Making the most of Sunday

You will be thinking practically all I eat is soup and bread. Well, it is heading into winter here, and I love soup and making bread. Today I've whipped up a brew of my "not minestrone" minestrone soup. I say "not minestrone" because traditionally minestrone has beans, but Mr B makes a fuss if he has to eat anything other than a baked bean, so I leave them out. Here is the general recipe. This is a throw it in the pot and it will work recipe.

1. Brown bacon (I used 100g, but you can use as much as you like)


2. Throw in one chopped up fat onion and continue sauteing.


3. Chop up one fat potato, 2 big sticks of celery and 1-2 cups of cabbage and throw into the pot.


4. Add water to almost the top of the pot (I forgot to say I use a big pot)


5. Add 1 tin of tomatoes in juice (chop up roughly if not already chopped) and 1 little tin or pottle of tomato paste.


6. Throw in a handful of dried pasta (because Mr B loves it).

Boil it all together for a while. Season with salt, pepper and smoked garlic salt (if you have some).

Serve with a sprinkle of cheese if you can bear to part with lots of money to get some.

Here's my bread in the oven. I wanted to make 2 loaves so I have enough for sandwiches during the week.

I had some extra dough so I rolled it out and spread it with sweet chili jam.

Then I rolled it up and sliced into little swirls.

Unfortunately while I was letting them rise a bit more on the table (waiting for a vacancy in the oven, as you can happily do with bread) something dreadful happened.

Someone was hungry.

Luckily she was only halfway through scoffing off the whole tray when she was caught, sweet chili jam sticky upon her whiskery lips. There were a few left for the intended consumers, so I bunged them in the oven. May I just suggest that you don't attempt to remove these from the tray as soon as you get them out of the oven. My finger hurts. Burnt by sweet chili jam that stuck like superglue to my fingers while I flapped around trying to get them under the tap. Bugger, bugger, bugger!

I'm proud to say I had an outstanding baking afternoon, apart from the obvious little issues I faced. Here are the banana muffins I made from bananas Mr B promised he would eat, but didn't.

The one missing was a test muffin. I had to make sure they were fit for human consumption (the dog certainly wont be getting any!

I'm off to grab a slice of bread and a bowl of soup. I'm pretty proud of myself. If I can do it, so can you!

More soup and a bit of a bread recipe

Went of to school all bright eyed and bushy tailed, but as soon as I rolled up there was someone waiting to harrass me about something. I've only got four days to go until the holidays, but I'm still trying to appreciate each day.

This concoction is kumera and pumpkin soup. It contains a big onion, a massive kumera, half of a pumpkin (leftover from the last batch of soup) and three rashers of this bacon:

This is New Zealand bacon which is from free-range pigs. You would think that in NZ bacon would be from piggies allowed to roam free, but don't be fooled. Most of the bacon on sale here is not NZ bacon. You need to look for specifically labelled products. Any ham off the bone that is available here is apparently imported too, in most cases. I don't want to contribute to sow crates where lady piggies are kept for their whole lives, unable to move around freely. I'm sure the conditions for the other pigs wouldn't be much better.

I blitzed up my ingredients in my food processor to save time as we had visitors. Then I added water and boiled it up. It was seasoned generously with smoked garlic seasoning and pepper. I was chatting to Meg on the phone and accidentally browned the bottom when I was cooking the onion and bacon, but that added great caramelised flavour. I really recommend this recipe, even though it was super simple. I think that it would be a good idea to cook the kumera before chopping it up because it maintained its grainy texture even though I boiled it forever. The pumpkin broke down much faster.

Now for Ryan, who need some bread-making tips. I made this yesterday:

I faced some time challenges when making this, so it didn't get to prove (rise) for as long as usual. Never mind, it was scrummy with butter while it was still steaming hot.

I make bread by random luck, so providing you follow my basic steps you can't go too far wrong.

