And Now For The Hard Work.

We were lucky to get an abundance of fruit from our apricot, peach, prune and plum trees this year, which kept me busy in the kitchen.  The figs are finishing (thank goodness, it's hard to know what to do with 30 kilos of them and there are only so many one can give away it seems) and we've picked our first lot of quinces.  Now that the trees have stopped fruiting and are getting ready to go to sleep over winter, and we've a wee reprieve from preserving their bounty, it's time to give them all a prune.  

In previous years pruning has felt like a mammoth chore because we've had to squeeze all the pruning into one weekend.  Now that we're not working, we've been able to take our time and prune a few trees each day.  This also means that we've been able to pay more attention to how we prune them. Not that we actually know what we're doing. We have learnt a lot from my lovely Mum (who grew up on an orchard) by watching videos, reading ABC Gardening Australia magazines and listening to Sabrina on the radio on a Saturday morning. This year we've been able to utilise what we have learnt more effectively.  Hopefully that means we'll get lots of fruit again next season.

Because we grow our trees in a shade house (we call it that but it's actually constructed from bird netting, not shade cloth) we prune the summer fruiting trees twice a year.  Once at the end of Summer to control their size. This is vital so they don't grow through the roof of the shade house.  And then again at the end of winter, when they've dropped their leaves, to remove dead wood, create the nice vase shape all the experts talk about and take out any branches that are crossing each other.   This year we paid particular attention to the fruiting spurs as we pruned them to size.  And, because we've got bacterial canker we sterilised our pruning tools between trees, and between cuts on the already badly infected trees. 

This is how the trees looked before we pruned them:

                                    

                                   

                                                   

They were growing right into the roof of the shade house and there wasn't a lot of room to walk through them.  They were lovely and shady while we were picking the fruit though.

Now, they look like the ones in the pics below. Or variations thereof. The amount of pruning depended on the type of tree.  The loquat (in the first pic) can be cut back quite hard and will bounce back and still fruit.  Some of the others needed a less drastic haircut. 

                                                       

                                                       

                                    

The late apricot had a very drastic prune.  We're not sure if it will fruit next year but, everything we read said to prune below the canker as much as possible.  Even if we don't get any fruit for the next couple of years, hopefully we will have saved the tree.

Now we just have to do something with the branches that were pruned off.  This pile is just from the loquat.  Those will be put through the shredder and used as mulch or in the compost.  We can't do that with the ones affected by canker though.  We will do a bit more research and dispose of thoses in the safest, least wasteful way we can.

All in all, it took us about a week to prune the trees. Although it is quite a lot of work it's very satisfying because we know (or at least hope) the trees will reward us with lots of fruit next Summer. Fingers crossed. I guess we better start eating some of the produce we preserved this year and make room for next year's crop. 

Oops, Missed That One

We were out raiding the veg patch after spending a few days with R's Mum in Perth.  We go over to the shade house every day to pick anything and everything (or so we thought) that is ripe. So imagine our surprise, on returning home from the big smoke, when we found this:

We're pretty sure this zucchini didn't grow to a size of 1.6 kilos and 40 cms long in the three days we were away.  So we must have missed it during our daily visits to the shade house.  I've no idea how.  It's not like it was actually hiding!! It took up a lot of room in the trug. And the fridge.  Lovely problem to have right. 

We've been picking zucchini all summer, mainly when they're small, and eating them sliced in salads. I also made Belinda Jeffery's zucchini slice which is really delicious and freezes well.  I make it a lot because it's quick, easy and all Belinda's recipes are reliable and scrumptious.  Mum used to love this with a bit of salad on the side:

Zucchini, Feta And Dill ‘Pie’ — Belinda Jeffery

But, after a whole season of eating zucchinis, we're feeling a little ho hum and ready for a change.  The thought of eating 1.6 kilos of the veg was just too much. The thought of wasting it was worse though, so I trawled the internet and came across some recipes for relish, pickles and chutney.  I've already made a double batch of fig chutney this summer, so I settled on making some relish.  I used this recipe from the Australia's Best Recipes site:

Zucchini relish recipe | Australia's Best Recipes

Luckily R was on board and we both chopped the zucchini, capsicum and onion.  Rodney used our Dreamfarm Corpeel for the corn.  Designed in Australia this little piece of kitchen kit really does get the kernels off the husk without any mess. Just like they show in the video on their website:

Dreamfarm Corpeel | The World's Best No-Mess Corn Peeler

I don't normally spruke products, but Dreamfarm utensils really are worth spruking.  One doesn't even have to peel the garlic before using the Garject.  I hate peeling garlic, I always end up with bits of the skin sticking to me, so I just love this press.  Anyway, that's enough sales talk.  After chopping everything we then cooked everything for an hour or so and sealed it in sterilised jars.   

