Hi All,
A terrifying thing has just happened…I headed to my “Blog” folder on my PC to look for the beginnings of a blog post. I usually have one or two ideas stuffed up my collective sleeve (I collect things in my sleeves so I am allowed to abuse the vernacular, mostly dirt and dog hair but whatchagonnado when you live on 4 acres out in the bush?) but today I found nada. Nada isn’t a good start folks…nada…zip…zilch…whatever you want to call it means that narf7 has to pull her finger out and get cracking with something for her dear constant readers to pore over with a microscope (you don’t? I am assured many do! 😉 ) for a Wednesday. Hump day arrives and narf7 has responded by being in recovery from her complete and utter addiction to Pinterest last week and by actually doing some work for once. Yesterday I spent the day removing rope and sundry “things” from a massive length of ex-fish-farm netting. The sundry things consisted of a huge amount of sludgy green algae (I removed it with that collective sleeve I mentioned earlier…), assorted chook manure that I kept finding thanks to the chooks being out now and most curious about what I was doing, several white plastic rings that I have NO idea what they were meant for but that made Steve excited to be the new owner of (for “own” read “throw in shed to make more mess…) along with so much thick nylon rope people are going to start talking about us unless I decide to find a tutorial for how to make a hammock that has a half-life.
Here’s the view from the deck looking over the water at 7.30am on Monday morning and Steve just caught the sun coming up…
And this is exactly the same spot the last image was taken but at 7am on Tuesday morning…it doesn’t look like the same place does it?! Anyone else think that we are in for a bit of rain in the near future? ;). Note, neither of these images have been Photo shopped.
We have been busy collecting wood and waiting for rain. We have various piles of debris on Serendipity Farm that we would like to imagine that we left there for the specific purpose of allowing the leaves to fall from the branches and mulch the denuded soil, harvesting smaller branches for a hugelkultur base for our soon to be realised ENORMOUS fully enclosed veggie garden (typing that just made me tired…) and for harvesting the larger portions for making Brunhilda the equivalent of a tasting platter. In reality we just piled them up whilst doing the metaphorical equivalent of putting our fingers in our ears and yelling “I CAN’T HEAR YOU” loudly…over and over again. Now we have to deal with our metaphoricals in a more physical way and after poring over ideas to make me look like I am a clever and savvy horticulturalist, environmentalist and permaculturist (all the “ists”) I came up with the idea to use the big bits for firewood. It’s amazing how much wood you actually get out of piles of ex shrubs. Steve and I know…we have been harvesting it all week.
Ferals enjoying the autumn leaves
The maple tree has finally started dropping it’s lovely red leaves
The weather for our winter so far (all 5 days of it) has been that glorious mix of crispy squeaky cold mornings and lovely sunny days. I love weather like this. It makes you feel clear headed and full of purpose (even when you aren’t and are just dragging along behind an overexcited dog hell bent on urinating on every shrub he sees). Today we cut more ex-fish farm netting and we collect more firewood. It might not sound interesting but when it all comes together it is both productive and delicious. I have been cooking a lot lately. Lots of wholesome soups and delicious Stromboli’s and my mind is starting to turn to food adventures. I am considering making a sweet Stromboli. How does adding some more sweetener to the dough and some kind of dried fruit and sweet spice sound? How about when I flatten it out (easiest dough to work with folks…) I spread over some grated apple and cinnamon sugar or grated chocolate and orange zest or jam and more sultanas, but this time they have been soaked in rum? Then I roll it all up, tuck in the ends and bake it for the sake of a happy man. I could call it “Stromboli Poly” and could serve it with custard and thick pouring cream. I reckon it’s a date!
As you can see, we aren’t short of a few leaves here on Serendipity Farm. Do you like where we chose to put the craypot we got for $5 from the progressive garage sale?
