Author Archives: hotnsticky

We Are Cooking in the Heat

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This last few days of heat has really set the garden back. We are out early and late watering. I watered for an hour, early this morning, but by lunch time everything was drooping with this blast of oven temperature air.

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Because it is so baking hot, I have been out cutting bracken fronds and sticking them into the seedling beds to give some shade to the young transplanted seedlings. I transplant them in the evening when it is cool and give them overnight to settle in before the next hot day. They seem to be surviving OK so far.

I have been harvesting the summer excess. A bucket of beetroot, a bucket of cucumbers a bag chillies and another red cabbage.

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I decide to make pickles, I wash, chop and thinly slice the cabbage, then soak in a brine of 2 cups of salt to 1 litre of water. The cabbage collapses over night and in the morning it is completely submerged. I rinse it twice to get a lot of the salt out, then pack it in hot sterilised jars from the oven and cover with hot pickling vinegar, then seal down the lids.  I hear them ‘pop’, and vacuum seal themselves when they cool, as I go about dealing with the cucumbers. They have been sliced and soaked in brine too. I rinse them and pack them into hot jars, cover with more of the pickling vinegar.

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While I’m at it, I stuff another large jar with whole chillies, that I have sliced open on the side to allow the pickling liquid in. My final job is to peel, then slice a big boiler full of cooked beetroot. They are a really wonderful colour. I bring them back to the boil for a minute or two in their original juice, I get 4 jars packed tight. I fish out a chilli, some cloves, pepper corns and a small piece of cinnamon bark to add to each jar. Then cover with the last of the vinegar.

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I have to go back to work tomorrow in the kiln factory. I have 7 kilns ordered, so far this year already. I’m booked out till September.  I have to get busy. My summer break is over. I started back a couple of weeks ago to get an early start on all these orders, but then I sliced my knuckle open. So that was that till now. With the scorching heat, I don’t fancy working in the tin shed that I call the factory. But needs as needs must. I think that I’ll be running the sprinkler on the roof during the hottest part of the day.

Heath Cullen House Concert

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We hosted a house concert last week for Heath Cullen. A great favourite of ours. He is a lovely person and a very good musician. Every one seems pleased with the concert. We had our lounge room in the Old School Building packed to chockers with 38 people in the house. We were very pleased with the turn-up. Everyone brought a plate to share and there was, as there often is, way too much food to eat on the night and we had to ask our friends to take much of the left-overs back with them, as we have all the food that we need in our vegetable garden. We want for little.

Live music is such a pleasure. Especially with someone like Heath, who has so much talent and has so much to offer. We asked everyone to arrive by 6.30 for a 7.oopm start. Heath was here at 5 to set up and we ended up re-arranging the chairs to suit his personal choice of performance space, We had an early dinner with him and a few friends who helped us to clean out the house and set up the chairs.

We had two 45 min sets of songs with a half hour break in-between, which got a bit stretched with everyone eating , drinking and talking animatedly with each other. After the show, half of our guests stayed on the chat and the night ended going on till quite late, with Heath leaving about 11.00pm.

A thoroughly enjoyable event and night. We will be doing it again in a few months with another musician that we like. I’m keen to have Lucie Thorne here some time. Check out her web site. <luciethorne.com>. ‘The Age’ newspaper reviewer, had this to say about Lucie.

“Thorne writes some of the most simple and beautiful songs you will hear” **** The Age.

Heath is keen to come back again next year. And we’re keen to have him here.

His three  CD’s have been on regular play all this week.

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Check out Heath’s web site;  <heathcullen.com>

A realy nice person, a great performer, lovely music, good company, intimate space and our solid brick, old class room, has excellent acoustics. What more could you want ?

Of Passata and Porcelain

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The summertime heat brings on the tomatoes, zucchini, chillis, aubergines and sweet basil. They love this hot weather, as long as they get the water that they need. This means I have to start making passata sauce. We are now harvesting more than we can eat each day. This is just the start. At the moment we have to harvest the tomatoes each day in the small numbers that are ripening. It has taken a week to build up sufficient quantity to fill the boiler. This is the first batch of passata. Soon it will build up to 2 batches a week. I will continue to make this sort of tomato sauce right through the summer and into the autumn.

Tonight I’m making a small batch to start with for our dinner, so I’m including a lot of zucchinis and aubergines as well. This will be a sort of variation on the ratatouille theme. All these vegetables grow together, they ripen together and they taste so good together.

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I bring it all to the boil and simmer it for a few minutes, just enough to soften the zucchinis and egg plant chunks, then scoop out a bowl full each for dinner. It’s summer on a plate!

