The Whole Five Acres

Can the harummphs go away?

After Happy's hour and half with the woe begotten neighbour, he finally comes in to attend to my needs.

A quick phone call to our neighbour (need I say, I begged him to talk to him for the last three days about the property?) and it appears they are waiting to hear from us as to whether we want the place or not.

It's all peculiar.

Then again, the house is not.

So...as soon as the harummmphs go...I'll be happy once again because we are moving and into a house that I fantasize about on my walks. Mmmmmmmmmmmm

Not-moving day

Harrumph! A quick check on our local real estate websites and two things jump out at me. The house I wanted to rent, and had been waiting weeks to hear about is no longer listed. Secondly, the house we looked at the other day, with the owner's father selling it fast and furious, is now listed for rent!

It's been a few months of filling all our spare time with looking at properties to rent, and this alone has taken up all our spare time and allowed us no time for much more than work or house hunting. We're tired.

So we had these two properties shortlisted as our perfect opportunity to live close to the farm. It's a bit hard for us as my business takes up an enormous part of the home, and Happy's part of my business takes up an equally enormous part of our home. We have ladders and posters, nails and drills, proofs and paperwork - enough to fill a warehouse. Working from home too also brings about certain needs such as a quiet space to set up my ever messy desk. Who wants to look at this everytime they wake up on a Saturday morning craving peace and coffee?

The first, now gone, was two separate residences in one. In my mind, one for mess office, one for home. The second, now listed, offered a nice living plan with the promise of a few acres to get a few pigs.

I'm sooooooo disappointed tonight. I'd mentally moved my furniture and office into both and was prepared to jump, now I'm back to square one.

And if that isn't enough to rot your socks, then the neighbour on our verandah whining about his sons plum farm is. Whilst he's been good to us in the past, I do wonder when he might kick out his bottle of Jonnie Walker Blue and offer Happy a drink! We're $295 (duty free) down on the deal at this moment, and as he yaks, Happy's dinner dries out on the stove.

It seems always to be the way. The good neighbours inevitably are the ones that keep to themselves. The first wave of friendliness is generally the needy neighbour with no friends and he'll drink you dry.

Tonight...Sad sack? Yes!

Tomorrow...homehunter? Not to sure! If only we could fund a mortgage then we could buy the property of our dreams. Five acres, more or less, three bedrooms, more or less, a rural property, more or less and our name on the lease. Is it too much to ask?

Minestrone, or CasaLinga, it's all soup

Hugh, of River Cottage fame, spoke to me the other day when I was contemplating the enormous pile of vegetables and leftovers hanging around the kitchen. A bit of this, a little of that and next thing he had chopped his scarecrow into a soup. (You'll have to watch his shows to work out what the scarecrow has to do with this recipe!)

With a fridge full of bits and pieces, a few leftover nubs of prosciutto and pancetta I had a soup in the making, and boy did it turn out fine. Lucky for me, Hugh saved me from throwing away a few ingredients I had already chopped to make another dish.

After days of chopping tomatoes for bottling, I hit upon the last couple of boxes (or so I thought). With the determined look of a cook ready to deal with the masses, and an idea to make a straight tomato puree for bottling, I started hacking into cherry tomatoes and tossing them into a pot. About 24 tomatoes into the pile, and only 8 in the pot, I was despondent and ready to give up. Almost every second tomato was mushy, or marked, or ready for the bin. There was no way these would make good preserves.

I'd already hacked up a few bulbs of garlic for the pan, and sat forlornly looking at these veg, and then at the pile of rotting tomatoes and gave up.

Hugh saved the day. He chopped up his scarecrow and threw all in a pot to make a wonderful Italian style soup. It was when I saw him chop up the zucchini that he fully got my attention - the moment when I decided all could be saved by preparing homemade soup.

Here is how I followed his inspiration...

Into the pot went 4 chicken wings in the fridge. We keep them fresh to treat the dogs, so there are never too many on hand.

The last bits of pancetta and prosciutto still hanging from the cupboard door and soooo dry you would break a tooth trying to eat them. (we bought these at the local market and enjoyed all the goodness of them over the last couple of months - but after a few weeks they became so hard we couldn't eat them anymore)

A cup of white beans quickly plumped up in a pot of water.

A few carrots, some onions straight out of the garden, and a larger than life 8 ball zucchini along with a good glug of extra virgin and a covering of water.

There was also a dozen or so mini capsicum roasting in the oven which i had to deal with, so these were quickly, roughly deskinned and thrown in as well.

The only herbs I could cut out of the garden suitable for soup were rosemary and basil so in they went as well. A smattering of pepper and then it was on to cook for dear life.

