Make your Easter a bit greener and more sustainable by colouring the eggs naturally.  Brown Easter eggs are my favourite for two reasons:

1. the colour is natural and so simple to make,
2. brown is strong enough for our chickens’ brown eggs.

Here in Australia,  I rarely see white eggs.  Our chickens’ eggs range from cream to medium brown.  Singapore, our black chicken lays the lightest coloured eggs – she is very popular around Easter time .

How to Colour Easter Eggs Naturally

Here are step by step instructions with photos for colouring your Easter eggs naturally.

You need:

• hard boiled eggs
• old stockings, washed preferably , cut into several 15 cm (6 inches) pieces
• lots of brown onion skin (outer layer only)
• large pot
• herb leaves like parsley

Instructions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil together with the onion skin.  Boil for about 10 min.

2. Place a chosen leaf face down on the egg.

3. Tie a knot on one end of the stocking, carefully put the egg and tie the other end.

4. Stocking should be very tight to press the leaf so no colour gets under it.

5. Place the eggs into the pot with onion skin in it. The water doesn’t need to boil, but should be hot.

6. Leave the egg in the onion water for at least 5 min or longer depending on the colour of the egg and desired colour depth.  Check after a few minutes.

7. Once happy with the colour, take the egg out, cut the knot with the scissors, remove stocking and the leaf and let it dry.

8. Rub some oil to give the egg nice shine.

These eggs are safe for eating.  Happy colouring!

Do you have a natural egg colouring method you would like to share?  Please do so using the comment form below!

Seeing the photo above, some might ask:  what on earth are we doing here?  Making hay.  But why?  In an inner city backyard?  There are no big meadows or cows close by!

Well, we are using it as the chicken coop bedding for our pet chickens!  Instead of buying hay or wood shavings for the bedding, we tried to make some.  It works!

In our bid to live more sustainably in the city, making hay is one little step towards greener living.  It reduces waste and saves money.  It might seem insignificant, but all the little things do add up.

How to Make Hay

Hay is basically cut and dried grass.  It’s usually made on farms to feed stock during the winter or dry season, but also as bedding and/or food for pets.  Straw on the other hand is a byproduct from grain production like wheat.

Although you can’t make haystacks as above form suburban lawn (you’ll need taller grass and lots of it), grass clippings are excellent for making hay in smaller amount. The two most important things to check are:

1. Lawn shouldn’t be chemically treated: no weed killing solution or chemical fertiliser used.
2. The weather: do it on a sunny and wind free day.  As the saying goes: Make hay while the sun shines!

The first point is obvious and if you have kids playing on the grass area you probably don’t use chemicals anyway.  When asking the lawn moving guys to leave some grass clippings, I always remind them not to put any from the nature strip between the pavement and the road as it might contain dog’s poo or cigarette buts.

A perfect day for making hay is when it’s sunny and calm.  Spread the grass clippings in a thin layer on the ground, preferably on the concrete.  Turn it and mix it around a few times during the day.  It shouldn’t take more than half a day or so until it’s completely dry.  Before night time, gather it on a pile and store in a box or another container and leave in the dry place.

On a rainy day I don’t bother making hay, even in the sheltered area as it’s too humid.  I can’t choose the day as the grass is always cut on Tuesday.  Instead, I give a portion of freshly cut grass to our pet chickens to eat (only on the first day!) and the rest goes in the veggie garden as mulch.  The grass breaks down into organic matter enriching soil.   It is also beneficial to leave some clippings on the lawn.   Alternatively, toss it into the compost bin, but no thicker than 5-6 cm.

If you have rabbits or guinea pigs, you might like to try making hay for your pet as food.

Hay as Chicken Coop Bedding

Here you can see our pet chicken Sunflower, the boss, inspecting the fresh hay layer in the coop!

As said, we use hay as bedding for the chicken coop.  We have 3 backyard chickens and they use the coop only for sleeping. At daytime they are in their chicken run.   Fresh hay has a lovely smell, at least until the chickens go to sleep (yes, chickens poo during the sleep, too!) .  The coop is cleaned once or twice a week and the whole hay bedding and the chicken poo goes into the compost bin and makes great fertiliser for the veggie garden. Grass clipping recycling at its best!

