Cuppa Anyone ?.

Every year in a small  old town  about half an hour from where we live on the coast they hold a Tea Pot Festival.
I went to it many years ago with my lovely neighbour Rita and her daughter , sadly since then Rita has passed away, so her daughter and I make the pilgrimage every year up to the festival.
I thought I would show you a few of the displays of the weird,wacky and also some very beautiful tea pots and related bits and pieces.

The tea pots vary from the traditional, to the quirky to the totally ridiculous, but we have a lovely day wandering around the place. This was the first year that I have ever taken my camera to take some photos.They have many,many more than what i have  photographed, with beautiful traditional pots and sets as well. There  is something  to interest most people.

Morpeth, the town where the festival is held,dates back many years  and is on the hunter River and steam boats  in years gone by used to service the township to the coastal port of Newcastle.. There is a lot of history in the town, beautiful old buildings and a very good  town association which keeps events like these running every year. They do a tremendous job.
My companion  and I make the  day out so much more than the tea pots, we always have a lovely morning tea and then follow it up later with a nice lunch somewhere.

The  two  tea pot sets above  have a distinctive Australian flavour with tradittional  aboriginal designs on them.Every year there is also a Tea Pot  Cosie competition, and they always have many weird and quirky designs among them.

This year they had a Golly display, they are either loved or disliked, but I decided to include them as they were there on the day.

They also had a display of early Australian electric Jugs(Kettles), they have become quite a collectors item these days and can fetch a good price.

Something I also found   hanging around was  a lot of wind chimes made from old,pots, and milk jugs and sugar bowls ect, they were quite effective, or at least I thought they were.

This painted cow was there too, so thought I would pop him in just for fun.

We have a fun day up at Morpeth tea pot festival  each year, and hope to keep going  for many years to come. It will be a good excuse for me to head back down this way each year to keep up the tradition.
So on that note, I may just put the kettle on and make myself a cuppa,
So until next time,
Cheers,
Jane

Rosemary drying

We grow a fair bit of Rosemary at the farm, mainly because it's one plant that survives the long periods that we are away without water, and it stays green all year round  and then produces lovely blue flowers for us,and gives us a herb that we use  constantly in the kitchen cooking our lamb.
We chose the "Tuscan Blue " variety  an upright ,hardy vigorous grower and it has done just that.We have to prune it regularly to keep it at a good and attractive height.

We have several areas in which we have planted  them.
We pruned this one  back about  two months ago and hung all the chopped off stems in an old curtain  up in the shed which remains  fairly dark and cool when we arn't there.

When we returned to the farm the next time   and checked it , it was all crunchy and dry , so I brought it inside to the kitchen and stripped of all the dried leaves....It made quite a mess as I am  really not a tidy or neat food preparer.

I ended up with  4 quarts of  dried leaves,loosely packed.
My husband reckoned  it was too coarse so he suggested that we blitz them in the processor, but I didn't have that up at the farm , so just gave them a hit with the stick blender to chop them up a bit finer.

I then placed the rosemary into 3 pint and 1 half pint Pre- washed  jars on a tray in the cold  oven and heated the jars and contents until the thermostat reached 200 Degrees Celsius, and then maintained that for about 10-15 minutes.

While the jars were heating in the oven, I simmered the jar lids in some water for a couple of minutes and when the rosemary was done, a jar at a time, dried the lids and sealed the jars with lids and rings to finger tight, and waited for them to ping, which they all did quite quickly.

I only had 2 pints  and a half pint left when I took the photos as I passed on one to my next door neighbour. We tend to swap and share a bit of everything we do.
This rosemary will keep us going for ages, as well as having the fresh.We often use the long rosemary  sprigs to skewer fish and chicken for BBQ's and just put sprigs on the BBQ when we are grilling our multitude of lamb chops.(We really do eat a lot of lamb!)
We also grow a fair bit of lavender as it is easy and hardy.
Next year once we relocate I hope to grow many more herbs and dry and store them, they are just so handy to have in the cupboard. One in particular is mint as I want to make mint sauce and jelly, and I also will grow,coriander, Italian parsley and basil,as they are the main  staple herbs that I use in cooking and salads.
We are having extreme heat here at the moment, for this time of year, we reached 38 Deg C (about 100 deg F) yesterday and we are told will be about the same today.(not bad for the middle of Spring) I hate to imagine what summer will bring this year.
So think I will hibernate this week until the cool change they are predicting hits us later in the week.
So cheers to everyone until we meet again,
Stay cool,
Jane.

