Getting closer to the Chanel look

Got these new tights from the UK last week.


They don't match the shoes I bought to go with them unfortunately, but they do match these ones, that I got from No1 Shoes for $20 (and they're leather) last week, quite well. They look good with black shoes too.

I've ordered some black and white tights, and when they come I'll dye them the cream of the other shoes - cream dye isn't going to do much to the black part!

More meaty goodness

My bridge friend Alec is having a "sausage sizzle" at his house next weekend to celebrate his dog's 15th birthday. Any excuse, I suppose - although he is very attached to the dog, who is a sickly wee thing (but very cute) and it's amazing she's made it to 15.

I made some sausages to take because pork shoulders were on special at the supermarket, at $7.99/kg. I made the sausage mixture pretty much the same as I did here,


but I then took out a little less than half of the mixture and added in some of this:


I smoked all of them …


… then chucked them in the freezer.

Then I decided to make a version of this recipe; I used kumara (sweet potato) instead of potato, and instead of beef soboro I made a chicken one, with sage and onion stuffing flavours.

I had some chicken boneless thighs which I chopped up finely (couldn't be bothered dirtying the mincer), along with a small onion, and some parsley, thyme and sage from the garden.


I browned it all, then decided it wasn't chopped small enough so I put it in the blender then slowly cooked it for a bit longer.


I used it to stuff a boiled and mashed kumara/flour mixture (which is exactly what I use for kumara gnocchi) …


… and formed little buns:


I've already eaten most of them, and they were supposed to be for lunches! Too scrummy.

The Great Home-Made Jam Sandwich

Two of the nanny goats at the farm where I get my milk had kids; these wee brown and white twins …


and this snowy white singleton:


They're so gorgeous, I wish my grandkids lived closer so I could take them to see.

This week I wanted to make some parmesan cheese. Parmesan uses low-fat milk, so I needed to find a use for all the cream that comes on top of my raw milk (this week I got 10 litres). I ended up having a bit of a dairy binge - I made the parmesan cheese from ~7 litres milk, butter from a bit more than 1 litre of cream, yoghurt from a litre of the milk, and ricotta salata from the buttermilk and whey. I have also kept a litre of milk for my weekly consumption, and about 400ml of cream for my morning porridge!

Here's the cream I used for the butter:


I was a bit nervous about this, I wasn't sure that gravity and pouring-off-the-top would give me a high enough fat percentage cream to whip. All seemed pretty good though:


It whipped up beautifully.


But then it deflated and just didn't seem to want to turn into butter. Eventually I rubbed some between my fingers and decided that it actually had turned, but the low fat percentage was preventing it from all joining up into a big hunk. I poured it through some fine muslin, chucked it back in the mixer, and turned it on. Hey presto, within seconds I had this:


I ended up getting only about 160g butter, which is about 1/3 of what I got from a litre of shop bought cream. I'm a bit puzzled about this - I'd have thought the cream wouldn't whip with such a low fat content. Our shop cream is about 38% fat, so I'm guessing this must be only about 13% - nowhere near enough for whipping according to everything I've ever read.


Oh well, who knows. Next time I think I'll get Merrill to separate the cream for me, he's just bought a separator.

So here's my home-made jam sandwich:


They don't come a lot more home-made than this. The raw ingredients for the whole thing are flour, water, sugar, milk, salt, and cape-gooseberries from the garden. The bread was made using my sourdough starter - a wild yeast I captured. It is so satisfying having made something like this pretty much from scratch - I'm not about to start growing my own wheat or sugar cane though!

Why we discuss the weather so often

Last month I wore shorts and dresses to work and was looking forward to a beautiful summer.

Last weekend more than 100 cars were stranded on the Napier-Taupo road (in the warmer North Island) because of a massive snow dump. Their passengers had to be rescued by the army in their unimogs, and members of the local four-wheel drive club. We had snow on the hills here too.

This photo …


… was taken on Monday while walking through the Botanical Gardens on my way back to work after visiting the dentist. The cream tulips with a sprinkling of red poppies look gorgeous at the moment - but look at the sky. The weather was beautiful again. Now we've just had another severe weather warning for the next few days.

University exams begin very soon though, and in all the years I've lived here, we've always had hot weather during exams. I well remember sitting in exam rooms 25 years ago with all the doors open and wearing as few clothes as I could get away with, sweating onto my exam scripts. Of course the weather packs in again as soon as exams are finished and you'd really appreciate some sun.

We don't have climate here, we have weather. You never know what it's going to be like, which makes it very difficult to dress appropriately in the mornings.

We've just had another tsunami warning too - not that we're likely to see any here in Dunedin, but those poor people in the Pacific! Some of those people in Samoa have only just been coaxed out of the hills where they fled after last week's tsunami. Hopefully this warning comes to nothing.

First lot of raw milk

On Friday after work I went to pick up my first batch of raw milk. It was pouring with rain, and the goat who lives at the farm was tied up in the cowshed awaiting the birth of her kid(s). Hopefully they'll be hanging around next week so I can take a photo - partly for here, but mostly to show my granddaughter. I just wish she lived here so I could take her to see them.

I got eight litres of milk this time, four of these plastic bottles. See how much cream there is:


You should be able to see the line if you look hard, it's a lot lower than I expected. I poured the cream off two of the bottles, used a litre of the semi-skimmed milk to make yoghurt, stashed a litre in the fridge for using during the week, and used all the cream and the rest of the milk (six litres total) to make a stilton-type cheese.


The amount of curds was comparable to what I'd usually get from eight litres of milk; I think this might end up being economical despite the traveling involved. The cheese is currently in its hoop setting.

Last week's smoked ricotta salata was delicious. I had it crumbled on my lunchtime salads and it added a lovely smoky saltiness.

Smoked rocotta salata is therefore going to be a permanent fixture in the fridge. Yesterday I smoked last week's and the week before's - I'll do a bit of a test to see what difference that extra week's aging makes.


I also smoked the pork belly that had been sitting in the fridge curing for the past week:


This is the skin side with the skin removed:


I made myself a couple of bacon butties with this weekend's bread. Scrummy.

A shoe post

This pair of shoes arrived yesterday from the USA:


I bought them from Endless.com to go with my new cream and black tights, a la Chanel but much cheaper, that should be arriving from England quite soon. Endless won't deliver outside America so I had to get them sent to a friend, who forwarded them to me.

It's always a bit of a risk buying shoes online when you can't return them (well I could, but it'd cost more than the shoes) but these fit perfectly, and are very comfortable. I do hope the tights arrive before the 23rd October, because that's our Labour Weekend and I'm going away and want to wear them. I have to make a new cream skirt before then too. The skirt will come in handy for wearing with a number of other pairs of shoes too.