A while ago I purchased a Mad Millie's Sausage Making Kit when I had to use up some expiring Airpoints and have finally got around to trying making sausages at home. I was put off for a while because when I was reading the instructions they said that it was useful to have another pair of hands so I'd been thinking I'd have to arrange for a friend who might be interested in trying sausage making too to come around. In the end I decided to give it a go myself anyway and, yes it would have been … [Read more...]
Breville Juice Fountain Review
I bought a juicer with a view to being able to make best use of a bountiful supply of fruit and vegetables from my increasingly productive garden. There was a 50% sale on that helped my choice but I chose the Breville Froojie Juice Fountain because it had an extra wide chute so that you didn't have to spend time chopping everything up first and it was powerful enough to extract all the juice without too much waste. There are less expensive Juice Fountain models, but I chose this one because it … [Read more...]
NutriBullet Review
Hah! You've succumbed to the TV advertising! Well, no. I record all my TV programmes so that I can fast-forward through all the ads. So when a friend recommended the NutriBullet and I decided I would get one, I had to carefully screen the ads as they were speeding by to get the phone details I needed. The NutriBullet is described as a nutrient extraction system to get as much goodness as possible out of our food, particularly in the skins and seeds that we would normally throw away. I had … [Read more...]
Homemade Rose & Raspberry Sorbet
I had been thinking for a while that making fruit sorbets would be a great use of fruit from my garden so when I found a Sunbeam Ice Cream Maker on super special it seemed like a sensible move to buy it and try it out. The recipe book is full of different recipes to try out: basic vanilla icecream and lots of variations, gelatos and sorbets. I also found 25 deliciously different recipes to try on Martha Stewart's website. A traditional creamy Ice Cream is made from a custard base using … [Read more...]
Cheese Making At Home: Ricotta
Cheese making has always intrigued me as one of those mythical arts that I never thought I'd be able to make. I'm not a fan of strong cheeses and for some reason I had always associated cheese making with those sorts of cheeses. It wasn't until I saw the cheese making kits at Mad Millie that I started to think about more about trying it. I started looking at the videos and lists of different cheeses that you could make quite simply. These were all the sorts of 'cheeses' that I do eat quite … [Read more...]
Make Your Own Gourmet Yoghurt Dessert
Most people in New Zealand (and likely everywhere else now) will have heard of EasiYo. If you don't have one of their yoghurt makers, you really should! I used to buy pottles of fruit yoghurt and have them every day until I realised how full of sugar they are and how expensive they were getting. I tried making home made yoghurt using plain yoghurt as a starter culture but it seemed that you had to keep it going and I always ended up with far more than I could use, particularly if I was away for … [Read more...]
Drying Herbs using a Dehydrator
I had been thinking about getting a dehydrator for a while, particularly for drying herbs for cooking and in soaps and other bath products but also for potentially preserving my increasing fruit and vegetable harvests. After a bit of research it seemed that you could get either large expensive dryers or small relatively inexpensive dehydrators and nothing in between. There was a lot written about the bigger dryers but not so much about the smaller ones. I certainly couldn't justify the size … [Read more...]
Getting the Right Preserving Jars for Your Needs
When I first started preserving I just used whatever empty jars I had saved or scrounged from friends - and this was absolutely fine. I could usually get a few extra uses out of them before they cracked, the seals went or the lids rusted and I had to throw them out. It generally made for a ragtag collection of preserves but who really cares when it is just for you or to give the occasional jar to someone else. Then I thought that if I was going to be doing this more often I should probably … [Read more...]
Preserving Gear
It is quite possible to do preserving using just the pots and pans and other equipment you probably have already in your kitchen. My cast iron casserole dish has certainly done double-duty as a preserving pan and I have managed to eventually get most of my jams and pickles successfully into the jars and sealed using an ordinary ladle. But what a difference it makes when you do invest in getting purpose-designed equipment! It may seem expensive but should last you a lifetime if you get good … [Read more...]
Home Brew Cider Making
I’ve always liked the sound of making home brew but I’m not really a beer drinker and I’d heard so many stories of exploding ginger beer that I had previously decided that it wasn’t for me. Recently I had some Airpoints to use up and spied a Mad Millie’s Cider Making Kit in the Airpoints store so decided to give it a go. The Starter Kit http://www.madmillie.com/shop/Cider.html comes with everything you need to make your first batch, including the fermenter, bottles, siphon, hydrometer, … [Read more...]