It all adds up

Being interested in sustainability, simple living and permaculture, we read a lot of blogs on those subjects. It's both inspiring and instructive to read about the different things that people do to in order to live more sustainably. There is so much helpful information out there.

We've made many sustainable changes to our home - including adding solar hot water, PVs for electricity generation, water tanks, switching to efficient wood heating (using waste wood) and creating an organic fruit and veggie garden. Alongside all of this, we've also been making continual small changes to how we live, and learning new skills along the way.  

When you're working towards living more sustainably I think that sometimes the smaller steps you've made towards that goal can be forgotten.  Probably because doing these things just becomes part of normal life.  However the other day I had a little reminder.  I was putting together a few homemade things as a gift for a friend. When I stopped and looked at what I'd gathered I realised that these items were the result of some of the smaller steps we have taken to live a more sustainable life.  

Here's what it contained:

• Honey from our backyard hive. You can read about how we extract our honey here, here and here.

• 100% cotton reusable knitted dishcloths (or face washers). I've been having fun making these using cotton yarn from my stash.

• Preserved olives collected from our backyard trees. See the recipe here.

• Homemade Tamatar Kasaundi (Tomato oil pickle). From "The Complete Asian Cookbook" by Charmaine Solomon. This is absolutely fabulous stuff - very spicy!  I'll post the recipe soon.

• Homemade laundry liquid.  From the book "Down to Earth" by Rhonda Hertzel.

That little lineup of home produce made me stop and think. Those little things do make a difference - we are a more sustainable, resilient and healthy household as a result of being able to produce more of what we eat and use at home.  

It would be great to have more free time to tackle lots more sustainable projects. There are lots of things we'd like to do.  Right now though, life is busy with full-time work, after-work activities, volunteering, and time spent planting trees on our country block.   Given the time that we have, continuing to make small changes in order to live more sustainably is something that works for us.

I think little things do add up and small changes can make a difference.

What do you think?

Preserving the harvest - Cumquat marmalade

Our little cumquat tree fruited well this year. We like to give home produce as gifts so this weekend we turned the harvest into cumquat marmalade.

Here's the recipe we used. It's based on one published in The Age newspaper, many moons ago.

Cumquat Marmalade

Ingredients
1 kg cumquats
5 cups water
2 tblspn lemon juice
5 cups sugar

Method
1.  Wash the fruit and cut them into quarters, removing seeds and placing them in a small bowl.  Using containers with lids, soak the seeds overnight in 1 cup of the water, the fruit in what remains.

2.  Transfer the mixture to a large saucepan and stir in the lemon juice.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes until cumquats are tender.

3.  Add sugar, stir over heat without boiling until sugar dissolves.  Bring to boil over high heat , then continue to cook, uncovered, without stirring for about 20 minutes or until marmalade jells when tested.

4.  To test if the marmalade is ready place a teaspoon of it onto a cold saucer and place in freezer for 2 minutes. Remove from freezer and press your finger gently against the marmalade to see if it wrinkles and has formed a skin. If not, keep cooking the marmalade for another 5 minutes, then retest.

5.  When ready, remove from heat and allow to settle for 10 minutes. Scoop out any remaining pips at this point and discard. Pour into hot, sterilised jars and seal.

To sterilise jars: Wash in hot soapy water. Rinse. Place upside down on tray in warm oven (120 C) for 20 minutes. Useful to keep in oven while making the marmalade. Sterilise lids by putting them in boiling water for a couple of minutes. 

Preserving Olives - a success

A while back we posted how we tried the technique of preserving olives in brine. Previously we've preserved fruit using a Fowlers Vacola - which cooks the contents of the jars - and also dehydrated fruit and tomatoes using various methods. Preserving olives was our first go at preserving using brine.  We followed the recipe outlined in Preserving the Italian Way by Pietro Demaio with some slight modifications such as slitting the olives to speed up the process and not adding any herbs or spices to the brine. The recipe stated that the olives could be eaten after 6 months. As we slitted ours, they would have been ready earlier, but we still left them for about 6 months.