After dinner, I add in all of the other chopped tomatoes and cook it down into a sauce. After it cools I put it all through the mouli sieve to remove all the seeds and skins, then reheat and seal in pre-heated jars to keep for the winter.

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The other thing that I like to do in this summer heat is to make porcelain from my collected stones. They are so hard that I need to put them through the rock crusher first thing to reduce them down to grit, then I can sieve the grit and re-process the larger pieces to get it all to pass through a 3 mm screen, then into the ball mill to be reduced to ultra fine grade.

 From this I can make glazes and/or more throwing body, as required.

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Cucumber Soup and Zucchini Fritters

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A real favourite of Nina’s at this time of year is cold cucumber soup. The cucumbers have responded to the heat and our regular watering and are starting to produce in excess of what we can eat fresh in salads.

Nina doesn’t have a recipe as such, it’s really just a way of thinking about using up cucumbers. It’s cooling and soothing and a little bit tangy, and you get to use up a lot of cucumbers.

You can use half a dozen small, or 3 large cucumbers. Peeled and seeded if they are older and larger, but all in as they come if they are young.

She starts with one of our red onions from the plait hanging in the kitchen, but you could also use a mild white one. You can add green spring onion tops finely chopped too if you like. Add as much as you like the taste of. (and never end a sentence with a preposition! )

A big bunch of cilantro or coriander leaves finely chopped. The first spring planting of coriander is bolting away to seed heads just now, but there is enough to pick from it and the new, young seedlings of the second planting are only just emerging.

Add a small bunch of mint leaves, finely chopped.Then add a couple of cloves of garlic, or six! depending on their relative strength and your taste expectations. I really love the stuff, so she puts in a lot. It tastes better, i.e. stronger flavour  if you smash it with the side of a knife or extrude it through a garlic press. The mashed fibres give off more flavour. I think that the fresh raw garlic really makes this soup. That and the coriander. The cucumbers are really there just to fill it out. Next, add some finely chopped chilli to taste and although I don’t use salt, if you want it, add it to the degree that you want your arteries hardened. Go for it!

Add the Juice of a lemon or preferably a lime – or two.

Put the whole lot in the blender with half a tin of coconut milk. If you don’t have a blender use a food processor, if you don’t have electricity, use a hand whisk! Add a couple of spoonfuls of plain greek yoghurt, if you don’t have greek yoghurt, add some Turkish – that’s close enough! Use what you have that seems right, taste as you go to check. Sometime we use sour cream, just to use it up if it’s open and that’s what you have in the fridge. You can use a blend of all three. Use what you have. Experiment! If you don’t have a fridge, eat it warm, but it’s not quite the same. Cold is better in this hot weather.

You can serve it with a little bit of olive oil on top and some paprika sprinkled on, or just plain.

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Janine mixes up and alters the recipe each time she makes it to keep it lively and interesting, sometimes adding chopped dill, parsley or tarragon leaves. Sometimes with only yoghurt and other times with just coconut milk. It works just the same.

It’s always different and always delicious. A perfect soup for a hot summers day. Nina has made this fantastic soup to cheer me up as I’ve managed to hurt myself during the day.

Zucchini Fritters

Take 3 or 4 zucchinis, depending on size, 1 potato for a little filling and binding starch and a small white onion. Grate them all into a big bowl, add a handful of flour and 2 eggs, some pepper and whatever herbs that you prefer. Today Nina adds Thai basil, parsley and a small amount of mint. Mix it all together in the bowl, then press off any excess juice. She pan frys them in a little olive oil. We have them with cucumbers in yoghurt and a few sliced fresh tomatoes. Delicious.

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The next morning, my finger is not red or throbbing, so I have done a good job of cleaning it. I’m confident that it will heal well now. No need to go to hospital. I just can’t use that hand to grip anything for a while.

An enforced day off. Something rare for me.

The First Ratatouille of the Summer

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Ratatouille is one of those recipies that has a lot of different interpretations. It’s that time of year again, when all the necessary ingredients are all ripe together at the one time in our garden. We simply use what we have that is ripe on the day.

Today that is egg plant, capsicums, chillis, zucchini and red ripe tomatoes. I brown some of our onions and garlic that we have hanging in plaits in the kitchen and out on the verandah. Add in all the chopped ingredients, along with a small jar of tomato sugo that I bottled in the autumn. A few sprigs of sweet basil are added in and the whole lot is simmered together for a few minutes, until softened and then served. It couldn’t be easier or more immediate and wholesome. Not to mention delicious!

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A Decade-long Project, Finally Completed

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For the past ten years or so, I have been working on a long-term project, to save every champagne, prosecco and sparkling wine, cork capsule that we opened and make Xmas decorations out of them. I decided, for better or worse, that I would make a string of capsules hung all around the front verandah of our house.