A close up of a vegans nightmare 😉
I got up at 2am this morning. I don’t know if it was the pressing need to write a blog post or just that my mind is a bit twitchy today. I am off to my daughters this weekend and my brain has gone into planning overload. I want to bake up a storm. On the phone yesterday my youngest daughter Bethany told me that they had bought me a tray of friand pans and had also bought me some Matcha green tea powder. They couldn’t find me any locally so they imported it from China! The food miles are prohibitive but apparently I have a certificate with my bag of fluffy green powder to assure me that it is “Genuine Green Tea”. I can only begin to imagine why they would feel the need to issue a certificate with their green tea…I don’t want to imagine it any more…all roads lead to adultered milk powder with stirred in spirulina ;). We are going to have a great time this weekend and I am taking the ingredients for making waffles over with me. I am also going to take the ingredients for friand. Apparently “Friand” is a peculiarly Aussie word for the French “Financier”. They are one and the same thing but we Aussies love to take something and make it our own (just ask the New Zealanders, they have been saying that we pilfered lamingtons, pavlovas and goodness only knows what else from them for years! 😉 ). I have been lusting after friand pans for a while now and whilst I can’t justify buying a set of pans for a single use, I CAN accept them as a gift 😉
Steve has had Stromboli’s on a regular basis ever since we trialled them for The Virtual Vegan Potluck last month. As an Omni, he has smoked csabai and bacon and feta on his Stromboli’s along with grated cheddar cheese which I hadn’t grated on yet in this picture. This is the Stromboli pre-roll…
And here it is post roll. You get a good look at our kitchen in the background. That board resting on the floor was designed to fit snuggly over the gas cooktop on that section of cupboards to the left at the rear of this image so that we can use it for extra preparation space. We don’t use this cooktop much in winter as Brunhilda is on pretty much 24/7 so it’s a good idea to utilise the wasted space when we need it the most, when we are up to our armpits in bread dough etc. over the cold winter months.
I have to report to you that Steve will be my guest poster on Saturday. I was twitching about having to get this post AND Saturdays post done yesterday and Steve gallantly came to the rescue. Steve is an attention hog folks…don’t let his mild mannered beatific smile lure you into any false pretences that this man is a benign sideliner…no sooner is my back turned then he has plans for this space. Apparently he is going to give you a history lesson for Tasmania “Steve style”. I just wanted to mention here that I can’t be held responsible for any content that my wonderful quirky Aquarius husband inserts here on Saturday…just hold onto your rollercoaster seat and get ready for a decidedly “side left” experience! I have given him free range so long as he doesn’t go on about religion and politics. He seemed a bit crestfallen there as just about everything going on in Tasmania at the moment has something to do with both and that is where he got the idea about history…you can’t go wrong with historical events…they have already been and Wikipedia has more than enough of them for the average bear. He didn’t really like what Wikipedia said. It bored him. He is easily bored so he is going to rectify that by adding in his own interpretation on events. Good luck…make SURE to affix your safety belts and don’t tell me you weren’t warned when I get back here on Wednesday 😉
Glad allowed us to take a few shots of her driveway when we were talking to her the other day. See all of those leaves? That’s about 1/8th of the leaves to be raked and claimed by yours truly :). I love it when helping your neighbour is also helping yourself :). The road you can see at the end of Glad’s driveway drops off straight into the river on the other side.
Aren’t these oaks lovely? The minister for the Auld Kirk church next door to us was buried in Glad’s garden somewhere as her home used to be the church manse. I wonder if Glad knows where he is?
I’m back. Did you miss me? I have been outside collecting wood and cutting net while the sun shone which wasn’t all that long to be honest but at least we were able to get some of what we wanted done. Steve has been wrestling with his chainsaws which have both apparently gone on strike. I decided to retreat to the safety of the house to protect my delicate ears from the ensuing stream of profanity and decided to finish off this post. I have fed Audrey and she is ruminating nicely on the kitchen bench. I like to give her a little bit of time out in the warmth of the kitchen to make up for the fact that she pretty much lives in the fridge. I have also transferred my milk kefir grains from their twice weekly dunking in “real” milk to a container of homemade soy milk made from organic beans and date paste. The grains LOVE date paste. I have been watching them closely to see if there was going to be any negative connotations with putting them into non-dairy milk on a long term basis but haven’t seen anything yet. If anything, they appear to grow faster when they live like this. I guess they know that they are going to have a nice holiday in regular milk every couple of days and have decided to make the best of it. I get the feeling that certain sections of the yeast/bacteria symbiosis that forms the complex relationship we know as kefir grains love nothing more than fruit sugar. I had read that you can double ferment kefir by adding fruit to the finished result for the kefir grains to continue to feed on. I use date paste because they seem to like it a lot. They actively feed on it whenever they are added to the date sweetened soymilk and I have started to get adventurous with my combinations
