Fabulous Fennel

The veggy patch is in full production. We picked 3 kg of runner beans yesterday, ate some with dinner last night and I blanched and froze the rest. There's another similar amount of beans almost ready to pick. I can see us getting sick of beans fairly soon.

The Florence fennel is getting quite big ~ so today I picked 3 bulbs that were bigger than a clenched fist and decided to make soup. It was a great way to use up some home grown potatoes, onions and spinach too. I made fresh chicken stock from yesterdays roast chicken carcass, celery, onion, carrot and a bay leaf but I have used stock cubes/powder in this recipe before and you still get a good result.

Creamy Fennel Soup:
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
a knob of butter
3 large fennel bulbs, cleaned and chopped
reserve a few of the fennel fronds
600g potatoes, peeled and chopped
900ml chicken stock
100 ml milk or cream or a mixture of both
salt and white pepper

a handful of spinach or silver beet leaves, shredded
3 rashers of streaky bacon, chopped

Heat the oil and butter in a large saucepan (or stock pot). Add the onion, garlic and fennel then sprinkle with a little salt and stir. Put the lid on and cook gently just to sweat them, you don't want to colour them, just soften them up. It will take about 10 minutes.

Next add the chopped potatoes and the chicken stock, bring to the boil and reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook for 20 minutes or so until the potatoes are tender.

Remove the pot from the heat and using either a stick blender (my preference) or a jug type blender process until the soup is smooth and free of any lumps. Return to the pan, add the milk/cream and stir whilst gently warming. Avoid boiling the soup at this stage as it could split. Taste and season well with salt and white pepper. Add a few snipped up fennel fronds and stir through.

Keep the soup hot while you make the topping:
Dry fry the streaky bacon until it's crispy, then add the shredded greens. Stir for a few minutes until the greens are wilted. Pour the soup into bowls and top with the bacon garnish.
Makes 6 servings.

If you are making the soup you could go the whole hog and make this bread to go with it:

I used the same recipe but divided the dough into 2 rustic cobs and proved until doubled in size, then baked them for 15 mins each in my mini oven (I still don't have the proper oven installed).

I'm back....

It's been a long long time since I have had the time or chance to write anything. Life here has been total mayhem ~ the house repairs are still not finished, the kitchen is still half fitted. The saying 'anything that can go wrong, will go wrong' has become my mantra over the past 6 months. I used to be a glass half full type of person but now I find myself leaning to the glass half empty side more and more.

I would not wish this EQ repair process on anyone. I knew it would be a major upheaval and in my mind I could easily cope with it (hey, we used to move house/county sometimes country every 18 months when my hubby was in the RAF). We were lucky in that we had an extremely good team of tradesmen, but unfortunately it was the organ grinder who didn't listen. Hence we are still waiting to have the chimney, fireplace and surrounding walls taken out in the kitchen. Heaven knows when this will happen.

Because of this we can't have the remaining parts of our new kitchen installed, but as it happens that's no problem as things went wrong yet again. The kitchen cabinets were ordered way back last year, when delivered in December 3 crucial cabinets were missing. One being the oven housing unit. Me being me, although feeling extremely annoyed, thought it's no biggie, worse things happen ~ I will just go buy a bench top oven and make do for a few months until the other cabinets arrive in February.

February turned to March and still no cabinets, I rang the shop and they said they had arrived but I would have to pay an outstanding invoice before they could deliver them. WHAT? We had paid in full for the entire kitchen on order day. I searched through bank statements and invoices to prove the payment had been made. After emailing copies of these to them I waited and waited. No apology, no confirmation, nothing. Zilch. I rang the shop to ask if they had clarified that it had been paid for. It had, which I knew anyway. It was like pulling teeth. Still no apology.

The delivery truck arrived last week and after unwrapping the cabinets I saw that the wrong oven housing unit had been ordered. I saw red. I rang and told them there was NO WAY I was willing to wait another 3 months for another replacement being ordered (from Germany). It seems they made a mistake on the latest order, even though I had confirmed twice with them that this one (showing them a picture) was the cabinet on order and was assured that it was.  As it turned out they had the cabinet I was wanting in stock, unfortunately it was a shop model one. Did I get a discount? Don't be silly, refunds/discounts don't exist here. Once they have your money there's no way you would ever get a penny of it back. You have to think yourself lucky that they managed to get you the items you had ordered and paid over the odds for to start with!

Sorry if I'm sounding negative about New Zealand today, but the place really tests my patience sometimes. Life is not a bed of roses here as friends and family overseas like to think. It seems everything has to be put through the Kiwi Complicator machine at least once and sometimes twice.  Sometimes I feel life here is just a big battle.

On the positive side, there are little things that are making me happy, such as food and flowers from my garden:

These colours tell me it's Spring, yet it's Autumn.
Easter approaching tells me it's Spring, but it's not.

