Eight Acres

I know I'm a bit late with this post, but I ran out of time before Christmas to write about my rum balls.  I don't know about other countries, but rum balls seem to be a traditional Christmas food in New Zealand and Australia.  real food rum balls In a traditional rum ball recipe , the main ingredients are sweetened condensed milk, a packet of biscuits, cocoa, sultanas, rum (of course) and everything is then rolled in coconut.  Its not very complicated, but its also not real food.  They are full of refined sugar from the milk, which has been processed to high temperatures, so there's not much goodness left and there's probably canola oil and flavour in the biscuits, as well as more sugar.  I don't particularly like them, they are too sickly sweet, but I did think it would be interesting to try to find a real food version and see if people could tell the difference. I started with this recipe , and I also made some traditional rum balls so I could compare....

Without having a religion or kids to give Christmas a higher meaning, for me, its all about the food!  Christmas is not complete without good food, with my two favourites being ham and trifle (not mixed together!).  We bought a delicious ham from our local butcher (although not nitrate-free, or organic, will try harder next year!). This year I volunteered to bring a trifle for Christmas lunch with my parents in law.  But when I thought about my traditional family recipe, I knew I was going to have to be creative, because its not real food! Traditional recipe for trifle (not real food): Take one supermarket sponge cake (full of additives, yuck, and even better if you can find one "reduced to clear", as it will already be nice and stale) and break into pieces. Drizzle with sherry Make custard from custard powder (not real food) and milk, pour over sponge Drain a can of peach slices (from goodness knows where) and place slices over the custard Whip cream and spread...

After the Christmas ham is finished, the traditional next step is to make pea and ham soup.  Every time I have ever made pea and ham soup it has come out thick and gluggy and yuck.  So this time I really really wanted it to work!  I followed both the recipe here and the recipe for lentil soup in Nourishing Traditions , and I ignored Edmonds cookbook for once.  Following an actual recipe has got to help, right? I soaked 3 cups of split green beans for 8 hours in a pot of cold water and 2 Tsp of whey simmered small ham bone in a big soup pot for 2 hours added drained peas and cooked until peas were totally dissolved (about 2 hrs) sautéed onion, carrot and silver beet stalks (had no celery!) and added to soup cooked it all for a bit longer and then blended soup with stick blender  crossed fingers that this time it would taste nice!  And it did, but I have no idea why it worked this time because I can't remember w...