The soup slowly bubbled away for hours, and in the end the result was sweet and fresh. Crazily so. I'm not a lover of salt, so was quite happy with the sweetness of the final soup - but for those that are after a salty finish, just season to taste.

This was soooooo good, I won't be waiting to have a kitchen disaster to cook this again. It was a perfect way to deal with some crazy leftovers, and Happy has eaten his way through many litres of the soup while building up his energy after a hard day on the farm! (His meal last night while I lay in bed nursing a busted back - half a leg of pork, two huge bowls of soup, one spinach pie, half a watermelon and god knows what else - the man eats his weight in food everyday!)

A quiet night at home.

What else is there to do on a quiet Friday night, but sit around the table and package up tomatoes. The silly shops won't take these small tomatoes without them being in punnets, so Happy happily packaged them last night while I busied myself with some Moussaka making.

The photography is a little lacking, but after a hard day dealing with one glut after the other I didn't give a rat's arse how the photos turned out.

The punnets were sold off this morning, with a few more to go out tomorrow with a swack of zucchini orders.

As for the Moussaka, it was delicious. The shots show pre cheese sauce covering. The dish on the left was a work in progress as I ran out of eggplant half way through and thought to throw a bunch of steamed tuscan kale on top, along with a smattering of fresh, salty luscious ricotta. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm - it was good!

Next time I think I'll go back to my old habit of cooking the eggplant in salt water before grilling. The fried version took up quite a bit of olive oil, and whilst it is good for us, large quantities are probably not going to rid me of the mid section belly flaps. Yew.

The recipe is so simple, however fiddly.

Moussaka

Slice some eggplants into 5mm discs, salt and leave to drain. This gets rid of the bitter juices.
Chop up a couple of onions and some garlic, add to pan with a small amount of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Cook until nicely caramalised an softened.
Add 500gms beef mince (you can use lamb or any other type of mince based on your preference) and brown through.
Next I added a cup of my chilli, tomato and capsicum pasta sauce. Any pasta sauce would work. I also added a large jar of chopped tomatoes. Perhaps change this for a tin of tomatoes.
Some cinnamon, some nutmeg, a bit of balsamic vinegar to bring out the tomato flavour, pepper and salt to taste and reduced to a thickish sauce.

While the sauce is reducing, it's time to fry up the eggplants. Add oil to pan, cook until browned on one side, flip and do other side. Drain on paper.

Line pie dish with eggplant slices. Smother with a layer of mince. Add another layer of eggplant.

Make a cheese sauce with cornflour. You can add egss which would be more traditional but I forgot.
Pour sauce over dish, and finish off with a bit of cheddar.

Bake until crispy in a hot oven.

Easy!

The kale version only had one layer of eggplant, a layer of mince, a layer of steamed kale (spinach would work here) 250gms of fresh ricotta then the sauce over the top.

Open for business!

This is what $15 will buy you these days. 1 kilo each of banana peppers, cherry plum tomatoes, eggplant large and small, and zucchini. If you place an order ahead of time we'll also throw in some great zucchini blossoms. All picked fresh daily and delivered to your door if we are in the area!

Bargain!

Would you believe, Happy has two massive boxes of these small plum tomatoes, but the greengrocers won't buy them loose? So now we have to race around to find punnets, then pack them up before we can sell them. It's crazy. Are people so denatured* these days that it's can't be a cherry tomato if it's not in a punnet?

And these chillis come with a severe heat warning. Lovely flavour but oh my word, do they knock your sox off. At this stage we only have a handful of these, but expect to see them soon on the menu.

*I know this isn't quite the right word, but for me it makes perfect sense - so now it has a new meaning!

Zucchini Flower Fritters

It's taken an awful lot of begging and pleading, not to mention nagging to get Happy to bring me home some zucchini flowers for our dinner. But now he is on the bandwagon of selling the flowers too, I was able to steal a couple of dozen and whip up a beaut batter to highlight their gorgeousness.

We had several types, all with the little zucchinis on the ends. Each type had its own flavour, but the standouts for me were the small round green, and the long green varieties. The yellow zucchinis are just too subtly flavoured for me to get excited about.

The batter was simple - rustled together from a memory of a recipe i now can't locate.

Take a half cup or so of self raising gluten free flour.
Add a scant teaspoon of both ground cumin and ground coriander.
Toss in a good tablespoon of poppy seeds, an egg yolk and start mixing and adding cold water little by little until you have a good batter consistency.

Batter made, then it's time to heat up the peanut oil in your wok.

Slosh the flowers gently in the batter, then straight into the oil.

Cook until they are lightly browned and crisp.

Hoo-boy, these were good. The self raising GF flour worked a treat too, without any stodginess.