Here are some ideas for recycling grass clippings:

• Make hay for pets’ bedding/food
• Feed it to the chickens (freshly cut only)
• Leave them on the lawn as a fertiliser
• Mulch the garden
• Incorporate into the soil in the garden
• Compost the grass clippings
• Put them into the green waste bin, anything but…
• Just don’t throw the grass clippings into the rubbish and add to the already full landfills.  Only…
• In one instance trow the grass clippings in the bin:  If the turf was treated with chemicals!  That grass has been killed long before it was cut!

Pumpkin seeds are truly nature’s wonder food.  They are full of vitamins and minerals including zinc, iron, magnesium, copper and potassium.  Half a cup pumpkin seeds provides us with our daily requirements of magnesium.  The health benefits of eating pumpkin seeds are well known.  High content of zinc makes them beneficial for prostate.  They are also good in fight against the parasites in the intestines, have anti-inflammatory properties and can help lower blood cholesterol too.

Many people buy them and include them in the diet, mostly already peeled, green in colour known as pepitas.  However, when cutting pumpkins, the seeds are very often thrown away.  In terms of nutrition, it is a waste of real gold.  So, how to use and eat them?

How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds

This kent pumpkin in the picture above was cut up and roasted for the warm pumpkin and fennel salad.  Whether your pumpkin is destined for pumpkin soup, pie or Halloween, pumpkin seed are usually not needed in the recipe.  But don’t throw them away!  Roast them and turn the byproduct into a healthy snack.  Here is how:

1. Separate pumpkin seeds from pulp and remove strings
2. This step is optional: place seeds in colander, rinse and pat dry.  I don’t wash them, they are more flavoursome with traces of pulp on them.
3. Spread seeds on baking tray.  No need to add any oil or salt (see note at the end).
4. Bake at 190 C (375 F) for 20 min or until golden and crunchy.
5. Cool before eating.  Delicious!

How to eat roasted pumpkin seeds

Up to this part things are straight forward.  But, how to eat roasted pumpkin seeds?  You could eat the whole thing with the shell if you like.  But pumpkin shells might be a bit tough, preferably it is best to remove them.  Doing it by hand takes some time and it’s quite fiddly.  The best way to do it is to crack the shell with the teeth (see pictures below).  It might sound quite an effort, but it makes perfect sense: while being much more flavoursome than already shelled pepitas, it also slows down the snacking.  There’s no way of eating a bowl of toasted pumpkin seeds in the first 15 minutes of the movie !

Speaking of snacks I should mention that roasted pumpkin seeds were our family’s favourite winter time snack.  My grandparents have always grown big pumpkins to feed the pigs during the winter, so there was a good supply of seeds, indeed.

Here is the technique that works well with a bit of practice:

Hold a seed like in the picture below.

Gently crack the shell up to the half:

The shell will open and reveal the seed.  Just pull it with your teeth or fingers.

It might be frustrating at first, but practice makes perfect .

Note:

• If you prefer salted pumpkin seeds, sprinkle some salt on damp seeds in the tray just before baking.
• For the spicy pumpkin seeds season them with cayenne pepper, curry or the spice of your choice the same way as above
• To roast the seeds later, rinse, dry and keep in a container till you collect more seeds or have the oven to bake other things
• Larger quantity can be baked at once.  Allow longer baking time and mix occasionally.
• Save a few rinsed and dried pumpkin seeds, keep them in the fridge and plant them in spring.

Vanilla is my all time favourite spice!  There’s something luxurious, exotic and warm in the vanilla scent.  This might be why: vanilla plant belongs to the orchid family growing in tropical regions and is the second most expensive spice (saffron is first).

I used to by a single vanilla bean only when cooking for a special occasion.  At $6 plus a pod, it is really expensive for everyday use.  But NOT any more! I turned to the Internet in search for more affordable vanilla beans and wish I did it earlier.  If you use more than 2 vanilla beans per year, you would be nuts to buy it in shops: for the price of two you can have at least 10 or more online!

