Frugal Vegetable Soup (bulk freezer recipe)

Around the home

It was Queens Birthday weekend and also a long weekend for New Zealanders.  The Queen's birthday is actually in April, however we celebrate it in June.  Haven't ever found out the reason for this, perhaps someone knows?

A strong earthquake measuring 5.5 jolted us all yesterday morning at 9.09am.  We have had a real seismic couple of days.  I will need to straighten my bookcases again, as the books all slid sideways.  Last evening, I had just finished giving Alex the earthquake drill before leaving to pick Georgia up from her friends house, when another one hit.  It pays to just remind the children when they are being left at home for a short time, what to do if one strikes and Mum and Dad have popped out.  I admit to feeling uneasy leaving him on a day with so many aftershocks.  Turned out there were no more while I was out.  Just one when I got home instead.

Georgia has been away all weekend, staying with a horsey friend and being groom at a 2 day horse competition.  I have to admit to missing her.  We share such a close relationship, so I missed her chatter and excitement around the house.  Alf and Alex had Air soft on Saturday and worked together yesterday and Sunday.  So I've actually had some quiet time to myself.  This is most unusual and almost never happens.  So what did I do with my time? I finished a (non homeschooling) book I was reading, spent some time reading blogs, got up to date with the accounts for our business, and pottered around the house.  Not terribly exciting at all.  However, I feel refreshed with just having had a break from other people.

In the last week, we have adopted Isaac, the country dog.  This came about because his family had moved to Australia for work about 6 months ago.  Since then he has missed having children and people around him.  Isaac is a 12 year old Black Lab/huntaway cross, with the most gentle personality and only one eye.  He is very good around the cats and doesn't even bark at the chickens (he is very good at rounding them up when they get out).  He will invariably retire with us and is no problem at all.  Hopefully he will be a good teacher for young Moose when he gets here. Which won't be long now, as they are running around outside now.  So our pet population has suddenly doubled almost overnight!

In the Kitchen
I make this soup almost weekly over the winter months.  Very cheap to make and is delicious.  You can even watch it on YouTube.

Pumpkin & Vegetable Soup

5 litres water in a large pot
Bring to boil and add the following:- pumpkin, celery, carrots, silverbeet, 4T chicken stock and minced garlic
Boil soup for 20 minutes
Add 2 cups red lentils
Boil another 20 minutes
Puree soup

 

Autumn Leaves Are About - Time For Pumpkin Soup

Seasons
Autumn leaves are abundant and vibrant everywhere one looks at the moment.  I absolutely love the autumnal season, but I'm biased.  The autumn weather in Christchurch can be very chargeable however.  One minute we are basking in mild temperatures in the 20's, meaning we deliver our morning newspapers in just a t-shirt.   The next moment a southerly storm arrives and frosts begin on the ground.

Cooking & Baking
Along with the autumn weather, autumn food prices are beginning to sneak in at the fruit and vege shops.  Apples have come way down in price, thankfully because apples are our fruit of choice around here.  Apples, along with oranges, kiwifruit and the odd banana are what I mainly buy.  I will only buy bananas if they are under $2 per kg.  That does not happen very much any more, however, last week bananas were .99c per kilo along with those royal galas I bought.  Lucky Alf gets to eat them for his work lunch.

Alf had to work over most of the Easter break, so on Easter Sunday I packed his lunch like this

My Favourite Pumpkin Soup

1.5 kilos pumpkin, peeled and chopped into chunks
2 medium potatoes
2 onions, chopped

200g bacon, chopped

3 litres of chicken stock

4 Tablespoons butter or oil for cooking

salt and pepper

Dash of milk at the end if needed

Chop the bacon, onion, potato and pumpkin pieces.

In a large pot, melt the butter/oil, then add above ingredients.

Stir around and then cover with lid .

Turn the heat down to the lowest setting and let the ingredients sweat for around 5 minutes.

Remove lid and pour in the stock, give it a stir, then increase the heat until the liquid simmers.

Simmer until vegetables are soft.

Puree in batches in the food processor and return to a clean pot.

Check for seasoning and if too thick add some milk

 Enjoy

Why I love Shopping In Rangiora

Rangiora is a beautiful satellite town a small distance north west of  metropolitan Christchurch. Each Saturday, just before lunchtime, I head out there to take Georgia to her riding lesson at Ashley Downs Riding Centre.  The drastic increase in the petrol price, now at 215.9 cents per litre, necessitates that I stay out there for the afternoon to save on 2 extra trips.  Although Georgia rides at 1pm, she is encouraged to help out before and after her lesson.  She also eats her lunch with around 10 other similarly aged girls before her lesson.  This is a wonderful opportunity for Georgia to socialise with other nice, like-minded girls with similar interests to her.  Homeschooling all week at home requires us to make concerted efforts to leave the house and meet other people, so I look forward to Saturdays and a day out of the city.

