Chocolate Beetroot Brownies

I'm about to head to a friend's house warming party down the road and didn't want to go empty handed. I made some yummy fetta and pesto quinoa with grilled zucchini - but a couple of wilting beetroot in my crisper drawer were making me feel guilty so chocolate beetroot brownies were in order. These are easy to make and actually quite healthy...as brownies go. And a lovely way to warm a house! You could add nuts - if that's your thing.

Chocolate beetroot brownies

2 medium beetroot

100gm dark chocolate (70%) 

1 egg

60gm plain flour

50gm butter

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

125gm caster sugar

15gm cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Grease and line a rectangular pan (approx 15 x 20 cm). Peel and cut beetroot into eighths. You can either cook til tender in a microwave with a little water on high for 12 mins or steam on the stove top. Blend the beetroot with the chopped chocolate, vanilla and butter in a food processor until smooth. Beat sugar and egg until creamy, 2 minutes. Gently fold in the beetroot mix. Sift in the flour and the cocoa and gently fold into the wet mixture. Pour into the tin and bake about 25 minutes until the centre is almost done. Cool completely in the pan.

House vs Home

I spent this weekend clearing out, de-cluttering and organising our house with my partner, Andy. It was desperately needed, I only wish I'd taken before photos so I could do a comparison. We've lived in five different places since moving in together ten years ago (six if you count our stint in Dublin for 6 months) and it has turned us into water-treaders. When you move a lot (and also rent), it's easy to get into the trap of not really putting down roots. All of our previous rentals have really just been houses, this current place is the first I'd call a home. It's a big difference that, house vs. home. And it's taken about five years living in the one place to realise. 

I finally arranged a little space for myself to call a craft corner, setting up my sewing machine instead of leaving it neglected in the linen closet. That feels positive in itself. I wish we'd done this years ago but it's better late than never. Definitely another reminder of the importance to 'grow where you are planted'.

I made banana bread to provide sustenance for the weekend's work. A very tasty, cinnamon-y loaf that's firm enough for toasting under the grill. And perfect for the sudden rainy cold snap we're having.

Banana Bread

adapted from a recipe in Things on Toast by Tonia George

200g self raising flour

125g brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

pinch salt

50g butter, melted

60ml milk

1 egg, beaten

3 very ripe lady finger bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 180degC. Grease a loaf tin (mine was 14cm x 20 cm). Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl. Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix to get rid of floury pockets. Don't over mix, it will be lumpy. Bake 30-35 mins or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin 10 mins. Fantastic toasted with butter!

Waste-less

I mentioned in an earlier post about the huge amount of food Australian households waste (estimated at around $6billion a year!). These numbers frighten me. It basically means, when weighed against how much money the average family spends on food, people might as well just throw out one full bag of groceries out of every six they purchase the minute they get home. Crazy.


I try very hard not to waste food, but I'm far from perfect. We're lucky that we have a dog who loves veggies and what she doesn't eat raw gets cooked into her dog food I make every few months. Anything below Frankie's standard goes to the compost bin to produce better soil in our backyard. 


All these options are good. But one of the tastiest uses for scraps of veg is in making stock. Same goes for bones and chicken carcasses but best not ask a vego for the recipe! I love home made stock, it really does make food taste better and is worth the effort. 


I read an idea somewhere (I can't remember where unfortunately) that suggested keeping an old milk carton in the freezer and adding all your veggie scraps to that throughout the week. You throw in all the onion tops and celery leaves and carrot tops and then when you want stock you just cut open the carton and chuck it in the pot. Simmer the stock 'til flavoursome and then strain. We did a mushroom stock the other day with some dried out mushies and it was amazing!


Once you have your beautiful stock, the options are endless. Below is my favourite soup recipe. We sold this with lazy girl bread at last year's BOGI Fair and it sold out in an hour. Great comfort food.

Potato and three onion soup


nice, local waxy potatoes
leeks
brown onions
onion chives
garlic
stock 
butter
olive oil
cream
salt and pepper


All quantities are to scale based on your number to feed. Dice your onions, use more onions than you would as a base to most meals. They're a major ingredient in this soup, not just a supporting act. Soften the onions slowly in a good knob of butter and a good splash of olive oil. Take your time here, when they're halfway done, add the sliced leeks (as many as you can afford). Cook until soft and delicious. Stir through your diced and peeled potatoes, get them well covered in the onion-y goodness. Add your stock and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through. Blend with a stick blender or in batches in a blender until very smooth. Add cream and some more butter (I didn't say it was a healthy dish!). Season. Serve with lazy girl bread.