A pre-loved Ashford Traveller wheel that I finally found the time to lavish with TLC, it's like new after a good rub down with furniture oil, a new drive band, tensioning system and a few tweaks here and there. It spins lovely ~ not that I've had the time to do much spinning:

We have a completely renovated, beautiful bathroom that's waiting for some new flooring laying tomorrow, (finally we have a 'finished' room, yay!) my organic vegetable garden has kept us in potatoes, salads, berries and vegetables over the past 6 months. I walk my dogs most days and as I turn to go back up the driveway and look over at the mountains I know I've got it good. The problem is life can stop you seeing it that way sometimes!

Shortbread

It's 5 years and 4 days since we emigrated to New Zealand. That's 5 very long years when there's no shortbread.

Rewind to Monday ~ at the supermarket I noticed they now have packs of rice flour (ground rice to us Brits). Imagine my excitement.

Now everyone who bakes shortbread knows that this is the 'special' ingredient that adds the satisfying crunch and texture to the biscuit. When baked without ~ well that just isn't shortbread to me. It's too soft and cloying in the mouth.

I bought some after scrutinizing the label to make sure it didn't contain any gelatine or other suspect additions as is often the case.

So what did I make on Tuesday morning?

Here's my recipe:

115g soft butter (unsalted)
55g caster sugar 
A good pinch of salt
130g plain flour
40g ground rice/rice flour

1. Pre-heat the oven to 150C. Put the butter into a large mixing bowl, and beat with a wooden spoon until soft. Beat in the sugar and salt.

2. Sift over the flour and ground rice and mix to a smooth dough; it should come together nicely. If not add a little more butter.

3. Shape the dough into a log, about 2" in diameter. Roll in baking paper and chill for at least an hour.

4. Cut into slices just over 1 cm thick and place on a baking tray lined with paper. Leave a space as they will spread slightly. Bake for 25-30 minutes until they feel firm but are still very pale.

5. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes then transfer to a wire rack. Once cold they will last for a good few days in an airtight container, unless you eat them all quickly of course.

Makes about 24 biscuits.

I often add flavourings such as grated lemon rind, finely chopped preserved ginger, chopped dried cranberries with orange rind, lavender flowers, macadamia nuts or drizzle a little melted chocolate over the tops. But sometimes, like today, I just want them plain to remind myself of what I have been missing. 

I can predict what will happen next ~ in a few days the rice flour stock will be totally gone and will never get refilled. When you ask about it at the store they will say 'there's no call for it' even though there obviously is. I've noticed this happens a lot here. That's why I bought 6 bags. Now I'm off to eat shortbread.........

Spring Storms.

I spent most of Thursday and Friday on the phone trying to secure a motor home rental. Finally succeeded on Friday. EQC phoned Friday afternoon to say the dates have been changed but no one knew what to. I wasn't impressed. Then I received another call just before 5p.m. to say it would now be the 8th October. We shall wait and see.

Yesterday started really good, weather sunny but warm, a bit of a breeze. By 3 p.m. I could see a southerly storm moving in very quick. Did we get a battering! Hail, sleet, rain, winds, thunder and lightning. The sky was black. It lasted about 4 hours. Absolutely wild. The thunder was so loud it felt like the house was shaking.

I went outside this morning to survey the damage to the garden, all my cheerful daffodils and tulips are flattened and my peonies look like they have been through a mangle.

On close inspection of the veggie garden I found this little beauty peeping through:

The asparagus will soon be ready to pick ~ it grows quickly once it bursts through the ground. This is early for us, I'm sure we didn't see it until October last year but I did see the first of it in the shops 2 weeks ago at $18 per kg. I've planted peas, radish, salad onions and cos lettuce so far and have lots more to put in once the weather gets more reliable. The potato beds are ready to go- waiting for the early Liseta potatoes to go in, I'm waiting on them sprouting a little more before planting and I won't be storing the frost cloth away just yet.



The cherry trees are just starting to bloom

I made 36 Macarons at the weekend and the 3 in the photograph are the only perfect ones I got out of the whole batch. I've made them before and they were fine so I'm not sure what went wrong this time. They were still edible but had cracked on top.

2 years on.....

It's 2 years since we had the first earthquake, I don't talk about it really ~ I may have mentioned it once or twice but I know there are families who are in a much worse situation than we could ever be. I always look for the positive in any negativity, but I'm all out of positives - at the point where I could pull out my fingernails through frustration with 'the system'.

Our house had an EQC assessment in November 2010, 3 months before we purchased it.

July 2011 - Had the log burner/chimney replaced as the chimney had fallen down in the September  quake. Informed that our second heat source (a range in the kitchen with wet back and chimney) would get replaced at the end of that year. It didn't/hasn't.