I found eBay to be a really good place to buy vanilla beans. While searching for vanilla I came across the recipe for homemade vanilla extract on one of the vanilla bean eStore.  Now that I buy in bulk and have plenty of fragrant plump beans on hand I make my own vanilla essence.  For our Australian readers, I would recommend to buy at Australian eBay (as I do) to avoid possible customs issues (food import).

Homemade Vanilla Extract Recipe

There are only two ingredients you need:

1. Vanilla beans and
2. Alcohol, eg. vodka, rum, brandy or spirit of your choice provided it’s at least 40% alcohol and the aroma doesn’t overpower vanillin

The ratio is 3 vanilla beans per one cup of spirits.

I prefer to use rum or vodka. Rum complements vanilla flavour perfectly.  It’s best in cakes or muffins. Vodka on the other hand doesn’t have as strong aroma as rum and won’t compete with the vanilla flavour.   Vodka based vanilla extract is good for cream and cheese based deserts.

The Method

• Prepare a clean glass jar or bottle.
• Split vanilla beans lengthwise and then in half
• Put vanilla halves into the bottle and pour the alcohol
• Close the lid or bottle top and leave in a dark place like a cupboard for at least 1-2 months
• Shake occasionally

With the time, colourless spirits like vodka will develop lovely brown colour.  Rum colour will deepen further and become cloudy and less transparent.  So will the flavour: the longer it stands the stronger and more aromatic your homemade vanilla extract will become.  The picture below is rum based vanilla extract on the day I made it:

The first time I made vanilla extract I couldn’t wait longer than one month!  Once you’ve used half of the homemade vanilla extract, simply top up the alcohol or add vanilla beans halves that you’ve scraped the seeds out or cooked with (just wash it thoroughly). Topping up can be done indefinitely.  If the aroma becomes too strong or the jar too crowded, simply divide the vanilla extract and beans into two bottles and pour more alcohol.  The second bottle would make a lovely present!

The homemade vanilla extract and the shop bought are worlds apart.  The latter one can contain sweeteners such as sugar or corn syrup, thickeners, artificial colours, caramel, stabilisers etc.  Especially bad is imitation vanilla essence that contains artificial vanillin made from wood-pulp by-products – give it a miss.

So get in action and make your own lovely vanilla extract.  It will take you only 5 minutes and you’ll know exactly what is in it!  Did I mention that I make my own vanilla sugar, vanilla ice cream and vanilla scented body deodorant too?

Recently I’ve found a new use for skateboards.  Not only are they great for spider hideaways and dust collecting in the garage but also very useful for moving heavy objects!

Necessity is the mother of all inventions. Well, here I’m not claiming to have reinvented the wheel; I’m pretty sure many came up with the idea.  But there I was, filling the wooden box with soil and compost on one side of the garden and trying to lift it and carry to the other end.  I didn’t stand a chance! Even if my husband was at home, I don’t think he would be too enthusiastic about lifting such heavy objects.  He had seen his chiropractic far too many times recently.

I went to the garage hoping to somehow find a way to do it and: bingo!  I saw the skateboard.  Wheels, of course!  Well, maybe I reinvented them .

Let me introduce our gorgeous city chickens: Princess, Singapore and Sunflower.  Singapore is the black one, still occasionally called “he” although reliably proving the opposite every morning.  Sunflower (on the left) has brown feathers, lays biggest eggs and is first in the pecking order – meaning she is the boss!  Princess is our daughter’s darling, brown too, but laced with more white feathers than Singapore.

How it all started?

For quite a while, our kids were asking if they could have a pet, as most kids do.  We’ve tried to settle for a fish, but “we can’t play with a fish!” was the answer.  Fair enough.  For a dog or a cat we neither have time nor space.  Children usually promise to help and take care of pets, but as soon the novelty wears out, they become parents’ full time responsibility.  So we needed an easy care pet that stays outside and can be left on its own for a few days when we are away.

After months of thinking and debating it dawned onto me: pet chickens!  On our last year’s trip to Europe, the kids really enjoyed playing with little chickens at grandparents’. Feeding the big ones and collecting the eggs was fun too. And the eggs were EGGcellent.