Gifting

A friend, Amy, posted a link to a really interesting article about the economy of gifts recently. After reading I started thinking about ways to make this sort of idea work. I spoke with Mel about this and she mentioned she'd been thinking about the idea of community sufficiency as opposed to self-sufficiency for awhile. It makes a lot of sense to me. We'd like to have something organised (as described in the article) but I also started thinking about ways in which I'm already involved in gifting. 


Mel and I don't seem to ever visit each other without something in hand - a jar of jam, something home grown or a piece of clothing, even something we saw while op-shopping which made us think of the other. It's a natural thing and it makes me happy. Seeing someone else get joy out of something you made, or wear a beautiful dress you no longer fit in to can be really uplifting. 


I also use freecycle quite a bit. I recently posted some items and when a lovely girl called Em came to collect a couch and laundry basket for her new home, I thought she looked a little familiar. Turned out she knows Mel and a half dozen of my friends! She brought a home grown rockmelon and an eggplant, and some of her hen's eggs. It reminded me of the days when you'd never think of visiting a friend empty handed.

These simple, small acts are the easy way to start the circle of giving. I'm a big believer in starting small. Next time you visit someone, take them a flower from your garden or a few slices of banana bread you cooked. It'll make you both smile.

Swap, Mend and Re-Use

There have been murmurs of a clothes swap for a while now. But while Gav and I were away was when the idea of something a bit more than just a clothes swap dawned on me. With the war time mantra of Make Do and Mend rattling around in my head I came up with Swap, Mend and Re-use. While the war time mantra was born out of a necessity to maximise scarce resources, this new mantra has been born more out of a desire to be resourceful with what we already have, without the usual exchange of money and with the underlying theme of re-use. Contrary to 1940's UK, here in Australia we have access to plenty of cheap (and not so cheap) clothing, most likely to have been made by those who have so little to begin with and are receiving an inadequate amount for the work they are doing to put layers of clothes on our backs. Add to that the environmental impact of our clothing habits and I'm left a more than a bit embarassed to admit that I bought a pair of shoes for $4.80 from Target the other day.  My only consolation is that the big company didn't get the highest price at point of sale from me. Not much of a consolation - these are complex issues!

But anyway, I don't want to get too heavy and not highlight the fun, because the day WAS fun! And I am really thankful to all those who came to share resources, skills, friendship, time and tasty treats on a beautiful Saturday morning.

The day was planned in a relatively short time frame. Emails and facebook stuff sorted, a few old sheets, a hot kettle, a few sewing machines and a couple of skilled folk ready to share their knowledge was all that it took (thanks mum, sis and others!). I was so chuffed to see all those that came along and made the day as excellent as it was. Here's some snaps of what went on:

Items of clothing happily swapped or lined up for some re-fashioning



Clever hands helping on the sewing machine



 A favourite shirt being salvaged and sewn on to another



A shirt being transformed in to a skirt

A little cutie enjoying the piles of clothes that were begging to be hidden under 

Thanks to all those that came along! 

I heard a few people talking about their fabric collections and desire to actually make things from said collections (Me included! My op shopped piles of fabric need to stop growing and turn in to things!). So I was thinking I'd be keen to have a Sew, Mend and Re-Use day sometime in the new year. The lead up could involve sharing patterns, online tutorials and other inspiration...

And yes, I'm still keen to make undies out of old shirts. That might be a tutorial of it's very own! 

~ 

Melania

Food...and where it comes from

I think about food a lot. Cooking it, eating it, growing it. But I also think about where it comes from. Not just the store but the real source of what I'm eating. I'm always trying to find the best option which meets my financial and moral (and taste) needs. I ask myself questions such as: "Is it better to choose an organic product from overseas or a local non-organic product?" or "What about when the quality of the imported product is higher (like with Italian canned tomatoes) and the product is so much cheaper?". I have to weigh these concerns against a tight budget of both time and money. I think these are pretty common limiting factors for many of you. 


