Raw Milk Ricotta Cheese

My raw milk ricotta has turned out very well. I don’t even want to talk about the vile supermarket stuff, but the raw milk effort is vastly different in taste and texture to the batch I made with supermarket milk. The high cream content, and the absence of added water makes a very rich, creamy, soft cheese. Here is a link to my ricotta cheese recipe, good enough but if you can, do it with raw milk.

I made bruschetta for lunch

Toast bread, rub with a clove of garlic drizzle olive oil over . Sopon ricotta cheese thickly on to the bread, add a few dabs of carrot top pesto, salt, pepper and another drizzle of olive oil. Eat it immediately befor the bread cools. Delicious. Link for carrot top pesto

PEPERONI SOTT’OLIO

One part water and one part vinegar (good quality) add salt and pepper to taste plus a few bay leaves. Bring to the boil. Cut peperoni in 3 mm strips and throw into the water/ vinegar. When the water boil again, drain the peperoni. While still hot put into the jars and cover with good olive oil – ad two fresh bay leaves and a few garlic to the jar and seal immediately. Keeps in the pantry for ever. Beautiful!

Dunedin Botanical Gardens: The Herb Garden

We live close enough to include the Gardens in our regular walks. In the beginning we spent time in the herb garden to see what grows well in this climate and what does not so we could plan our own garden. Today went to see the garden in full flower, and spent a very happy time sniffing and nibbling at a leaf or two and marveling at how beautiful a herb garden can be. The light was very subdued, a typically cloudy but warm summers day, with some mist on the tops of the hills, not ideal for taking pictures

Congratulations to the gardeners

Who needs the Waste?

A WASTE REDUCTION PROGRAME (to be followed by all in New Zealand?)

The Council is supplying households with a YELLOW BIN and a BLUE BIN for paper and glass recycling respectively. Then you could either purchase black rubbish bags or rent a RED BIN for all your rubbish. This is for Dunedin, but probably similar elsewhere.

The object of garbage management in your household should be such that you should strive to have as little as possible to put in THE YELLOW, BLUE and RED BINS at all times. How do you achieve this? Firstly you keep an additional four containers under your sink (I keep 2 litre plastic buckets) and come into the habit when you work in the kitchen to have these bins readily available and sort offal into these in the sequence described underneath, as much as possible.

The BLUE BINS are used for unbroken glass bottles and jars

The YELLOW BINS are for paper and cardboard, clean rigid plastic, tins, cans, aluminium trays, foil, aerosol cans, plastic bottles, containers and lids

The other four bins are :

The GARDEN COMPOST BIN (If you do not make garden, it is now the time to start 😉 ) What goes into this bin?
• Citrus off cuts and peels
• Onion off cuts and skins
• Coffee Grinds
• Tea Bags
• Egg shells
• Newspapers and other light paper materials

The POULTRY BIN (Chickens are a delight!) – What goes into this bin?
• All off cuts and left overs that a human being will normally eat and benefit from if stranded in the desert and starving. Remember chickens love meat and meat products. Cut these in bite size bits for the chickens, ducks, quails or what ever.

The RABBIT BIN (Bunnies are so cute!) – What goes into this bin?
• The same principle applies as for chickens, but only the vegetarian foods – if you can eat it, so can the rabbits. Depending on rabbit and chicken numbers and animal preferences, divide food between these two groups.

The WORM BIN (Get worms ;-))
• Anything vegetarian that the chickens and rabbits wont eat or do not like, goes to the worms, like banana peels, apple cores, hard or wilted outer leaves of vegetables, poisonous plants for animals like rhubarb leaves, etc. Do not put meat into this bin as it attracts vermin

The GARDEN COMPOST BIN – You should have a compost bin already if you are a gardener
• Any product that will ferment in one to two months if composted and did not fit into any of the above. Do not put meat into this bin as it attracts vermin

The RED RUBBISH BIN – The odd product may go into this, which is unavoidable
• Bones
• Plastic Bags

The idea is to have as little as possible to put into BLUE, YELLOW and RED BINS.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a working vegetable and fruit tree garden the problem is so much smaller and easier to handle. Try to buy as little as possible processed, tinned and bottled food – buy fresh and unprocessed if you do not produce it yourself. Should we follow the above simple steps, vast amounts of money will be saved, the human carbon footprint will be dramatically reduced with all the accompanying benefits. Last week was the National Day Against Waste in Italy. A project supported by the worldwide SLOWFOOD organisation. If it is in Italian, click “TRANSLATE” on the top of the page for English