Country Life

Country Life:

I come from a Farm outside of Wagga Wagga. My boys love to visit Nanny and Pa and work on the farm in the school holidays in fact we all do. This is a snapshot of a day on the farm.

Breakfast is always hearty due to the amount of work that needs to be done and we burn a mighty amount of calories. Our favourite breakfast is bacon, eggs, sautéed mushrooms, thickly cut toast with lashings of butter and homemade jam, washed down with hot tea and the occasional croissant. Yum!

Sautéed Mushrooms

Mushrooms

Garlic

Olive oil

Fresh herbs (such as rosemary, parsley, thyme or whatever you have, I mostly use rosemary and parsley as we always have it on hand)

Lots of ground black pepper and salt to season

Put it all in a hot pan and cook til mushrooms are golden and serve. Great with a steak too.

This is breakfast!

Into the truck and off to work - this is the favourite part of the day for the boys. Rounding up the sheep and putting them in the yards ready for the shearer to do his work. Then off to the shearing sheds to assist our shearer by collecting up all the wool and placing it into the bins for grading. It’s greasy, dirty work, but being boys they love it. It kills my back, working in the shearing sheds and I have had the unfortunate experience of falling into the bin of fresh wool, which left me very smelly and greasy, so I am always happy to escape and prepare the scones for afternoon tea.

Shearing is incredibly hard work. I tried and failed. My husband Chris loves it and cannot believe in his wildest dreams that I come from a farm. I think its those boots with heel's that let me down!

Eddie my youngest tries very hard at pushing up the sheep for Pa to drench. As you can see it is hard work for a little boy, he's having a sit down but not for long if Pa has anything to do with it." Hurry up Eddie no sitting down on the job".

Scones

2 cups of self raising flour (can be made gluten free, I use White Wings gluten free flour)

Pinch salt

60g butter at room temperature

¾ cup milk

Method:

Preheat oven 200C

Sift all dry ingredients together, add butter and rub in with your fingertips.

Add ½ cup of milk and cut into mixture with a knife, add more milk if necessary, knead very lightly for 30 seconds. You can also do this very quickly in a food processor, pulse to crumbs, and then add milk through feed shoot. Remove knead briefly and gently til smooth.

Roll out to 1.5cm thick and using a scone cutter or a glass if you don’t have one, cut and place on a baking tray lined with paper and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Tip, when placing scones on tray place them close together as they help each other rise.

Serve warm with lashings of jam whipped cream and the good old country favourite of piping hot tea.

I love to set the table even for afternoon tea, the shearers love the special treatment.

  

I have a friend who makes her scones with a can of lemonade, do you have a recipe you'd like to share with us? 

I hope you have enjoyed a look at country life.

Jo

Anzac Biscuits

Anzac Biscuits, everybody in my house loves them. Most people have a recipe for them, here's ours.


1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of rolled oats
1 cup of coconut
125g butter
1 tablespoon of golden syrup
2 tablespoons of boiled water
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate soda


Method

Line trays with baking paper then preheat oven to 180C.
Combine all dry ingredients together.
Melt butter and golden syrup, remove from heat, add boiling water and bicarb soda. The mixture will then start to froth. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, stir to combine. If the mixture seems too dry add a little water.
Drop teaspoons of the mixture on a tray lined with baking paper, allow room between each biscuit as they will spread. Bake for approx 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Allow to cool on tray before removing onto a cooling rack - biscuits will harden as they cool. Great for lunchboxes or afternoon tea.


A great way to present the biscuits for a gift is to wrap in cellophane bags and tie with raffia.
Great as a hostess gift or a thank you, everyone loves to receive homemade biscuits. It is also a great way to present for school fetes. These biscuits never last long at my house with the boys - they eat them straight off the tray.


Jo

Vic Market

I’m just home from the market, I head into the Vic market each week to load up on fresh fruit, veg, meat, fish, deli stuff and flowers. It’s a lovely way to shop and I always enjoy seeing what’s new in season as well as what’s a good buy. It’s also social, I enjoy having a natter with my favourite stallholders as well as keeping up with some of the regular shoppers who keep the same routine as me. And of course you can’t beat the choice and quality of what’s on offer – a supermarket can never do that.

The bit that isn’t so fun is the putting away! Dividing meat into portions, labelling and freezing, cooking up a vat of something… it does take some energy. It’s good in winter though, I love to turn on the food channel, crank up the oven end stay warm while filling the house with beautiful aromas. Summer always makes me impatient to get outside.