In the first few years, when it was only a few feet long. I was able to take it down after the Summer Solstice holiday was over and put it away till next year, but as it grew longer year by year. I found that it was very easy to get all tangled up with itself. It became a tiresome job to un-tangle it each year and re-hang it. As we were adding to the length by about 4 feet or 1.5 metres a year. It soon became apparent that I should leave them up permanently. So it has become a fixture ever since. No-one sees it anymore, it’s become just part of the house.

So, I was very pleased today, to finally complete the bling-string by adding this years collection of sparkling wine capsules and found that it finally reached the other end of the verandah.

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Now that I’ve completed this epic art installation. I think that i will start on there BBQ area. It could use a little bit of sparkle too!

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

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It’s an ill wind that  blows nobody any good. Citrus stinkbug up-date

My friend down the road just emailed me to say that he had been doing just the same as me. Getting out there and squashing the citrus bugs, but unlike me, he has taken the precaution of wearing the rubber gloves. Unfortunately, although he wears glasses, one of the little buggers managed to give him a serious squirt in the eye from an oblique angle. He ended up in hospital. His eye all swollen and weeping. Unable to open it. The hospital said that the caustic juice had corroded the surface of his eye! Poor bugger!

I’ve never been squirted in the eye by these stinky little effers. I can only imagine how painful it is. But I have coped a little spray on my neck and face and it really burns the delicate parts of my skin that might be exposed. The most pain that I have suffered at the hands, or should I say butts, of these little squirty critters is when I had a cut on my fingers and the acidic juice get into the cut. You can’t wash it out fast enough and it never really goes away for hours.

I go about on my rounds of the citrus trees this morning, I only find 5 victims. However, I’m wearing rubber gloves and clear protective goggles this time. A lesson well learnt by my friend and passed on in a timely manner. I see that ants are completely immune to the caustic acid juices of the stink bugs. All of yesterdays corpses are covered in ants, being dissected and devoured. It’s an ill wind that  blows nobody any good!

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The Summer Vegetables have Arrived

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In these last few dying days of the old year, the heat has set in and all the summer vegetables that were dawdling along last month, are now racing in the heat and we have to water the garden every day. We had our first red tomato before the Solstice, as well as  beans, zucchinis and our first aubergines. There are lettuces shooting up, along with the radishes, mesclun greens and rocket. We have enjoyed the first meal of pan-fried, stuffed, zucchini flowers. It’s a rich and varied, fresh and crisp menu these days, with plenty of garlic, chilli and sweet basil. Roll on the summer days of veggie stir fries, BBQ’s and salads. Not to mention our blueberries, blackberries, golden berries, peaches and apricots for our breakfast fruit salads, all given a little bit of a lift with a squeeze of lime juice.

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Citrus Stink Bugs Move In

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The weather is hot and the insects are very active. There are termites swarming in the evenings. Suddenly, I realise that the citrus stink bugs have moved in. Usually, they come in small numbers and are green. They slowly change over a week or two to a copper colour. Then finally to a shiny black. This is when they are sexually mature and start to breed. I hadn’t noticed them in the lead up as I might usually do. I guess that I’ve been too busy lately. I’ve been watering the citrus trees, but I didn’t notice them.

Now that I have noticed them, I start to crush them with my fingers. There are lots of ways to deal with them, but quickly reaching in to the foliage and crushing them between the fingers is the fastest and most effective. I have a 98% hit rate. Very few are fast enough to get away. If they do, they don’t go far and usually land on another branch where I track them down and finish them off.

If i don’t deal with them, they will breed up and eventually suck all the juices out of the new growth, killing it. Also sucking  the life out of the small fruit, until it drops of. So, with all the new growth dead and all the small fruit gone. this sets the tree back a whole year. Left unchecked, it’s a disaster that means hardly any fruit and an stunted tree.

I finish off every bug that I can see. So much so that my hands turn yellow with the acrid juices that the bugs spray out as some sort of protection. I have to be careful to keep my eyes clear, so as not to get sprayed in the eye. My hands are quite stained and they stink, but the job is mostly done. I will now return every day to the citrus grove to clean up any strays that I might have missed. I get 100 or so the first day and maybe another 30 or so the next. I don’t like killing things, but this is a case of defending my food supply. I can’t get them all, there will be some that get away and go on to breed, so that there is always another generation every year.

The second day I take out another 20 or so more. This time, I take the precaution of wearing rubber gloves. I’m not too sure what long term effect this caustic stink bug juice will have on my skin. It certainly smells awful!

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How Many Potters Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

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How many potters does it take to change a light bulb?

