Stocking the Pantry

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Posted on February 16, 2025

Today has been a mixed bag, as usual.

Bed changed, 2 loads of washing done, some volunteer admin work and visitors this afternoon for wine, cheese and chat.

Somewhere in between all of that I made time to make another batch of tomato sauce for the pantry.

We have almost finished the last bottle from last year and this is the first time in several years that I have almost run out. I am hoping to make more batches to stock up.

I had less tomatoes than the recipe so I did some quick calculations to reduce the other ingredients proportionally. I took a fairly easy option by chopping the tomatoes and onions in the food processor before simmering them with the sugar, vinegar, salt and spices. You can find the actual recipe here.

We are expecting tradesmen tomorrow to remove and replace some doors and windows so I will hopefully have interesting before and after photos to share before too long.

Preserves in the Pantry

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Posted on September 18, 2022

Apologies for my absence but more about that in another blog post.

I generally make all of our own jam and today GMan and I were discussing what we had on hand.

The inevitable consequence of our discussion was that he pulled out all of my unlabelled jars from their storage spot in the back corner of the pantry.

There was tomato sauce, sweet chilli sauce, lime marmalade, jaboticaba jam and Davidson plum jam as well as a gifted jar of marmalade. It was a timely review as I noted that there was no spare bottles of Worcestershire sauce. Time to make some more. The recipe is here if you are interested.

I decided that there could be an easier way to store and access these homemade goodies. I remembered an wooden serving tray that was not being used so I placed all of the jars on the tray. This will make it much easier to get them in and out of the pantry.

Stocking the Pantry

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Posted on February 1, 2022

Fresh produce from the garden is wonderful but there are times when you definitely can’t eat it all at harvest time.

This basket of cucumbers was a case in point.

The recipe from a friend has clearly been passed down from an earlier generation.

I tweaked it slightly and will modify it a little more in the future.

Cucumber Pickles

3.2kg cucumbers, thinly sliced
2 large onions, thinly sliced
3/4 cup salt
Iceblocks
5 cups sugar
5 cups vinegar
1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried celery leaves

Layer the cucumbers and onions. Sprinkle with salt and cover with iceblocks. Allow to stand for 3 hours then drain and rinse thoroughly twice.

Place cucumber, onion, sugar, vinegar and spices in a large pot and bring to the boil. Do not boil the mixture. Turn the heat off and fill sterilised jars. Make sure that they seal before storing.

NOTE: I increased the turmeric and altered the celery salt from the original recipe to match what I had available. Additionally, in future I would reduce the sugar and vinegar to 4 cups of each as there was more liquid than I needed.

In deference to our industrious ancestors, it only seemed right and proper to use these two mixing bowls that belonged to my grandmother and would be around 100 years old. I use them on a regular basis in my kitchen.