I was talking to Roxy, our friend who lives down the road on the way past her home yesterday and as she volunteers in the local Beaconsfield thrift shop I asked her to keep her eyes open for any hand knitted jumpers that I could buy and unpick for the wool. She said “hang on a minute” and came out with a bag of wool. This bag contains 5 balls of a lovely khaki green wool. Not sure what I am going to make with it but I think I might make Steve some fingerless gauntlets
She also gave me a large bag of hand spun wool that she had spun herself. I will be making myself some gauntlets out of this gorgeousness. I love sharing. We gave Roxy and Guy a whole lot of potted plants to plant out on their property and Roxy, in turn has been very generous back with veggies and this lovely wool. Developing community allows one mans trash to become another mans treasure. Roxy said that she had knitted herself enough beanies, gloves and scarves to last her a lifetime and I was welcome to the rest of the wool. I will try my hardest to do it justice. Any suggestions for patterns (pointing me in the right direction online) would be most gratefully listened to 🙂
I am not all that sure that my adventurousness is being rewarded. I have combined the finished kefir with some homemade coconut milk that I made a while ago (from fresh coconut meat not dried) and promptly put into the cold part of the fridge and promptly forgot all about. I found it the other day when I was hunting for cheese for a sandwich for Steve. I opened the top and it didn’t smell “bad” so I decided to throw it into the kefir mix. Not so sure it was a good move…it tastes nice but it seems to have added something explosive to my kefir mix. The kefir has started to bulge alarmingly in its 3 litre plastic milk container. I opened it this morning and the lid blew off! It is über fizzy, tastes lovely and as I have been adding more date paste to keep the mixture fermenting it is certainly using what I give it. I figure that I have made a sort of date, coconut and soy hooch. I tossed in a bit of leftover almond and oat milk this morning and the kefir assimilated it like the Borg. I don’t know what I have created but I feel like Dr Frankenstein once he lost control of his creation…it may yet go over to the dark side and need euthanising but for now, it’s great fun and so long as I remember to release the gasses from the finished kefir every time I go to the fridge, I shouldn’t have to clean up an almighty mess any day soon. (Note to self…remember to use it all BEFORE you go away for the weekend… 😉 )
This is what “real eggs” look like folks. Those feathered Somalian pirates do have some benefits. The problem is, it is getting increasingly harder to find where the crafty minxes are laying!
Remember that tree that rotted and dropped and is being propped up by another tree right next to the house? Well it’s still there…sigh…
The chainsaw just started and kept going so I figure that means “SUCCESS!” and it might be safe to step outside and check if the bit of drizzle that we have had so far is adding anything to our rainwater quotient. Steve now sounds like he is trying to play “The Chainsaw Song” by Jackyl (a band from the 80’s folks…I hadn’t heard of them either…) on one of his long suffering chainsaws. To illustrate what I am talking about here is a link to the song…watch it, and then you will understand what I mean…incidentally…I would like to apologise for the 30 seconds of “Kardashians” that you will be forced to watch before the actual video commences…please feel free to get a bucket in readiness for the inevitable vomit response that will highly likely occur…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52p9jc-gOo
Now let’s get something straight from the get-go…Steve and I both LOVE this song. We are apparently both Sidmouth Rednecks in the making but manage to stifle it most of the time. You can be sure that we are both jumping around the kitchen for the duration of the song (and I dare you to remain seated…its catchy folks 😉 )…aside from that you might be forgiven for thinking that Bon Scott from ACDC has somehow taken possession of the lead singer of Jackyl…he hasn’t. The man’s name is “Jessie James Dupree” (somehow incredibly fitting) and aside from being a pretty good and most athletic singer in a redneck band, you may have seen him in the heinous approximation of a television show called “Full Throttle Saloon”. Much like Mr David Lee Roth who is also an athletic and very good singer, Mr Dupree seems to be squandering his talents. At least Mr Lee Roth is driving an ambulance…Mr Dupree seems hell bent on getting Mr Lee Roth as much work as he can handle.
This is an Osteospermum daisy. It is my nemesis. I decided to share this photo with you because they do look pretty but they aren’t welcome here along with their Vinca major mates!
Since we cleared out all of the competing undergrowth from around this lovely Protea it hasn’t stopped flowering. It’s probably the happiest plant on Serendipity Farm
Steve appears to have a desire to become an aging redneck. His hero is a now deceased man called Popcorn Sutton. Popcorn Sutton made the best moonshine in the U.S. Steve is in awe of the mention of his name. He has an uncanny ability to dance just like Popcorn Sutton and wants me to video him doing his hillbilly shuffle so that we can rotoscope him for posterity. Should this strange (and somewhat disturbing) video ever eventuate, I promise to share it with you all here on The Road to Serendipity, cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye folks! By the way…what is it about half naked men with long hair that appeals to me girls? Give me an 80’s Pearl Jam clip and I am gone! ;).
