Having fun with preserving...

In my inspired travels around the WWW and from a wonderful book my Mum sent me for mothers' day (right) and also some family recipes I'm wondering why it took me so long to take it up. I envisaged it as something that was too hard, too messy, too, too too. It's actually much much easier than I thought, takes not a lot of time given the length of time you get to enjoy the product for and it saves a bucketload! There's also an element of pride when your kids request their favourite jam that you made or serving it to friends and family.

But I've since taking on our farmgate lifestyle and starting our own vegetable garden have a real appreciation for seasonal produce and getting back to basics... never one for recipe bases or chicken tonight or the like - my Mum and all the family have always cooked from scratch and I much prefer the flavour and knowing what's in my food. I think I've always been a food purist at heart - thanks Mum!

A great little community can be found at Green Living and they sell extra bottle lids to your regular jars to convert them to preserve jars. Both inexpensive and secondly, great for the environment! They have a forum where you can find lots of FAQ on preserving, recipes, troubleshooting etc. Recommend it.

Whilst on the Green Living site, it inspired to take another step in getting back to basics. Next thing challenge of making my own cheese. Yes, you read that right.. cheese. I'm was taking on this initially from the view of cost. I've bought a 30 minute mozzarella/ricotta kit for $34 - it makes 13.5kg of ricotta. For me, I make pasta and many low calorie recipes with ricotta and it's about $3-5 for just 250grams depending where you buy it from. There's also reusable supplies like the cheesecloth and the thermometer, so if it works out I can just replenish as I go. I'll be doing this over the weekend.. I'll keep you posted.

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