Pizza Night!

We've still got tomatoes in the greenhouse and they are the redest, sweetest tomatoes ever. But they weren't going to last for ever so we thought, why not have some home made pizza.
I made some dough in the breadmaker. I couldn't find my wee recipe book, so I went online and found one that I hadn't used before.
It was lovely and had a great flavour, so here it is.

Pizza dough recipe

2 teaspoons dried granulated yeast
3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup water, plus
2 tablespoons water

Once the dough has been made leave it for around half an hour in a well oiled bowl, then you can roll it out. This made 4 very, very thin based pizzas.

I had to adapt it a bit as it was too solid, so I actually added about another tablespoon of oil and same again of water. This loosened it up a lot. It was still thicker than the usual dough I make, but it actually rolled out a lot better, so I think I'll use this one again. ( but another reason it may have been more solid is that I think my yeast was dead!) 

Lovely tomatoes and some basil. (in one of my bowls!)

 We have very basic pizzas in our house. So all we put on them is some cooked down, home made passata, some home made feta ( or mozzarella) some tomatoes and some basil. And that's it.

We didn't light the pizza oven this time, we just used our oven in the house with the pizza stone, and apart from some pretty terrible sliding of pizza by me, they were perfect!!

 And yesterday was mother's day. I am a doggy mum, so to celebrate this fact we had lovely crepes for breakfast. Yum.

Here's the very simple batter recipe for the crepes.

The fifth Annual Curry Cup

Last year, Lloyd won the Curry Cup.  Which meant that this year we hosted and Lloyd couldn't enter. But I could :)
The day dawned lovely and sunny with a weather bomb, and we had thunder and lightning and some amazingly heavy downpours.
Thankfully we have the Woolshed which is such an amazing space, so we moved our big refectory table over and Danny & Paula brought over an outdoor table so that everyone could heat up their curries an wee camping stoves.

I made curried eggs a la 70's! But my secret weapon was crispy fried onions that I sprinkled on top. I was actually really pleased with it.

Lloyd made a Dahl - just because he couldn't enter doesn't mean he couldn't cook.

Here we are, all set up and just waiting for the various curries and folk to arrive.

OoOoo the curries are on, and heating up.

The actual entries, there was even more food though, poppadoms, dahls, roti breads, raita and the biggest bowl of rice ever seen! Number 7 won, number 2 second and the big one at the back was third. (Mine was number 4 and I was the only person to actually make the dish the curry was served in!)

Some of the delights included; a Burmese rendang, Butter Chicken, lamb curry, a couple of dahls, monkfish curry, a beef something or other, the curried eggs and even some curry ice cream!

It takes a while for 14 people to stack their plates high with curry!

Still queuing!

At last, all sitting and eating

After eating, eating and eating - some even went back for fourths -  the voting was done and counted. Lloyd was ready to announce the winners.... oh the suspense!

Danny was in third place, and deserves a special mention for his home made curry ice cream. It was absolutely amazing!

Nick and Sara were runners up, with the gorgeous monkfish curry - it was delicious and a personal favourite!

And Andrew had a well deserved win with a Burmese Beef Rendang.

Lloyd seemed even happier about this than Andrew!

It was a really brilliant day. Yet again the curries were all spectacular. It makes the voting really, really difficult. People were back round the curry table taking wee spoonfuls of individual curries, Masterchef judges have nothing on us!

Bring on next year! As Andrew has won a couple of times Nick and Sara offered to host. 

Oh and guess what? I was 4th! The top three all had a lot of votes so I was a fair way behind them, but 4th! I was well chuffed, I think it was the onions that did it!

where, oh where have I been??

I've no idea! But the time between posts has been for ever!
I can't even remember all of what we've been up to, so I'm just going to let you see a selection of photos and you can guess!!!

 

And for Charlotte - Banana!
Who is GREAT!


Did you guess right?

Answers are!

Pizza night at friends
A lot of dogs sleeping where they're not supposed to be
Baking
Roller Derby - my new favourite thing!
International Dinner - Mexican night!
Cafes
Auckland and yachts
Auckland and girls night out
The Script
Decided to sell my lovely car
More pottery.