Our favourite fish Trumpeter was on offer today. It has a really short season of just a couple of weeks. I’ll cook it simply and serve it with a salad – I need a fast meal tonight as we have to go out.

Chicken was a good price so I bought 2kg - that worked out to be 5 huge breasts. I removed the tenderloins and sliced the breasts through horizontally to make them thinner, then cut them into ‘fingers’. Flour, egg and breadcrumbed and placed the crumbed pieces out flat on a tray to go in the freezer. My girls will love this treat – and I’ll love that I’m ahead for another night.

I cut the remaining 3 fillets open to butterfly them and they’ll do to stirfry, bbq or pan-fry to turn into something like a warm chicken salad. Again I placed them flat into a plastic bag so that when it comes to thawing it will happen quickly. Often when I freeze something like this I also write serving ideas on the label for those mornings when I stand staring at the freezer hoping for inspiration….

I love to try different veggies and there’s always something new at the market. That’s one great aspect of being truly multi-cultural – someone always has something new to share, and they do so willingly. Today I bought chicory, it’s not something I grew up with. The lovely Italian lady suggested I blanch it quickly then toss it in a pan with oil and garlic, salt and pepper; I’m looking forward to trying it. Apparently it has a slightly bitter taste – sounds like it will be perfect with a roast or a steak.

Andrea

Chinese New Year-Create our beautiful table

To create our beautiful table setting we have used simple white china as a backdrop along with the addition of Chinese teacups and spoons. The chopsticks rests are fortune cookies. We've used simple orchids for the table centrepiece which cost $6. The under-cloth is a piece of Hessian (Bunnings - around $3 per metre) over the top we placed a piece of taupe and black striped fabric as a highlight. This fabric was a remnant fabric, a bargain at  60c per piece. The napkins were also made of remnant fabric, again 60c  for the piece, we simply cut the fabric and rolled it  into shape. Very simple, very inexpensive a total cost for the fabric and flowers was $16.20.  


We look forward to sharing more table styling ideas with you. You don't have to pay a lot of money to create the designer look.


Jo.

Clicking

We'd love your support with our blog and hope you'll find lots of bits and pieces to keep you coming back. Our book has had some lovely feedback from publishers however they'd like us to work on getting a profile to assist in the marketing of it. So if you enjoy what you find, please share our link with your friends... the more clicks we have, the closer we'll be to getting "Honest Food" published.

Andrea and Jo

Valentine's Day

I'm not much for Valentine's Day... but Jo just loves it. Do you know she makes lunchbox treats and notes for her boys and the whole shebang dinner. Me, I don't get it. Next Monday night will pass like any other, Pib and I will swear we won't drink a bottle of red - but we will anyway, and dinner will be great but not covered in hearts... Tuesdays and Thursday mornings start VERY early here. Our eldest rows and has to be somewhere by 5.40 - except for tomorrow when it's 5.15....

Anyway, we do have some lovely ideas for Valentine's Day breakfast that you might like to try on Sunday morning when you'll have more time to sit and enjoy a lazy breakfast. That's what we love to do.

 

Sweetcorn Cakes with Bacon and Avocado Serves 2

1 (420g) can corn kernels, drained

1 spring onion, finely sliced

1 egg

3 tablespoons flour, plain or use Gluten Free flour or Rice flour

1 teaspoon sweet chilli sauce

S&P (that’s salt and pepper!)

To serve -

4 rashers bacon (GF if required) cooked crisply

1/2 avocado, sliced

2 tablespoons Ricotta or sour cream

Sweet Chilli Sauce to garnish

Spinach or Rocket leaves drizzled with a 1/2 teaspoon olive olive oil to garnish

Place half the corn, spring onion, sweet chilli, egg and flour into a food processor and blitz for 10 seconds to combine. Remove to a bowl. Add remaining corn. Stir to combine. Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat, spray with oil, place spoonfuls into pan - you’ll need 4 even cakes. Cook until golden underneath and set on top, about 3 minutes, carefully turn over using an eggslide (or Barbie mate!) Cook about 1 minute on the second side. Plate by placing one cake on each plate, place 2 slices of  bacon on each, top with sliced avocado then add another cake. Top with a teaspoon of ricotta or sour cream and garnish with a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce. Place salad greens on plate like the photos above. Clever huh? We'd love to hear what you think.