Here is a “Doodied up” version of Popcorn Sutton dancing…marvel at those moves folks and know that Steve has been studying them intently and can replicate them in minutiae…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E575kEtKRBs
Finally we see fungus! Anyone who has been hanging around Serendipity Farm and this blog for long enough will know of my undying love and respect for my fungal companions here on planet Earth. I have NO idea what this fungus is, all I know is that they tend to grow on tree stumps and rotting wood in large clumps like this.
Isn’t this pretty? My love for fungi knows no bounds 🙂
I might make this a slightly shorter post than usual and leave it here folks. It is starting to get late and it’s already almost dark at 2.45 in the afternoon! I have my evening routines to start at 3 when we feed the dogs and everything flows from there till about 7pm when we get to both sit down (after racing around after animals all over the place) and have a well-earned rest. We think Frank and his wife have headed off to Canada as they have been strangely quiet on the Western Front. We did see a good friend who used to work at the Alanvale Polytechnic when we attended horticulture lectures there for 2 years (Hi Nat :o) ) who used to be the head groundskeeper. He wasn’t ANYTHING like Groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons and was more like Mr MacGyver (Mr Smarty-pants fix it with string…) from the hit television series of the same name that back in 1985. Corey could fix ANYTHING and was/is the most laid back person I have ever met. Today we saw him driving a truck load of gravel for a new house being built right next door to Frank’s house. So we have impunity to see just how many roosters we can populate Serendipity Farm with in the 6 months that Frank will be absent without leave. Let’s take some bets on how many shall we? The winner takes them all! 😉
theroadtoserendipity 
Jun 05, 2013 @ 23:06:51
I always find it fascinating how the seasons, daylight times, and weather can be so varied around the world, when I am just getting up here in Oklahoma, USA… and another rainstorm is upon us! We are just leaving spring behind and heading into the long, hot, blistering months of summer.
I had the Jackyl CD for many years until a nephew became infatuated with it and asked if he could have it. I grew up loving the hair bands of the 70’s and 80’s! I know every generation thinks their era of music was the greatest… and I’m no different. The music of the 70’s and 80’s was unmatched!
Lucky me… I did not have to suffer the Kardashian clip. I have never watched an episode of that, nor have I ever been tempted. I’m always amazed at the hollowness of some programming, and stupefied that people actually watch those shows!
Nice post and lovely photos, as always, Fran. Have a lovely weekend visiting… and I look forward to a most interesting post from Steve! 😀
Jun 06, 2013 @ 03:15:23
Steve is becoming very secretive about his post on Saturday so hopefully he isn’t plotting on taking over the blog! Steve and the Somalian pirate chooks ruling the high seas of The Road to Serendipity!!! The mind boggles 😉 glad you didn’t have to suffer the Kardashians. I haven’t ever seen an episode and watch very little T.V. but they are insidious and seem to bleed into everything. Crap t.v. is a big problem…once one show “makes it” (say Mythbusters) suddenly the television executives who have very little imagination but also very shallow pockets want to cash in on the action. Much like music and movies, what works once will be milked until it is past dry. If you look like someone famous, you sound a bit like someone famous, you have the same style as someone famous and you get enough hits from people watching your youtube channels you will be given a contract whether you are actually any good or not. I must be getting old…I remember when bands were original but then I was born in the 60’s and you are right, the hair bands WERE the best 🙂 glad you loved Jackyl too. Steve and I only discovered them when watching one of the music channels and the chainsaw song came on. LOVED IT! 🙂 Its such a pity the lead singer is such a deadbeat now on that awful television series full throttle saloon (ech). Oh well, at least Mr Lee Roth is trying to save lives 😉
Jun 05, 2013 @ 23:31:32
Having a giggle about Popcorn Sutton. Sounds crazy enough to be one of my rellies.
Jun 06, 2013 @ 03:17:13
I reckon he just might be Kaye…Popcorn Sutton first alerted Steve to the fact that it just might be possible to make booze yourself ;). Not that we have the resources or the energy (or the cornmeal) to do so BUT I think it’s something about those Appalachian mountain folk that just gets you in the solar plexus, Dolly Parton…we love you! 🙂
Jun 06, 2013 @ 00:25:38
That vegan’s nightmare,..looks so tasty to me! Now, I would like to eat it straight away, please!!!!
