Summer Abundance

While my kitchen is being rebuilt, I've been finding things to occupy Mum and keep her busy.  Fortunately, this summer has been abundant so far.

I picked the broccoli sideshoots and blanched them.  For some reason I'm getting huge sideshoots this year.  Normally, they're about bite-sized, this year, they're getting to the same size as the original head of broccoli and I'm getting at least ten per plant.  I currently have several kg of frozen broccoli in the freezer and there's no sign of them slowing down.  I've also missed picking lots of them in time so there are several that have gone to seed.  I don't consider that to be a problem though, I should have plenty of broccoli plants next year.  I was also told recently that after November, you might as well pull your broccoli out because you don't get anything useful from it.  I beg to differ.

The cauliflower was a bit of a bust though.  Out of 18 plants, I've gotten four caulis.  Two bolted because I wasn't quick enough, the rest turned brown and black before they were fully grown.  Luckily the pigs like them and Brownie the house cow assaults anyone who goes into that garden and won't let them leave without giving her some cauli leaves.  The entrance to the garden is right next to the gate for her paddock.  

We found a local fruit and vege shop selling sauce tomatoes 4kg for $4.  20kg bought so far has become 10 litres of tomato sauce, 10 jars and 9 ziplock bags of spaghetti and 5 ziplock bags of pasta sauce.  The ziplock bags are in the freezer.

Tomato sauces cooling on the bench.

I have two favourite recipe books for various preserves, both from the 1960s.  One is the New Zealand Country Women's Institute Cookbook and the other is 575 Recipes by the Good Housekeeping Board.  Their recipes for tomato sauce are different and each year I face the dilemma of not remembering which one I used last time and which one I prefer.  So this year, I made the tomato sauce in two batches - one from each book - and labelled them with which recipe book.

The spaghetti is a recipe from my father-in-law.  Hubby remembers him making it when he was little and went out of his way to get the recipe for me to make for him.  I did it a year or so ago, but it went off in the jars.  This year I sterilised the jars more carefully and followed up with a water bath.  We'll see how this lot turns out.  

Wild plums.

A glance down the gully showed that the wild plums are coming ripe.  Hubby, Miss Ten and I spent about an hour picking plums after it cooled down enough to be bearable outside.  I explained to them both that the best way to tell which were ripe was that the ripe ones fall off when you touch them.  It rained plums on all of us for a while.  The terrain around our wild plum trees is rather steep, with the added bonus of plenty of fallen plums making for treacherous footing.  At one point, Miss Ten slipped and went down several metres of slope on her backside - stain removal on her shorts will be fun.

We didn't get very far through the gully before it became too dark to continue safely.  We came back with 7kg of plums.  Not bad considering they're only slightly bigger than the average cherry.  I still have several jars of plum jam made a few years ago.  I've decided to stop making jams until we actually get through some of what we have in the cupboards.  Just how much was in the cupboards was fully revealed when we had to move them for the kitchen rebuild.  This time I've made plum sauce so far and used maybe half of that picking.  My issue now is that I've run out of bottles for sauces, unless I resort to using soft drink bottles.

Spaghetti and sauces on top of the fridge for now.

I've been looking for recipes for plum chutneys and relishes.  Maybe some that can also utilise the frozen rhubarb my neighbour gave me.  I've found a few, but none that keep for longer than a few weeks without refrigeration or freezing.  I want recipes that will keep in jars for as long as I need them to.  I'll have to keep looking.

I thought about drying some, but given how small they are, I'm not sure if the result will be worth the work.  I may try it with some and see how it turns out.

Meanwhile, we've also had more rainfall this month so far than we had all of last year!  Not enough to officially break the drought, but certainly not the worst El Nino summer and drought that was predicted (so far - touch wood!).  I went for a wander yesterday to see if the combined rain and heat had provided any field mushrooms and came back with over a kg.  They were sliced, sauteed in butter and frozen in single serves.  This is the only method I've found for preserving a glut of mushrooms that we'd actually use.

Even with my kitchen still in partial disarray, I'm using it flat out and making jokes about how this pantry will be full by the time it's finished.  In all honesty, I greatly doubt it, the plan for the pantry is to make the shelves the size of what will go on them.  I find current pantry styles frustrating.  The shelves are spaced so widely apart that what looks like a full pantry actually has a lot of wasted space or double stacking which isn't always safe or practical.  A friend sent a video to me that showed a practical pantry built for a woman by her husband.  It looks like the video was purely shared to facebook so I think the only option to share it for others is a link and not embedding - it can be found here.  I found the video truly inspiring and showed it to anyone who would watch it.