Hopefully it will last a good ten years because we've already a cupboard full of preserves. If you're visiting and give me a gentle reminder (because my memory is appalling at the moment) you're very likely to score a jar or three.  I did manage to give away a jar while it was still hot, to the tiler who was finishing the tiling in the laundry.  He commented that it smelt good and that was enough to get a jar.

At Last

At last (which happens to be the title of one of my all-time favourite songs by Etta James) our kitchen is finished.  I say at last because we embarked on our renovation at the end of October last year when the tiles were ripped up and replaced with jarrah floorboards. Today, a little over five months later, our new kitchen was completed with the addition of two open shelves and some hooks to hang our aprons on.  The living area has now joined the house and no longer looks like a pod added on the side.  The kitchen has gone from this:

To this:

                                      

What a transformation.  Thanks primarily to the fantastic work by Travis (owner and designer), Clay and Riley at Bunbury Designer Cabinets and Furniture, who built our beautiful new kitchen.  Thanks also to the crew who did the stone bench tops, Naturaliste Timber who laid the floors and Kim Evans who pulled up the tiles and prepped the pad.  Both the kitchen and floors look way better in real life than they do in the pics.  You'll just have to come for a visit and see for yourself.  

In truth, it has been a lot longer than five and a half months to get the renovation finished.  My lovely sister did a preliminary design of a kitchen for us.  She included a free-standing island bench and, without that I don't think we'd have been brave enough to go with the final design that Travis came up with.  My sister's initial design was way back in 2023 when we also bought our appliances as our oven had died and the cooktop was definitely starting to decline.  But life well and truly got in the way of all our plans (one could say it smacked us all in the face several times) so it wasn't until early 2024 that we started looking for quotes.  Travis came up with the best design by far (the other two used exactly the same footprint we already had, which wasn't working for us) and we felt his quote was fair.  Plus, we felt really comfortable going through the ideas and selections with him. Albeit I was slightly alarmed that he laughed at R's puns!!  

Anyway, I digress, after the new floors were laid and treated and the electrician and plumber had left the carcasses of our cabinets were finally installed:

                                        

                                        

They don't look like much but I, for one, got really excited seeing them in place because I got a real sense for the first time of the layout and how the kitchen was going to work for us.  But I almost excited myself inside out when I saw the shelves at the end of the island, even though they were in their raw state and Travis said I wasn't allowed to photograph them because they were not finished.  They were there just to allow the bench top guys to do the benches properly. But look at that curve. So beautiful. 

                                       

We then had bit of a wait for the crew doing the bench tops to come out and measure up and then install the benches.  

We chose white because we didn't want to make the living area too dark.  But it's not bright white and it's not flat. It has a little bit of pattern through it which can barely be seen but helps to make the benches interesting and warm rather than sterile.  At least I think it does. 

Travis installed the shelves just ahead of the counter tops going in. He popped down to our bedroom (the one room in the house we could actually live in) and asked me to come and take a look.  I said I was in the middle of paying his invoice (for the first stage) and he just looked at me and said, "Maybe come and look at this first, you might not want to pay that".  We duly went down to the kitchen and of course, the first thing I noticed was the shelves which had the beautiful, hand turned spindle added.  "Just perfect" I said.   Travis said he had stayed awake for three nights worrying whether he'd got the spindle right.  All he had to work on was a description from us and a few pics of spindles from art deco stairs we'd provided to go on.  And he nailed it.  Or rather Clay (who turned it) did:

I really love the double curve that Travis designed:

  

                                     

Next the appliances were installed and then came all the drawers, cupboards, rangehood and shelves.  The rangehood was installed by Brett Robinson who, coincidentally, used to live just down the road and enjoyed revisiting the area.  Big thanks to Brett who made the installation go nice and smoothly and was really helpful as we sorted out a new flu to replace the one that came with the rangehood (it was too short).  The flu was made by Elite Stainless Steel Fabrication in Bunbury.  

