Yesterday was a Kitchen Sunday.  It felt good to have a Kitchen Sunday again after so long away from them. 

I meal planned in the early morning.

I then grocery shopped.

I made gingerbread cookies for morning teas at work this week. 

I made a split green pea soup (2 portions frozen and 2 in the fridge.)

I made yogurt for lunches this week.

I then made dinner following a recipe from an 1984 recipe book called "New Dimensons Recipe Book - A Vegetarian Guide to Health Foods" by Dr David A Phillips.

The recipe I chose was called Protein-Carotene Loaf and it is supposed to be high in Vitamin A.   Every recipe in the book has a small blurb which explains the nutritional value of the recipe as a whole and what certain ingredients add.   Most of the recipes also offer alternatives to change the recipe and serving suggestions.

I called this recipe 'Surprise Carotene-Loaf' because I was entirely surprised by how fantastic it tasted.  It isn't a very cheap recipe because of the addition of pistachios - however, the recipe's nutritional blurb states that pistachios have high levels of Vitamin A which most other nuts don't, hence it's addition here.

The finished 'loaf'.  Still beautifully orange inside but browned ontop.

Of course, true to form I tweaked the recipe.   I substituted bok choy for the silverbeet because a bunch of the latter was going to cost me $6 when a bunch of bok choy was a quarter that price.  I added almond meal - because I had it in the cupboard and it was due to be used up soon.  I substituted parmesan for most of the cheddar the original recipe called for because I only had a teeny bit of cheddar and heaps of parmesan.   So below is my (total guesstimate of some ingredients) rendition of...

Surprise Carotene-Loaf 
(altered from a recipe by Dr David A Philllips in New Dimensions Recipe Book, 1984)

•  10 leaves buk choy
• 500g carrots, grated
• 4 eggs beaten
• 150g pistachio kernels
• 50g almond meal
• 50g grated mozerella cheese
• 100g grated parmesan cheese
• 100g mushrooms - stalks removed
• A 'generous sprinkling' of saltbush herb (an Aussie Native herb) or other herb of choice. 
• 10g sunflower seeds

1) Preheat the oven to 180 deg Celsius.
Trim the white stalks from the buk choy.  Steam leaves until tender then chop finely.
2) Use a food processor or coffee mill to mill the pistachios into a fine meal.
3) Add all ingredients except the sunflower seeds to a bowl.  Mix well.
4) Brush the inside of a loaf pan with vegetable oil.
5) Press the mixture into the loaf pan, ensuring there are no air pockets. 
6) Sprinkle the sunflower seeds across the top of the loaf and press in slightly.   It will look like the picture below!

7) Bake for 45min to 1hr.  (The recipe called for 45min but I found it required another 10min in).

Simply Stock

I haven't bought vegetable stock for a long time now - because I found how easy it was to make my own.  Once I had started using my own home-made stock I found I found the factory-made stocks were too salty for me, even those which were salt-reduced. 

Basic vegetable stock is very easy to make.  To make chicken stock, you just add the bones and leftover meat of one or two chicken carcasses to the pot.   

This is how I make my vegetable stock - but I would also recommend looking at some of the other links about how to make stock for variations or a better proportioned recipe!

Cat's Way-Too-Easy Vegetable Stock

(which is remarkably like every other vegetable stock recipe!)

• - 1 swede, chopped roughly
• - 1 parsnip, chopped roughly
• - 5 small onions, cut into 8ths, skins left on. 
• - 3 celery sticks sliced (including leafy greens)
• - 5 medium carrots sliced
• - 2 bay leaves
• - 1/2 tsp whole peppercorns
• - Water enough to cover (roughly 2.5L)

Put the lot in a large stock pot or saucepan.
Bring to the boil, then reduce to medium heat.  Leave to simmer for roughly 45min.
Strain and keep the liquid.  Dispose of the solids.



Links to other vegetable stock recipes which probably have better proportions!

River Cottage Sous Chef's recipe for stock made on peeling scraps - I may try saving peelings in the freezer to do this next time!

Good Taste magazine recipe for vegetable stock courtesy of taste.com.au

The Kitchen.com has a basic recipe that makes vegetable stock look pretty.  It uses similar ingredients to the one on BBC food.

ABC's The Cook and the Chef shows that stock can be made from less conventional vegetables for an Asian flavour.



So when it's so easy and can use just frozen peeling scraps and stalks why not try making some stock at home sometime?   It can be made in bulk then frozen to be used in soups, risottos and casseroles later. 

Setting Goals

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.” 

