With the warm Spring weather the jalapeños have been very productive, so I have more than I can cook with and give away. It was time to get creative and try ‘cowboy candy’, sweet pickled jalapeños. I’m glad I did.
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You can probably never have too much thyme. Part of the plan for my herb garden was to have a section of low growing and fragrant herbs like thyme under the clothes hoist. With our second Spring finishing after sowing it the first Winter, it’s almost what I envisaged and filling in nicely.
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We were given a huge bag of homegrown potatoes recently, which are beautifully creamy, so I thought I’d try potato sourdough. After a bit of tweaking I’m very happy with it. I would rate it as an advanced bread to try, as it relies on a feel for the dough consistency.
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It’s a year since we got water to a cleared paddock half way down the hill and the ‘Mid-levels’ garden was begun. After fencing (about 230 square metres) and lot of digging it has become our main kitchen garden. The garden area keeps expanding beyond the original fenced patch, including the addition of two greenhouses and an aquaponics system. Along the way I’ve learned a lot as the seasons made a full turn.
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What to do when the trickle of eggs you waited and waited for finally turns into a steady flow and the full cartons begin to collect? Mum is of course always a good source of knowhow, and mine sent me a recipe for pickling eggs. They are not something I think I’d even tried before, although I’m sure I’ve seen them in jars in Yorkshire pubs. So I at least had to give them a go. And then I saw the tweak of adding beetroot to the pickling mix. Pink…
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A couple of coffee trees can give you an interesting home addition to your coffee repertoire. Our place here came with a couple of mature coffee trees, growing under a canopy of tall trees. After some maintenance and two crops, I have learned a few things about processing them for home grown coffee, and decided it’s worth the effort. Although the processing is a little involved, it can reward you with a good home roast, with no additional equipment if you already grind your home brew.
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This sweet little orchid, native to the East coast of Australia, has been amazingly forgiving of some pretty harsh treatment, but hopefully it is now in a spot where it can flourish. It is an epiphyte, growing on a piece of wood on a tree trunk, and has lovely spikes of white flowers in early Spring.
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With our mild frost free Winters and warm wet Summers, onions generally don’t do well in the subtropics. They are cool-weather growers, and need a bit of chill to form bulbs. I have tried about six different varieties from seed, plus leeks and chives, and have had good results only from white bunching onions, meaning that these might be the subtropical onions for me.
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