Will work for food

It’s official – I now work for food, literally. A couple of months ago, I started working with an organization here called Ooooby doing grant research and now some writing. Ooooby does produce box delivery in the Sydney area. As a thank you, I’m now getting free deliveries for my effort. Jason’s joked that I should change my picture on LinkedIn to me holding a sign that says “will work for food”.

Coffee Exfoliant

Awhile ago I found a blog post somewhere about making soap with coffee grounds and got really excited. I have a cup of coffee a day and it makes me sad to just throw away the grounds once I’m done (now we have the worm farm so that’s where most of it goes). Anyway, I started saving the grounds from my daily coffee. Eventually I gathered what I thought was enough so I went looking for that blog again. After reading it, and this is embarrassing, I thought it was too much effort so I scraped that idea. But what was I to do with all of my coffee? I then thought about making an exfoliant. A quick Google search told me that I could make a super simple exfoliant with coffee grounds and either water or olive oil.

For my first attempt, I followed the instructions that said 1 tbsp coffee for 1 tbsp water or oil. I decided to start with water first, but thought that the amount of water was too much. It ended up being pretty watery and I was worried it would all just run off of my hand in the shower. I added another tbsp of coffee and it was great. So I would suggest a 2:1 ratio (2 parts coffee for 1 part oil/water). So far, I’ve used this on my face, upper arms and feet. It’s quite nice! Apparently the caffeine is supposed to perk your skin up. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but it sounds nice! It makes your skin so smooth.

Dark chocolate and cherry peanut butter cups

A couple of weeks ago I was going stir crazy in the house. We had a couple of rainy days, so I started to play in the kitchen. I took this recipe, that I’ve made before for Jason’s coworkers (sans the coconut oil and with milk chocolate) and went a little crazy. This time, I used the original dark chocolate and coconut oil AND I added some cheery preserves to the mix. They were amazing. Instead of making 12, I only made 6. So you can imagine how huge they were.

I made them about two weeks ago and have kept them in the refrigerator since. I just take one out whenever I want one, give it a couple of minutes to warm up and enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 200 mg dark chocolate bar (I use bakers chocolate)
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup cherry preserves

Instructions

1. Melt the chocolate, either in a double boiler or the microwave. I used the microwave with 30 second bursts of cooking (and then stirring).
2. In a small bowl, scoop out roughly 1/2 cups peanut butter. Add 1/4 cup of cheery preserves to the peanut butter and mix together.
3. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners. Depending on how big you want them, use either 6 or 12 liners. With a spoon, scoop in a little melted chocolate to cover the bottom of each liner. Place in the freezer for about 2 minute to slightly set.
4. Add a small scoop of the peanut butter mix and gently flatten with the back of a spoon.
5. Scoop more melted chocolate to cover the top, about 1-2 tablespoons. Return to the freezer for about 15-30 minutes until serving.

Our worm farm and 2,000 Carles

For awhile now I’ve wanted to compost, but in DC we were in a teeny tiny apartment where I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Then, when we moved to Sydney I thought that it wouldn’t make sense to do it here since we’re in an apartment and I”m not sure what we’d do with the compost once it was finished.

Finally, I realized that I didn’t care if it was too short a time period to make the investment, or if we’d then have compost that we couldn’t use. If anything, it can serve as an experiment to see how much food waste we generate. And, at the end of the day, if we have too much compost we can give it away to some of my gardening folks.

All that being said. I bought a worm farm three weeks ago. You can make them easily if you have the tools, but we didn’t. Instead I just went to the nearest hardware store and bought one. With the kit, I also bought 2,000 worms (1,000 worms per person in your household). I’ve named all of the worms Carle so we don’t get confused. They take their name from Eric Carle who wrote the children’s book The Hungry Caterpillar. Here are some of the pictures from the beginning.

A worm farm is just another way to build compost. The farm is basically a set of black tupperware. The worms break down most of our food waste (they don’t like too much citrus and we very, very rarely cook meat in the house). In addition to the compost that will be created, the worms also provide this glorious “worm juice” that’s supposed to be very good for plants, serving as a liquid fertilizer.

At first I was little nervous because I was worried we fed too much to the worms at once. The worm farm came with a coconut block to feed the worms, but the worms also came with their own dirt and paper concoction. So, I let them hang out for a bit while they got use to their new home. While they were hanging out, we were collecting food to feed them later. This is when I thought I’d given them too much. After two weeks we decided to let them rest for a week. I just checked on them and everything looks great! I’m so pleased with the progress. As more of the food breaks down I’ll post another picture.

