My goals

Tips for living frugally, reducing waste, healthy living and being environmentally friendly. Join me on my journey as I explore ways to achieve these goals.
Showing posts with label rockmelon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rockmelon. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Two in one recipe: Peach and rockmelon juice and peach, rockmelon and passionfruit sorbet - egg free, dairy free

I have a juicer which is great but I find that, during the process of extracting juice, there is a lot of pulp left behind. I don't want to waste the perfectly good fruit pulp, so the other day when I made this Peach and Rockmelon juice, I used the pulp left over to make a very yummy sorbet.

For the juice:

1/2 rockmelon (cantaloupe)
4 peaches
2 oranges
1 tablespoon lime juice

Juice the fruit according to the instructions for your juicer. For example, I have a different attachment for doing 'fleshy' fruits like the peaches and rockmelons and another attachment for juicing citrus fruits. Months ago I juiced a heap of limes and put them in the ice cube trays in the freezer. I picked out enough cubes of frozen lime juice to make about 1 tablespoon and added them to the rest of the juice.

For the sorbet:

Collect the pulp of the peaches and rockmelons from the juicer.
In a saucepan, place 1 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water and slowly bring to a boil until sugar has dissolved. Put aside to cool completely.
Once cool, stir into the pulp along with some passionfruit pulp and seeds (or omit if you don't like passionfruit).
Place into a shallow freezer proof plastic container and freeze. After a few hours (when it is almost frozen solid), pull out and beat, then place back into the container and freeze again. If you leave it longer (I left mine for two days!) and it is frozen solid when you pull it out to beat it, just let it sit at room temperature until it softens.

Many sorbet recipes say to whip raw egg whites into frozen mixture when beating it. With two young kids in the house I wasn't keen on using raw eggs, so left them out.
Last night we tried the sorbet and it got the thumbs up from everyone. My husband was impressed that it was so tasty, and bar the cup of sugar, was relatively healthy.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Garden update...200kg of produce and counting!

Three years ago I planted a vegie patch. The first year I got 104kg out of my garden and was pretty excited. Last year I got 120kg and was even more excited. Yesterday I picked the last of the tomatoes as well as some oranges and was extremely excited when I weighed the days takings and found that my garden has produced 200kg this year so far (and it's only the middle of September!). I have a set of kitchen scales and I weigh everything I pick so that I can keep a record of how economical my garden is.
I spent the weekend digging out unwanted flowering plants as well as the tomatoes and pumpkins that have died off. I went out and bought the following seedlings: rockmelon, watermelon, corriander, sweet basil, zucchini, tomatoes (4 varieties, one seedling of each...I do it each year), cherry tomato, peas and beans. I had some corn seeds that I got from the Adelaide Royal Show and some pumpkin seeds that I saved from the last pumpkin picked out of my garden. I don't usually have much luck growing things from seed, apart from parsley and lettuce that self seed in my garden, so will be looking out to see if the corn and pumpkin germinate. If not, it will be a quick trip down to the nursery to get seedlings. I also bought some manure and sugar cane mulch. I love the smell of fresh sugar cane mulch on the garden! I had a very busy day yesterday, with lots of soil preparation and planting. I didn't get to plant the rockmelon and watermelon as I have to remove the grass that has grown in the spot where I will put them. I will have to do it sometime in the next week.
Does it cost much to set up a garden? Yesterday the mulch, manure and seedlings (and Seasol spray) cost me about $130.00. Not bad considering how much I will get from it in regards to zucchinis and rockmelons, etc. It will pay for itself over the season.
My husband got me some editions of the Grass Roots Magazine from the library and I read an interesting article about how much food is NOT eaten from our vegie patches. The author started going out each day and picking produce from their garden and making a point of using it in a meal. It didn't matter if it was one spear of asparagus and a few leaves of lettuce, it still went towards a meal. I think I will give this a go, as I find there is so much in my garden that doesn't get used. My cos lettuce are huge, so I think I will pick some today and maybe make a Caesar salad for dinner. I also have a lot of spinach and silverbeet, so will pick a few leaves and make something with them (and pick the snails off them at the same time).
I am also excited that the asparagus that I planted last year has shown a new lease of life this year. After I planted it my husband and I moved it just as it was dying off at the end of the season as it was where my husband wants to plant a fig tree. After transplanting I cut it back to ground level. Recently we looked at it and declared it dead, as it certainly looked that way. A week later Spring started and new spears popped out from under the ground!