

I follow my grandmother's lead with the vegetables and serve steamed cabbage but with a pinch of caraway seeds sprinkled over, carrots pulled fresh from the garden also steamed and potatoes and onion boiled in the corned meat water. The potatoes are not peeled and left whole so that they do not fall apart in the cooking. The onions are lightly peeled of papery skin but left intact with the root end trimmed but still on so that these also do not fall apart in the water.

Before I serve I make a huge jug of white sauce with a couple of tablespoons of the meat water added to the milk to give subtle flavour. Just like my grandmother (well maybe she boiled the cabbage!)

Dessert was the quince pie I made earlier in the day. The quinces were poached for eight hours in a Leatherwood honey flavoured syrup of their own juices and were a beautiful contrast to the salty meal.

The table was simply dressed with autumn leaves and some late chillies. I commented to my guests that I thought the doily placemats looked like spider webs caught in autumn mists....but they thought that was a bit of a stretch!!! Well the bright cheery leaves can stay all week and keep me company at table anyway.

What dishes did your grandmother teach you that you still carry the baton for?

 Remember to teach your children and their children because a recipe is only a guide, it is the little tips and know-hows passed that make them family traditions and joys. This knowledge is only accumulated over time and with side by side instruction unless someone has been thoughtful enough to include lots of anecdotal reference in the recipe margins.

We remember to let children help with biscuits and  cake making when they are little because it is a good activity to keep them amused but I think as they grow older we are less inclined to have them at our shoulder absorbing the subtleties of cooking. This has become evident to my daughter who has lived with various housemates.

Perhaps once a week at least, we need to get them off the computer/TV/homework for an hour and schedule some family cooking time. It is absolutely natural that they should be expected to assist with meal preparation at any age and it is part of our job to take a deep breath, ditch the stress of the outside world and share the moment of family nourishment and nurturing. 

Do you set aside at least one night a week for family all together at the table?

Do you have a traditional roast on Sunday still?

I'd love to know what you still cook from your grandmothers repertoire.

( Dedicated with thanks to my mother and her sister, Aunty Leigh whom I used to regularly ring and check details with when I was first flatting on my own and trying to remember all I was taught xxx)

Poached Quinces-The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Quinces - closely related to apples and pears. They ripen in autumn when their skins are yellow and they look like pears in shape.

The trees are frost resistant and in fact need several nights below 7C for fruit setting but the fruit themselves need to be harvested before the first frosts.

They are usually too hard and sour to be eaten raw so are more usually poached and used for many recipes from cakes to savoury roasts to pickles (lets face it we do seem to pickle just about anything!) and a favourite in Tasmania is quince paste that is enjoyed with our islands fabulous cheeses.

Sound like I know it all....

This is my first cooking foray with quinces and its about to get ugly...


I found lots of recipes to try in Stephanie Alexanders "Cook's Companion" (my favourite cookbook and bible for the kitchen. I chose to poach and take my projects from there.
So I duly got out my cast iron casserole dish and washed the quinces the really well.
In went the seeds wrapped in muslin and light syrup and a whole vanilla bean.
So first cut into quarters or sixths.
They are as hard as pumpkin to cut!
Stephanie says to poach at 150C for at least 4hrs and up to 8hrs.
Perfect!...because I have to now go to work and it can cook away till I get home
Hmmmm....just a thought, perhaps I could do this in the slow cooker....
better just stick to the book for my first time.

They turn red, that's OK, that's not the bad bit.

The bad bit is that I didn't read the recipe properly and I should have peeled them.

That's OK, 'cos I can gently peel off the skins.

Here comes the ugly....

The smell when I got home was overpowering throughout the house and it was like burnt vanilla toffee.

And that's because it was!!!

The syrup had bubbled over all day and spilled onto the base of the oven and baked and baked

This my friends is a snapshot of what I did this morning. After warming the oven again I went to work scraping the "toffee" off the bottom and using a hot cloth to try to wipe out the worst.

When I tried to rinse the cloth it became rock hard with impregnated burnt sugar so it was a long process.

I'm voting for a catching dish underneath next time or better still, I think this could all be achieved painlessly by using the slow cooker on low.

So away from the oven disaster and with a bit of "food styling" mmm-mm some beautiful glossy ruby chunks of poached quince ready for

Stephanie's Quince Tart

which is a blind baked shell of sweet short pastry with the quinces cut into wedges and arranged attractively with a frangipane style topping and baked again. The rest are going into the quince and nut cake.

But there is more....

I have reserved the poaching syrup for Eliza Acton's quince custard (also found in Stephanie's book)

where it is mixed with 12 egg yolks to make a custard to which I intend to re-use the vanilla bean by splitting it and adding the scraped seeds to the custard.

For more information about quinces start here at the Wikipedia link.