I thought it was finished

but the quilt top has decided it's not.  It tells me it wants a border.  And I had one.  In fact, the whole quilt was built around some fabrics I bought, including a striped deep rose pink that I thought would be perfect for the border.  Well, it's not perfect, it's terrible.  It's all wrong.  

Has that happened to you?

And of course, no other fabric in my (rather too extensive) stash is right either.  I actually think it needs a border of the brown/grey that makes up the corner-stones in the sashing - the centre of the faux churn dash block.  Which, of course, I have none left of.  Luckily I'm pretty sure I know where I got it from.

Now here's a question for you:
What do you put in your water when you cook a corned beef?  It seems this is quite a traditional thing.  Preferences passed down from parent to child.  I put in a chopped onion, some whole cloves, a bit of golden syrup and bay leaves.  I'd love to know what your preferred flavours are.

French braids on a Sunday

Sunday (yesterday for us), was awfully windy.  I stood for ages trying to catch a picture of the gusts visible in the trees outside my lounge window.  Eventually I caught a shot that almost shows how breezy it was.  We did manage to get out and plant another forty odd kanuka trees without getting blown away.  The ground is getting dry now so that will be the last tree planting before Summer and hopefully these will survive - kanuka are pretty tough.

I spent most of the day pottering around in my studio.  I was having a play making a french braid table runner.  The instructions are from a book I borrowed from my guild library, "French Braid Quilts" by Jane Hardy Miller with Arlene Netten.  I made my strips half an inch narrower and now I feel the centre square is a little big in proportion.  I think it's calling for a simple appliqué motif.  The points along the edge will all get trimmed straight and I'm undecided whether to bind it in the deep red or the dark blue?  Any suggestions?

For lunch we had green slime soup for kids, pea and asparagus soup for adults.  Isn't it a glorious colour!  Very yummy too and the kids have no idea they are chowing down on asparagus (they won't touch it in it's recognisable form).

Then keeping with the green theme, I ran the kids a bath.  If you have reluctant bathers like me, a splash of food colouring can be a good motivator.  It's probably a better use for food colouring than actually in food!  It doesn't stain the bath (it might if you have old porcelain or deep scratches) and it only stains the kids if you use too much.  Of course, once my kids are in, they never want to get out....

It's nice to have a normal weekend.  No obligations, no visitors staying, nobody to cook for except your own family.  Hope you had a good one too.

Don't slurp your soup.

I have a lunch guest. This is King Theodin, who completely lost his head when he tasted the soup and found out how good it is ;)

Soup is a favorite standby in our house at the moment. Fantastic winter warming food, and the kids adore it. Yesterday, at their Grandmother's house, they had a choice for lunch: soup or pie. They chose soup!
Today’s recipe: take the water from boiling the corned beef last night, add a couple of left over potatoes cooked in the same water, a cup of dried split green peas, some frozen chicken stock, chopped fresh pumpkin (the kids won’t touch it normally), a few big spoons of leftover spaghetti bolognaise mince and simmer for a few hours till mushy. Add extra water to the thickness you like and serve.  Leftovers make the best soup.
After lunch, the first job is to find some glue to re-attach Theodin’s head. The second job is making loads of bias tape for my big blue and white quilt and the third job is starting to appliqué the signature blocks onto the 21st quilt.
Thank you all for your thoughts on whether the 21st quilt is big enough. I’m still undecided, but leaning toward leaving it just as it is. So I figured I’d work on the back until I’m sure.

The back of the quilt so far - you can tell we are having lovely weather this afternoon!

A few rainy day pictures

It's raining here today.  Pouring in fact.  So I'm just sharing a few pictures I've taken over the last little while.  Can you see the cheeky bunny stealing chook food?  We had a bunch of half-wild ones born a while ago and one day they all got out.  We managed to recapture most of them but this wee one has continued to elude us.  But he's semi-friendly.  I think he's living in the chook enclosure because he always seems to be there when it's food time, but I know he can sneak out through the fence too. 

Did you ever read 'My cat likes to hid in boxes' when you were a kid?  Wild Puss crammed himself into this box for a wee cat nap today.  Can't say it looked very comfy!

And these two made me laugh so hard I just had to take a picture!  They are a couple of my chooks done with a recipe my MIL shared.  You rub salt and pepper and turmeric into the skin - I added dried mixed herbs too - and then stand the chook upright and cram a jar of beer/cider/wine up it's bum.  Roast for about 45 mins to an hour depending on the size of your chicken.

I think they look like a couple of old ladies at a show day.  They've taken their little fold up stools and they're sitting down for a wee rest and a gossip about who won the chutney and pickle section!

By the way - they tasted delicious!

How to joint a rabbit (chopping up dead animals - vegetarians beware)

When I searched my recipe books for a 'how to' on jointing a rabbit I came up with a blank.  Similarly, I couldn't find much on the web.  So I thought I'd do my own little tutorial, photos included.  There is a recipe for my favourite rabbit stew at the end of this, so if you want, you can flick past the fleshy bits and get to the recipe at the end. 

Take your rabbit carcass and lay it on it's back.  Start on the hind legs.  Bend one backwards towards your chopping board until you are dislocating the hip joint.  Cut through the flesh (a good narrow sharp knife helps a lot) where the top of the leg joins the abdomen until you reach the joint.  Carefully cut through any last cartilage holding the joint together.

Then slice through the rest of the meat, heading down towards the tail (I'm not a professional butcher so forgive me it my meat looks a little hacked).  Do the same with the other hind leg. 

Then move onto the front legs.  Pull the leg away from the body and start slicing in the armpit area.  It will then separate and fold away from the body more like in the picture below (that's the other side leg from the last picture).

It will then slice off quite easily but you have to either slice through the itty bitty collar bone or find a joint and cut through that.  Do the same with the other side.  Then you are left with a legless body.

Cut through the flappy abdomen flesh heading back towards the spine and around the back of the lowest rib.  Once you reach the spine then bend the carcass in half backwards and dislocate the joints where you want to cut through and then carefully cut through.  If you can't work through a joint then get a big ol' blunt cleaver and just hack through.

Finito!  You have six nice joints instead of a carcass that resembles a boiled baby.  Much more aesthetically pleasing.  I practiced on chickens first and adapted the instructions I had for them (thanks Alison Holst!).

Onto the recipe.  My favourite rabbit stew.  (Those are nettles in the background NOT anything illegal!  I can post a recipe for nettle soup if you like.)

Chop an onion and fry gently in butter. Chuck into a slow cooker.  Season about half a cup of plain flour with salt and pepper and mixed herbs (dry or fresh, oregano, sage, rosemary etc).

Roll rabbit joints (I used two smaller rabbits) in the flour then brown them in butter.  Layer them into the slow cooker with sultanas that you've plumped up with boiling water.    Fry some chopped carrot and chuck that in the cooker too. 

Deglaze your pan with a good splash of your favourite dark beer.  Throw that and the rest of the beer (300 ml can of Double Brown worked for me) on top of everything else in the cooker and cook for about six hours.  I stirred it once 'cause I just can't resist!

Serve it up with homegrown broccoli and cauliflower and some spud and enjoy!  Yes, even the kids ate it.

Recipe adapted from my sister-in-law's NZ Country Women's Institute Cookery Book Reprint 1964 (she even scanned the recipe and the cover for me and emailed it to me but blogger won't upload that pic for me).

Edited to add:  This is a really good video of how to joint a rabbit that I've found since writing this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8OO2vAwzQY&feature=related

Enjoy!

And I'll take pictures of the new lamb when it stands still!  (His name is Minty or Woolly depending who you talk to.)