I asked the butcher to leave our bacon loins whole this time so we could slice our own. Sometimes you just need stupidly thick slabs of bacon-steak. Now we can slice it how we like it, thanks to a smart TradeMe purchase by Daniel and Kelly. This piece is about a third of the loin, [...]

These ten beauties are our new beef calves. They are Angus Charolais cross and should prove to be both chunky and delicious in another 12 months or so.

I was hunting through the recipe books for potato recipes as we seem to be eating them for every other meal to get through the glut (it’s a tough job eating seasonally and local, but someone’s got to do it). Frittata caught my eye and as I worked my way throught it I realised we [...]

The abundance of spuds we harvested is now awaiting consumption in my very cold workshop. Don’t worry little spuds, you’ll be warmed up in a variety of delicious ways soon enough.

This meal is the epitome of what we’re striving for - 100% food self sufficiency. Lamb chops from our paddock with home made spicy tomato-chilli relish, our mashed potatoes and a helping of spaghetti squash. Washed down with my home-brew beer, it was a very satisfying meal on many levels.

Karen’s planter pot system is working a treat with these broad beans ready to go in the garden. We thought we’d try planting a few before winter as we’d read a sneaky pre-winter bed can be up and producing much earlier in the Spring than starting from scratch then. We’ll see in a few months [...]

The wood range is well and truly part of the family after six months of continuous use. It has proven itself a winner for any cooking from the most delicate sponge or shortbread to roasts and bread. It probably gets used for bread more than anything come to think of it. My latest favourite bread [...]

Last night was our Friday pizza night (semi-traditional now). The wood-fired bakery I work at part time does an amazing pizza with sour cream, bacon, spring onion and caraway seeds I have tried to replicate. The result was pretty tasty and for a purist like me to stray from margarita or marinara means it might [...]

Our friends Brian and Carol down the road were kind enough to give us a few bags of quinces while their tree was full of fruit. We had made some delicious quince preserve last year so we thought this year we’d scale things up a bit. We ended up calling every pot in the kitchen [...]

We’ve just dug up the last of the potatoes and collected 103kg this weekend. Including the ones we’ve already eaten, our total potato harvest weights are:
Agria - 30kg
Rua - 11kg
Ilam Hardy - 15kg
Desiree - 15kg
Rocket - 15kg
Cliff’s Kidney - 15kg
Jersey Benne - 15kg
Red Rascall - 9kg
Maori Potato Selection - 8.5kg
Grand total - 133.5kg
We’ll store the [...]