Cooking Fresh Food - breaking the jar/can/bottle habit...

[Astrid]

Been doing so much better starting with Christmas, having a productive veggie garden helps so much. Basically, it is there so we use it the best we can, which sometimes is not easy as the garden is only new and there is a bit of mismatch with what comes through. Made a nice pea and ham soup with the leftover ham leg from Christmas that we froze down for later use.

Made a pav for Australia day, so we decided to make a nice mayo with the egg yolks. Both were a hit with everyone. Making more effort to make biscuits and cakes for the family (even though I am trying not to eat food like that myself). Sometimes I am thwarted by my pantry not having an ingredient, but that is slowly changing. Making my own rissoles more often now, but I do admit for grabbing chicken jumbos from Lenards to keep in the freezer, will need to experiment with my own version.

Just need to get the sausage parts for the Kitchenaid and we will have a go a our own sausages

BG - what a pain losing all that food in the freezer

[briggsy's girl]

BG - what a pain losing all that food in the freezer

yeah something of a PITA seeing we bought over $500 worth of meat just before Christmas, about $200 of veg from the markets same day, spent the next two days cooking and completely filled the freezer with meals

the big dog is loving it now though - he is getting all the meals. it was all frozen when we got home, but pwer had been out on 40degree+ days so it's just not worth the risk...

[christy]

ohhhh Astrid!! That's exciting about home-made sausages!!!!

I was thinking (as DH made the 5 minute chocolate cake for visitors..) about how we have few packaged things except for lunches for M at school. I have yet to get enough homemade things for M for lunch. One day a week she takes hummous (homemade) and carrot sticks and rice cakes with her sandwich. And another day is vege muffins with her sandwich, but still she needs more snacks and stuff.... being dairy free is difficult for snacks and trying to not use package ingredients.

[Astrid]

I find that homemade biscuits are eaten so quickly. I think next time I might need to bake up a couple batches (and hide one) so there is something for the end of the week.

DH had everyone jealous at work one day as he rocked up with silverside, parsley sauce and veg for lunch. Sauce was homemade of course with our own parsely

[christy]

Astrid I actually make a double batch and freeze half the dough for my biscuits for later! That way I don't have to make them twice. I have choc chip cookie dough in the freezer as well as the biscuit part of jam drops for later....

[TheBear]

It's great to see people getting into this - keep up the good work...

This was my New Year's Eve effort this year - Click here for pictures

[Rouge]

Delish Bear Nothing better than a spit We were actually talking about this a couple of weeks ago!

Bit of a warning though who might be vegetarian or have an aversion to cooking animals

Awesome work, next time send me an invite

[TheBear]

Fair point - if you are squeamish then I'd give the link a miss...

The comical thing was the preparation - the pig had been in the deep freeze in my lockup for a couple of months, so the night before I had several interesting learnings:-
1. It is much easier to put a freshly killed pig into the freezer than it is to extract a frozen pig that has molded to the shape of the freezer.
2. When transporting a frozen pig across town, think twice before sitting it in the passenger seat of the car and putting a seatbelt on it....think a third time before driving past an active RBT site!
3. How the f*&*( do you thaw a 55kg lump of pork overnight?

:-)

[thepixie]

I'm making my own marmalade at the moment. Damn that Bear, I never even used to eat marmalade and now he has me making it myself!