Over this past year my partner (Andy) and I have been discussing our food choices in fairly serious ways. We'd been slowly reducing the amount of pre-made food we purchased and our food bills had dropped significantly. We did this by replacing things such as tortillas, bread and pasta with home made versions and buy simply limiting the amount of 'junk' food we purchased. The majority of our shopping is now for the ingredients to make food instead of ready made food. We can also afford to purchase more organics and high quality products. When we see shelf-stable products on special we purchase multiples and stockpile. We also signed up for our local Community Supported Agriculture group Food Connect. Food Connect provides subscriptions of fruit and vegetables sourced from local, sustainable, chemical free or organic growers and gives a fair price to the farmer (approximately 40% of the sale price compared to 4-6% the large chains offer). The food is great and it has put us back in touch with the seasons and the effect weather can have on food production. 


We also spoke about meat. I'm a vegetarian and have been all my life. Andy has always eaten meat, and was raised in a meat-and-three-veg family. He has reduced his meat consumption since we've been together. I don't think this is due to any sort of guilt tripping from me (I hope!) but because of the tasty vego food we make together. Andy has also learnt more about nutrition and so understands appropriate portion sizes for meat better now. We like the idea of 'meat as a treat' - choosing great quality, free-range or organic meat and paying more for it but buying less. As the quality is higher, you need to use less and having it less often makes you appreciate it more. 


In the past I have been an active dumpster diver. I have collected food from bins all over Brisbane. When you start doing this it can really shock you. The quality of the food is amazing but the quantity is the really shocking thing. One of my regular haunts regularly had half a dozen wheelie bins full of fruit and veg on every visit. The photo below is a selection from one night's diving. There would have been 10 times that amount left after we were finished. It is estimated that we throw out over $6 billion of food a year from Australian households...I'd hate to think what the value for retail stores and restaurants would be.

I dumpster dive less since signing up for Food Connect. I'm not against diving any more, I still stand by the reasons I started doing it in the first place (namely, reducing the amount of food going to landfill) but we get enough food from our subscription. I also like that I'm supporting the farmers and hopefully making small steps to change. This is the reason I've always struggled to wholly support the freegan idea. I don't think we can see change unless we support those attempting to produce better products. Choosing to not spend at the large chain stores is one thing but neglecting the little guys trying to make a difference as well doesn't create change. 


Since reducing my dumpster diving nights (or possuming, as I like to call it - after overhearing some packing staff say "Here come the possums" one night), I've been looking into some ways others are working on the supermarket food waste problem. I was glad to see a post on one of my favourite blogs about this here. Tricia gave some great links to charities and groups working to redistribute the food before it gets sent to landfill. 


I guess this whole (rather long) post is about making the choices that are right for you. You can only work within your limits of time and money. Research your food and make active choices about what you buy. You'll feel better for it!  

Jessie's guest Green Cleaning post

I twisted Jessie's arm at the last SkillCycle day and convinced her to write something for the blog. So, with much excitement, introducing our first guest poster - Jessie!

There are lots of different motivations to get into green cleaning – for example, for healthier skin, safe grey water for our gardens, to help protect our waterways, to consume less, and to save money.

Some of us also have particular things that keep us from actually doing it – for me, it was uncertainty about whether I could get things ‘really’ clean (I was also wary of the smell of vinegar, until I realised it has no scent when it dries). Then the Queensland Floods happened in January. With water and sludge up to 2 metres up the walls, and the threat of mould enveloping the entire house, I had more cleaning to do than in the rest of my life so far, and didn’t want to inflict any more damage on the natural world than the disaster had already done.

Starting with clove oil to kill mould spores, and baking soda and vinegar to clean almost everything else, I realised greener methods could be extremely effective.  (And after the initial double-take on the cost of 10 ml of clove oil, I realised that with something so effective when using only a few drops per bucket, I could clean the entire house several times, for less than the cost of one spray-pack of ineffective whiteners. I still have ½ the bottle left).

Since then I’ve gleaned more information from friends, books and websites, and hope that this set of ‘Green Cleaning’ basics will be helpful for everyday (everyweek/month) cleaning and for dealing with some of the rarer tasks and accidents.  Ideas and links are really welcome!

Jessie