A bits and pieces week

We have had a busy week or so up at the farm, for once i am actually posting from the farm as the satelite service seems to be running extremely well for once. We will have to revise this service once we live here permanently.We have been watering constantly as it is so dry here at the moment, It has been a dry winter and the farm is looking pretty bare.When we want to water the lawn or gardens, Brian has to start up a big generator up the back which pumps the water up from our underground bore which is 300 foot below the ground. We can only do this for 10 minutes every hour, as we pump it dry. Once we live here we will install a solar pump which will eliminate the need for the big generator and it will be a constant but slower flow of water.
We are babysitting our daughters black lab  Josie, she is a cutie, Brian takes her for walks all over the property with our old blue cattle dog Tilly, but as soon as they return Josie always dives straight into the stock troughs and cools down, she is such a cutie.

Because the place is so dry, we had to reduce our sheep numbers drastically, so while we have been here this time we have butchered 5 sheep. Two were extremely old, so we decided to butcher them and completely bone out the meat and can up to  feed to the dogs as their  nightly feed. They absolutely love it.

We ended up with  approx. 38 pints of dog meat, we also did a canner load of lamb for our own consumption and a load of rump that we had bought cheap, as it wasn't a full load we topped up the canner with  some pints of  4 bean mix,( so easy, just a half cup of dried beans in a pint, fill with water  to within an inch of top, seal, and process the same time as meat) Brilliant for salads or to pop in soups and stews or to do refried beans.

With the bones from the  two old sheep we boned out I decided to also make some lamb stock. I had saved a pile of celery tops and had a few scraggy carrots that needed using up, and we have a tub full of spring onions growing out back, so used all those in the process. We ended up with a lovely rich stock, which i set overnight in the fridge to remove any fat and we managed to get 13 quarts to be canned.

The pantry has been well stocked this visit, I have done, rhubarb,meat for us,meat for dogs, lamb stock,olives, chick peas and 4 bean mix.

While we were here we took a trip to Dubbo the other day to meat up with one of our daughters and to see my mum, who was still recovering from foot surgery. While we were in Dubbo my Mum had a nasty fall and had to spend the afternoon in casualty. below is my husband and myself with our beautiful Grand daughter Claudia  and the other is a wonderful four generations photo taken about an hour before my mum ended up back at the hospital.

We had a lovely visit, even though it was a bad day in other ways. we will be seeing my mum again  this weekend to celebrate her 89th birthday, and to attend a dinner with her  which is an annual event to celebrate her being nominated and receiving an  OAM (The Order of Australia Medal) two years ago, for 50 years of service to the returned servicemans  organization (The RSL). We  were and are very proud of her.
So until we meet again, cheers from this hot and windy farm in Aus.
Jane.

Our Beautiful Ruby Rhubarb.

I have been a bit slack on the posts but with good reason.
Around the middle of September my elderly mum was admitted to hospital. She had woken up on the Sunday morning and the skin had literally fallen off the sole of her foot. (she is a diabetic and has no sensation in that leg). After several days  the doctors decided to air lift her to a major city hospital where they placed a stent in her leg  to aid circulation  and unfortunately ended up removeing all the toes on her right foot. She has now recovered well and is walking  again well,until the day before yesterday when she took a tumble getting into  the car after a doctors visit and has now broken her pubic bone. Thankgod no surgery required just  rest and pain killers.
Mum will be 89 on the weekend and all the family are gathering to celebrate.
So  with all the happenings we haven't been at the farm much. We have been here for the last week and have been really busy, and instead of one big blog encompassing everything I will break it up into smaller  stories.
When we  left the farm the last time nearly 2 months ago we  couldn't remember if we had left the watering system on the rhubarb bed or not, and if we hadn't would probably have lost the lot,so we were indeed pleased to arrive and find  the rhubarb bed green and lush and in need of picking.

