VINEGAR FOR BAD ODOUR

To get rid off bad odour from rooms, fridges, cars, drawers etc, wet a slice of bread with vinegar and leave it there over night.

STUFFED ZUCCHINI (COURGETTE)

Here in Australia, we have started to really feel the summer recently. Many things change with seasons (not that we have real 'seasons' in Mebourne!); energy levels, weekend programs, clothing, colours, business items, types of plants that are grown in the garden and so forth. Food is not any different. It changes quite a bit too as different vegies and fruit become available in season, different levels of calories and other essentials are needed, preferences change with the season etc.

In regards to food, in our case, we are normally quite happy with our natural yoghurt and eat it on a regular basis throughout the year. However, especially when it is warm or hot, it surely becomes one of our 'must-have' types of foods. We don't necessarily follow a particular diet at home, however, we do prefer certain cuisines over some others and the Mediterranean cuisine is one of our favourites for sure and youghurt generally goes well with it.

We sometimes consume yoghurt as is or even make a quick wrap or a dip with it, sometimes it compliments and accompanies other foods, such as stuffed vegetables and it does it beautifully. We stuff a lot of vegies and today, I will be sharing with you our recipe of stuffed zucchinis (note: there are variations of zucchinis and the ones in the pictures here are better known in Europe).

This recipe is a vegetarian recipe. However, it can be made with minced beef as well. If you are an omnivore and would like to know how to make it with meat as well, it is very easy. Just cook the beef with some onion (and alternatively with some tomatoes or tomato paste) and then the rest is the same as below.

Ingredients: 

2-3 zucchinis
1 medium onion
Approximately 1.5 bowlsful of short or medium grain rice (you can use bulghur/cracked wheat instead)
A tablespoonful of paste (optional) (You can use tomatoes instead of paste)
Ground mint
Salt
Cracked pepper
Olive oil (approximately 2-3 tablespoonsful)

 Method: 

For the stuffing, caramelise your chopped onions until brown (you can add your paste or tomatoes at this stage or right after the onions are caramelised) in shallow oil. Add rice, mint, salt and cracked pepper and stir it for a minute or so on high heat. Pour some hot boiling water on it (about a glassful) and turn down the heat. Close the lid of the pot and let it simmer until the water is absorbed.

To prepare the zucchini, cut your zucchini into about 2-3 equal pieces horizontally (this depends on the size of your courgette) and then cut about a 0.5cm (or a bit over) off from each piece to be able to close each stuffed zucchini with. Carve the insides of your zucchinis (there are tools designed particularly for that purpose but if you don't own one, just use a teaspoon and carve it with that just like scooping icecream of a tub). You don't need to waste that bid. Just chop it up and add it to the stuffing mixture or add it to your soups. The walls and the bottom of the zucchini  should be about 0.5cm in thickness for it not to break. Once they are ready, put your stuffing in each piece until almost full (not too full though as it will expand a bit more while cooking) and close them with the pieces that you have cut from each one.

Place them all in a pot horizontally (it is more desirable if you use a shallow pot as opposed to using deep ones), pour some hot boiling water (perhaps about 3 quarters of the zucchinis should be under water) and once it boils, turn down the heat and leave it on low heat until cooked. It takes less than half an hour to cook.

Enjoy something that makes you think of summer today!

DID YOU KNOW ... (47)?

photo credit

 The largest eyeball ever recorded in history belongs to a colossal squid. Colossal squids have the world's biggest eyes.

A HANDMADE SIFTER FOR THE GARDEN

We thankfully worked with Sontec Plumbing. They were great. Recommended: 0409 695 927

As I have mentioned here, there are things happening in our backyard this year and we are excited about it all as a family. There will be other posts on other aspects of what is going on there and what we have done or learnt throughout this process. Today, here is one of Mr. Hubby's ideas and our handmade tool that worked wonderfully for us.

As you know from my previous post on our garden that we have some stones and rocks on the sides of our backyard along with the fence and we wanted/needed to take them off from there and use them elsewhere. There were four reasons for that: 1) We need to dig up some parts of the garden and the stones are very hard to work with when doing so. 2) Where we are planning to dig up the soil, stones are unneeded and are not welcome. 3) We need all those rocks and stones elsewhere. 4)We have enquired about some walk in bins to take all that dirt away from quite a few places and the quotes for a 6-8 cubic meters walk in bin started from approximately $300 and went up to around $600 which too made us think of other possible options.

Mr. Hubby is a person with bright ideas and can think outside the box. He is skillful too which is a great advantage on our behalf. He started thinking of possible solutions (can you tell he is an engineer?) and voila! This is what we did on the same day after he suggested it:

We bought a metal mesh for about $20 from a local hardware store. We came home and got working. We picked some pieces of wood that would work well for our little project from our little 'unwanted-for-the-moment' wood pile, took our drill set and some nails out out, and started to make our rectangle metal sifter. We kept one side's two wood ends a bit longer to make it easier to lift it up when heavy.

We placed the sifter on top of the wheelbarrow that we have borrowed from a family member (which we should really give back sometime soon).

The rest was pretty straight forward. We loaded the sifter with dirt using a shovel, sifted it through our handmade sifter, most of the soil and some small sized beneficial rocks went through and went into the wheelbarrow, we separated the big chunks of branches, twigs and grass roots and the rest stayed on the sifter which we then poured into buckets to make it easier to transport.

During this work which went for over a week on and off, Mr. Junior was very helpful finding all sorts of bugs and worms and informing us of his new findings. As a person who would not go to his Grandparents' house unless they make sure that their pet dogs are locked away or on leash, he did really well with bugs and all those slimy little creatures!

As for Miss Junior, she helped us out with the rocks the most by making sure that we did not miss any unwanted bits in the rocks section. She was an excellent supervisor and a worker. She inspected the rocks that we collected in a container in detail and whenever she didn't like it, she took them out of the container and put them on the ground so that we would know we needed to do it again, this time, more carefully.

Once again, it was hard work but was well accomplished and we surely had a smile on our face when it was all completed.

We even found some surprises in the garden where they were least expected! 

TIP: HOMEMADE GROUND MINT

Mint from our garden

If you leave your mint to dry in the sun, your homemade ground mint will go dark and won't look as good. Instead, do it indoors and it will look greener.

DID YOU KNOW ...? (46)

photo credit

Most newborns cry without tears until they are three to six weeks old.

TIP: Removing Stickers

Use white vinegar to take off stickers (from toys, glass, car windows etc). First, wet the corners of the sticker with some vinegar and then using a hard piece of card (bank card, telephone card etc), start taking it off.

You can use more vinegar for the rest of the sticker and use a soft piece of cloth to take off anything that is left on the surface. First make sure the vinegar stays on the surface a bit before you clean it with the cloth.