As I said the in previous post, I'm going to use December as an opportunity to reflect and summarise what we've done at Eight Acres (and more recently, Cheslyn Rise) over the previous couple of years. I particularly want to review the things that are working well and have become habits in our daily lives.
Speaking of the dairy cow, we’ve had Bella for over a year
now, and I’ll write more about milking and calves in another post, but we have
certainly learnt a whole lot about cheese and dairy products since she came to Eight Acres, starting with raw
milk….
Late last year I bought a dehydrator and I have found plenty
of uses for it this year to help preserve herbs and other veges and to dry
herbs for tea.
We went on a couple of holidays, and as always we sampled
lots of the local foods, here are some of the highlights:
And finally, if you’re still with me, here’s a few of my
rambling thoughts about food, growing your own and meeting your needs:
The big exciting achievement this year was baking my own
bread since April. We have bought no
bread (apart from the occasional bread stick), and I have come to method that
works, doesn’t take up too much time, tastes great and can be cooked in the
woodstove or the BBQ.
Posts about bread:
 |
| Homemade bread since April |
Earlier in the year I wrote a series of reviews on
Nourishing Traditions. If you haven’t
heard of this book, its about preparing and eating traditional foods, like
stocks, fermented foods, organ meats, sprouts and soaked grains. I am gradually trying different recipes or at
least being inspired by some of the concepts.
It is a tough book for some people, and it does really help to have a
dairy cow, but I think that everyone can get something useful out of it, even if you can't use every single recipe yourself. I also wrote about a another useful book on the "peasant diet", called Frugavore.
The chapter reviews:
Some of the recipes that I’ve tried from Nourishing Traditions:
 |
| Sprouts |
Easy
Peasy Raw Milk Cheeses – making cream cheese
|
Cheese
making basics – making hard cheeses
|
 |
| making cheese |
 |
| dehydrating chillies |
 |
| Strawberry picking on the Sunshine Coast |
 |
| lots of green veges over winter! |
What about you? What are your real food achievements this year? Please share in the comments and feel free to link to your own post if you do a similar summary (I'm too lazy to set up a linky, just put a link in the comments).
I read awhile back, about lacto fermenting on your blog and I finally got to experiment with it this fall and have had good success. Thanks for getting me interested in it!
ReplyDeletewell that's a comprehensive link post if ever there was one. thankyou :)
ReplyDeleteThere's some good links there. Will bookmark this for some inspiration when we're unpacked and getting into it next year! Thanks.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I'm trying to think back over my year. Getting more real food breakfasts I love has been good. I keep meaning to make your bread recipe but need to track down the ebook for it. I'm sure I got it at some point but now can't find it.
ReplyDeleteI experimented with lactofermenting apple and carrot. Sprouted some flour. Made raw cream cheese and sour cream. Incorporated chicken stock into lots of meals. Ate beef liver straight plus added it to lots of mince dinners. Increased our raw milk order to 4L per week plus 1L cream. Ate lots of veges from our garden.
I also went backwards in some ways, when it all got overwhelming. And I just needed to get food on the table.
Xx
Great to hear that I've inspired some real food and there's plenty of others having a go too. I look forward to seeing what everyone makes in 2013!
ReplyDelete