I feel a little bit guilty about this. I am a committed Vacola preserver, like my mother before me, and her mother before her. We don’t can, we preserve. What is this pressure canning thing anyway?
Autumn is about preserving the harvest. Autumn contains many large and bubbling vacola units, and results in beautiful preserved fruit and food. But now we seem to have gone over to the dark side of the force. And I think I’m glad we did. Read More
Labneh is a very easy to make and tasty cheese made of strained yoghurt, that can be stored in a jar of olive oil on the shelf. Cheese meets yoghurt meets olive oil meets extends shelf life (without refrigeration). And darn yummy. I’m in! Read More
I am a little bit in love with our new honey press. It is made from stainless steel and it can crush close to a whole box of natural honeycomb in one fell squish. What better way to get all that goodness of the pollen, propolis and of course the honey into the jar? Read More
Now that Autumn’s here, our woolshed is bedecked in produce and garlands… brown onions, red onions, preserves, pickles and all the rest. And it turns out (fortunately) that stringing onions into a garland is actually quite easy. Read More
"Apples emit a lot of ethylene gas. It has the effect of speeding up the ripening process of fruits and vegetables kept together with apples. When combined with potatoes, apples prevent them from sprouting."
Well, we all know food preservation IS an art, but this is a slightly different type – Korean artist Jihyun Ryou has done a beautiful project translating traditional food preservation knowledge into quirky design… Read More
Drying fruit is one of my favorite things. I love the versatility of dried apples and pears – so simple and yummy to munch on their own, yet so much fun to use in all sorts of ways in recipes year round.
And this year we seem to have access to an unlimited supply of apples, pears and nashis, so we’re going for it! My aim to to really and truly dry enough fruit to last us through till next year. Here’s the method we’ve settled on… Read More
I can now proudly report that the beetroot and radish kimchi has been a success. And it tastes delightful. Kimchi is normally a spicy cabbage-based Korean ferment, but Rose decided to get a little radical, and use what we had in season.
Previously in Spring, Rose had tried making bok choi kimchi, which did work, but was, well, rather full of bok choi. But I knew from the start that beetroot and radish kim chi was going to rock. And it does. Here’s how Rose did it… Read More
And I think all in all, it went pretty well. Ever since the gazillions of tomato plants (in numerous heritage varieties) were planted in the Milkwood Market Garden, we’ve been waiting for this great day. The inaugural squishing of the harvest.
And check out our new, fancy-pants passata machine! In the spirit of multi-function, it also transforms into a meat mincer and a juicer, so we can harvest every which way. And harvest we will…