 Bernard Shaw

I can't help the feeling of excitement I feel when I look at the blank slate of a new year before me. 

I don't really set New Year's Resolutions -  I formulate goals that I want to work towards or achieve within the coming year.   What's the difference?  Well, the way I see it, a resolution is a decision to do something or not do something, typically without a tangible measure.  (e.g.  I want to improve my diet.  I want to exercise more.)    A goal has a deadline and a tangible and defined point of achievement.   (e.g.  I will have bought three chickens before July.  I will have read 10 books before Dec 2013.)  

"Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've set a number of goals that I want to achieve before January 2014 (that's just under two years).  Some of these are health related, some financial.   Others are about my home and garden.   There are a stack that are things I've been procrastinating over.   Then there are the ones to make my life sparkle - the crafting and fun outings goals.   Because planning the next year can't all be about suffering, deprivation and hard work!

“Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”

William Faulkner

 

I've written all of these goals in a list (me and my deuced lists!) in a paper diary.   Following the list I have been writing every day the small steps of achievement I've made towards a goal.  No matter how small... I record it.  "Today I spent an hour investigating different online chicken suppliers, pricing and breeds. (Goal #32).   I've done this because I've come to recognise that, to use a terribly overdone cliche,  Rome wasn't built in a day.  Every little step counts towards the final achievement and I should celebrate those steps to encourage myself onwards.  

"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

Confucius

Also, writing it all down makes me realise how much I have achieved in the course of a day, even around work time and the daily humdrum of housework and life.   Not least of all it also makes me feel like I want to have at least one thing to report each day - no day should be wasted!  I've found ways to find more time.   If I have time in the car as a passenger on the daily commute then I can spend that working on that cross-stitch (that I started 5 years ago!)  If I have to catch the bus between where we park and my workplace - well then, I have time to try to finish reading Vanity Fair.  If I sit to watch James May's Man Lab with Rhys, there's nothing stopping me from unpicking a seam on a costume that needs renovating while doing so.  (Incidentally,  I highly recommend James May's Man Lab...)

“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.”

Denis Waitley

But in making all these goals I've had to first look at my past goal setting and find my pitfalls.   Where did I go wrong in the past with my goal setting?   Was I too ambitious?  Were my goals too inspired by my current passions that quickly became stale?   Did I set goals that required repeat performances to be considered finished?

I also thought it was important to consider my vices and things that assist me to fail achievement of my goals.   I recognise the internet can be one.   Spending time on facebook, twitter, even here on blogger, isn't the whole of the problem.   I can also spend more time investigating, scoping, sourcing, reading, looking at inspirational sites and images related to my goal than is helpful.   Often I'll never get past the point of researching....

 “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

Rabindranath Tagore

So with all of these possible show-stoppers in mind,  I've written my goals and now have to keep my impetus and, to quote a famous sports goods slogan - just do it!

Curried Carrot Soup

 I have recently learned how easy it is to make vegetable stock from scratch.

All vegetables, water and a few choice spice/herbs.  Not a single speck of salt added.   It totally beats any stock cube/powder or liquid stock you can buy - even the salt reduced ones still have a lot of unecessary salt in them.

I made up a batch of vegetable stock and made a sweet potato & thyme soup which is a delight to taste.   I then had a half litre of stock leftover.   I used it last night to make this curried carrot soup which rocked a party in my mouth like I couldn't believe.   I ate it too quickly to take a photo!


Curried Carrot Soup

• 20g butter
• 1 small onion diced finely
• 1 garlic clove chopped finely
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 4 med carrots chopped (do not peel)
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 3/4 cup water
• a splash of white wine vinegar
• a dollop of sour cream

Melt the butter in a saucepan.   Fry the onion and clove for a minute in the butter.  Add the spices and stir until the onion has softened and the mixture is fragrant.  Add the carrots, stock, water and vinegar.   Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer over medium heat until the carrots have softened.  Puree the mixture then serve with the sour cream stirred through. 

Serves 2
5 - 10 min preparation
10 - 20 min cooking time
 

The Ill Fated Chicken Concern

I've wanted chickens for some time now.   My good friend Metanoia in Adelaide bought chickens over a year and a half ago (she used to write about them on one of her blogs - Backyard Hens) and hearing about her chickens made me really yearn for my own.

Perhaps I was also a little inspired by watching TV shows such as The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler and River Cottage with Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall.   Hugh particularly puts a lot of emphasis on supporting heritage breeds of chickens and I thought this was a very worthy thing. 

