The Greening of Gavin

Archives for October 2012

A Quick Break From My Book

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Sometimes you just need to take a quick break.

Which is exactly what I am doing now (would you believe).  I am taking a break from transcribing my small off-grid solar power supply ebook from my hand written journal into MS Word.

I needed to focus my attention on something different, so here I am!

Writing is hard work sometimes, but it is certainly made easier when you plan ahead.  For this ebook, I took the time to write out a very basic book structure, giving each chapter a title, jotting down ideas for topics within each chapter, and then doing a heck of a lot of research on the interwebs to make sure I had my facts right.

I feel a lot more comfortable writing this book than I did the first two.  Probably because it is not a story per se, but a genuine “How-to” book with full explanations,  instructions, and pictures of components and how they all fit together.  It will be much more detailed than my series of blog posts on the subject of Energy Independence, but still written in the same, easy-to-understand style that I have previously used in my books and within this blog.

If writing one book is not enough, I am also half way through writing a separate ebook about “How To Build Your Own Outdoor Clay Oven” (working title).

This book is not as easy to write as the power book for some reason which I can’t quite fathom.  However, I find that if I write at least 200 words a day (equal to about three pages in my journal), it keeps the momentum going, and writing by hand also helps keep the creative juices flowing.  Thankfully, I have ample time on the train twice daily to achieve this self imposed writing goal.

One thing that I can’t handle is a blank Word document.  It is so daunting starting out, so this is where the basic book structure has really helped this time around.

Anyway, enough about books, I better get back to work.  This typing will not magically jump onto the screen all by itself!

Do you like writing?  Do you find it easy?

Sunday On The Home Front

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As is the case on a Sunday, we utilised our time to full potential.

We were expecting friends over for lunch, so we were both up early getting things ready.

Kim whipped up a delicious Chocolate Ricotta Tart.

She made the shortcrust pastry, and home made/grown ingredients were Ricotta that I made during the cheese workshop, and some chooky eggs from the girls.

It was wonderful, and tasted just like a baked cheese cake with a layer of soft chocolate on top.  If you are interested you can find the recipe for this tart at Taste.com.au.

Kim then made an egg and bacon pie, with my weekly bacon ration.  No pictures of my own, but you can find the recipe and a picture for the egg and bacon pie at Insidecuisine.com.  The recipe was created by Annabel Langbein, better known as the Free Range Cook.  It was delicious!

After our friends left, it was into the garden to plant a garden bed of sweet corn, and plant out a few more cucumber seedlings.

The sweet corn seedlings were about 30cm (1ft) tall, so they are safe from slug annihilation  so it was time to pop them into their bed.  The bed had rested for two weeks so it was ready to go.

Here is a picky of yours truly with his hands grounded in the soil feeling very content.

After the corn was planted and watered, I removed most of the spring onions that had gone to seed.  I kept a few seed heads for next years crop, and then sprinkled with blood and bone and pelleted chicken manure.  It will be ready for Tomatoes next weekend.

As I am running out of room, I had to begin to intersperse cucumber seedlings among the brown onions which are starting to swell.  By the time I pick the onions in mid November, the cucumbers should be well established, with room for a zucchini or two.

Holly and Teddy were most helpful (not).  I wish to come back in the next life as a dog, especially one that lives in this house!

With the corn and all other beds planted or prepped  it was time to give the plants some seaweed solution to prevent transplant shock.  This light watering really does help the seedlings get established well.

Once that was completed, I had to complete my income tax return.  This was not too onerous, because Kim had gathered all the receipts and categorised them.  She makes things easy for me!

This weekend I will harvest the garlic and hang it up to dry.  Then, in go the various tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum (bell pepper) in that bed, and a few more pumpkins around the other side of the yard.

I also have to build a new herb garden as I have really gone crazy with basil, coriander (cilantro), and dill this year.  So many punnets, but nowhere to plant them.  So, I have a 44 gallon plastic barrel that I will convert into a butterfly bed.  Plans and pictures will be posted once I figure it all out, I promise.

Somewhere over the weekend, I also have to finish painting the laundry, and a few other odds and ends to keep the darling wife happy.  Shouldn’t take too long.  Oh, and I need to put down another batch of Cerveza.

Busy or what?   Don’t you find that a full Sunday just flies by?

Mozzarella and Ricotta Workshop

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Today I taught a great cheese making workshop.

It was held at the Melton South Community Centre who handled all the booking, some advertising, and fee collection for me, and provided the venue.

The class started at 1pm, however Kim, Ben and I arrived at [12:15] pm and set up the classroom and cleaned all the surfaces that we were going to make cheese on.

All students turned up around 1pm with the exception of a friend who was delayed.  I started it at about 5 minutes after the scheduled time and we got stuck into the lesson.  My friend soon caught up with Kim’s help.

Firstly we made mozzarella in the normal way as I have previously demonstrated in my Mozzarella YouTube video.  Everyone followed the process, and it was speeded up a little because we brought along our microwave oven to complement the one from the Centre.  This time there were no delays when heating up the curd.

Once everyone completed successfully (7 out of 7 strike rate), Kim sliced up some sourdough baguette and they enjoyed sampling their fresh cheese.  Very tasty indeed.

While all participants were enjoying some banter, I started the Ricotta Master Class, which is a fancy term for a demonstration!

I used a new recipe for my Ricotta because I was sick of the final product being tasteless and bland.  I wanted a smooth, sweet flavour that could be moulded in a basket.

Well, I found a great recipe for Whole Milk Ricotta that I slightly modified, which I posted over on Little Green Cheese for all you curd nerds.

After I made the Ricotta and it was draining in the basket, people began to finish up and leave.  The feedback during the course was wonderful, and I had many requests to teach other types of cheese making classes.  I think I will have to expand my repertoire into a few other soft and semi-hard cheeses.

For the first time, I dared to try a bit of cross selling.  This is because after every workshop I have taught the participants always ask where to buy the ingredients, so I thought to myself that I should sell them.  Why not?  I usually buy my ingredients in bulk anyway, so it was no trouble at all.

I bought ingredients to make up some Mozzarella kits ($13 with ingredients for 4 batches)  for the students to buy and have a go at making the cheese at home.  Thankfully they were a big hit, and I all but sold out.  I also had muslin and thermometers for sale.

Unfortunately I forgot to take some pictures or delegate Ben as the onsite photographer for all the classroom antics.  Silly of me.  Next time I will be a bit more diligent.

I do have a picture of my sliced Ricotta (above), and I will post a picture of the Chocolate Ricotta Tart that Kim is currently making for a small lunch gathering we are having tomorrow.

It was a great class and day, with great students to boot.  Everything just worked so well.

Thanks to Kim and Ben for their helpful assistance.  It wouldn’t have been the same without your hard work.