1. Put about 1 dessertspoon full of granulated yeast (NOT EASYBAKE!!!) and 1 teaspoon of sugar or honey in a big bowl.
2. Add about 2 cups of lovely warm water and give it a wee stir around (I have it fairly warm so it will stay warm for a while, really hot will kill the yeast and too cold won't work).
3. Cover this and keep it warm (cover with a towel on a cold day or stand next to the fire).
4. Once it starts sort of foaming you know you are in business (10 mins approx.)
5. Add a good dollop of olive oil, about a dessertspoon full of salt, or a bit more, plus herby things if you want (mmm, sundried tomatoes, olives etc. Don't be stingy with the salt as bread needs it for the flavour. Pepper adds a nice zing too, if you add plenty.
6. Now add your high grade flour. Tip some in and stir it. Tip in more until you can stir it into a dough. Take your dough out and put it on a floured board. Knead for a while (until you get sick of it) so the dough goes lovely and elastic feeling (if you didn't get bored too soon). If you don't know how to knead, buy a breadmaker.
7. Flour the inside of your bowl and put your lovely ball of dough in again. Cover and keep warm until it is all fat and exciting looking (at least doubled in size). This depends on how warm you can keep it. I have resorted to standing the bowl in warm water in the sink and covering the sink with a towel.
8. Now for the weird bit. Take your plump, soft ball of dough out and put it on your board. Knead it for about a minute again. It will go all small again, which is very disappointing.
9. Shape your pitiful blob of dough into a loaf, rolls, a plaited twist with wheat sheaf trim etc and put it on a floured tray.
10. Leave in a warm place and I promise it will get fat again. Once it is fat and happy bung it in the oven and bake until golden. Tapping on the bottom of a cooked loaf makes a hollow sound.
11. The oven should be about 200 degrees celcius or around 180 on fanbake. I think you can have it hotter too.
12. Just remember not to burn yourself trying to cut it when you just got it out of the oven, and put it on a cooking rack to stop it getting a soggy bottom.

Some home truths about bread making:

• Using a bread maker does not mean you have made genuine handmade bread. It doesn't taste anything like it, plus you actually don't do anything, the breadmaker does.
• Easybake Yeast gives bread a nasty taste. I really don't like the stuff. I would love to try fresh yeast but it isn't very easy to come by.
• Bread requires quite a bit of time. Set aside about 2 hours for your first go at my recipe. There is plenty of reading time while the bread is rising, so you shouldn't be feeling like a slave to your oven.
• Homemade bread is usually gone the first day you make it, so make twice as much if you want some for the next day.
• There are thousands of bread recipes. I only do this one because I can whip it up without too much thinking.

Good luck. Go forth and give it a go! You can do it Ryan XXX

Pumpkin Soup Finished

I threw in a leftover bread roll with some goodies from the fridge. Yum.

A fresh start

Oh sadly neglected blog, it is time to resurrect you. For a while I have been thinking about the consumerist society. Packaging, country of origin, quality, processing etc. I hope I am ready to tackle the elements of my consumer activites that bother me. This blog is about my Good Life. I'll save Poppies and Daisies for hobbies, building and fun. So some new goals are in order. I will:

• Base as much of my diet as I can on unprocessed foods.
• Have a wide variety of food in my diet.


• Make as many things from scratch as I can.


• Buy New Zealand made products (food and otherwise) as much as possible.


• Make as many of my own clothes as I can.


• Hunt for great new products.


• Look for organic, cruelty free, Earth friendly products.


• Recycle/reuse as much as I can.


• Relax and have fun with food (and with life in general).

So on that note I present pumpkin soup.

Yes, this spawn-of-an-alien is the centre of a red pumpkin, which was purchased for 69c. What a bargain.

Garlic, onion, a carrot and 3 little potatoes joined it with some of this:

A fantastic local product. I love it for adding a smokey depth of flavour.

I got some of this divine natural yoghurt.

It is made in Canterbury. It is naturally mild and sweet. I might try making my own by using a spoonful of this in some warmed milk. Sounds like a very good idea.

I'm off to serve up some pumpkin soup. Hope it is good!