This week we opened one of the jars to have a taste. There was some gas buildup which could be due to the olives fermenting a bit or possibly indicating that the preservation technique hadn't worked properly and that the olives might be contaminated. There is a risk of dangerous contamination and food poisoning with any preservation technique. A quick check on the internet had several sources saying that some gassing with this technique was OK although one source said that the gas indicated we should throw them out. Feeling a bit more confident we went ahead and had a taste. We drained the brine off (by this point in the process it is very bitter) and rinsed the olives under running water before tasting a couple.  They tasted great! Being cautious by nature, we waited a week - no trip to the hospital with botulism or other food poisoning observed - before deciding that the process had been a success for that jar at least :)

For the remaining jars, we made up a new brine solution. Our recipe recommended a 6% brine (i.e. 60 grams salt per litre of water).  As was the case in the original recipe, the brine was poured hot into the jars and then they were sealed. According to the recipe we followed, these olives should store for a year.

The olives we tasted from the original jar were put into a fresh jar with olive oil. Yum!

We found that preserving olives in brine is a quick, inexpensive preservation method that keeps the shape and colour of the olives.  A method we'll definitely be using again.

Preserving Olives in brine

This year our olive trees produced a bumper crop. After watching the olives ripen on the tree for some time and thinking "gee, I should pick those", I finally got around to picking them yesterday. After filling 2 buckets I reckoned I had enough.....

We've tried a few ways of preserving olives and this time I thought I'd just use the brine method. I followed the recipe described in the book Preserving the Italian Way by Pietro Demaio, with a few minor changes.

Pietro has some basic rules about pickling olives which I'll mention here:
- Always use fresh unbruised fruit
- Make sure your utensils are clean and are either glass, stainless steel or unchipped enamelware bowls. Copper, brass and aluminum react with the olives and spoil the flavour.
- Fill the jars so the brine is above the olives. If any of the olives are above the brine, they will turn brown, soft and taste mouldy
- Wipe the rim of the jars well to ensure a good seal.

Okay, time to get started. First up, give the olives a good wash.

Then use a sharp knife to slit each olive.  This wasn't mentioned in the recipe but from my online research (yay internet!) it enables the brining process to work much more quickly to extract the bitterness.  

I wasn't sure how much brine solution I'd need for the amount of olives I had so I packed the slitted olives into clean jars to get an idea. The olives should be tightly packed to minimise floating once the brine is added.

I ended up with quite a few jars...

For making the brine, I used the traditional method consisting of salt, water and a raw egg (still in its shell). Warming 5 litres of water in a large pot on the stove, I gently added my egg and then some salt (non-iodised), stirring gently to dissolve the salt.  To get the brine solution to the right concentration, you continue to add salt, stirring to dissolve, until the egg floats.  It's important to use a fresh egg.  This is because the older the egg, the more air is inside it and consequently the less salt is required to get it to float.

Brine at correct concentration

Once the egg is floating, remove it and bring the salty water to the boil.  Once boiled turn off the heat and let it sit for 5 mins.

Then pour the still hot brine into the jars, covering the olives and seal. I filled the brine to the very top of the jars to minimise olives floating.  I had underestimated the amount of brine I needed so had to make up another couple of litres.

The jars, once cool need to be stored in the dark so I put my jars in a cardboard box somewhere cool.

The recipe mentioned adding garlic, lemon, chilli and a fennel flower to each jar (I didn't) and stated that the olives can be eaten after 6 months. However as I slit my olives, they should be ready in less time than that.  

Other recipes I came across suggested that the jars should be agitated a few times a week. The brining time will depend on the ripeness of the olives and how salty you like them ...so you need to taste them every few weeks to determine when they are ready.

Once the olives are ready I'll need to pour off the brine which will now be very bitter. Then they can be eaten straight away or stored. There are a few storage options to choose from - in a new brine solution, in olive oil or in vinegar.

Fingers crossed for success!