Use It - Don't Lose it: Loving the Leftovers

So call me weird, but I get a sense of satisfaction from using up leftovers, converting them into a tasty meal instead of letting them become science experiments in the back of the fridge, or tossing them in the compost bin. I hate to see good food wasted, food that cost good money or time. My meals are usually planned around what needs using the most in the fridge or garden. In this way there are no Science experiments in the fridge, the turnover is too rapid.

This weekend we catered for 100 people and had a lot of leftover rolls, potato salad, coleslaw, tuna salad, green salad, dessert and sauces. How does Elastic Mom tackle this problem, you may ask?

Well, firstly I shared out some of the rolls, cheese, potato salad and coleslaw with the farm families. I froze the rest of the fruit crumbles, sauces, rolls and cheese for using at a later stage. We ate salad with the next few meals too.

We couldn't eat the salads fast enough, so I was contemplating what to do. Then I had a brainwave: I tossed potato salad with tuna salad (lettuce and all), stirred in 3 beaten eggs and spread the mixture in a casserole dish. Topped with grated cheese, it was popped in a medium oven and baked. The end result was the best potato bake that I have ever made. It was creamy and delicious.

I made a hot lettuce soup (Ina Paarman's recipe) for lunch yesterday from the half the wilted lettuce, onions and cucumber and some chicken stock and milk. I just couldn't toss out 8 litres of lettuce salad. The soup was ok, but not that exciting, so I gave the chickens the rest of the lettuce. If we had had any more coleslaw, it  could have been used in a winter vegetable-style soup too.

Tomatoes are precious around here, considering my summer tomato crop was a failure, so I picked over the green salad, removing all the tomato wedges, olives and feta.

Last night, for supper, I turned one leftover cooked steak, a bowl of tomato wedges and a handful of olives rescued from the green salad into a very tasty toast topping. I sliced up the steak and fried it in a pan with the tomatoes,  garlic, some horseradish sauce, some monkey gland sauce, a splash of gluhwein, and with the olives tossed in, it was lip-smackingly delicious. Decadent Dad yom-chomped his way through the meal.

In all the busyness of preparing for the catering, my fridge got a little too cold in the bottom drawer and froze up the last few precious cucumbers from our garden, and some green peppers too. This evening I made a ratatouille from the rest of the salad-rescued tomatoes, the half-frozen cucumber and green peppers, some garden-fresh brinjals and one of Decadent Dad's salami-style sausages that is half cured, not ready for eating raw, but tasty sliced up for cooking. I tossed in the last of the macaroni from the pantry and, voila, dinner. Delicious again.

Tomorrow, for lunch, I plan to make quick pizza  rolls
topped with the last of the ratatouille and olives, some peppers from the garden and our home-made feta rescued from the salad. I couldn't bear to toss those hours of hard work.

So there you have it... Elastic Mom... stretching those resources big time.

Slow Living in March

March...month of brilliant blue-sky days, and crystal-ice nights, roads lined with delicate cosmos, beech trees turning golden, round bales freshly cut in the fields, sunflowers drooping heavy as they wait for their heads to be chopped off, rows of maize standing to attention, rose-hips fat and red.... Join me, along with Slow Living Essentials as I reflect on the month that was. 

NOURISH

Autumn, harvest time, is the season of year when the fresh produce just keeps on coming. We gather in an abundance of bounty from the land and our meals are richly full of God's goodness and blessing. with few exceptions our food is as local as this farm. 

For health and strength and daily food we praise your name oh Lord. 

PREPARE

As we gather in the harvest, we preserve and prepare for the winter ahead as fast as we can, no slow living in this department, just bubble, bubble, toil and oh so much blessing. We are full to bursting with laden shelves and no more room in fridges and freezers. Herbs dry in the sunny kitchen window before being stored in glass jars. We gather in large bunches of mint, sage, thyme and oregano before the frost steals them away. Potatoes and gem squash are dug and picked and stored in the dark. Rusks are baked in huge batches, as are trays of nutty granola. Ice-creams are  made to order: fresh peach, pear caramel, vanilla pod and toasted coconut. We make cheeses and cured meat, most for sale and some for storage. The fruit trees are laden with fruit, ripe for the picking and falling and lost unless we use them.