As ever, it's all go!!!

No sign of a baby cria, but Cupcake is doing GREAT!
We're still enjoying tomatoes from the greenhouse and Lloyd is making enough chilli sauce to feed the whole of NZ.


Hope all of you are well and happy!

Glazed Pottery!

The second batch of pottery was ready to be picked up today. I was really excited to see it, as it included the very first ever bowls I made on the wheel as well as the newer ones.
Now, I'm aware that these are very lopsided and squint rustic and I could say I made them like this on purpose  - however I'd be totally lying, as, in fact, I would love to make a symmetrical, weighs less than a tonne bowl, but I'm not in that league yet!

That being said, I am really thrilled with these. They are in colours I like and are all usable.

First, these are small, hand made bowls out of white clay. I love how they turned out.

This is a medium sized bowl I  made on the wheel, out of white clay. I like it, it's lighter than the terracotta ones and less squint! ( the light is terrible today as it's pouring down so you can't really see the true colour)

The first ever wee bowl I made! I gave this a pourer and it works perfectly. It's a small bowl

 A terracotta bowl, this is SO heavy!

And lastly, I made these hearts towards the end of a class one day as a sort of time filler, and when I came to glaze them I had spent so long on the bowls that I just slapped some glaze on these, but I LOVE them! They've got holes in them, so that I can thread them to form a sort of heart chain.

I am loving this so much!

A new Cria

Vienna had her baby a few days ago.
It was expected but out of the blue if that makes sense!

We knew the due date was near, but since alpacas can give birth a month either side of the date, unless they show you some signs it's very difficult to tell!
Vienna had given no clues at all.
However when Lloyd went out to feed them, a little later than usual as we'd had a long lie, I heard him yelling. I ran out, and lo and behold, an absolutely perfect little Cria. She was still very wet so wan't all that old.
We named her Cupcake, as I was just making cupcakes when he shouted.

But as ever with cria births on our farm, nothing was a simple as it could have been.

Firstly she was trying really hard to drink, but nothing was coming out. A quick read of the internet and I found out that there is a waxy 'cap' on the nipples and obviously this little cria wasn't sucking hard enough to dislodge it.
In the mean time we bottle fed her about 50ml of colostrum stuff just to be sure that she got some into her as quickly as possible, then I had the rather awkward job of getting rid of the waxy cap. That was fun - not.
Luckily Vienna is the most biddable of alpacas and just stood there while I fiddled around under her. All terribly dignified.
Anyway, milk appeared and wee Cupcake got her first drink from mum. And all was well. Until evening.
I'd been out in the feeding pen for about an hour just watching and all of a sudden Cupcake seemed to get incredibly dopey, floppy and not at all interested in anything. When we stood her up she fell over.
Steve and Christine from Naturally Alpacas had come up and Christine said that this wasn't great. So the vet was called. Cupcakes heart beat was fine, and so was her temperature. Vet and Christine both thought that the birth may have been difficult and that perhaps she'd been starved of oxygen for a wee bit and maybe her brain was a little swollen.

She was injected with vitamin B1 and B12 and a steroid and antibiotic. We put her wee coat on and within about half an hour she was much perkier.

Then it was bed time.

In the morning we both woke up with rather hammering hearts. Lloyd put on his brave pants and went out to see what had happened in the night. Thankfully it was all good and little Cupcake was trotting around quite the thing!
And any day now, or in the next month we have to go through it all again with Coco who was mated at the same time as Vienna...

Anyway, introducing - Cupcake!

Here she is with her big brother, Herbie. Herbie is a wee monster, he's so in your face and completely funny but certainly has never been the gentlest of wee boys. However, he seems to totally adore Cupcake. He takes care of her, makes sure that Cupcake is in the middle of him and Vienna and is just so incredibly gentle with her - I'm amazed.

With her mum, the lovely patient, Vienna

 We have everything crossed for a smooth delivery from Coco. Then Cupcake will have a wee playmate!