The answer is, only one. But it takes about one hour and lots of frustration. Actually it just took me over 2 hrs, because I couldn’t believe that such a simple job could be designed to be made to be so difficult and monumentally stupid by a car designer, so I spent an hour on the internet looking up what other people had done to solve the problem.

The problem is that the low beam head light bulb on our car wore out after ten years of use. I have no problem with this. It’s the first thing to have worn out on the car. A Mitsubishi Colt hatchback. It’s been a really good, reliable, fuel efficient, little car. Changing it should be simple. The light bulb can just be twisted and pulled out and unplugged. A new one plugged in and twisted back into the socket, BUT and its a BIG BUT. You can’t reach the back of the head light with your hand. It’s been designed to be located into such a cramped space, that access to the back of the light is not possible from the open bonnet.

The owners manual makes light of this. Just rotate the steering wheel in the opposite direction to make space in the wheel well, remove the liner and replace the bulb as shown in the illustration. It sounds so easy – just do it. The only problem is that it isn’t. It isn’t easy at all! When you get down to it, it is a lot more involved. So I read it up on the web. And yes, it is a lot more involved. Very much more.

One mechanic wrote that it is much quicker and easier to remove the entire front of the car. Front bumper and other fittings , then take out the entire headlight enclosure. It is so simple to swap the bulb once you have the entire fitting in your hands! He claimed that it only took him 1 hr! I doubt that, unless you do it all the time and are used to it.

I decided to follow the manual instructions, and go in the back way, through the wheel arch. Using the added advice from the web chat line and the 15 minute video of high lights on You Tube. I like watching highlights! It’s my favourite way to take in the Boxing day cricket test match too!

So, this is what you have to do. You have to jack the car up on one side, as it is too low and cramped to get in there if you don’t. Good advice from the web. Remove the front tire. remove the wheel arch liner, or at least most of it – about 3/4. This involves snapping off he plastic rivets that hold it in. These all need to be replaced, but the manual doesn’t tell you that. I’m a careful sort of guy and take my time with these things, but I could only manage to salvage one of the plastic gadgets for reuse. It doesn’t help that you have to lay on your back, in a very uncomfortable position, in a restricted space, with all the years of accumulated dirt and sand dropping in your eyes while you work.

Next, you peel back the liner and twist it out-of-the-way. Finally you get to see the back of the head light fitting, but you can only manage to fit one hand up there in the narrow gap.

You simply have to release a wire clip, by twisting lowering and pulling. Simple on the kitchen table, using two hands. But not so easy in the dark, up in the small cramped space allocated. I say in the dark, because when you insert your hand up there, it blocks out almost all of your vision, so the operation has to be done by Braille. Oh! And the other thing that I forgot to mention, is that you are not allowed to touch the light globe with your hands! You must always hold it by the mounting socket only, or it will explode!

I finally get the old unit released so that the fitting can hang down on its connecting wires, to where I can get two hands onto it. I have to wear plastic gloves at this point, to avoid touching the bulb. I swap it over, but it won’t go back in to where it just came out of. It sort of goes in but the wire clip won’t go back into place to secure it. I manage to tear holes in 3 rubber gloves trying to manage this. I decide that there must be a left and right, or up and down option for plugging the bulb into the socket, but it is too dark to see if there is and the wires aren’t long enough to bring it into view. I just take it all apart and try again in reverse. Non of this is mentioned in the manual or on the webinar.

This does work however, I swap my thin sensitive rubber gloves that I can feel through, for a pair of thicker, plastic, work gloves that are clumsy but more robust, and by now I know what I ought to be feeling/sensing through the gloves. The bulb goes in, the mounting eventually goes back in, and the clip finally gets secured. I replace the wheel arch liner with the one remaining good plastic rivet. I can’t drive anywhere in the car like this. So then I hop in my truck and drive down to Mittagong to get a packet of new plastic clips/rivets, but they only come in blister packs off 3! So I have to buy a dozen in 4 boxes. All unnecessary land fill.

I replace everything as it should be, refit the tyre and lower the car back down. It costs as much for the plastic rivets as it does for the bulb. But most of all, I have just wasted 2 hours of my life that I will never get back, and had to drive 100 kms! Someone once told me that the garage charged an embarrassing amount to replace a blown bulb. Based on this experience I can understand why.

Maybe next time, I’ll try dismantling the front of the car and go in that way? At least I’ll be standing upright! There is bound to be a next time, as the car is now 10 years old and the other side bulbs will be getting old too. At least I’ll know what to expect. I’ll buy all the plastic clips as well along with the bulbs. I console my self with the knowledge that I’ve just saved myself a few hundred dollars. This car has never been to a garage to be worked on. I’ve managed to keep it all tidy and well serviced for all these years. It’s all just a tiny part of being self-reliant and living frugally.

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