Here's some more of what we prepared in March to keep us going for the year:

bunches of rhubarb stewed and frozen

peach and raspberry jam 3 1/2 jars

peach chutney 5 1/2 bottles

pears bottled

peaches, apples and pears cut in chunks and frozen

a crate of apples dried

Green beans frozen in innumerable quantities

 2 jars dilly bean pickle

6 jars curried beans

marinated green peppers

spiced brandy and apple chutney 6 jars

pear and green pepper chutney 6 1/2 jars

apple lavender jelly 4 jars

apple sage jelly 5 jars

apple thyme jelly 6 1/2 jars

apple rosemary jelly 5 jars

apple rose geranium jelly 9 jars

apple cinnamon sauce 13 tubs

apple mint sauce 10 bottles

REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE

My Elastic Mom nature balks at waste and so I use parts of plants that traditionally go uneaten. Brussel sprout and broccoli leaves are great chopped into soups. Beetroot leaves are used like swiss chard. Baby carrots, leaves and all are pretty in a stir-fry. I also cook the whole of a leek, not just the white bits. Sometimes I use the green bits and the white bits separately depending on the recipe. Young pumpkin leaves are one of the most delicious vegetables if cooked the right way. 

GREEN

We have grown veggies in our tunnel for three summers now. The first summer our cabbages were magnificent.... unknown to me our gardener was spraying them with poison until I found out. The second summer our cabbages were moth eaten and riddled with aphids... disappointed, we ate them anyway, just washing them really really well. This time I have found a green solution that is working for us so far.... just cover the brassicas with fine netting to keep the moths away. 

GROW

As the summer crops come to their end, they make way for our winter crops. I was given a heap of cabbage seedlings. Hopefully they weren't planted too late in the season. We have also sowed leeks, onions, kohlrabi, turnips and more. I follow a very carefully planned crop rotation in our tunnel. Autumn brassicas follow legumes. They enjoy the remnants of lime that was dug in last winter for the spring legumes. 

CREATE

That darn sock (see my Slow Living in Feb post) is proving to be a lot more difficult to knit than I thought it would. The pattern was ambiguous, but I think I have it figured out. I am persevering one stitch at a time. I have turned the corner, literally, around the heel and on my way to the toe. 

DISCOVER

Decadent Dad is on a steep learning curve in all meaty things smoked and cured. The inhabitants of our little town have caught a whiff of the smoky wind of his charcuterie and he can barely keep up with the demand. The three main resources that he is using in this exciting new adventure are the books, Salt Sugar Smoke by Diana Henry, Preserved by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton and the dvd, Pig in a Day by Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall. So far he has made sweet cured bacon, smoked bacon, smoked and unsmoked pancetta, paprika and chilli pancetta, 2 types of chorizo sausage (a paprika and fennel spiced salami-type sausage), and coppa, 

ENHANCE

 I have joined our local garden club. Being isolated on the farm, it is great for me to be join with some of the the ladies in our community for a monthly meeting. In March we walked through the veld examining veld flowers and grasses. Surprisingly, a lot of the so-called weeds are useful medicinal herbs or food plants. 

ENJOY

 Not much beats an afternoon ride through the farm lands, enjoying the magnificent landscape and glorious wild cosmos flowers. 

Decadent Dad's Charming Charcuterie

 Decadent Dad has ventured into the realm of charcuterie and all things smoked and cured in the meat realm. This is the next intriguing step on our journey in  self sufficiency. His bacon (above) and pancetta (below) are so beyond delicious.

His latest experimenting is with sausages. Yesterday he made a paprika and fennel pork sausage. It was amusing to see my men learning to use the sausage machine.

After watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Pig in a Day, he mastered authentic sausage tying first time. Sometimes I find the ease with which he does whatever he puts his hand to astounding and sometimes irritating. I would have had to follow slow motion instructions on You Tube at least ten times to get this right. 

The sausages turned out beautifully.

We cooked a few fresh sausages for supper to test them. spanish style bangers and mash... the sausages were so tasty, really good for a first try, and perfectly complemented by my green tomato ketchup sauce. 

The remaining sausages are in the cold smoker, slowly turning from spicy fresh sausages into cured and smoked chorizo. They will hang in there for a few days and then mature for at least 20 days. For someone who never liked sausage much, it makes a difference knowing that the finest ingredients went into them and that there are no artificial preservatives. 

I can't wait to try them. 

Strawberry Popcorn

Everybody's intrigued by this beautifully ornamental, delicious strawberry popcorn. It is an heirloom corn. We planted more than 40 plants in our veggie tunnel as early as I could after the frost ended on Spring so that they wouldn't cross-pollinate with the maize on the farm. The plants were planted in a block rather than in rows to aid wind, pollination.The seeds germinated well, sending their grass-like leaves up in promise of a good harvest. As they matured they were attacked by aphids, but a host of ladybug larvae were soon feasting on the miniature invaders. We have had a heap of rain lately so I picked the cobs before the plants were fully dry to prevent them from going mouldy.

I dried the miniature cobs on a sunny windowsill. 

When the kernels are dry enough, they shuck easily off the cob. One cob gives about 1/3 cup of red jewel kernels.

The secret to perfect popping corn is the kernels being dry enough. If, like me, you are impatient, your popcorn will only pop open in tiny cracks.

 On the other hand, if you wait a little longer while they dry...

you will be rewarded with fluffy bowls of tiny popcorn. 

Delicious.

Slow Living in February

 

February has been a month of bringing my heart home, here on the farm. After last month, I have needed to draw in and find my rhythm again. It has taken almost the whole month to settle back into comforting routines, and find our way with my diligent son's schooling. The chockablock full days have flown as we've studied new subjects, added to our menagerie, and dealt with the unabating harvest from garden tunnel and the farm. I have fallen into bed every night only to be woken at sunrise by our pup, calling me to let her out. Join me, along with Slow Living Essentials as I appreciate the blessings that came our way in February. 

NOURISH

What a thrill to sit down to breakfast made from scratch where everything, or almost everything, was homemade or home grown.  

Tomatoes grown in the garden, eggs freshly collected, bread baked using our buttermilk and the most delicious bacon cured by the talented Decadent Dad. 

Just picked ripe figs and Jersey yoghurt on Decadent Dad's fluffy flapjacks, drizzled with his runny honey and almonds.

Organic oats (bought not grown here) dolloped with our Jersey yoghurt, then sprinkled with walnuts from the old trees on the other farm, the few gooseberries that I beat the birds to, and grapes from the verandah then drizzled with fig syrup.

Lunches and suppers have been pretty much the same... fragrant lamb and pumpkin bredie (a slow simmered spicy stew) served on mashed potatoes with green beans and carrots, all raised and grown here... home baked bread with our farmhouse cheddar cheese and dilly pickles... heirloom beetroot, cumin feta and sweet cured bacon salad alongside sweetcorn cobs dripping with farm butter. 

I never dreamed that this would be my life, nor did we plan it to be this way, yet we sit down daily to gourmet meals purely because of the incredible abundance of fresh, seasonal bounty. And when we give thanks for our food, we sincerely mean it.

PREPARE

I made Jamie Oliver's tomato ketchup using different colour tomatoes from the tunnel. It is delicious, but tastes all wrong because I substituted white pepper for black, and it is a lot stronger in flavour than it should be. The yellow tomatoes made a pale green ketchup, and the black cherry tomatoes made a brown ketchup. Had I known of the impending tomato death, I would probably have rather frozen the tomatoes whole. 

