Sketches on Ceramics

This week I have been:

Sketching scenes of my house onto ceramics for my upcoming solo show at the Brunswick Street Gallery in Melbourne at the end of the March.

Kitchen Series

These are scenes painted in underglaze - the next step is to glaze them with a clear porcelain glaze. Im a little nervous about this next step as the blue underglaze can run if the gloss is too thick... they're in the kiln as we speak. Fingers crossed they turn out ok

Window scene of my kitchen

Sewing some of my fabrics into bags ...

Pink Bitsa Bag www.madeit.com.au/kateward

 Experimenting making my own ginger beer from scratch. The recipe is really easy its:

1tsp sugar
1 tsp dried ginger
1 sachet dried yeast
1 cup warm water.

combine in a large jar and cover with muslin (in my case chux - new and unused)

for the next 8 days add 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp dried ginger.
(Im still at this stage)

After 8 days you divide the liquid into 2 (its now called a ginger beer plant) and you can give one to a friend or use one part to continue feeding the ginger beer plant and with the other half turn it into drinkable ginger beer.

Ginger beer plant 

To make up the ginger beer this is what you do:

Mix together:

4 cups water

24 cups warm water (this is probably about 5-6 litres)

1/2 cup strained lemon juice

then add the ginger beer plant. Bottle and seal. It should be ready to drink in about a week.

I'll let you know how it tastes!

green tomatoes 

 Ive given up hoping that my green tomatoes will ripen this year. With the continuing wet weather I was afraid they would rot on the vine. So Ive just turned them into green tomato pickle using this recipe from the ABC. As is my way of cooking, Ive 'kate-ified' it by adding some stewed crab apples and my own homemade version of curry powder.

This is what it looks like......yum. I love all the tomato seeds scattered throughout the chutney.
I plan to eat this with chunks of cheese and bread.

Im dreaming of a green Christmas

Christmas for me is a chance to spend time with family and loved ones. Not a commercial event where so many unwanted gifts end up gathering dust or in the trash. So last year I decided that all my Christmas pressies had to be thoughtful and environmentally friendly! 

I set myself some rules: I wanted to give gifts that would be enjoyed, but would have little impact on the environment. So I decided that hampers were the way to go. Recycled baskets from the local opshop were filled with home made jams and chutneys (using recycled glass jars collected throughout the year).  

 

Handmade cards, decorated with beaded snowflakes (which could be reused as Christmas ornaments) labeled each basket, and exotic fruit added a touch of colour. Each basket included a hand printed linen tea towel (by yours truly). Although I didnt make the wine (thats another project on my growing list of things to do!) at least it was in recyclable glass bottles.

Ginger dipped in dark chocolate, and other delicacies  were wrapped in grease proof paper and tied with string.

Happily all the contents of my Christmas baskets were biodegradable.

This year my Christmas presents will be handmade again, and I am working within another theme. Its so much fun, but I cant give away any more.... shhhh its a secret until Christmas day x

Autumn Harvest and Half Hearted Days

Today whilst I was driving home something red in the trees caught my eye. I slowed down to check it out and to my delight it was a wild apple tree growing by the side of the road.

It must've been serendipitous because only moments before I was thinking I should make some chutney with some old apples I had in the fridge which were perfect for jamming, but too floury to eat.

I couldn't resist temptation and I picked a basket full of the delightful tiny fruit.

Amazingly the majority were unspoilt by bugs and insects. They look like they could be Gala apples- although Im not terribly good with apple varieties. They are sweet and tart to eat.

And so cute and photogenic!

Anyway they inspired me to get cooking. Last week a friend of mine was telling me about Apple Butter she used to eat with fried biscuits (like a scone, apparently its an American thing) so I was curious to see how you make it.

I found a recipe which looked pretty easy to make and got started. I choose it because I didn't have an apple peeler and the idea of peeling each of the tiny apples was pretty unappealing....

So I cut and cooked the apples in a water and vinegar solution and they were starting to soften nicely. The next stage of the recipe called for the boiled apples to be passed through a sieve - this sounded too hard to me - so I just blended them together and then added the sugar and spices....... It wasn't until the end of the cooking that I realised that straining the mixture gives it the 'buttery' texture. Because I was in a half hearted mood I had just made thick apple sauce! Its still yummy though and now I want to make the recipe properly.

In my searching I also found a recipe for making the apple sauce in the slow cooker or crock pot which takes about 12 hours. This looks like another easy recipe :) I am a big fan of this cooking device and so tomorrow morning I will be embarking on Apple Butter #2.

Im also hoping to make a Bengal Chutney - its main ingredient is also apples. I used to make this one all the time when I sold jams and chutneys for pocket money when I was studying at Art School. I cant find my original recipe (its stashed somewhere safe) but I found a similar one on the web.

You can click on the links below to each of the recipes I am referring to :

• Apple Butter
• Apple Butter cooked in the slow cooker
• Bengal Chutney

Whilst delighting in my discover of a windfall of apples it reminded me of a movement which I heard about in London where people were sharing fruits off neglected trees in urban environments. I found a page where someone was starting to document all the trees in London called Urban Forager - a fantastic idea! I don't like to see food go to waste, which got me started dabbling with the alchemy of preserving fruit in the first place.

With a little further research, I found an article in the Sydney Morning Herald similar concept undertaken by a Sydney sider.

Hmmmm. I could be onto something here.... there's heaps of old fruit trees near where I live.

Food for Thought - as they say!