Biggest Kitchen Table Audit - Food

The next topic of discussion at The Biggest Kitchen Table was food.


What have I done so far to improve the quality of food in my diet, to make my food socially responsible (ethical, environmentally sustainable etc), to lower the costs and to remove unnecessary preservatives and chemicals from my meals?

• Make meals from scratch.
• Buy basic ingredients (no packet mixes).
• No longer buy packaged baked goods but rather make them.
• Eat home made bread and make homemade pizza bases.
• Drink water, tea and home made cordials - no more softdrinks or nesquick.
• Buy food in bulk where possible (makes it cheaper and less packaging to dispose of).
• Buy all vegetables at a local fruit and veg market.
• Shop for dried groceries with Australian owned and made as preferences.
• Almost never buy take-out.
• Take lunch to work (leftovers from dinners and baked treats for morning and afternoon tea).
• Buy meat only once a month or less (meat is an essential part of our diets but not to the extent that most people eat it and there is a huge amount of grain used in farming meat).
• Consider the best way to use an ingredient to get the most out of it - for example, if I have a steak of beef I will not cook it as a steak with vegetables and gravy - because that will feed me for one meal. Instead I will dice it up and use it in a stir fry which will last me 4 - 5 meals.
• Use up leftovers rather than letting them go to waste and freeze meals to save them.
• Have a worm farm to help dispose of food scraps in a way that is beneficial to my (future) garden and keeps food from rotting and creating methane in landfills.
• Harvested and used macadamias from our tree and basil from the pot in my cooking and baking.

I'm only human so occasionally I stumble and buy a KFC snack box or buy more vegetables than I can use before they go off... but I'm getting better all the time.

What I'd like to change or put in place:

1) Get chickens, big, fat, plump egg makers (who will also help with disposal of kitchen scraps and produce excellent nitrogen boosting poop for my compost and garden).
2) Build a 3 box compost system.
3) Begin a small vegetable garden (using heritage seeds and organic gardening methods, with a smattering of permaculture concepts thrown in)
4) Plant some fruit trees - especially some awesome, unusual and exotic ones like chocolate pudding fruit.
5) Learn how to make yoghurt, cottage cheese and then hard cheeses.
6) Learn the best way to store food items so they last the longest.
7) Get a pasta roller and make my own fresh pasta and gnocchi.

That all feels a bit overwhelming so I'm going to stop there before it feels unachievable.

Onions - Something to Cry About

I was flicking through my handy household hints book, looking at the interesting tips when my eyes fell on the entry for Onions.

It made me think that I have heard SO MANY different tips for how to chop/slice onions without the teary eyes but none have ever worked for me. These are all the ones I've heard:

• Breathe through your mouth, not your nose. (Why this would work, I don't know!)
• Put the onions in the freezer for a few minutes first.
• Store your onions in the fridge rather than the cupboard.
  
• Plunge onions into boiling water just prior to peeling.
  
• Run onions under cold water for a few seconds prior to making the first slice.

None of these tricks have ever worked for me! The closest I've gotten to eye-dry onion cutting is when I use my Tuppawear 'Happy Chopper' which does all the dicing within a fully enclosed compartment. The added bonus is that it limits the amount I have to touch the onions too... getting rid of the problem of smelly hands! Though I've heard two or three wives-tales about how to remove or prevent that too!

Has anyone got any onion cutting tricks they use (successfully) to avoid tears?

The Humble Goog

goog [gug, gʊg]
noun Australian: an egg.
Origin: 1940–45; orig. uncert.
Common Usage: As full as a goog.

Today while looking through 80 Breakfasts, a beautiful cooking blog, I read how the author had frozen egg whites for later use. Having tossed an egg white yesterday after my passionfruit curd experiment, I thought it would be worth doing some research to find out if this is a safe and practical way to save egg leftovers.

During my internet footwork, I remembered a few things I had learned about eggs in my Home Economics classes at university (I'm a trained Home Ec teacher though I don't work as one!). Then I checked my handy 'ultimate tips' book and found even more useful tips to do with eggs.

So I thought I'd share with you some useful bits of information about the humble goog.


Buying eggs, testing for freshness and keeping eggs fresh for longer.