I now enjoy the shopping aspect of Rangiora that Christchurch does not afford me at the moment.  Being a small township means I am able to shop in one storey buildings in relative safety.  This also means I have plenty of time over the afternoon to shop at Bin Inn, Countdown, Farmers and a well stocked bookshop. This luxury is not mine alone however, 100's of Christchurch residents have flocked out there to live temporarily since the earthquake.  So the shops are packed with people doing the same as me. Sadly, the crime rate has increased some 300% there since February.

I had a worrying time last night.  Alex went to the movies alone for the very first time.  I dropped him off and paid for his ticket, mainly so I knew what time the movie finished so he could be picked up.  I wasn't worried about the alone at the movies part, it was him being in the movie theatre if there was another big aftershock! I definitely prayed about that one. However, there were none, thank goodness.  Alex said there was a detailed message on the screen about what to do in the event of an earthquake.  Viewers are told to stay seated and curl into a ball, hugging knees.  A bit like on a plane I suppose. Then when the shaking stops to head to the exits. Sobering stuff.

Autumn chill in the Air
The seasons have definitely changed, and autumn is here at last.  The nights are getting darker and the mornings cooler. Not long now until the end of daylight saving. We are finally putting in our new log burner that we purchased this time last year.  That's right, LAST year.  There was such a huge rush on log burners before the new clean air woodburner deadline of 1st April 2010, our fire took an extra 2 months to arrive. By that time it was far to cold to consider taking out the old fire.  So we very quietly burnt our very non-complying logburner an extra winter, hoping the council weren't driving up and down the streets checking people's old chimney tops.  However, now the instalation is proving problematic again because the position of the new free standing fire box is too close to the wall. Meaning extra fire proofing wall board and umpteen regulations to comply with. But the consent is all paid for, Alf can install the fire (saving us some money) and we just need a plumber for the water booster. Done.

The trees are changing colour, love Autumn.

Weekday Risotto with Roasted Pumpkin
I love this quick dish.  Very cost effective on the food budget.  I watched Simon make a risotto on the Masterchef Cooking Class, and I have to say I'm quietly confident that my risottos are up to scratch compared to his. Here is  my weekday risotto;

Ingredients
4-6 cups chicken stock (I use oxo cubes when I haven't made stock)
3 tablespoons oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 cups Arborio rice
1/4 cup parmesan cheese (I just use ordinary cheddar)
2-3 cups chopped pumpkin, coated in oil and roasted


1. Put stock in large pot and heat through.

2. Cut up pumpkin, coat in oil and roast at 180c until cooked through.


3. Put onion and garlic in pan, saute in oil.

4. When onion is soft, add uncooked Arborio rice and stir, coating the grains with oil.

5. Ladle stock 1/2 cup at a time into the rice, stirring well after each addition.  Do not add more stock until  previous ladleful has been absorbed.  

6. Continue this until rice has absorbed enough liquid to become thick and creamy and no longer hard to the bite.


7. Stir the pumpkin in gently so as not to break it up or make it mashy. Mix in the cheese just before serving.


8. Serve with a crisp salad and crunch bread, or on its own.

The pumpkin chopped and roasted

The rice cooking in the stock

I added some freshly chopped silverbeet for colour and goodness

Weekday Risotto

Some freshly baked rolls to go along with the risotto...Enjoy!

Making A Little Go A Long Way

Hard financial times in our home at present, leave little money left over in the household kitty once the bills have been paid.  It's our reality at the moment.  Some days are very hard and coming up with frugal methods of cooking day in day out to keep our house ship shape is a struggle.  In times like this I just have to remember that we are able to pay our bills and put made-from-scratch homemade food on the table.  We are indeed blessed, as others do have it much tougher than us.  So as I hop down off my mighty Frugal Soapbox, I wanted to talk about how s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g  the staples in my cupboard, makes our meals go a little further, without appearing to.

Cooking Up Chickpeas and making Chickpeas with Curried Cous Cous

This dish has evolved over the years, as many favourite dishes tend to.  You become so adept at making it, and one day you think, oh I'm missing some the ingredients, I'll swap something around.  This is how my roasted vegetable salad became a chickpea salad.  Also, this is a dish I spy alot at flash cafes around the city and can easuly make at home.