Keeping pet chickens has many benefits:

• Fresh and tasty eggs with a deep yellowy –orange coloured yolk
• Cheap to keep
• Simple to care for
• Eat kitchen scraps and leftovers – best composting system
• Produce top manure for the veggie garden (needs to be composted first)
• Chickens are sustainable pets
• Kids love to feed them and to collect the eggs
• Numerous psychological benefits for kids as with any other pet
• If everything properly set up at the beginning, need only 10-15 min of your time daily
• Pet backyard chickens are a lot of fun!

Our chickens came from the kinder our daughter attends.  Just as I started searching for a place to buy them, they had a chicken hatching program:  the eggs that are about to hatch are delivered in the incubator and kids care for the chickens the next ten days.  Afterwards they are either given away for free or taken back to the farm.  Good intentions, but would be even better if the program has the mother hen sitting on the eggs.  It would be a great deal more natural.

Keeping city chickens: some points to consider

If the idea of pet chickens appeals to you, there are few things to think about before getting them into your backyard.  For the start check following:

1. The first thing if living in a city is to confirm your city council allows chickens.  Our council’s rule is six chickens maximum and no rooster.
2. Do you have enough space: allow a minimum of one square meter per chicken and at least two chickens (they are social beings and don’t like to be alone).
3. As with any other pet, there is responsibility of your pet chickens’ wellbeing: protecting them from the elements and predators, feeding them, keeping the area clean etc.  After all, you want happy and healthy chickens.
4. Will the chickens be close to the neighbors, would they object?

Have a tick for all the above?  Great!  The next step is research.  Read a book or two on chicken keeping and search the Internet.  Without going into too many details, you need to decide what breed to buy, where to buy, do you want day old chickens or point of lay (when they are about to begin laying, 5-6 months old) chickens etc.  A book or a comprehensive web site will give you the idea about info you need.

I didn’t have any experience on keeping chickens other that feeding them and collecting the eggs as a little girl while on weekends at my grandparents’.  All that is written here is coming from our experience and let me tell you, having chickens is really fun and rewarding!  I meant to write about them earlier, but was waiting to see if they survive us !  There will be more about our city chickens in the future, meanwhile enjoy our chickens’ pictures: our city girls are mad about sunflower seeds!

Almost a grown chicken: picture taken 20 days before the chickens laid their first eggs:

Still not eating the herbs, but soon it all will disappear…

Any sunflower seeds hidden here?

What a feast!

“Excursion” to the lawn:

Bread is a staple food in our home: we eat a lot of it, especially when it’s freshly baked. Bread making is passion of mine. Nothing compares to the aroma of a loaf just out of the oven!  But when fresh bread is on the table, what to do with the old one?  Don’t throw old bread in the bin!

12 ways to use the old bread

As a child I was constantly being reminded by my family that wasting food is such a bad thing, bread in particular.  My grandma would tell me it’s a sin toss a piece of bread in the rubbish.  That stuck into my mind.  Over the years I’ve made some delicious meals out of old, stale bread and always look for new recipes.  Here are my favourites:

1.      French toast

French toast was the favourite way for my mum to use the old bread.  My sister and I loved it, now our kids love it too.  We didn’t call it French bread, just fried bread, and it always was the savoury version, as on the picture above.

White bread is the best choice for it:  simply beat the 2 eggs, add 1 cup milk and pinch of salt.  Dip the old bread slices into the mixture and fry in little hot oil in a pan.

For the widely known sweet version of French bread, use dried out sultana loaf, brioche, or any other sweet yeasted bread.  The method is same as above, you can however substitute butter for oil.  I don’t add any sugar to the egg and milk mixture as it burns more, but rather sprinkle some icing sugar before serving.

2. Homemade bread crumbs

It’s so easy to make homemade bread crumbs:  cut the stale bread into thin slices, spread it onto oven rack in a single layer, turn the oven on low and dry unit the slice snaps.  Cool and put into food processor.  Process until desired coarseness.

All types of bread are suitable for bread crumbs (except maybe sultana bread).  There is no need to remove crust.

