During their childhood, kids use a large amount of glue. Most of them are chemical mixtures with no ingredients listed on the packaging. You can only imagine what’s in there.

Preschoolers love pasting and collage, as well as tasting anything that comes close to their mouths. Besides the awful taste, shop bought glue might not be the perfect substance for their tummies. School kids have (hopefully) learned not to lick the glue, but having it on their skin and, occasionally, all over them, isn’t good either as we know that our skin absorbs anything that’s put on it. Try this old trick to prove it: rub a clove of garlic onto the soles of your feet and after a while you’ll feel the garlicky taste in your mouth!

Whether you would like to avoid a chance of your kids digesting chemical glues, make your house greener and as chemical free as possible or just want to avoid buying stuff and reducing wasteful packaging, the recipe above is a sure winner. There are many natural glue recipes around, but this one is the simplest to make with only 4 ingredients you most probably have on hand. I’ve tried it and it works, not only for paper, but also for gluing chunks of wood.

How to make non toxic homemade  glue

• For the ingredients needed, see the recipe on the photo above.
• In a saucepan mix 1 cup of flour with 1/3 cup of sugar.
• Add half of the water required and mix into a thick paste without clumps.
• Pour in the rest of the water and combine till the paste is smooth.
• Pour a teaspoon of vinegar and put on medium heat until the mixture starts to thicken.
• Cool and transfer to jar or an airtight plastic container.

This glue will keep for a few days. Refrigerate to prolong the shelf life (the jar in my fridge is 6 months old). It needs a bit longer to dry out, but once dry the bond is relay strong.

Vinegar in this glue recipe acts as a mild natural preservative. You might use grapefruit seed extract or tee tree oil (5-10 drops) instead of vinegar to naturally preserve the glue. Stick with vinegar though if you have small kids – not only is this glue non toxic, but perfectly edible too!

P.S.  At Christmas time I use this glue for card making and add a few drops of anise or cinnamon essential oil to give the cards a nice scent.  If adding dark essential oils or ground cinnamon, bear in mind that the glue will have a slightly brownish colour unlike plain one that becomes almost transparent when dry.

It’s the middle of the winter here down-under and what better way to warm up than with a hot soup.  Our all time favourite is this veggie soup with semolina dumplings.  Very popular throughout Europe, semolina dumplings (Griessnockerln, Griesskloesschen, griz knedle) can be added to any clear broth soup.  I’ve got this recipe while living in Germany.

Semolina dumplings recipe

Semolina dumplings are easy to make.  Use coarse semolina for this recipe, as dumplings made from finely ground semolina tend to be dense and cook slower.  Make the mixture when the soup is almost ready.

• 50 g butter at room temperature
• 1 egg
• 100 g coarse semolina
• salt and white pepper to taste
• a pinch of ground nutmeg
• flat leaf parsley or chives, finely chopped (optional)

Method

1. Beat the butter until pale and fluffy
2. Add egg, mix with butter
3. Pour in semolina, season, add herbs if using and mix until all comes together
4. Dip a spoon into a hot soup or broth then take some of the mixture and slide it into a simmering soup.
5. Repeat until all the mixture is used.
6. Cook for about 10 minutes, then turn the heat off and let it stand covered for further 5-10 minutes.

If I’m in a hurry, I make larger dumplings, as on the photo above.  For smaller semolina dumplings use a teaspoon or make little balls out of the mixture.

Bon Appétit!

World Environment Day (WED) 2010 is tomorrow, June 5th. Every year I mark it with a symbolic activity or deed.

This year I’ve joined 1 Million Women – A campaign of daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers – Committed to protecting our climate, our communities and our future, leading change for the better.  The goal is to inspire 1 million Australian women to take practical action on climate change by cutting 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the main greenhouse pollutant causing global warming.

For more info about WED and how you can take part visit the United Nations Environment Programme website

http://www.unep.org/wed/2010/english/

At the market last weekend, fennel bulbs and pumpkins were everywhere.  That means cold weather is upon us.  June 1st is the official start of winter in Melbourne, although the temperature is still in the pleasant range.

Pumpkins are so versatile: you can boil them, roast them, make sweet or savoury dishes.  They keep well for a long time.  Not only do they taste good, they are packed with goodness of alpha and beta carotene, potassium, magnesium, zinc, vitamins A and E and other nutrients with only 15 cal per 100 grams raw.  And if that is not enough, pumpkin seeds are nature’s wonder food.  Read more about the seeds.

What do I make from pumpkin?  Pumpkin soup, pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin scones, roasted pumpkins, the list is long.   One of my favourite pumpkin recipes is pumpkin and fennel salad.  There are several version of it, but I like this one with the sesame flavour.  If sesame isn’t the flavour of your choice, omit sesame seeds and oil and add roasted pumpkin seeds.  This healthy vegetarian salad can be eaten warm or cold.  Serve as a side or a light main meal with some freshly baked bread.