Jun 06, 2013 @ 03:18:09
lol I was hoping to see if I had any of those “rabid” crazy vegans reading my blog that would tear me into shreds for posting that image…my trap didn’t work 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 01:17:35
Friands! Are we friands, Fran? I had to look them up; they look divine. Almond flavored, yum. We are inching toward the Solstice and here it is light at 4:30am and not dark ’til 9:30pm! Long luscious days and we fall into bed exhausted. The B.O. is also wrestling with chainsaws. It’s not pretty. But I, too, love dancing boys with long hair. 🙂 Popcorn looks just like the B.O. dancing!!!! I also like your idea of a spousal post, and anxiously await Steve’s history lesson. Have fun with the daughters! 🙂
Jun 06, 2013 @ 03:26:44
I think we just might be “friands” Christi…little bites of glorious flavour infused with real flavour and once you finish it you want more! 🙂 “Financiers” are the very same thing but that’s what the French call them (and they invented them so I guess that’s what they are! 😉 ). I am trying to talk Steve into illustrating his post. Some of the best drawcards for this blog have been Steve’s illustrated posts! I have a video taken on my camera of Steve dancing just like Popcorn Sutton. I think that it might not just be us that are twins Christi, I think Steve and the B.O. might be as well! Hey, maybe we are the exact opposite “propositions” on each side of the earth, maybe our humble little farmlets are the Qi for the world? Don’t get me started on my “balance” theories ;). I am going to (hopefully) have a ball. You know what it’s like with adult daughters. They just get better and better as they age like fine wines :). I might teach them to dance like Popcorn Sutton 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 02:46:48
So many beautiful colours in your photos today – and wool! You lucky lady 🙂 And Stromboli Poly too…which reminds me, you need to share some more of your sourdough recipes with us as I think I’ve now cracked the bread making and want to use it for other things. I need a name for mine too! Looking forward to reading a blog for a fellow Aquarian, I’m sure it will be full of moments of distraction if he’s anything like me. Have a great week!
Jun 06, 2013 @ 03:21:46
It will be full of moments of distraction and great tracts of bad spelling (although spell check helps 😉 ) and wild crazy gesticulating via the vernacular. I will do my best to recover the shards of what remains when I return, armed to the back teeth with photos of “What narf7 did on her mother-and-daughter weekend” ;). You need to give your sourdough a name. I am sure that Audrey would have given up LONG ago living in the frozen tundras of the Serendipity Farm fridge if she wasn’t given the most resilient name of Ms Hepburn (or that flower that needed feeding in The Little shop of horrors which is what I REALLY named her after 😉 ). I just found a recipe for coconut sourdough muffins that look amazing. I might have to start baking a few of my recipes and posting them here. Do you think anyone would be interested?
Jun 06, 2013 @ 03:43:14
I love Audrey Hepburn but I always imagined yours was called Audrey from LSH 🙂 Oh yes, I think others would def be interested in your recipes…please! Looking forward to readign Steve’s post and then to reading all about what you got up to on your visit. Am now thinking of names for my starter…not sure if it’s male or female, I think probably female….
Jun 06, 2013 @ 03:53:41
My first starter was called “Herman”. I had a great uncle Herman who was a wonderful little short stocky man who was in the navy. He had a girl and a port for every equation and he travelled the world leaving his mark all over the place (and probably his progeny but we won’t go into that here! 😉 ). He was a quintessential “Aussie” and my first starter was all alcohol and no yeast…much like Great uncle Herman to be honest! Herman is in stasis on my pantry shelf. I just couldn’t bring myself to kill him. He might only be lactic acid…he might have made vinegar bricks that the puritans would have been proud of BUT he felt like a relative and so I just couldn’t flush him :). Lets just hope he never breaks out of his vacuum packed stasis…we shall never talk of this again! 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 04:00:19
Will never mention his name 😉 Sounds like a great guy though!
Jun 06, 2013 @ 04:21:24
I had a major moment of familial shame when we were walking in hushed silence in the Port Arthur convict site to see carved into the large sandstone blocks “Herman Stahl” (Stahl is my maiden name…) Uncle Herman strikes again!!!! 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 05:21:09
I have made several more stromboli using leftovers, and had been thinking of trying a sweet one myself. Interesting fungus!!