We were  lucky to pick a huge bunch, our neighbours informed us that they too had been picking in our absence( an arrangement we have) and after removing all the leaves were left with quite a bit so i decided that i would preserve it  into jars.

I cut it up into roughly 1 inch sized pieces and put into a large stock pot with   about 2 cups of water and two cups of sugar. I then cooked over low heat until the rhubarb starts to breakdown, stirring and watching regularly to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot which it is  apt to do.

After it has reached the right consistency I then  fill my pre-prepared jars,  and place  lids on that have been simmered in hot water, and place rings on finger tight.

I then placed them into my electric water bath canner, and covered with  about two inches of water, which we were using outside hooked up   to a generator so not to drain our household battery system and brought them to a boil and water bathed for 15 minutes.

After  boiling for the required 15 minutes, I then turned off the canner, removed the lid and let the jars sit for about  5 minutes.I then removed the jars , and placed on a towel on my kitchen table and let  sit overnight. Next morning, I removed the rings, checked seals were intact , washed the jars  and rings, stored the rings away for future use, labeled the jars and stored in the pantry for lots and lots of future yummy pies, crumbles ,cakes,slices and other lucious desserts.

 So, do I recommend growing and canning rhubarb....you bet I do, !!!
We also canned chick peas this week, but that's another little story.
So until we meet again, cheers,
Jane from Aus.

We love Olives,how can you not !!!

Without the beautiful olive, my entertaining  would be dull.
I can't seem to ever have Happy Hour  without at least a few olives, be they marinated  big green Spanish olives, or Kalamata or lovely green olives stuffed with feta or pimentos or the beautiful smaller black Spanish olives, whatever the olive of choice  the nibbles platter just wouldn't be the same  in their absence.
Recently Aldi had  the bargain of the century(or at least I thought it was), they had large jars(907grms) of big fat Spanish olives for $ 1.99.I forced myself to buy 20 jars.

As lovely as these are by themselves(they are a large very meaty good tasting olive) I prefer them to taste of other flavours rather than just of the brine solution that they are in.
So, what I decided to do was  to drain the brine off them, marinate in other flavours  and repack,reseal with water bath and enjoy them later.
So I gathered all my ingredients and equipment together and got started.
I drained all the brine off  and repacked the olives into mason quart jars, I had a little over 8 jars so was able to fill 1 pint as well.

I then made up a solution in a jug of white vinegar,red wine vinegar,white wine vinegar and water and set this aside.
To each quart jar I then added  about half a teaspoon of minced garlic,quarter teaspoon minced chilli,1 teaspoon of Italian herbs,half teaspoon salt, a squirt of lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil.
I then filled the jars with the vinegar solution.

I over filled the jars a little and will note next time to allow more head space.
I then de-bubbled the jars,simmered the lids, and wiped the jar  rims with paper towel dipped in white vinegar.

Next I placed the hot lids (at great personal pain to me,as I had left my magnetic wand up at the farm) onto the jars and screwed on the bands until they were finger tight.

After all were capped I then placed them into the big electric Water Bath preserver, covered them with tepid water,covered and waited for them to come to the boil.

On reaching boiling point I then started timing for 15 minutes. When the time was up, I turned off the preserver, removed the lid and allowed the jars to sit in the water for several minutes.
I then grabbed my trusty jar lifters and removed all the jars out onto a folded bath towel on my kitchen bench to cool.Shortly after removing the jars they all made that lovely "Ping" that we all wait with bated breath to hear.

So on the bench they will sit, for another 24 hours, after which I will remove the bands,check the seals are intact, wash  and label the jars and store  away in my pantry for future use down the track.
This is less than half of my bounty from Aldi, so I will probably repeat this activity tomorrow with the rest.
So ,until we meet again,
Cheers to all,
Jane from Aus.