Pickling, drying, freezing and preserving is the order of most of our days at this time of year:

seeds collected and dried: dill, coriander, celery, tomato, bean, leek, walnut

herbs dried in bunches: thyme, oregano, sage, dill

figs: green preserve, syrup, dried and jam

beans: dill pickles, and frozen

apples: apple cider vinegar 

green peppers: marinated peppers

cucumbers: dill pickles

tomatoes: ketchup, sauce, dried, frozen

sweet corn: frozen

beetroot: pickles

And of course, we continue to make cheese daily. 

Decadent Dad also managed to collect his annual honey harvest with minimal stings in the process. His smoker  ran out of puff just as he opened a rather aggressive hive which proved  fairly challenging for him. He came away with a year's worth of honey for both us and the other farm household. 

GREEN

I regularly use vinegar instead of rinse aid in the dishwasher and it works just as well.

GROW

It's harvest time in the tunnel. We are pulling out potatoes as we need them, gem squash (all these from two plants, and last year we picked a total of about six squash), purple carrots, green peppers, mild chillies, courgettes, lovely sausage-shaped orlando aubergines, and we picked most of our strawberry popcorn crop which is drying along the windowsill in the sun room. 

I have also started sowing winter crops such as brassicas, leeks and onions into seed beds and beds that empty up as we harvest their current crops. 

REDUCE / RE-USE / RECYCLE

I was hoping to do a big clear out and tackle decluttering after we returned from Cape Town, but facilitating my son's education has demanded the majority of my waking hours. We did resurrect my husband's ancient drawing board and some of my engineering drawing instruments, from more than 20 years ago, for our son to use for his engineering drawing studies. That saved us many hundreds of rands.
Instead of tossing out some too-sour-for-the-market cream cheese, I turned it into pastry along with butter and flour.

CREATE

I picked up on the sock I am knitting after I inadvertently pulled out one of the needles and dropped heaps of stitches more than a year ago. The yarn is very fine and the needles thin and I must confess that I am enduring rather than enjoying this project. I have always wanted to knit socks, however, not being the most co-ordinated person around, I am finding it pretty fiddly. I persevere because I like to keep my hands busy on long car trips, and in the evenings as the weather cools. I wonder if I will finish the pair before the end of winter. 

DISCOVER

In search of harvest recipes I have spent many moments trawling through my recipe books, and rediscovered the delights of our Reader's Digest South African Cookbook. This beautifully illustrated, 400 page encyclopaedic tome thoroughly covers almost every possible locally available ingredient and presents all the classic, tried and true recipes for South African cooking from Malay bredies and African putu to Afrikaans vetkoek and British shortbread. It has been sitting on my shelf for years, handed down from my mom-in-law, but only now am I really appreciating this bountiful book.

ENHANCE

Our farm art group met at our house this week. Inspired by the sunflowers in the fields, they painted their own van Goghs. The diversity in style and  choice of colour was delightful. 

ENJOY

This week a tractor arrived to plough the field next to our home. I am super excited, as this means oats for winter grazing.

In February we were blessed with the birth of a little bull calf, Rumble. 

At sunrise one morning I woke to find Joy in the garden and already in labour (see first pic in this post). I watched her for hours as her labour progressed and then almost missed the delivery which happened very fast. What a privilege to sit beside them in the long grass as the calf wobbled onto his feet and then persevered, with many rests in between, until he found her milk. Over the next few weeks he has grown stronger and now frisks around his momma in the field.

Decadent Dad treated me to a romantic picnic on the hillside above our home on the 14th... my Facebook status the next morning...
"When he was up past midnight the night before, chasing thieves in the dark; and drove three hundred kilometres in the heat that day; and was going to wake somewhere in the wee hours to bake an order of croissants; and had eyes drooping with exhaustion; he thought of me. 

When storm clouds were gathering; and I had snapped at him the day before; and complained about the wrong shoes; and pitied our boy watching a movie eating pizza alone; he silently walked me up the hill at sunset.

