Yummy cranberry and apple teacake

I made this today, it was very easy to make, plus only uses 1 egg which is a bonus when supplies are low! The recipe is courtesy of NZ Home and Garden.

1 egg, separated
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 cup SR flour
125g butter, melted
3/4 cup frozen cranberries
apple jam*

Grease a 20cm cake tin. Preheat oven to 180 deg c.

Beat egg white until stiff then beat in egg yolk. Gradually add sugar while beating. Gradually stir in milk. Beat in flour and butter until smooth. Fold in cranberries.

Pour 1/2 batter into cake tin. Spread (or dollop) 1/2 apple jam on top. Pour rest of batter over. Bake for about 30mins.

Turn out, brush with butter and dust with caster sugar.

Sorry! I missed this bit - **Serve warm with cream, ice cream, or yoghurt with some of the leftover apple jam by the side**

* Apple jam - peel, core and quarter 3 large green apples (I used several small Cox's Orange Pippins), add 1/4 cup water, cover and cook slowly for 10mins, mashing as they soften. Uncover and add 1/2 cup sugar and a pinch of nutmeg. Cook for 30-40 mins stirring frequently to prevent burning. Cool before use.

Interesting news item this morning!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/video/news/video.cfm?c_id=1501138&gal_cid=1501138&gallery_id=110174

Ever seen anything like this before Ngaio?

Cherimoya seedlings

Lucky us, we were gifted x2 cherimoya plants by our neighbours W& P, thanks guys! These little babies will be nurtured until they are much bigger before we can plant them in our new subtropical orchard.

Fish!

G went out on our boat fishing today with a friend and came home with a good catch. Here are all our snapper fillets (about 3kgs). We ate some for dinner, gave some away and froze the rest. Delicious!

Sowing seeds for winter crops

Well while we've still got loads of work to do to get the garden up to scratch for planting, it's time to get some seedlings going if we're going to have anything to plant!
So over the last week I've been sowing the following:

Leek (Lungo Della Riviera)
Leek (Winter Giant)
Turnip (Milan White Red Top)
Turnip (Tokyo White Cross F1)
Shallots
Beetroot (Chioggia)
Beetroot (Bulls Blood)
Beetroot (Albino)
Cabbage (Verona Purple Savoy)
Cabbage (Palm Tree Di Toscana/Cavalo Nero)
Kohl Rabi
Cauli (Violet Sicilian)
Cauli (Green Macerata)
Silverbeet (Giant Fordhook)
Broccoli (Tender Stems)
Broccoli (Purple Sprouting Early)
Pak Choi
Tat soi
Endive
Lettuces (Butterhead, 1/2 century, Stevens)
Cape gooseberry

Whew! Quite a list, but I thought may as well get a few things going if possible. Also a few of these seeds were a bit old so not sure how well they'll germinate.

Shelter along our boundary fence

Along part of our boundary fence (about 50m) and edge of our main orchard we planted a row of karo pittosporum trees which were doing quite nicely until next door's cow (cheeky thing is hiding behind the netting in this photo!) decided to munch them. So yesterday we got busy and put up some wind cloth. In hindsight, we should have done this from the very beginning, or perhaps planted the trees further away from the fence but.......ah well, it's all a learning curve! Anyhow, we got about just over 1/3 of the length done yesterday, ran out of clips to do any more, but already it looks heaps better and should help the trees recover. It will also provide a nice bit of shelter for the orchard, and for new trees to come (including more karos which we need to fill in the gaps where some have died).

The fruit trees are doing OK, some of the more established apple trees are producing fruit (although not ripe as yet). This is a double grafted tree with both red and golden delicious.
We still have a lot of room left for more trees so will be thinking about that for this winter (planting time).

Fence construction continues

After a bit of a lull, work has recommenced on our fence that is going up around the veg garden. The back and side walls are up and painted.

 

Now starting along the front fence:

 

Will have 4 gates in total when finished as we need various points of access for ease. Then we will be building raised beds.