Based on Roasted Vegetable Salad with Curried Dressing, from Sophie Gray's STUNNING FOOR FROM SMALL CHANGE

Chickpeas: Short cut the soaking period by placing 2 cups of chickpeas in 8 cups of water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 minutes.  Leave to stand for 1 hour.

They are then ready to cook for 1-2 hours.  Keep checking the level of water, as it does evaporate quickly.

That's the chickpea part.

Cous Cous: I place 2 cups of cous cous into a dish and cover well with boiling water.  Cover immediately with tinfoil and sit for 15 mins unitl completely swelled and fluffy.  Fluff up with a fork, add small dob of butter and stir through.

Curried Dressing:

2 tsp curry powder

1/4 cup oil

2 tsp vinegar

1/2 tsp sugar

1 clove garlic, crushed

Combine above ingredients then add a handful of sultanas.

Everyone has their favourite bolognaise recipe they use week in week out.  I certainly do, and I like to do as much as possible with it, stretching it out into several dishes.  Everyone loves lasagne in our house, and it's one of those great  do ahead dishes.  Monday is our tricky day, when we are out of the house in the late afternoon for several hours. Last year art class was between 5pm and 6.30pm, now we are doing rock climbing in the city from 4pm until 5.15pm.  I make several weeks worth of lasagne in use-again foil dishes and freeze them.  That means I just need to defrost one during the day, pop into the oven and reheat.  With the addition of the cous cous salad and veges, a satisfying meal is provided for the hungry family.

If I keep aside some of the bolognaise from the lasagne, I am able to make several more dishes.  The good old pizza is immediately jazzed up with a layer of the meaty sauce.

Last but not least, pinwheel scones made with the meat sauce, then sprinkled with cheese.  This made for a filling school holiday lunch.  Easily put in a lunch box for outings as well.

Life Returns To Normal At Last

Daily Happenings...

I am soooo much better now that I'm over all this nausea and other unpleasant symptons of the food poisoning I had last week.  In fact I'm almost chomping on the bit to get things done. The last week has just flown by and I want to get my garden back into some sort of order and also spend a couple of days mapping out Term One's schoolwork. Finish the spring cleaning I started as well.  My kitchen gleams from the day of furious scrubbing I spent in there.

Garden Happenings....
As I wandered a the yesterday I certainly noticed how much the veges have grown and in some cases done their thing and are ready to pull out (read cauliflowers), and that I need to make ready the ground for autumn produce. Ooooh! We have been eating our beetroot.  I have been roasting them, just lightly coated in oil and sliced in half.  What a amazing sweet flavour they have done that way, yet they still retain the classic beetroot taste as well. There really aren't enough to bottle and it's nice to eat them as fresh as possible.

I was at the nursery to pick up parsnip seed (last packet on the shelf as everyone else has the same idea as me) and popped a sage plant for my herb garden on the counter as well. Thinking ahead to next year's roast chicken for Christmas!

So more carrots to sow and some parsnips for the winter.  They will go into the space where the potatoes have come out of.  Next year we definately need to plant twice as much potatoes for a longer harvest.  Speaking of next year's garden, look what happens when you have too much time on your hands and an very early morning coffee session outside....

Mapping out some more land for garden, the other potential garden runs between this one marked out with garden tools and the wheelie bin and tyre swing and the boundary fence.

This whole plan hinges on the removal of this Silver Birch tree.  We already topped this tree in the spring and were amazed at how much light we now have. We like the light that now streams into our living rooms too much.

 Frugal Meals...

With me being sick last week, the meals were certainly more expensive and more instant to make than perhaps I would personally plan for.  However, I'm not complaining in the least as the best was made a of bad situation and it was all hands on deck for food preparation.  So this week, things are a lot tighter to make up for this. This is what I have planned for the meals until Thursday...

Last Friday we had Chili, rice and seasonal veges like those roasted beetroot, salad, beans and broccoli

Saturday was Macaroni Cheese enough for 5 of us

Sunday was leftover red kidney beans made into another Chili in Crepes, salad, green beans and rice

I covered these crepes with a white sauce and grated cheese, makes a little go a long way.  This meal fed 5 adults with almost one dish for left overs.

Monday will have a go at making ravioli stuffed with left over roasties and seasonal veg

Tuesday Fried Rice, seasonal veges and a pudding

Wednesday Chili Bean and Potato Bake with seasonal veg and baked bread

Nibbles

Our Caterpillar, Nibbles, is certainly living up to it's name.  Nibbles is now 35mm long and very wide and chews day and night.  Reminds me of this...

Bye for now, Lee-Anne