He laid out a blanket and we sat. He poured me wine. He spread selected delicacies. He kissed undeserving me. He smiled.

We feasted. We watched the cows grazing below. We saw the grasses waving, silhouetted in the breeze. We heard the frogs. We heard the distant rumble of thunder. My heart stilled, and filled."

This is a beautiful time of year, with balmy days and evenings, and I am enjoying farm living. If only I was able to spend more time outdoors. 

Heirloom Tomato Saga.

I have a treasure trove of seeds, a precious collection given to me by my generous brother-in-law when he left South Africa for the UK. I sorted them into  ten shoe- and ice-cream boxes, one for each family of plants: roots, brassicaceae, curcurbits, aliiums, solanaceae, flowers, herbs, lettuces, legumes, corn and miscellaneous. The solanaceae box alone has more than forty packets of tomatoes, peppers and brinjals. In early winter last year I carefully planned my Spring planting to maximise the use of  these wonderful seeds in our vegetable tunnel. 

In mid-winter we constructed trays of seedling pots from newspaper and sowed seeds in our own home-made seedling mix using sand hauled from the river bed, vermiculite saved from the attic and our own compost.  To thwart frost's dominion over our planting times, I placed the seed pots under lights in our sun room to germinate. 

Besides all the other types of seeds, I sowed 15 varieties of full sized tomatoes and 6 varieties of cherry tomatoes. Last Summer we didn't harvest enough tomatoes to see us through our year, so I planned to grow 24 regular and 12 cherry tomato plants this year. I had glorious visions of tomato sauces, dried and frozen tomatoes stored up for winter. 

I knew that I needed to sow more seeds than we needed in case of failure to germinate. Seed insurance. It's just as well that I did, as quite a few varieties did not germinate at all. From those that did, there were losses along the way, like the time I was ill and my family forgot to water them, and the time the cat thought the trays of seedlings would make a great kitty toilet. 

After months of indoor nurturing, the survivor seedlings were eventually transplanted into bigger pots and hardened outdoors until they were ready for planting in the tunnel. Only 3 varieties of cherry tomato and 8 varieties of regular tomato had made it to this point. However, I still had more than 36 plants waiting for transplanting. My two beloved men prepared the beds, doing the backbreaking work of digging in barrow loads of compost. Then I carefully set out and labelled the seedlings. 

The tomatoes grew fast and furiously. We built wooden trellises to support them. By December they were reaching for the sky and, laden with green globes, bearing promises of a bountiful Summer. We flanked them with borage, nasturtiums  and cornflowers to attract the pollinating insects, and basil to repel the chomping insects. 

Then in January we were away for three weeks. Our home and garden were left int he capable hands of Molly and Blantina. 

We arrived home after dark. We were tired and hungry.  

Baskets of tomatoes and a pile of eggs were a welcome sight. 

My tired brain mulled over the supper problem. What could I make, relatively effortlessly, using egg and tomatoes. There wasn't even any bread in the house. A frittatta was the solution. Fast food, farm style. 

The following morning I was stunned to see the change in our beautiful tomato plants after three weeks. 

They were falling over their supports, all brown and dying, fruit valiantly ripening on the wilted vines. Apparently, while we were in Cape Town,  our water pump was out of order for two of the three weeks, and in scorching weather. 

Over the next few days I rescued as many of the fruit as I could, picking them slightly underripe to prevent pest damage on top of their distress. I tied up, fed and watered the vines, yet we still lost about a third of the plants, with more dying daily. 

With my plans for saving seeds and preserving a year's worth of tomatoes dashed, as few of the tomatoes were still producing flowers, I did what I could to enjoy the wonderful, mostly heirloom varieties that had survived. My scientific nature kicked in. I sorted the tomatoes into their varieties as they ripened indoors and we had tasting contests, and I also experimented with cooking methods for the different varieties.