Pumpkin and Fennel Salad Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 medium butternut pumpkin or small Kent pumpkin
• 1 fennel bulb
• Salad leaves of your choice
• 2 tablespoons roasted sesame seeds or pumpkin seeds

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• A drizzle of sesame oil (omit if using pumpkin seeds)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• 1 teaspoon honey
• Salt and white pepper to taste

To make salad:

1. Cut and peel pumpkin into chunky cubes or slices.  Reserve the seeds (see here for roasting instructions)
2. Roast pumpkin in the oven or cook in a heavy skillet
3. Remove outside layers of fennel bulb and slice thinly on a mandolin (white part only)
4. Mix olive oil, apple cider vinegar, orange juice, honey, salt and pepper.  Heat if serving salad warm
5. Arrange salad leaves (I’ve used young rocket, green salad and beetroot leaves)
6. Top with cooked pumpkin and sliced fennel
7. Sprinkle sesame or pumpkin seeds
8. Drizzle with dressing

Bon Appétit!

It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday, May the 9th.  If you are looking for thoughtful and eco friendly present ideas, you might find some in my last year’s post.  This post is about our recent loss.

On Easter Sunday my mother-in-law passed away very unexpectedly, at the age of 66.  It has been a difficult time for us as we couldn’t be there for her when it happened, we didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.  But especially hard will be for my husband this year’s Mother’s Day.

I know this isn’t quite a cheerful reading for such a special day.  But I would like you, if you are still with me, to think about Mother’s Day in a less commercialised way.  Think about what is important in life.  What memories will we take with us when the time comes for us to cross to the “other” side.  After all it is memories and emotions we cherish, not “things”.

Although I am aware of everything written below on any other day, this Sunday I’ll reflect on following:

• As a mum, this Mother’s Day I’ll remind myself how fortunate I am to be able to do the toughest job in the world, on duty 24/7 – being MUM!
• I’ll express my gratitude to have two great children and a loving husband.
• I’ll remind myself to cherish every day spent with my kids, no matter how frustrating some of those days might be.
• As a daughter, I’ll appreciate the fact that although living 16, 000 km away I still have my mum and her unconditional love.
• We’ll take time to light the candle and reflect on our late mum, mother-in-law and grandma’s life.

Our lives are filled with seemingly “important” everyday’s task and problems.  To-do lists are boring and without an end.  Wouldn’t it be great to have something like Call mum and tell her I appreciate all she has done for me between shopping and paying bills on it?  Or how about Write I love you note for kids lunches as a task on the to-do list?  If you’ve always wanted to say something important to your mum (or anyone else), to say sorry for something that happened long ago or to do something special for her, but never find the time or the right moment, do it now.  The other day, the next time you visit or the next year might be a bit too late…

As someone said,

Our life may be short, but the memory of a life well spent is eternal.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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!

In a week time on Saturday 27 March 2010 at 8.30pm, millions of people from around the world will join together for Earth Hour™.

Turning off the lights says we care about planet Earth and we want others to care too.

Earth Hour History

Earth Hour started in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Approximately 2.2 million people and 2,100 businesses took part in the first year.

In 2008, Earth Hour involved between 50 and 100 million  people  in  370  cities  and  towns  around  the  world,  including  Chicago, Toronto, Copenhagen, Dublin, Atlanta and Bangkok took part.

An independent survey found that 58 per cent of people in Australian capital cities joined in by switching off their lights.

In 2009, the concept truly went global, with Earth Hour triggering people to “switch off” all over the world – from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to Times Square in New York. Millions of people in over 4,000 towns and municipalities in 88 countries took part.

2009 was also an important year for the UN climate negotiations. In December 2009, world leaders and climate negotiators gathered at UN climate talks in Copenhagen to agree to a deal to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia ratified in 2007.  (Source http://www.earthhour.org.au/earth-hour-wwf/earth-hour-history)

What can you do

• Turn off the lights! For one hour on Saturday, 27 March 2010, 8.30 PM.
• Register your commitment. Go to www.earthhour.org.au for Australia or go to www.earthhour.org and choose your country.  Tracking the number of people participating helps show how many of us care.
• Get together on the night. Gather friends, family and neighbours to enjoy the hour of “lights out”.
• Spread the word.  Everyone does their little bit to spread the word trough Internet, Social Media, local newspaper, email, noticeboards…

For more ideas on how to take part go to http://www.earthhour.org.au/what-you-can-do

Seeing all the chocolate Easter bunnies and eggs immediately after Christmas made me instinctively block anything to do with Easter till recently.   Now that there are less than three weeks left, I can put my guard down.

