Cauliflower Rice

With my husband choosing the paleo lifestyle, we've adapted and changed what we eat and this recipe is a perfect replacement for rice and pretty quick and easy to make.

I mainly enjoy pairing this with a curry or stew that needs something to mop up their wonderful juices, particularly when the paleo lifestyle doesn't allow for bread.

Ingredients
Florets of 1/2 a cauliflower
1/2 a brown onion, roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, roughly sliced
Salt & pepper
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

Method
Throw the cauliflower, onion and garlic into a food processor and pulse until it resembles rice.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and fry the cauliflower rice until the moisture is removed.  Season with salt & pepper and enjoy.

Makes approxmiately 2 cups.

Happy living peeps!

Farewell To Our Calves

I've been reflecting on our beef over the past few weeks and just how far we have come with them.  Last month we sold our calves - all 7 of them to allow their mothers to "beef up" some more - so to speak, and prepare for the arrival of their new babies.  That's if Bullet the Bull did the bizzo.

I have to say, I've learned so much from these calves and I blogged about it in NEW ADDITIONS - PART 3.  Their wellbeing improved tenfold feeding off their mothers and I can honestly say that when we sold them about 3 weeks ago, they were about 10 months old, and one of them was still getting milk from her mother.

Our neighbour has been keeping an eye on our beef and made some initial enquiries.  He was particularly interested in one of our bull calves which I knicked named "tipi bum bum".  Mid way through May, my husband Gig asked him if he would be interested in buying all the calves and he jumped at the chance.  Within a couple of days, our 2nd addition to our beef whanau were gone.

 

Gig still believes that the balance of our beef versus the size of land/feed we have is not quite right and now our summers are more dryer and our winters less wet, it is taking it's toll on the land/feed.

 

We know for sure that a few of our cows produce some really good size offspring so the plan with the next lot of calves is to review the mothers and look to cull the numbers back.  We currently have 8 cows and 1 bull and realistically I think we should look to have no more than 5 cows and 1 bull.

 

Right now though, the focus is to ensure the new up and coming addtions expected in a couple of months, go well and I'm excited but nervous at the same time.

 

Happy living peeps!

 



The Hubby Is Hooked

I picked up this little side table for cheap as chips from a student who was finishing studies and moving back home.  It had definitely seen better days and needed some serious TLC.  It quickly got placed in the shed with great plans to give it a new lease of life.  Days went by, followed by weeks, then months as we worked on other projects around the Ponderosa.

The other day I came home to find my wonderful husband had decided he wanted the little side table next to his favourite rocking chair by the fire.  So ... he had given the little gem a new couple of coats of paint.  Colours of choice ... Annie Sloan florence, duck egg blue and paris grey.  He was right in the middle of giving the shabby chic effect when he promptly told me, I had to finish it off while he went for a ride with Aaliyah to her work.

A coat of clear wax and dark wax with some more work on the shabby chic look and it was finished.  Check it out!!

Unfortunately I didn't get any before photo's but I'm pretty happy with the finished result and think it looks a thousand times better. 

Happy living peeps!

Ducted Heat Transfer Kit

You would think that when you live in a house with three fireplaces, it would be a little excessive, but still lovely and warm.  But not when it's a 100+ year old villa.  Believe it or not, the three fireplaces isn't enough, especially in the winter time.

We've been doing a bit of work around the homestead making sure that we insulate underneath the house, seal all the draughty bits in the rooms as we renovate and even replaced an old wood burner with a new one when it "shat" itself so to speak last year.  I blogged about this in REVAMPED FIREPLACE.

The new wood burner we installed was awesome last winter and it's fair to say the back living area was lovely and warm.  The problem we were faced with was that all the heat stayed down the back of the house and it took forever to heat the entire home, even when we used the other original fireplaces. 