3. Bread and butter pudding

This is a very popular dish and great to use up sweet loafs.  Basically, the bread is cut into thick slices, buttered (I often skip this step, still tastes great) and arranged into a baking dish.  Eggs are mixed with milk or cream if one prefers, and poured onto bread.  It’s best to let the slices soak up the mixture before baking.  I like to add some chocolate, grated orange rind or cinnamon too.

4. Summer berry pudding

This is one of my favourite deserts!  It’s so easy to prepare, bursting with flavour and very refreshing: just the right kind of pudding for a hot Australian Christmas.  Here is the recipe.

5. Pancanella – Tuscan bread salad

I make this salad fairly often during the summer; somehow I don’t have any photo.  The main ingredients are old bread torn into pieces (or cut into cubes), ripe tomatoes, basil, cucumber, anchovies, seasoning, olive oil and vinegar mixed together.  It’s a meal on itself.  I love it!

6. Porridge form old bread (popara)

It is a meal made from old white bread cooked in just enough milk for five minutes to make a porridge consistency.  I like to add garlic and sour cream on top.  It’s usually savoury but can be made as a sweet meal too.

7. Toast it, freeze it

These are obvious, but let’s mention them:

Pop a day (or two) old bread into the toaster – it tastes great again.  I especially like toasted sourdough.

Freeze the bread you won’t eat immediately.  It’s great to discover a few slices in the freezer just when I think I have to go out and buy some.

The above recipes using old bread are the ones I make most often.  Dry bread can be also used to make:

8. Meatballs
9. Croutons

Homemade croutons are easy to make and great addition to soups and salads. Cube stale bread slices and bake them on a tray in the oven or in a pan on the stove until golden, mixing occasionally. Optionally, season the cubes with herbs, spices and little olive oil before baking.

10. As a substitute for pastry for mini quiches, as on the photo below:

11. Stuffing
12. Servietten Knödel (German bread dumplings).

Please note:  If the bread gets mouldy, it’s not edible anymore.  This happens if the bread is stored in a plastic bag for a longer period or in very humid conditions.  If you have a compost bin, toss it in there (break it up into small chunks!) rather in the rubbish bin.

During the holidays, as many parents know, kids expect you to entertain them from morning till dawn.  Unless the day is action packed, it’s a “boring” day and “I don’t have anything to do” day.

On one of those days, we made a batch of homemade playdough (play dough).  In summer, we tend to spend more time outside and kids didn’t play with it for a while.  Not only  did the playdough keep them occupied for hours – to mum and dad’s delight, but also there is an educational element to it: development of fine motor skills, blending colours, exploring senses like touch and feel, to name a few.

Instructions on how to make homemade playdough:

This is a simple no cook playdough recipe which you can make within minutes.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup salt
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 cup boiling water
• natural or food colouring (eg. beetroot, turmeric powder), optional

Note:  Increase the above amounts two or three times for more playdough which can be divided and coloured differently.

In a bowl mix all dry ingredients.

Add oil, liquid colouring and boiling water (warn kids if they are helping!) and stir until it all comes together.

This is a proper way. As you can see above, I usually put dry and wet ingredients all at once and then stir. Here I added a bit of beetroot juice, but, oops, forgot to add oil.  Still it came good.

Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it until it becomes smooth. If the playdough is still too hot to touch, leave to cool a bit.

Divide into several portions and add different colouring few drops at the time to each. Knead well into the playdough.

Store in an airtight container after play time.  It will dry out quickly otherwise.

Last step, but not the least, have fun and play with your kids (for a little while)! It’s very therapeutic for adults, too, as you can see in the picture below !

On the McKenzie’s Cream of tartar packet there is cooked playdough recipe if you prefer this method:

2 cups four

4 tablespoons cream of tartar

2 tablespoons cooking oil

1 cup salt

food colouring

2 cups of water

Mix the above ingredients in a saucepan, and stir over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, until the mixture congeals.