Now the kitchen is usable again, I also had a mad cheese-making day.  It was a bit hectic but I got cream cheese, quark, edam and (blue) stilton made.  Christmas present vouchers paid for a vacuum food sealer which I'm now using for cheese.  I enjoy the look of waxed cheeses aging on my shelf but on a more practical level, I can't tell if there's a tiny hole in the wax until it's leaked everywhere and I've effectively lost that cheese.  This can also be more challenging if when it leaked it's dripped onto other cheeses - it means I can't be sure which one is the leaker.

Vacuum sealed cheese.

Coming up probably in the next few days are mustard pickles.  I chopped up the stalks trimmed from the broccoli (no point in wasting them) and will be having a look around to see what other bits I can put into them.

Rebuilding The Kitchen

Most of our time lately has been devoted to redoing our kitchen.  The floor was rotten and there were spots that you'd feel seasick if someone walked past you while you were standing there.

It has been a long and slow process.  The kitchen is a room that five other rooms are only reached through, three of them from a small hallway. Because our house is an old farm cottage that has been added on to and rearranged several times over the last 90 years, it is a bit like a rabbit warren.


One of the first things to do was to take out one of the hall cupboards and cut a doorway through the back wall to meet that other little hallway.  That was always part of the plan and it was something that needed doing first so that the toilet and bathroom were safely reachable.  Part of that little hallway is going to be the new big farm pantry.

Hall cupboards

From the other side

Doorway cut

From other side.

The dining room can be reached through the lounge, but that took some rearranging of both rooms where various kitchen stuff and removed cabinetry were being stored.

I have found it interesting that there are several places where it seems we are restoring the original design, rather than making huge changes.  When we took the wall covering (mdf not gib) off in the old small hallway, we discovered wood paneling that showed that where my new big pantry is going to be, was previously a pantry.  Old water pipes that had been left partially in place - although they were just metre long lengths sitting inside the walls - showed that we're putting the sink and taps back closer to where they were previously, Some of the power points in the house are in the old steel pipe conduits, not all of the conduit pipe was removed when power points were moved, this made it amusing to be cutting a hole in the wall for a power point and finding a conduit pipe right next to where I'm putting this one.

I think the paint missing in lines shows where pantry shelves were previously.
It's also interesting that restructuring it for food storage was at least planned.

In a pleasant change from the lounge, not all of the joists or bearers were rotten this time.  Although the outer wall is going to need a lot of work in the near future.  One window had been framed properly and done well and was structurally sound.  The other, well, an attempt had been made to do it properly, but that was as far as it went.  In all honesty, with this house, I am more surprised and disbelieving when I find something done well than I am when I find corners cut or shoddy work.

Removing the old floor

Working out the new joists

Nearly done.

Floor down

So after a week and a half, that included my housecow coming on heat and jumping a gate to run with her steer calf, the pigs becoming serial escape artists, Miss Ten going on Girl Guide Jamboree and needing to entertain my Mum who has vascular dementia while Dad and Hubby worked on the kitchen, we're close to the finish I think.  Hubby has gone back to work today and the kitchen is almost usable.

The external walls have been insulated and when I was covering them, I sealed everything that could be sealed.  Hopefully that will work to keep drafts and rodents out and warmth in.  Hot water pipes have been lagged, underfloor insulation is coming.

External walls - I hadn't removed the lining from the one on the left at this point.

Insulated wall.

Gibbed, roughly stopped, and sealed.

Painted.

The floors are in, except for a few small spots that will require some tricky bits - doorways joining to other rooms etc.  I'm looking at a laminate flooring that looks like wooden floorboards.  I found one that even with the foil underlay stuff will cost approx a third of what all others do.  It seems too good to be true though, so I will investigate further before buying it.

The stove has been moved to a more sensible position - one that will allow a rangehood.  The cabinets that we pulled out have been reconfigured and put back in.  This time, the stove and dishwasher are in line with benchtops and cupboards and are not sticking out.  No drawers are blocked from opening fully by the stove, and the dead space beside the old stove has gone.

We were going to reuse the old benchtops, rearranged somewhat to suit the new layout, but Mum and Dad offered to take me shopping for new ones, far better ones and they just asked that we keep them in meat for the year.  I didn't need to hear that offer twice, I leaped at it.  Especially as it included a new double sink and sink mixer.  They'd found some great specials that meant it cost less than half of what we'd thought when we originally looked at the possibility.

Getting the benchtops home made for a nervous drive - that was sitting almost on my shoulder.

Joining benchtops and waiting for silicon to dry.

Bench fixed in place.  Sink and mixer fitted.

Cutting and joining the benchtops was challenging, but I think we've done well.  Dad thinks that at one of our joins is less noticeable that his (professional job) at home.

Now that Hubby and Dad have gone back to work, we're down to evenings and weekends, not counting the little bits that I potter around with during the day.  The new hallway and linen cupboard is coming along and the new farm pantry is this weekend's mission.

Where we're up to with the kitchen.