During the year we had people from various companies come through the home and give us some great advise about their great products that would be far more superior to any other product on the  market transferring heat from one part of the home to everywhere else .. bla, bla, bla, bla .. leaving your home warm and dry ... all for a cool price of anything between $3,000 to $6,000 and without any additional steak knife offers.

Surely there had to be something else out there for a fraction of the price?  All we really wanted was to take the heat from where the wood burner was and transfer it to the other rooms. 

Bunnings offered a heat transfer kit for 2 or 3 rooms for a couple of hundred dollars, but we needed it for at least 4 rooms.  Nothing at Bunnings or Mitre 10 was on offer. 

Enter a trustworthy and helpful electrical supplier who was willing to go out and have a look at what he could find for us.  Viola, he found one, so a couple of weekends back my husband decided to put it in when the weather was cool and raining - with my assistance of course.

Installation was pretty easy and stressless and I had a chance to get into our roof and see just how much space there is up there (enter some fabulous attic ideas).  Now our 3.5 metre stud home is lovely, warm and dry and although we didn't get any steak knives with our purchase I can assure you it did cost a fraction of what we were originally offered.

Happy living peeps

Spring Bulbs

If you are a keen gardener then you'll know that autumn is the time that most of the garden work gets done from preparing soil, to pruning, to planting to everything in between.  Right now, I have 4 gardens on the go awaiting for me to finish them before xmas and at least 3 of them are 90% completed.  The other one needs some extra work so I'll need to dig deep on that one.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for spring flowers and nothing talks spring more than daffodils BUT this year I've ventured out further into new and undiscovered territory.  One day when walking through the warehouse with my daughter Jayden, I stumbled over this heavenly display of spring bulbs.  Feasting on my moment of vulnerability, Jayden proceeded to convince me that we needed nearly every type of bulb available :-)  Crocus, daffodils, iris, tulips, freesias and ranuculus.  100's and 100's and 100's and 100s of bulbs.  When I got home, reality hit me and when it came time to plant them .. Jayden was no where to be seen!

A display of some of the bulbs

I managed to plant them all around the Ponderosa with the exception of the iris, daffodils and tulips.  I have visions of the tulips going into some pots because they are so high maintenance and have to be collected at the end of their flowering life and stored away.  The iris will line part of my west garden and I haven't quite decided on the daffodils yet.  I have a couple of weeks left before winter sets in for good and I can't wait until spring to see their beauty!

Happy living peeps!

Transforming A Light

If ever you have an old chandelier or light shade and wonder whether you should replace it with a new one, then think again.   This iron chandelier had seen better days and needed some extra TLC.  Enter a couple of coats of chalk paint and voila!!  Good as new!

This went into Aaliyah's room and she chose what colour she wanted.  I think it looks fab and definitely saved at least a few hundred dollars or even more!  I have a similar chandelier that will go into Jayden's room .. so the biggest challenge is for her to choose what colour she would like it to be.

Happy learning peeps!

Bees .. Glorious Bees

Since moving to the Ponderosa, I've wanted to have my own beehive/beehives to help pollinate all the beautiful fruit and flowers that we have.  In fact, I've read somewhere that the earth couldn't survive more than 2 years without bees which pretty much indicates, bees are pretty beneficial to us and our world.

To our surprise when we first moved into the Ponderosa we found that the entire back wall of the outhouse was home to .. you guessed it ... bees.  The wall was at least 4-5 metres long and the previous owners had tried to kill them, but without success.

We decided there was no way we were going to renovate the outhouse without trying to find a way to "relocate" the bees on the property.  I enquired to many bee keepers to see if they could assist, but again without success.  They all wanted to take the bees, but were reluctant to relocate them for us.

Two summers ago, we noticed the bees were gone.  From what we could see, all of the bees had swarmed inside the outhouse, left the back wall, and died trying to get out of the building.  It was quite a sad sight to see and the smell was horrible.  Oh well I thought .. I'll just have to source some bees inside a hive and place them on the property.