Here are some of my findings:

CHERRY TOMATOES

BLACK CHERRY (Heirloom, Living Seeds - original cellophane packaging*): Larger than  most cherries, firm and juicy, perfect for salads. Flavour tart and mild. Robust, prolific producer. 100% germination. 

BLONDKOPFCHEN (Heirloom, Living Seeds - original cellophane packaging*): Pretty bright yellow tomato, standard cherry size. Thin skinned. Sweet, tasty tomato. Lovely for drying, salads, and tomato tart. Prolific producer, vigorous vine. Good germination rate.

SWEETIE (Commercial, Kirchoffs): Tiny, bright orange, sweet, tasty cherry. Looks pretty alongside the yellow cherry in a salad or tomato tart. Succumbed to disease more quickly than other cherry types. 100% germination

SMALL TOMATOES

MONEYMAKER (Commercial, Starke Ayres): Small red tomatoes, not quite cherry, nor regular size. They ripened completely to a good red. The plant had died by the time we were home, so only we had a few to try. Good for sauces and stews. Taste unmemorable.

TIGERELLA (Heirloom, Gravel Garden**): Two pretty, small, still green, striped tomatoes were left on the dead plant. They didn't make it to the kitchen. My chef friend says these are wonderful, and sought after, sadly though, not robust enough for our drought.  50% germination (No photo)

REGULAR TOMATOES

HEINZ (Commercial, Starke Ayres): Small to medium, delicious bright red tomatoes. Firm textured. Robust tangy flavour. Perfect for roasting and sauces (obviously). Determinate tomato. Died from drought, but would have died anyway. Short lived, early abundant fruiting. 100% germination.

HILLBILLY (Heirloom, Living Seeds - original cellophane packaging*): I rescued one tomato before the stressed plant succumbed to disease. Interesting yellow and pink markings. Large, boat shaped, well flavoured, juicy tomato. 50% germination. (No photo)

CHEROKEE CHOCOLATE (Heirloom, Living Seeds - original cellophane packaging*). Old style, large boat shaped, mottled orange/olive/brown unattractive colour.  Flavourful firm tomato. Tasty eaten raw or cooked. Suited best to ratatouille-type dishes. Valiant producer in spite of drought.  50% germination.

 ESTLERS MORTGAGE LIFTER (Heirloom, Living Seeds - new paper packaging*). I would love to know the origin of the delightful name. A winner. Abundant fruit. Fairly robust plants. Bright pinky-red, large, boat shaped. The ultimate richly flavoured, juicy sandwich tomato. This is what a home grown tomato should taste like. Great for cooking too. 90% germination.
*** Edited to add link to a different Mortgage Lifter tomato story. I love it.***

COSTOLUTO GENOVESE (Heirloom, Living Seeds - original cellophane packaging*): Medium to small Italian ribbed tomato. Ripens to a bright orange red. Susceptible to disease, not a strong plant, but absolutely the best tasting tomato that we have ever tried. Very decorative when sliced.  Savoury, deep flavour. Definitely wins the prize for most delicious of all. 10% germination.

 GOLDEN MONARCH (Heirloom, Gravel Garden**): Definitely the queen of the tomato garden. A survivor. Enormous bright yellow, old fashioned boat shape. Savoury, sweet and juicy tomato, best served raw, sliced on a plate with a sprinkling of salt. By far the best drought and disease resistance of all the tomatoes I planted this summer. Late, generous producer. Rampant vine. 20% germination.

In spite of all the setbacks and disappointments, I am looking forward to trying again with some different tomato varieties and some of my new favourites next summer. In the meantime, we have pulled up a third of our tomato plants, with more on their way out, and sowed lettuce and chicory seeds in their place to carry us through the rest of this summer.


* Living Seeds is an excellent heirloom seed supplier in South Africa. I picked out their seeds to try from my collection that were the oldest (in their original cellophane packaging). Saved seeds are not usually viable for many years, so those that germinated well are a tribute to the variety and to the way they were saved.

** Gravel Garden is a delightful heirloom seed supplier in the Cape. We visited them in January