Simplest Meal

When Jason travels, I tend to eat the simplest meals. So far so that Jason (wrongfully) thinks that they aren’t meals. They usually include a hodge hodge of fruits and vegetables. I’m completely ok with this. Especially a couple of weeks ago week. I’d just finished an introductory course on Permaculture with Milkwood and have become even more conscious about the food I eat. So this time, I made a specific effort to eat simple meals in order to really taste what I was eating. The end result was really great, so I thought I’d share. I had some black beans that I cooked earlier in the day and went from there. To be honest, the lime is unlike me, but I had these two beautiful limes from a woman’s garden that I worked on a couple of weeks ago and didn’t want it to go to waste.

Ingredients

• 1/2 black beans
• 1 cup chopped potatoes, 1inch or smaller in size
• 2 tomatoes
• 2 lime slices
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp margarine
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. If your beans aren’t already cooked, cook your beans in water until just tender. Add a 1/2 teaspoon on salt. Transfer to a bowl with cooking water.
2. In the same bowl (or in a separate if you want everything warm), add the potatoes and some water and bring to a boil. Once boiling add about 1/2 teaspoon salt. Once cooked, drain the water. Add a dollop (maybe two teaspoons) of margarine, mix around, and let cool.
3. Once the potatoes have cooled down a bit, combine the beans and potatoes in your serving bowls.
4. Add the tomatoes to the bowl once combined. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. squirt the lime on top. That’s it!

Pumpkin Biscuits

I mentioned in my last post that I would be providing the recipe for the pumpkin biscuits I made so here it is! I used the pumpkin that we got (see exploring new fruits and vegetables) since we got so much from just the half. They turned out really well! I made one batch last week and still had some pumpkin left over, so I decided to make some for a friend whose house we were going over to. Everyone loved them! It’s always so fulfilling to watch people enjoy something you made and our proud of.

I promised myself awhile ago that I wouldn’t buy buttermilk anymore because I never use all of it. So for this recipe, I made my own with 1/3 teaspoon white vinegar and then filling the rest of the 1/3 measuring cup with rice milk (it what I had at home) and waited for two minutes.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) + 1 tablespoon butter (or margarine), divided
• 3/4 cup unsweetened pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup buttermilk

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda together.
3. Add in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs (I do this with my hands).
4. In a small bowl, stir together the pumpkin and buttermilk; add to the crumb mixture and stir just until moistened.
5. Split the dough into even sizes. For my first iteration, I made 10 small biscuits. The second time around I made 6 so it’s up to you and how large you want to have them. Just remember to adjust the baking time.
6. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Melt the remaining 1 tablespoon butter in a small bowl. Brush the melted butter over the biscuits.

Exploring new fruits and vegetables

I’ve made a promise to myself to buy fruits and vegetables that I’ve never heard of before, or have never tried when I find them at a market or store. The idea behind this is that if more people buy these things than more market producers will grown them and the diversity of food that we find in our stores will continue to grow. There’s so much more food out there than what we are given in a grocery store. With that in mind, we went to a market recently that had a number of things I’ve never seen before.

No-bake macaroons

If you like super dark chocolatey treats this is the one for you. It’s super simple to make and doesn’t require any bake time! I’ve recently discovered that I like coconut in my baked goods, but I’m never quite sure what to make with it. After some googling, I found a recipe for no-bake macaroons. I added more coconut to the recipe below as I thought the original was a little too sticky. To make these vegan, you can replace the honey with maple syrup. I happened to have just enough honey from this fun rooftop place in Sydney so I used that. 

Yulara’s Night Sky

We went to Yulara and the Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park earlier this month and were really blown away. There are a number of things about this part of the Northern Territory that’s incredible, but if I’m honest with myself, the night sky easily surpasses everything else. I’ve spent a good amount of time in areas with little light, in the middle of nowhere, but have never seen a sky like we did in Yulara. 

Cauliflower and Lentil Curry

I decided to try out this cauliflower curry that I found a couple of weeks ago. I love all things curry so I figured it would be delicious, and it was! We had just a bit of rice left in our pantry so I decided to add it, and I adjusted the spices a tad. I also adjusted the lentils, but I don’t think it was necessary. I made a lentil shepherds pie earlier in the week and had some left over (roughly 1.5 cups), so that’s what I used. If you’re cooking them for this recipe, I would use the original amount of 2.5 cups. I’m one who loved a crunchy texture, so I served this with two pieces of toasted sourdough (naan would have been ideal). I forgot to take a picture of it once it was finished. So here’s my leftovers and empty bowl. Whoops!