Last summer .. we noticed the bees were back but not living inside the outhouse or the wall this time.  They had found a new home in one of our wine barrels that sits on the deck of the outhouse.  Grrr ... great to have them around the vegetable and fruit garden doing their business .. but not good when I'm back to square one again .. trying to relocate the bees.

I know where I want the hive on the property and I even know what type of hive I want.  I'm just not sure whether I will have to get more bees or wait for my original ones to do their thing and swarm at some stage.  I have the next few months to come up with a plan.

I've seriously been thinking of doing a beekeeping course just to get the basics sorted.  My husbands cousin did it for a while and said it's not rocket science .. but of course nothing really is once you get the hang of things.

Happy learning peeps!

Fab-u-licious Feijoas

Feijoas have to be one of the best fruits available in New Zealand and from April to May we get a continuous supply of them.  In fact we have about 10 trees of different varieties all formed into a hedge around our garden shed.

To me feijoas send back wonderful childhood memories of sitting under neath my grandparents feijoa tree in Ngaruawahia with my cousins having to spoon all the flesh in a bowl.  It usually went half in the bowl and half in my mouth.  We would take the bowl inside and add sugar .. then eat it all ..and start all over again.

Later in life I purchased my grandparents property and continued reaping the rewards of their wonderful feijoa tree.  When my daughters were old enough, their daily job for the 3 weeks this tree fruited was to pick the fruit up.  We would get a supermarket bag everyday.  It was awesome for the first couple of weeks but in the end I would end up sending bags all over the neighbourhood.  Of course we couldn't eat a supermarket bag of feijoas each day so I would take all the flesh out just as I did as a child and freeze it down.

Every home I've lived in since purchasing my grandparents home has included a feijoa tree or four, although now I don't put sugar in with the feijoa flesh, I tend to use honey for a healthier version to sweetness.

Feijoa's freshly gathered.

Feijoa pulp ready to freeze

I find the best recipes for feijoas is anything that uses banana as the main flavour, such as banana cake or banana loaf, although my favourite has to be fresh from the fruit.

Happy living peeps!!

Photo Frames or Shelves

I know I haven't posted a lot during this month, but it's fair to say May has been challenging to say the least.  In saying this, I do have one post that I wanted to share which completes my daughter Aaliyah's room.

One of the walls needed something and I found some big photo frames I had in storage.  I knew they wouldn't be used in their bare format so decided to make some shelves out of them.  My husband whipped up the backs of them to ensure there was "shelf space" and I simply painted them .. with yip you guessed it ... Annie sloan - pure white and duck egg blue in fact.

Before

After

Each shelf individually

I love the finished result and these shelves definitely fill the wall space.  The hardest thing was for Aaliyah to decide what she wanted to display, which over time I'm guessing she will chop and change to suit her needs.

Happy living peeps!

Two of Us

It's been nearly a week since mothers day and I just had to share this great story on my blog.  You see on  Monday I walked into the office and was inundated with emails and private facebook messages from old friends and colleagues about a wonderful article I had written.

Thinking most of them were referring to my blog I didn't really think anything was out of the ordinary until they mentioned it was about mothers day.  Hmmm ... now I was a little confused as I didn't recall doing an article on mothers day!

I googled the article and read it.  It was a lovely piece  .. a tribute to those mothers who had gone too soon.  Then I saw where the confusion was.  My name on the article as the author.  I knew I didn't write the piece and I knew the author wasn't a mistake either.  

The solution?  To my surprise there is someone who shares my name.  This might not be a big deal to some people, but to me it is.  Let's face it, Delwyn isn't the most popular of names and to have my surname as well, what are the odds?   I chuckled and shared my findings with a couple of people sitting around me.  In return one responded saying how relieved she was.  Puzzled I asked why ... she replied "I know your mum and felt sad when I read the article". I reassured her that my mum was very much alive and even gave her mum's number to make contact.

Yes Monday was an interesting day for me.  If you are keen to read the article, then click HERE.

Happy learning peeps