 So, after the stress of all that I decided that we needed to eat a lot of home made biscuits!
Lloyd found this stunningly beautiful foody blog - the food dept. The photography is to die for and so it would seem are the recipes!
I made some of the peanut and cinnamon salt biscuits  - they are amazing.
The recipe is super simple
(I've taken this directly from them so all credit is theirs - and I hope this is ok)

 

  Recipe

Makes approximately 20 biscuits

• 125g unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 1 cup brown sugar

• 1 free range egg

• 1½ cups self-raising flour

• 1 cup roasted peanuts

• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

• ½ teaspoon salt flakes

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºF (360ºF). Combine the butter and sugar in a bowl, cream together using and electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and mix well.

2. Add the flour and beat in on low until well combined. Using a wooden spoon mix through the peanuts.

3. Using heaped tablespoons full of mixture, shape into balls and place onto a lined baking tray.  Lightly flatten.

4. Combine the cinnamon and salt flakes in a small bowl. Sprinkle onto the biscuits and bake to 10-12 minutes or until golden.

5. Cool on the tray and store in an airtight container.

Suffice to say these were all gone on the same day - I had a meeting in the evening so took them along and we ate them all!!

Wheat bags

Anyone use these?

When I was at the chiropractor on Tuesday he said that a wheat bag would be a good idea to put on various sore bits :)
I had a wee wander around town to look for one but then I thought eh!? why on earth am I thinking of buying one? I have a huge amount of fabric and after a wee online search found out that you can fill them with all sorts of things -

• Uncooked rice
• Wheat
• Feed corn
• Buckwheat hulls
• Barley
• Oatmeal
• Beans
• Flax seed
• Cherry pits

What did I have in the house? - a bag of rice - that'll do nicely!

You can also put various smelly things in them
  - lavender, rose petals, ground cloves, nutmeg, ginger, rosemary, cinnamon, peppermint oil, crushed mint...

So this morning I trotted off to the Pip ...

 (which you can see is a screenshot from my twitter - that I hardly ever use!) and found some scraps of material and sewed a wee wheat bag together.

I actually used a bit of a vintage sheet.

Here's what I had- the sheet - I made a rectangular one because I need it to sort of sit over my shoulder. Some lavender oil cos I love the smell, the rice and a funnel to get the rice into the bag!
 (even using a funnel I also needed a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the rice I spilled everywhere)

You sew the fabric together - I did a double seam - but leave around an inch so that you can get the rice, or whatever filling you use, in.


Once you've half to three quarters filled the bag just hand sew up the hole.

 And voila - a wee wheat/rice bag, finished and doing its stuff in around 10 minutes. And all for the price of half a bag of rice - not bad, I think.

and the best thing - it really helps.

oh I heated mine in the microwave for one minute. It's suggested that you don't leave it while it's heating in case it goes on fire or something!

I used this blog for inspiration - Sew. Cook. Laugh. Live

The Longest Summer

It's been a while since I last wrote anything, this is most likely due to the fact that summer is just going on and on and on and Lloyd and I are making the most of it.

Since I last posted, we've been to Waiheke Island for a wee holiday, I've been diving at the Poor Knights marine reserve, we've sauced and passata-d and gardened, done more pottery and yesterday we went over to the Hokianga for HokiFest. I've done all of this while dosed up to the eyeballs on painkillers. I've done something to my shoulder and am presently seeing a chiropractor and a voodoo lady! ok she's not a voodoo lady - she does cranial something or other and is a genius. After 2 weeks I think it might be on the mend. Which is great, because making do with only a few meagre hours of sleep, before being woken up with the pain is really beginning to get me down!

Anyway first things first - Waiheke Island.
In all the time we've lived in NZ we've never been, so a few months back we booked a 4 day trip. It was wonderful. It felt like we'd been abroad!  The sun shone the whole time we were there and basically we just explored. Highlights were a picnic on Palm Beach, watching the sun set from Cable Bay Winery,  exploring Stony Batter, Man O War Winery, Oyster Inn Restaurant, eating lovely meals and lying in bed looking at the view.