Jun 06, 2013 @ 05:35:26
Yeah…Steve had better do justice to the blog or he might find them in his next stromboli! 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 07:04:31
lol…watch this space I guess lol
Jun 06, 2013 @ 08:36:32
i hope you have a great weekend with your daughter..let us know how your friand making goes..and i’m looking forward to steve’s history lesson..x
Jun 06, 2013 @ 13:59:15
I think this will be your first time having Steve as a guest poster since you started following the blog Jane… I can only say …sorry… 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 09:14:42
Enjoy your weekend Fran and looking forward to Steve’s post 🙂 Don’t forget we want photos of your adventures x
Jun 06, 2013 @ 14:00:10
I will be taking lots of photos and Steve will be no doubt having fun here photoshopping me to look hilarious. He will remove it before I get back, but I know he is going to do it! 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 10:07:29
No Kardashians here either (phew) but a plug for a music company. *sigh* I do hate advertising. To my surprise Jackyl aren’t half bad. Very ACDC as you say. Brain not functioning so well this morning so leaving my comments there. I eagerly await Steve’s Saturday post… Should be interesting. 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 11:50:13
That sunrise is unreal… It truly looks like the sky is on fire! So beautiful, so inspiring. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen such a beautiful morning sky, but by the same token, I haven’t been waking up that early recently. 😉
And that stromboli? So perfectly rolled, it makes me want to start mixing up dough right this moment.
Jun 06, 2013 @ 14:06:20
That Stromboli is my go-to tea when I am too knackered to cook after a day out in the garden. The dough is so easy it is mixed, kneaded and proved inside 20 minutes and is so easy to work with because it contains enough olive oil to keep it malleable and workable. All you have to do is shred a bit of cheese or cheeze for we dairy shirkers, toss on some other toppings of your choice and voila! Easy peasy…the same dough is used for calzones and I like to put dried mixed herbs, chilli flakes and powdered dried tomatoes into my dough to add lots of flavour. I have been thinking about making lots of different coloured powders i.e. spinach, pumpkin, beetroot etc. and making lots of dough and then having a really creative time of it :). I will have to post about my results :). Glad you liked the sunrises. We have some unreal sunrises and sunsets before it is going to rain. Consider it a consolation for a day spent indoors with dogs with problems holding in their gas 😉
Jun 06, 2013 @ 18:36:12
I can honestly say that i have never watched the Kadashians, Neighbours or Home & Away. Too much to do to waste it in front of TV. When i do get to look its usually Grand Designs, or a Yutube doc on veggie growing or one of the Crime Shows.
Why doesnt Steve get his own blog and then he can waffle on to his hearts content and not have designs on yours. Funny, im always getting suggestions and some times photos from my 16 year old for blog fodder.
Thanks for your support Narf77.
Jun 06, 2013 @ 19:01:59
Steve has his own blog, he just likes to compete ;). I haven’t seen the Kardashians aside from that clip or neighbours but I must admit, when it first started, I did watch Home and Away…but not for long 😉
Jun 07, 2013 @ 04:50:08
Your writing makes me laugh. Sucha good way to start the day! I want to hear more about kefir in soy, and how you do it? I’ve had kefir in milk but always had to struggle it down, even in smoothies. And your Stromboli dough recipe too please 🙂 have a wonderful weekending your daughter and enjoy friand baking! Janette xxx
Jun 07, 2013 @ 05:11:34
Hi Janette, glad I make you laugh…sometimes laughing is the only way to face something that might otherwise make you hysterical ;). If you don’t like regular milk kefir, I fear you might faint when presented with a bubbling frothing glass of what I create. I make my own soymilk, then I add a liberal half a jar of homemade date paste to the mix. I stir it all together while the milk is still hot and let it cool down before storing it in the fridge. I use it to feed my kefir grains for most of the week. They seem to love it. I had to drink all of my supply because I am off for the weekend and I couldn’t expect Steve to be as vigilant as I am in releasing the gasses that build up most alarmingly through the day and didn’t want to be held responsible for the explosion that would have occured around about Sunday morning 3am ;). I drank as much of it as I could and Steve had the ambulance on speed dial because he figures I am trying to kill myself with some of my more extreme experiments. The poor man lives on the edge…hovering around trying to make me stop messing around with the forces of nature…I have an absolute love of fungi and he is terrified that I am going to race out and start making Aminita soup ;). I hope I am going to enjoy my weekend. My daughters are both like me (you can read that how you like 😉 ) so at least Steve can rest assured that if we kill ourselves in one of our experiments, we will go out in a most magnificent way! 🙂
Jun 07, 2013 @ 15:27:23
Sure sounds like fun! I made my own soy milk about a week or so ago, to be fair it was a bit hard to get down… Im thinking maybe I didnt cook it long enough. Is date paste as it sounds? Boiled up dates? Do you add anything else to it?
I exploded a water kefir last summer… made a hellish mess of the kitchen. Glass everywhere, I was still finding it months later!!!