Wednesday 13 October 2010

Home Made Pumpkin Bread & Strawberry Jam!!!

Here in Oz we are on a tight budget at the moment. This gave me a chance to look around the web and find ways to reduce my monthly food bill.  I already started a small veggie patch here in our garden and I am happy to say that my zucchini seeds are already little plants soaking the sun. The orange tree is blooming very happily and I already can see the fruits forming so we will have a great crop this year. The poor tree when we got the house was almost dead so I am very pleased by her happy recovery. We have mature almonds at the moment which the black cockatoo's are munching on, they are beautiful big birds and Luke is delighted to see them in the afternoon. Not bad for a city girl who didn't know anything about gardens!

Last week Luke and I went to the farmer's market near our home and  they had strawberries on special, so I bought 1,5 kg for less then 4 dollars. Too much for our house hold so I decided to make jam out of 1kg of strawberries. I used Jamie's Oliver's recipe and I am sad to say this but, it didn't work too well. I used the special jam sugar but it is still was runny even though I left it to boil much longer than in the recipe requested. It is still yummy, don't get me wrong you can still eat it but it is more like a strawberry sauce than jam. Well I guess next time I will make it with normal white sugar, I think it would set better and also be less acidic.

Grandma bought for me a huge pumpkin so I also had more than a kilo of pumpkin in the fridge which I didn't know what to do with, so I decided to make pumpkin bread. I used this great recipe from FRESH LOAF. It turned out perfect so I have two small loafs which I will bring one to grandma when Luke wakes up from his nap. She is has the flu so I can am sure she will enjoy the bread. I changed the recipe a bit I added more spices than the recipe and also used a little less flower (just 3 cups), also I added soaked raisins in orange liquor and walnuts. Like Luke says when he smells something nice hmmmmmmmmmmmm!! Enjoy the pictures of the garden and the loafs!

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