This is the view from our bedroom window - sunset on the first evening

Couldn't resist! Macarons by the sea - yum!

Picnic on Palm Beach

A fairly standard view around Waiheke! It's all pretty stunning.

Some washed out rocks

There are loads of vineyards on Waiheke - it's pretty famous for its wine.

Our last evening - at one of said vineyards - Cable Bay. Sunset.

We loved it. We'd love to make it a regular, maybe once a year thing.

Next!
The very next morning after we got home I had to get up at 5.30am to meet Simon and Alison and drive down to Tutakaka, where we were meeting a boat to take us out to the Poor Knights Islands. I've done a fair bit of diving here before so I knew how good it was going to be. And it was!
It's positively teeming with fish life there. Lots of sting rays, unfortunately no mantas, we'd been told they were around and had really hoped to see some.
I've said before how much I love diving. It's another world down there.

Two snapper following us around the place - they are incredibly tame.

I can't remember what this is called - but it's super cute!

A moray eel - this was a rather large one!

Simon and Pete having an underwater confab

I'm pretty sure  this is a large scorpion fish - its eye looks odd!

A long tailed sting ray

Alison rolling off the boat - I love this!! For non divers, the way you get off smaller dive boats is to sit on the edge with your legs in the boat and your back facing the water, and simply roll off backwards - it's great fun,

Now we've got pottery - I took some of my bowls and stuff home to glaze so that I can take it back on Tuesday to be fired - it saves time, and means that when I'm there on Tuesday I can make more stuff rather than paint glaze on.
 I also took home my wee buttons! They were just a time filler one evening, but I think they're very sweet so I sewed some onto the back of a white linen tunic I made to take on the Waiheke holiday.

 One of my bowls made on the wheel - ok not totally symmetrical! This has been fired once and has had the glaze painted on - once it's been fired again the glaze should be a glossy cream colour - we shall see!

These are just little hand made bowls - from white clay - again these will be cream with pale blue spots on them - I hope!

finally, my wee buttons

Today Lloyd and I picked the remaining tomatoes - there were actually still a fair amount left after we picked about 8kg - but by this time I am over them totally - we have about 20 litres of passata in the freezer! This'll last us quite some time. Anyway, because of this we took out the tomato plants that were left and fed the nice red tomatoes to the chickens. They were delighted! Then we chopped the basil down that's been in the greenhouse - I left the stalks as I'm fairly certain it will sprout from them. Then we set to work making another HUGE batch of passata - but this time it had a tonne of basil in it - I honestly think it may be the nicest one we've ever made.

You can really tell the difference between the outside tomatoes and the greenhouse ones. The outside ones are less sweet and also a lot more dirty! Greenhouse ones are super sweet and lovely and clean!

 This is the pile of basil - the pic really doesn't show how huge it is. These stems are about 1m long!

HOT CHILLI SAUCE RECIPE

Lloyd also managed to make the first batch of chilli sauce. The greenhouse has been amazing for the chillies. They're like flipping trees in there!  This sauce has a mixture of about 30 habaneros, 50  chilli fire, 50 anaheim, 50 hungarian peppers and 100 ceyenne oh and about  4 bhut jalokias.

Here's what was in the sauce as well as the chillies

200ml dark soy

100ml light soy

200ml cider vinegar

500ml dry sherry

and about 5 teaspoons sugar

brought to the boil and simmered for around half an hour -  turn off and let it stew for about another three hours.

Then blend it with a stick blender, mouli it and bottle it.

The trug with most of the chillies he picked

Lots of lovely greenhouse chillies! There's still about a gazillion more to come

Preparation, preparation, preparation. We also have a wee gas burner outside now. The catch in your throatness of cooking a million chillies really didn't do it for me.

Ready for bottling

Finished and labelled

( not great quality  - but the labels say Rather Hot Chilli Sauce)

This is the tomato sauce I made a couple of weeks ago.

on the left is one large bottle of basil passata to have in the fridge the remaining 100 litres is in the freezer!

So, all in all we've been rather busy. Sometimes I feel totally exhausted and others I feel like I'd could go for ever!!