                                                          

                                                         

                                                   

                                                                     

                                    

You might have noticed there is an abundance of cupboard doors and not many drawers. Instead of drawers I have pull out shelves in the cupboards:

I know, I know. That's the same as drawers, only you have to open a door to open the drawer.  I get that. I also get that it wouldn't suit most people.  But it doesn't bother me at all and, I think banks of drawers is a very modern look. Which is fine if you live in a very modern house. Which our house isn't. It's a federation house, or at least a federation style house (it was actually built in the 90s we're told).  But I still wanted the kitchen to sit comfortably in the home.  I think we've achieved that. 

I love all of my kitchen but there are some parts that I love more than others (don't tell anyone). One of those is the bookcase.  I was very excited about this because, after five years of doing without, I finally have easy access to all of my cookbooks and magazines again.  Oh, and that's the pared down literature.  I had twenty years of Delicious magazines, thanks to a yearly subscription gifted to me by my much-loved mother-in-law.  I had to get really tough and only keep the magazines which had more than a dozen recipes in them that I want to try.  I did really well and narrowed them down to a small pile. BUT I made the mistake of going through them for a second time.  Luckily, they still fitted in the shelves. 

                                                              

Then there is the spice drawer.  It is so good to have them in alphabetical order, and all laid out neatly in a single layer.  As opposed to in various tubs and spice racks in the old pantry.  And, in the same vein, the utensils drawer.  The utensils were spread over three drawers previously and it used to drive me nuts trying to find the tool I needed, which never seemed to be in the same drawer I got it from last time. 

                                            

Surprisingly the bin drawer is a real winner.  Who'd have thought disposing of waste could be so exciting.  Actually, it's the wee inner drawer above the bins that floats my boat.  I've been able to store clean cloths, bin bags and mitts nice and neatly for the first time ever in a proper spot made just for them. 

                                 


Along with the kitchen, our pantry has also been refitted by Travis and his team.  It now looks like this:

   

I wasn't totally convinced that all of our pantry supplies would fit into the little cubicles that Travis created. Our previous pantry had big, wide, open shelves and we could fit a bunch of stuff on those.  That said, there was a lot of space in the corner that wasn't very useful and I had to keep searching around the shelves to find what I needed.  Travis' design solves all those problems.  Each cubicle contains like produce; all the vinegars in one, pickles in another, oils in a third and so on.  And there are drawers in the dead corner, longer shelves (where I've stored stuff we don't use a lot) and a shelf for the microwave (which currently has a basket sitting on it). It does need a little tweaking but, overall, it works really well.  And how about the hanger that Travis made for our aprons and bags. How cool is that. 

One of the best things about the new kitchen is that we can both cook up a storm.  There is plenty of room for us to both spread out at the same time.  And we've both been cooking up a storm.  R has woken up his sourdough starter from hibernation and made some fantastic bread and I've also been busy baking and preserving.   I've made tomato sauce, apricot jam and bottled some tomatoes.  I've also made two types of fruit leather. Now I heard a rumour that was supposed to keep for months. Epic fail in our house. It's all gone!! I think there are some previous posts about our kitchen exploits.  Most recently I've made passionfruit cordial (thanks to my lovely sis who supplied the passionfruit), preserved an abundance of tomatoes from the garden and today I made cinnamon scrolls for the first time.   

  

These actually look like proper cinnamon scrolls. They tasted good too, although I thought they could have done with a little more cinnamon.

These are buttermilk pancakes topped with peaches, nectarines and raspberries from our garden.  And maple syrup from a garden in Canada.

Some of the produce that has been preserved or turned into tasty baked goods in the kitchen:

A goodly amount went straight into our stomachs or was shared with friends and family too.  

We have been cooking proper meals too of course. We've been enjoying cooking fish without stinking the house out.  We've even had a dinner party where we were able to conjure up a pretty decent butter chicken and a lamb rogan josh.  Suffice it to say we are very, very happy with our new kitchen and we're looking forward to many joyful hours trying out new recipes, preserving the produce from our garden and entertaining friends.  

Now, on to sorting out the laundry and painting the house.  No rest as they say. 

Plums, Plums and More Plums

One of the things I love about gardening is picking our own fruit and veg and finding various ways to preserve it. I'm enjoying this even more now that I don't have to cram preserving into evenings after work and weekends.  It's certainly a more delightful aspect of gardening than raking the leaves from the forty plus deciduous trees we have here.