October 2011 ~  had a further assessment.
We received a copy of this just before christmas and again it was wrong, no mention of the range/chimney/damage to master bedroom ceiling.

No further communication from anyone EQC related until May 2012 when we had a 'scope' assessment. Told repairs would start within 3 months. They didn't/haven't.

The thing that annoys me most of all is how they presume:

1. You have a spare empty house that you can move into while the repairs are carried out.
2. You have an invisible storage facility of cavernous proportions on your property capable of storing the contents of your home while repairs are carried out.
3. You can drop everything to accommodate them wanting to visit at 5 minutes notice.

Observations I have made:

1. Trying to get any information out of the 'system' is like pulling teeth. No-one knows anything.
2. Our second heat source seems to have been forgotten about ~ yet EQC regularly advertise in the newspapers telling everyone how many heat sources they have replaced to date. Save the advertising costs and invest the money in point 5.
3. Conflicting information ~ for example, some people can only choose wallpaper at $45 per roll while others have no set price limit.
4. If 1 wall in a room is damaged they will only paint that one wall once repaired, so you will have mis-matched decoration, which beggars belief when there are people who had a small crack in their foundation slab yet got their house demolished and completely rebuilt. Now they are splitting hairs over a bit of paint?
5. EQC needs to use some of the cash that we have paid into this fund to pay for eye tests. Our assessor was adamant he couldn't see ceiling/wall cracks that are clearly visible to everyone else. 
6. They believe seismic waves don't travel through interior stud walls and affect the room beyond. See point 7.
7. Most of the assessors don't have any qualification to assess anything.
8. They need reminding that some exterior damage looks old ~ it's 2 years since the damage occurred. Of course there will be moss and dirt in exterior cracks after being exposed to 2 winters, gail force winds, snow and -11 deg temperatures.
9. The paint called 'half black white' is actually grey.

We were told yesterday that our repairs are now booked to start on 1st October ~ I spent most of the afternoon trying to sort out a storage container and somewhere for us to live. We decided the best option for us is to rent a motorhome and live onsite. It would be ok for a week, maybe 2 ~ but we may be in it for 4 weeks or more. I will have my knitting to keep me sane. It's going to be a tough time in many ways but we have been through worse. I will be looking forward to getting nicely settled back in our home before Christmas. It will be such a relief to get it over and done with, we will be pleased to finally move on from what has happened during the last 2 years.

TdF & Ravellenics...

As soon as the Tour de Fleece over I was straight onto the Ravellenics.

I didn't manage to spin everything I had hoped during TdF, but at least I spun every day which in itself was a challenge for me.

Here's what I spun:

I managed to reduce my stash by 440g. I then added to the stash by purchasing 300g of Polwarth that I couldn't resist. I really enjoyed taking part in this and will look forward to participating again next year. I won a prize, and it was one of those wonderful prizes that I usually fail to win:

It's a hand dyed silk brick. I keep looking at it and touching it, wondering what it will become.
















So I signed up for the Ravellenics as a last minute thing and then wondered what on earth I was going to knit ~ I knew I wanted to use some of the yarn I spun during TdF. I finally decided on Pear Drop with the singles silk/merino yarn I had spun but wondered how it would work out as I usually stick to semi solid or tonal yarns for lace work. I worried that I would run out of yarn or that the yarn would keep breaking on me. Neither happened:

This is how the yarn looked after skeining and lightly fulling. I was very cautious with the fulling as I know there's a very fine line between fulling and ending up with an unusable mess.

The yarn was still a bit too energised for my liking at this stage so I set up the ball winder and skeiner at opposite ends of the room and let the yarn relax while travelling between them. This seemed to do the trick and removed the unwanted energy.

I used 93g of yarn.




I went to spinning today and came home with a bag of unknown fleece. There's 500g of crimpy sheepy lanolin scented beauty. Staples are 7" long, it's a fine and fairly soft fleece. It's definitely not Corridale. The lady who I got it from thinks that it may be Romney. I know Romney can vary enormously, I've had some awful carded Romney when I first started spinning which is why I thought I hated the stuff, then I got some carded top from a local coloured sheep breeder and it's one of the nicest fibres I have ever spun, so maybe this is Romney after all. A few of the very experienced spinners thought it could be a merino cross or halfbred because of the crimp:

I'm planning on flick carding just the tips and spinning it from the locks, in the grease. I just spun a mini sample skein and washed it to see how it finishes. I have it drying now by the fire on this extremely wet and grey cold day.

Tour de Fleece, so far so good...

Day 1:

Serenknitty batt, 39g

Day 2:

 Above singles plied ~ 98 yards, DK weight

Sweet Georgia yarns merino/silk singles

Looking forward to day 3 :-)