Few more tips:

• For a textured playdough, add some oats, dried lavender or herbs.
• Add a few drops of natural cooking essence like orange, peppermint or almond for a nice smell, but omit if that will tempt small kids into eating the playdough – it IS natural, but way too salty.
• If the kids manage to eat some, don’t be alarmed, it won’t hurt them, they’ll just be very thirsty!
• Be alarmed if they eat commercial playdough – it is full of chemicals, with a weird sweet smell.
• Once the playdough starts to smell rancid, dries out or gets very dirty, it’s time to make another batch.

Easter is just around the corner and it’s time to start some planning (I should say it’s the last minute to do so).  If you are celebrating Easter, think about how to green your Easter celebrations this year.

Here are some of things we do at our place:

• Number one: we limit the quantity of chocolate Easter eggs (at least at home)!  Kids really want the Easter egg hunt, however by Easter they have eaten too many at school and kinder.  So we hide about 3-4 small ones per child.  And we rarely buy any chocolate eggs as they keep coming from school, friends and neighbours. When buying chocolate Easter eggs, it’s best to find the smallest eggs, ideally hollow ones that have least chocolate in them.  Organic and fair-trade Easter eggs are now available.  Skip huge Easter bunnies and eggs with lots of packaging.

• At school and kinder our kids make Easter egg baskets form paper or recycled plastic tubs filled with shredded paper.  Refuse bought plastic basket with fake plastic grass.

• We boil and decorate real eggs.  Now that our chickens are laying we have our own fresh eggs.  Usually I boil them with the onion skin for lovely and natural colour:

• We bake the hot cross buns, make Easter cookies and generally all food for the celebration is homemade.

• Easter decoration is arriving on a daily basis form kinder in form of different paintings and paper craft – so I don’t have to worry about that task

• Decorated blown eggs:  we have a set made 5 years ago and still using it.  Simply, make two holes with a wooden skewer and blow the egg out using a straw.  Then rinse, dry and decorate.  You can hang them on some branches (see below), arrange them in a bowl or use them as a simple table decoration.

Here are just some of ideas for greener Easter.

Would you like to share your tips for eco friendly Easter? Please do so in the comments below.

When I announce Pancakes for breakfast! our kids ask immediately: thick or thin? Thin pancakes are actually crepes and thick are pancakes. Considered as a French specialty, crepes are widespread and very common throughout continental Europe: if you order pancakes, chances are you’ll get crepes.

Our son likes “thin” pancakes (read crepes) and our daughter “thick” ones, pancakes, that is. So when I make the latter, I thin out the last batch of the batter to runny consistency and make a few crepe-like pancakes. But still have to alternate between the two varieties.

My favourite pancake recipe is with buttermilk. Buttermilk pancakes are thick and spongy with less fat needed to achieve the softness. There is always buttermilk in our fridge as I make my own buttermilk. If you don’t have buttermilk, you can substitute it with regular milk (1 cup) mixed with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, apple cider or vinegar and let it stand 5-10 minutes.

The buttermilk pancake recipe:

2 cups plain flour (if using self raising flour, omit bicarb and baking powder)

1 teaspoon bicarb soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

2 tablespoon melted butter or oil

2 cups buttermilk

1. Mix all dry ingredients together.
2. Beat the eggs and add melted butter or oil.
3. Add one cup of buttermilk to the eggs, mix well.
4. Pour buttermilk and eggs mixture into dry ingredients and mix all quickly into a thick batter with a whisker. By adding half the required liquid first the batter will be smooth and without clumps.
5. Now add the second cup of buttermilk and incorporate gently. Add more buttermilk if the batter is too thick.
6. At this stage you can add some corn, herbs, grated cheese or carrot for savoury or chopped fruit or berries for the sweet version.
7. Pour the batter into medium hot oiled pan or griddle – about ¼ of cup or more for larger pancakes. Cook as many at the time as you can fit in your pan without sticking together.
8. Turn over when bubbles appear on the top and cook the other side until golden.
9. Serve warm.

This is a simple buttermilk pancake recipe without sugar. We love it with avocado or other savoury spreads as well as jam or honey, hence the jam will lend the sweetness. To make sweet pancake batter just add 2-3 tablespoons of sugar to the flour when mixing dry ingredients.