January 2012

Ok where to start. What a long year it has been already.

 

We have been so busy with drying peaches, bottling fruit and now the tomatoes have just started as well so I am making a big pot of tomato jam.

   Ok we start off with cuteness. For fun and with the heat wave that we have just had Jodie and the other smaller kids all decided to climb in the cows water and have a swim, luckily we had just clean it and filled it with new water, would have been a bit gross other wise.

Here is picture of the making of the cheese. It is on a double boiler melting. Once melted I pour it into a tub and let it set for 24 hours and next day we have cheese for lunch else I grate it and plop it in the deep freeze till needed. it melts very well on pizza’s.

 

I am making around 1.5kg of cheese every 3-4 days. I have also been putting in chilli and garlic that is very nice.

Like I said it has been a long year, Aimee twisted her ankle very badly, Sharna pulled her arm out, Sarah scrapped her chin, Daniel stood on something sharp, David cut his knee open, and Jodie fell on the broom on the nails and cut her little bum open  that was all in one day.

 

Our gorgeous sunsets.Abba Father spoils us with these lovely days and to end it with such a view is something special that we are blessed to see most days.

 

  One more blessing, Here we have homemade rye bread with homemade cream cheese, pesto that we have made with basil from the garden, tomatoes that I have grown and yes I bought the chips on the top of the bread, lol.

 

The kids making pop corn, as you can see the kids put to much corn in the pot, they needless to say had a lot of fun when the lid started to lift off and they waited for the pop corn to pop out but luckily it stopped popping before that happened..

So the Girls and Nathan started the year off by climbing to the top of the mountain behind us in the heat of the day and had a ball. Aimee ended up with sun stroke, Nathan was red as a tomatoes and Sharna pretended to not have been burnt till she got in the shower and her body stun,

So I planted loads of tomatoes as we can never have enough tomatoes~in our house.

We have been blessed with the tomatoes as they are growing so well. I have made Tomato Jam and am busy making Tomato Chutney. We have picked 15 – 20kg of tomatoes already.Yay Abba Father has been good to us.

Tomato Jam

Tomato Jam

4.5kg Tomatoes

1.8kg Sugar

4 Lemons

8 Cinnamon Sticks,

 

Cook tomatoes with out skins, Add sugar + Lemons+ Cinnamon till thick and ready to bottle.

Enjoy

Cooking up Tomato Chutney.

 

Red Tomato Chutney

1.5kg ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped

450g dessert apples, peeled, corded and chopped

450kg onions, peeled and very finely chopped

350g sultanas

350h raisins

1tsp dry mustard

2tsp ground allspice

1Tbsp salt

1Tbsp cayenne pepper

675g soft brown sugar

900ml vinegar

 

Place all the ingredients into a preserving pan and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring frequently until chutney is thick. Bottle and enjoy.

Aimee made yummy muffins today as we having guests.

Basic Muffins

375ml Flour

10ml Baking Powder

2.5ml Salt

125ml Sugar

125ml Milk

1 Egg, beating

60ml melted butter

 

Preheat oven to 180*C

Stir together the dry ingredients, Add the milk to the melted butter and egg. Add to the dry ingredients till just combined. Spoon into greased muffin tins and bake at 180* for 15 _ 20 minutes.

We added in 3 Tbsp of berry jam for flavour.

 

We are getting a 15l bucket of tomatoes ever 2 days. Aimee found a twin tomato. The first picture is my tomatoes that are in my box in front of my house. The other three pictures are my tomatoes that are in the garden.  

Well that is it for this month. Hope you all have a good February.