frugal friday..

preserved pears

i bought four kilos of pears this week for $0.80 cents a kilo..i peeled them, cut them into medium dice and poached the dice for 2 minutes in a light sugar syrup with a vanilla bean, a couple of cloves, a small piece of cinnamon stick and an allspice..then i bottled them adding the poaching liquid and processed them in my fowler's preserver..

pear vinegar

inspired by 'old days old ways' recipe for fruit scrap vinegar i kept the pear peelings from the pears i bottled and added 1/4 cup of sugar dissolved in 1200 mls water to the peelings..i'm really looking forward to seeing what happens over the next few days..will i be having a lovely pear, walnut and rocket salad with my own pear vinegar this summer?..if it works i am going to celebrate with the purchase of some roquefort to go with that salad!

crabapple butter

on wednesday i made a little jar of crabapple jelly and i was left with the pulp after draining the liquor and today i was left with some pear poaching liquid..so i put the pulp through a sieve and added it to the poaching liquid and cooked it down into a crabapple butter..

tofu, vegetable and brown rice soup

this week i made a large pot of stock after roasting some bones and meat trimmings with a few aromatic vegetables..this was all then boiled gently with celery, parsley, a strip of lemon, a fresh chilli and salt and pepper..today i removed the fat and strained it through muslin and made a simple soup with onion, celery, carrot, more fresh chilli, home bottled tomato puree and half of the stock..at the last minute i added batons of organic tofu, that i had bought at half price last week, and celery leaves cut fine..i cooked brown rice separately and added a few spoons to the soup bowl before adding the soup (i do this with pasta and rice)..i then grated myzithra over the soup..

sultana cupcakes

i was left with an egg yolk and half an egg white after making the candied violets earlier this week so today i made half a dozen sultana cupcakes..the bit of missing egg white means they are not quite as perky as usual but i'm eating one as i write this and taste wise they are the same as usual.. 

an accidental tea rescue

i was given a packet of english breakfast tea by a dear friend for christmas and because i don't like to have lots of packets of similar teas on the go i poured the gifted tea into my very large tea canister to join a couple of packets of a similar blend..i didn't notice though that the tea i had added was flavoured with vanilla until the next day when i made a pot of tea..now i love vanilla but not vanilla flavoured tea and the vanilla had permeated all the tea in the canister..so for quite a while now that large quantity of tea has been languishing in the canister..i can't drink it and i can't throw it out..anyway this morning the only tea i had left was a packet of earl grey tea and the vanilla tea and i'm not a huge fan of earl grey either but i do like a little mixed with a less aromatic tea occasionally..but today if i wanted to have a cup of tea and i didn't want to mission to the shops at 6.30 am i had no choice..so i popped a bit of 'earl' in the pot and in a rash moment added an equal quantity of 'vanilla'.. to my great surprise the combination works well..especially with the sultana cupcakes..jane