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Real Food in my Kitchen - 2012 update

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.

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:

Nourishing Traditions - Snacks, desserts and "super foods"

Beet Kvass and Ginger Ale
Some of the recipes that I’ve tried from Nourishing Traditions:

Sprouts
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….

Easy Peasy Raw Milk Cheeses – making cream cheese
Cheese making basics – making hard cheeses

making cheese
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.


dehydrating chillies
We went on a couple of holidays, and as always we sampled lots of the local foods, here are some of the highlights:


Strawberry picking on the Sunshine Coast
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:


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).  

Comments

  1. 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!

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  2. well that's a comprehensive link post if ever there was one. thankyou :)

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  3. There's some good links there. Will bookmark this for some inspiration when we're unpacked and getting into it next year! Thanks.

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  4. Hmmm, 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.

    I 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

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  5. 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

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