So, inspired and ready to get chickens I bought a chicken coop (it was on sale but still a pricey purchase at around $500).   Rhys and I erected the coop one afternoon.  It was huge!  It was dubbed the Chicken Mansion due to it's size.  I'm not particularly happy with the limited area of the run itself and would like to find some way of extending it but the coop itself was very grand and included a laying box with a lid I could lift for easy access (at the back of the coop).

Chicken Mansion - under new management and ready for residents.

I then decided it was high time to get some chickens to fill my coop.   I was determined to get interesting, heritage breed chickens.   Somewhere along my internet travels I had discovered a heritage breed of chickens called Araucanas.   I was faschinated.  Apparently, the lavender coloured hens lay eggs with a light blue shell.   I was SOLD!  I wanted needed Aracaunas.

The problem was that the Brisbane floods had washed out one of the main rare chicken breeders in the area.  Aracaunas became rarer than hen's teeth.  Ok... maybe not that rare, but close.  All the reputable companies I had previously been scoping out were unable to source any. So in desperation I turned to an online chicken sale forum.  Two Aracauna pullets - $40 each, one lavender, the other lavender and russet.   It was a big and exciting day for me when I drove out to pick up my chickens from a free-lance chicken lady.

This is where everything really started to go wrong- mostly because of my lack of experience in buying chicken stock and lack of research about what to look for.

She showed me the two Aracaunas she had put aside for me.  This is my thought processing that occurred upon seeing both chickens:

Lavender: Oh - poor little thing looks so scruffy and unwell.  She must be so hen-pecked by the others.  Poor little thing.  What a weird bald spot. 

Loretta:  Her nostrils are wet and she's much bigger than I expected.  What is this niggling feeling I have in the back of my brain?  Oh well.

So when asked if I was happy with them I quietly had a reservation or two.  They didn't look like perfect chickens to me.... but what did I know about chickens?  So I said yes, I was happy to take them.  I paid and I took them home to reside in Chicken Mansion. 

Loretta peering out in the morning.  Food?

As I proudly watched my chickens I looked at Loretta more closely and the niggling in my brain got worse.  She looked kind of non-hennish.  Like, she wasn't a plump, little round thing and she had long feathers around her neck.  But surely not!  The lady had said she was selling me girls.

Over the next few weeks I started to trust my niggling more and more.  I did some research on how to identify roosters.   She had some of the features roosters have but not all.   She was brave and bold,  she was bigger than other hens supposedly her age.  She would sometimes jump-kick at the door with her long legs when she wanted it open.  Her comb was rather pinkish but then, as a first-time chicken owner I wasn't sure how pink it should be before I cried "rooster".   She also had pointed saddle feathers, her tail started looking more and more sickle like and she had hackle feathers - those long feathers at her neck. 

Loretta or Lawrence?  It became more and more obvious.

The list went on but I was in denial.   I decided I couldn't possibly be sure until she either laid an egg or crowed. 

Meanwhile,  Lavender never looked any healthier.   Her bald spot remained - yet I never saw her being pecked at by Loretta.  She didn't grow much at all and when she was alarmed enough to skwark, she let out a weird kind of hooting call rather than a typical chicken skwark.   I was concerned that she might have some disease so further internet research went on.  I decided I should check the two of the birds for mites.   It was the first time I'd done a full check-over the two birds.   I didn't see any evidence of mites but what I did find was a disgusting, big, veined lump on her chest, which I thought might be a tumour.

Lavender - scraggly and little.  The runt of chickens.

Later, after the two chickens had gone to the great chicken coop in the sky,  I was reading a handguide to chicken keeping and learned that the lump was much more likely a swollen crop, something that was very treatable.

So I was decidedly unsatisfied with my two fowls.   The kittens didn't think much of them either, glaring at them from the back window.  The only person in the household who found delight in the chickens was Rhys.

So he was non too happy the day that Loretta crowed in the morning and I decreed she, nay - both of them - had to go that day.   Off she he and Lavender went,  to a friend's house where they were subsequently eaten for dinner.   I was fine with this.   To me, they were chickens I had bought to do a job, not to love as pets.   I didn't get any eggs from either chook but if they could do good elsewhere by providing a meal then so be it.    Rhys on the other hand was a little sullen about the whole thing and has been bugging me since with, "So when are you getting new chickens?"

Now that the sour memory of my first chicken experience has faded I think it's time to clean up and clean out the Chicken Mansion and get new chickens - this time I'm going for utility chickens -from a company that exchanges them if they turn out to be roosters.