My first post on the Easter theme is this simple floral centrepiece.  No, I’m not soooo organised this year, this photo is from previous Easter .

Instructions

You’ll need:

• container
• wet floral foam
• glass or jar
• grass with roots
• flowers, cut or potted
• coloured eggs

1. For a start, you need a container of any size and shape you like.  I chose a rectangular stainless steel box.
2. Soak a piece of wet floral foam in water and place it on one side.  If your container isn’t waterproof, put the foam into a plastic bag and secure sides with a rubber band leaving the top free.
3. In the other corner put a glass or jar for your flowers.
4. Take a bunch of grass together with roots from your garden, mondo grass from the nursery or any other living grass or plant you wish and place it on top of the floral foam.  Water it regularly.
5. Place the flowers in the glass or jar filled with water.  You can use potted flowers instead.  Tulips are my preferred Easter flowers.
6. To finish, place a few coloured Easter eggs on the grass.  And this cute wooden ladybird made a great finishing touch.

This gorgeous Easter centrepiece is really easy to make and will last for several weeks!

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!

In my previous post on butter, Butter vs. Margarine, I wrote about why butter is a better option.  As I mentioned at the end, there is one thing about butter that isn’t so handy: it’s solid and hard to spread directly out of the fridge!

Types of butter

Butter is mostly made form cows’ milk.  In the past, cream was collected from the raw milk and then churned.  This was and still is the best butter, also known as raw cultured butter.

Cultured butter in the shops isn’t made the old-fashioned way.  It’s rather made with pasteurised cream and cultures are added to finished butter.

Unsalted (also called continental) butter is made as above without bacterial cultures added.  Salted butter as the name says, has salt added.

Organic butter is made with organic cream without any additives.

The best choice would be homemade organic raw cultured butter. However, unless you have your own cows or access to organic raw milk, it’s hard to get it in the shops.

How to make your own butter

As said above, to make butter from scratch you need raw milk (lots of it!).  Alternatively, you can by cream and make your own.

Use cream with the highest fat percentage, 35% plus.  Pour it into a deep bowl and using a mixer beat until stiff.  Continue beating until some liquid starts to separate and cream turns yellow.   It will take some time.  When butter forms, press it together to expel liquid, put in a container and refrigerate.

In my opinion, this method isn’t worth the time and money.  When you calculate the cost of cream + time, butter is cheaper.  Though it is good to know the method in an emergency:  you need butter for a cake let’s say, the shop is closed or too far to drive but you have some cream in the fridge!

Soft Butter Spread Recipe

I’ve seen in the shops some butter spreads claiming to be spreadable.  They have oils added or water content increased.  So I decided to try it at home hoping that butter and oil won’t separate– it worked!  Butter naturally contains lecithin.  Lecithin is emulsifier – a substance that binds water and oil.   The first time I made soft butter spread was about 2 years ago.  Since then I’ve played with different oils and ingredients.

For the basic recipe you need a quantity of softened butter and oil of your choice (try to use good quality cold pressed extra virgin oil).  Also, I like to add water – it makes the spread a bit brittle, but there are fewer calories.

• 250g softened butter (or 2 sticks of butter for our US readers, that equals to 227g)
• ¼ cup oil
• ¼ cup water

Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix using a handheld stick blender, mixer, food processor or a whisker until all the ingredients are blended together.  The spread will be shiny but turn dull when refrigerated.   This recipe yields about 370g butter spread.

One of my experiments was to mix yoghurt instead of oil – to make a sort of soft cultured butter spread.  The result was interesting: instead of combining together, it started to separate a bit and to form little pockets of liquids, as when you make butter from cream!  Nevertheless, the taste was really good.

Note:

• You can omit water and add ½ cup oil only
• On the photo, it looks like 1 cup of liquids added, but the level increased when butter was added
• Water doesn’t only produce the best result, but it’s possible to make it as well
• Use this recipe as a guide only: increase or decrease the liquids to have firmer or softer spread
• While butter spread is still soft you can add herbs, garlic or other flavourings.

Nutritional Values of butter and butter spread

Here are nutritional values of each, butter and butter spread compared, per 100g using macadamia oil and above quantities:

You can see the change in decreased energy and saturated fat fields.

I predominantly make soft butter spread to have a spreadable butter in the morning, rather than out of worry about the saturated fat or calorie counting.  Long before we found about nutritional panels and kilojoules, people knew that  foods rich in calories shouldn’t be eaten by kilos.

My favourite soft butter spread is the one made with extra virgin olive oil and with yoghurt.  Our kids like milder tasting oils like macadamia.

Please share with us your thoughts about soft butter spread!