More nose trusting - Citrus lactic-fermented drink

As I posted a few weeks ago, I've been trying some fermented food recipes, but its been a nerve-wracking experience due to not knowing what these foods are supposed to taste like, I've just been trying to "trust my nose" and only eat things that don't smell bad!

We tried "lemon wine" at the cheese-making course, so at least I'd tried a fermented beverage. We will go to another course to learn how to make this kind of fermented food when it comes to Murgon in Feb/March 2012, but I decided to try a recipe in Nourishing Traditions in the meantime. Of course I also tried to modify it, as there wasn't exactly a recipe for lemon wine, more orange wine, but we had heaps of lemons from the neighbour's tree (two shopping bags) and a few mandarins that were on sale.

I juiced all the lemons and mandarins and ended up with:

1.5 L lemon juice
0.5 L mandarin juice

I added 1/2 cup of raw sugar to 1.5 L warm water and 0.5 L whey from cottage cheese and stirred it all into the lemon/orange juice.

Left it for a few days and.....

hmmm looks fermented......

I bottled the brew into old Grolsch bottles (knew I was hoarding them for a reason) and put them in the beer fridge. I think I should have added more sugar, this is seriously sour! But ok mixed with water, a bit like drinking apple cider vinegar! They should be nice as a refreshing drink over summer......

Have you tried to make fermented beverage?

See other fermented beverages that I've made since.

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What to do with eight acres

Behind the scenes of my blog I can see the search terms that led people to find my blog. It can be quite interesting to look through them occasionally and see what people are looking for. Most of them involve chicken tractors, but another question that comes up regularly is “what can you do with eight acres?” or “how much land is eight acres?”. Today I will try to answer this question.

Of course it is a very broad question, there are lots and lots of things you can do with eight acres, but I’m going to assume that you want to live there, feed your family and maybe make a little extra money. I make that assumption because that’s what I know about, if you want to do something else with your eight acres, you will need to look somewhere else.

If you haven’t chosen your land yet, here a few things to look for. Focus on the things you can’t change and try to choose the best property you can find in your price range. Look for clean water in dams, bores or wells, either on the property …

We don't have any cling wrap either

Last week I wrote about how we don't have a microwave and I really don't miss it. So continuing the theme of "weird things about my kitchen", we also don't have any plastic cling wrap or paper towels. And we haven't had them for so long I can hardly remember why we ever needed them.

I always thought that cling wrap was wasteful. Not just from an environmental perspective, but I also didn't like spending money on something that I only used once. When I was at uni and took sandwiches for lunch, I used to bring home the cling wrap and use it again until it didn't stick anymore. One year when we did Plastic Free July (I can't remember when exactly - here's what I wrote last year) we decided to stop using cling wrap. I used up the last of it recently when we were painting (its really hard to renovate without creating waste) - its handy for wrapping up paintbrushes and sealing paint temporarily, however I do not use it in the kitchen.

The pape…

Getting started with chickens - Tanya from Lovely Greens

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Farmer Liz: You will remember Tanya from Lovely Greens from the first series, she lives on the Isle of Mann and added chickens to her garden about a year ago. You can leave comments for this post on Tanya's blog.

How many chickens (and other fowl) do you keep, what breed and what do you use them for (meat, eggs, slug control etc)?
Tanya: Around the same time that we were initially thinking about having hens another friend beat us to the punch. She went to the local pet store and bought a flat-pack hen house and chicken run combo and found a local farmer who had dozens of semi-feral chickens running around his property. One night he pulled three down from the trees and my friend took them home in a pet carrier. She named them Miracel, Carmen, and Geraldine and though they’re probably related they were all…

Eight Acres

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