• When buying eggs from a supermarket take the time to flip open the carton and turn each egg to check that none have already cracked slightly.
• Don't buy eggs that are kept in a warm or bright area of the store. Refrigerated eggs and those kept in darker, cooler areas are safer.
  
• To check if an egg is fresh, put the egg in a bowl of water. If the egg is super fresh it will sink to the bottom. If the egg floats or stands on its end in the water, it is not as fresh. (WHY? An egg has a tiny pocket of air at one end. As an egg gets older, small amounts of water seep out through the shell and evaporates. This makes the pocket of air get larger and makes the egg more buoyant.)
• If you are camping without refrigeration, you can help eggs keep fresh longer by oiling the egg shell all over. This will help keep the moisture in the egg and the air out.
  
• If you are producing your own eggs via chicken/duck/bantam/quail keeping don't wash the egg after collection unless excess dirt and poop makes it necessary. When the egg leaves the hen it is covered with a thin film called 'bloom' which will keep the egg fresh longer if it is kept on.
  

Eggy leftovers.

• Leftover egg yolks can be kept in the fridge for up to three days. Cover the unbroken with a little bit of water and then some plastic wrap over the top of the container. The plastic wrap acts as a 'skin' for the yolk so its own skin doesn't dry out.
  
• Leftover egg whites can be kept in the fridge for up to seven days or can be frozen.
  
• Egg yolks can be frozen but they will become gluggy after defrosting and don't work well for cakes or other baked goods. To solve this problem beat in a little sugar to the egg yolk before you freeze it - (as a guide: one tablespoon for 6 eggs).

Seperating Eggs

• To seperate eggs.... cheat like me and get a tuppawear egg seperator. I couldn't live without mine. For shame!
  
• To seperate eggs without cheating, gently break the egg onto a saucer. You can then place a small cup (maybe a medicine cup size would work) over the yolk and tip the white off into a different bowl.
  
• When cracking eggs open to seperate them, crack them gently against a thin edge of a cup or bowl. This will create a crevice that you can pry apart with fingers. Too thick an edge (like a wide edged bowl) can cave the egg in and increase the chances of breaking the yolk.
• Rhys' sister Lauren can seperate egg white and yolk by tipping the yolk between the two halves of the egg shell.... but she's a genius and we can't all be so fabulous.

Using Eggs.

• Always, always, ALWAYS crack each egg used in a recipe into a seperate cup or bowl first, not into the bowl with all other eggs and ingredients. This allows any contaminated egg to be detected before it is combined with the others. It also means it you are seperating egg yolk and white that any mishaps don't destroy the batch.
  
• When beating egg whites to a froth, heat the beaters before hand. This supposedly makes it happen quicker and easier.
  
• Add a dessertspoon of vinegar to the pan when poaching eggs to prevent the yolk from breaking and to keep the egg white snowy white!
  
• Adding a pinch of salt or three drops of glycerine to egg whites when beating will make the froth stiffer.
• When beating egg yolks, first rinse the cup/bowl in cold water. This will help the egg yolks slide out rather than stick to the side.
  
• When poaching eggs put the egg in the shell into the boiling water for a few seconds before breaking the shells.
• When boiling eggs add a 1/4 tsp of salt to the water for every egg. Once cooked, empty out the hot water and add some cold/chilled water to the saucepan of eggs. This will make the shells very easy to peel off.
  
• When boiling eggs, add the eggs to the water before it is heated up rather than adding them to already boiling water. This will lessen the chances of the eggs bouncing around and splitting. (By the time the water is boiling and the eggs are bouncing, the outer layer of egg white inside the shell will already have hardened a little).

Hmmm.... when I was a teenager I read that the high levels of protein in eggs is exceptionally wonderful for hair. The book/web site (can't remember now) advocated washing your hair once every so often in fresh egg. This I did once a month for a while and I believe it made my hair softer and glossier but that could have been a placebo effect. I'm susceptible to placebo effects... I wouldn't recommend using eggs straight from the fridge like I did. Nothing feels more disgusting than a chilly egg on your scalp. Really.

Has anyone got any hints or tips about buying, storing, using eggs that I haven't listed here?

Aluminium Cookware - Tip

If food burns on the bottom of an aluminium pan, cover it with vinegar and add 1 tablespoon of salt. Leave this overnight then scour.