This year we've had bacterial canker in a lot of our fruit trees.  So, we got very little fruit off our late apricot (thankfully the early apricot didn't get infected), no peaches or nectarines and only a few prunes (darn it, that tree was loaded for the first time this year).  But the plum trees escaped infection.  We have two, one is a Satsuma and one is a double graft of Satsuma and Santa Rosa.  The Santa Rosa is the cross pollinator for the Satsuma. Without the Santa Rosa there would be no Satsumas.  This year we had an abundance of both plums.  The Santa Rosa came in first and we picked about 15 kilos.  We'd just finished those when we started picking Santa Rosas. We've picked 30 kilos of those, not counting the ones we ate.  That's a lot of plums to preserve. Thankfully we had our lovely family for lunch and were able to persuade them to take plums home with them.  And we didn't even have to twist their arms.

I have very fond memories of bottled plums prepared by my lovely Mum from a Satsuma tree, owned by my equally lovely aunt, which was a heavy fruiter.  We had luscious plums to enjoy all winter.  As I have a properly functioning stove top now, I decided I'd preserve some our plums using my Vacola preserver, which I had to find from the place it had been stashed while the kitchen was being renovated.  Bits and pieces were stashed all over the house and, being of a certain age, my lovely husband and I couldn't quite remember where the preserver ended up.  Thankfully we found it, the jars, lids and rings without too much time wasted.

As with all preserving, the first step is to wash and prepare the fruit. I prepared the fruit and filled jars as I went along. Mainly because I didn't know if I had enough jars for all the fruit.  In the case of plums the preparation means halving them and removing the stones. Or so I thought. Eight jars and five kilos in I remembered eating the plums that Mum had bottled and discarding stones on the edge of the bowl.  Doh!!  Needless to say, the plums for the remaining four jars were simply halved.

                           

I used Size 20 Vacola jars which hold enough fruit for two really hungry people or two less hungry people and a friend.  They're a great size but the top is too narrow for me to put my hand in.  Which makes getting the fruit in tricky.  It has to be layered and tightly packed. I can reach my fingers down almost to the bottom though which helped. As long as the first piece of fruit I dropped into the jar fell onto the cut side all the other pieces layered themselves nicely.  Thankfully. 

Once the jars are filled the next step is to add in some sugar syrup.  Mum used to make a sugar syrup (equal parts of sugar and water cooked until the sugar is dissolved) which she used to fill the jars.  Vacola have modified their preserving method.  It isn't hard to make a sugar syrup but I decided to give the new method ago.  This involved filling the jars of water and adding some sugar, ergo, one less pan to wash up. Vacola provide some useful guides to help determine how much sugar you need for the size of jar you are using and the level of sweetness you want.  I added two tablespoons of sugar for each jar which seems like quite a lot.  The taste test will tell I guess.

                                                   

Once the jars are nicely packed, and the sugar and water have been added, the next step is to make sure there are no air bubbles (I'm not sure why this step is important, but it is) then to put on the rings, lids and clips.  Putting the rubber rings on can be tricky but after the first one or two I found a technique which meant the rings went on smoothly without any twists. It's tricky to describe but basically, I held the jar with one hand, making sure my thumb was over the lip, and then stretched the rubber ring across with the other hand.  Going over my thumb seemed to stop the ring twisting. Next, it's just a matter of putting all the jars into the preserver (making sure you've put in the false bottom first because that stops the jars breaking), filling it with enough water to cover an inch above the jar and turning the gas on.  Make sure you put the preserver on the stove before you place the jars in and fill the water. It's way too heavy to move once it's full.  Then leave them on the stove until the temperature reaches 92 degrees Celsius on the thermometer and for another 45 minutes after that.  

                           

Once the 45 minutes at 92 is up, turn off the gas, remove the lid and carefully remove the jars.  It is important to take the jars out of the hot water straight away.  If you don't have some jar tongs, I recommend getting some as they make taking the jars out of the preserver way easier. If you're very lucky your preserving pan will have a handy tap on the side so you can remove the hot water and leave the jars in the pan to cool.

                                                        

It takes a bit of time to preserve fruit but just look at the end result.  Yum.  Plums to last the winter.

Satsumas are R's favourite plum and he is really looking forward to eating them right through Winter until the tree produces more next Summer. 

Now, what to do with the next ten kilos of Satsumas. And the strawberries. And peaches. And cucumbers...