thequarteracrelife

This video shows me digging out and harvesting the turmeric and ginger plants I have in a bed in the front garden. I expected that the ginger didn't do that well, as the plants were only put in last season from small cuttings. The plants themselves didn't grow very big and had already died off completely. I actually got a few useable chunks of ginger, which is more than I was expecting. The turmeric plants all looked very healthy and I must admit, I did expect more from them, considering how much I got from the two plants in the back garden. I ended up with about the same (~700g) from the back and front garden, but from 5-6 plants in the front, I did expect a bit more. I'm hoping that the application of organic fertiliser will help with a more impressive harvest next season. I'll also need to remember to fertilise a bit more regularly, which is something I probably didn't do as much as I should have last season. It was also a good excuse to get that bed cleared of weeds and mulched again.

This video shows me digging out and harvesting the two main turmeric plants I have in the back garden... and the ginger. A little disappointing on the ginger front. No matter, it at least provided four good pieces with roots to plant again (which was a tad rushed due to the rain). Hopefully the harvest of ginger will be better next season. The turmeric did very well though. I got ~700g of usable turmeric from those two plants (and a lot of pieces to re-plant), and I still have yet to harvest the ones in the front yard. That is coming up in Part 2 of this video.

We hope you enjoy our tasty granola! It makes a large batch, so is great to share with family or friends. Anita’s Homemade Granola Recipe by Anita @ Leave Room for Dessert http://leaveroomfordessert.com/anitas-homemade-granola/ 150g honey 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon 1 tablespoon vanilla essence 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped (optional) 1/4 teaspoon salt 140g (3/4 cup) vegetable oil 500g (5 cups) rolled oats 400g (3 cups) mixed nuts (I use what I have in the cupboard, almond, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecan, walnuts etc), chopped 40g (1/4 cup) sunflower seeds 40g (1/4 cup) pepitas (pumpkin seeds) 65g (1 cup) shredded coconut 40g (1/4 cup) hemp seeds Preheat oven to 150C (fan forced). Line two baking trays with baking paper. Mix together the oats, nuts, seeds and coconut in very large bowl. Whisk together the honey, cinnamon, vanilla essence and vanilla bean seeds (if using) and salt in a bowl until well combined. Add the oil and whisk again until well combined. Pour the honey mixture into the oat mixture and stir with a spoon or spatula until well combined. Divide the mixture onto the two trays and push to fill the tray. Once the mixture has filled the tray, make a line in the centre of each (this helps make the cooking more even). Make sure to press the mixture down firmly. If you want smaller pieces more like a muesli, Bake for 15- 20 minutes, stirring the granola occasionally (every 5-10 minutes) to ensure even cooking. Once cooked to your liking, turn the temperature down to very low and allow the granola to dry in the oven 10min at 100-120C – this will make it store longer. If you want large chunks: Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the granola is nice and golden (checking and rotating trays after 10 minutes). Wait until the granola has cooled completely before breaking into edible sized pieces. When breaking the pieces apart, you may find the edges break easily, but the centre portion may have some give or stickiness. If this is the case, put the broken pieces back in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Again, wait until completely cooled before transferring to a container for storage.

Crazy Cooking Sunday didn't happen intentionally. We needed to make and use up a number of things we had bought or grown, and it just happened that we ended up with a ridiculous day of cooking (and filming). - Breakfast: Pancakes with sliced banana, scoop of vanilla ice-cream and maple syrup (didn't do a video for this one - next time maybe) - Lunch: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl (video link below) - Dinner: Carne Asada Fajitas (this video!) We also: - Made a home-made chilli sauce (video link below) - Picked our very first pineapple to have with the fajitas (video link below) This was indeed an epic day and I'm glad it happened. Video links: Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 1: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl: https://rumble.com/v4bx0cx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-1-teriyaki-salmon-poke-bowl-lunch.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 2: Chilli sauce: https://rumble.com/v4c4u76-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-2-chilli-sauce.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 3: Picking our first pineapple: https://rumble.com/v4c4wmx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-3-picking-our-first-pineapple.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 4: Carne Asada Fajitas: https://rumble.com/v4c4xli-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-4-carne-asada-fajitas-dinner.html Acknowledgements: I followed Joshua Weissman's recipe for the white flour tortillas. Thank you @JoshuaWeissman . This is the best white flour tortilla recipe I've found. - Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynexTOjHbRs - Recipe: https://www.joshuaweissman.com/post/flour-tortillas Recipe: Small handful of coriander/cilantro leaves, finely chopped 3 tablespoons soy sauce 1/3 cup of olive oil 2 teaspoons ground cumin Juice of 1 orange Juice of 1 lime 5-6 cloves of crushed garlic Salt, black pepper to taste ~1kg skirt steak Juice the citrus and place into a bowl large enough to contain the steak. You could also do this in a large ziploc bag. Add the oil, garlic, soy sauce, cumin, salt and pepper and mix well. Place the steak into the marinade, cover and leave in the fridge for at least 3 to 4 hours, or overnight. Cook the steak on the BBQ over a high heat, turning every 2 minutes or so. Ensure the thickest part of the steak is at the level of doneness that you like your steak. For medium-rare, I usually make sure the thickest part hits 52 degrees celsius. The temp will climb a couple of degrees after you take it off and rest it. Rest for 5-10 mins before slicing.

Crazy Cooking Sunday didn't happen intentionally. We needed to make and use up a number of things we had bought or grown, and it just happened that we ended up with a ridiculous day of cooking (and filming). - Breakfast: Pancakes with sliced banana, scoop of vanilla ice-cream and maple syrup (didn't do a video for this one - next time maybe) - Lunch: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl (video link below) - Dinner: Carne Asada Fajitas (video link below) We also: - Made a home-made chilli sauce (video link below) - Picked our very first pineapple to have with the fajitas (this video!) This was indeed an epic day and I'm glad it happened. The pineapple was unexpectedly sweet. I thought that not being in the ideal location in terms of sun exposure would have meant that it might be acidic or tart, but it was beautifully sweet! Video links: Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 1: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl: https://rumble.com/v4bx0cx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-1-teriyaki-salmon-poke-bowl-lunch.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 2: Chilli sauce: https://rumble.com/v4c4u76-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-2-chilli-sauce.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 3: Picking our first pineapple: https://rumble.com/v4c4wmx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-3-picking-our-first-pineapple.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 4: Carne Asada Fajitas: https://rumble.com/v4c4xli-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-4-carne-asada-fajitas-dinner.html

Crazy Cooking Sunday didn't happen intentionally. We needed to make and use up a number of things we had bought or grown, and it just happened that we ended up with a ridiculous day of cooking (and filming). - Breakfast: Pancakes with sliced banana, scoop of vanilla ice-cream and maple syrup (didn't do a video for this one - next time maybe) - Lunch: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl (video link below) - Dinner: Carne Asada Fajitas (video link below) We also: - Made a home-made chilli sauce (this video!) - Picked our very first pineapple to have with the fajitas (video link below) This was indeed an epic day and I'm glad it happened. Video links: Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 1: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl: https://rumble.com/v4bx0cx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-1-teriyaki-salmon-poke-bowl-lunch.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 2: Chilli sauce: https://rumble.com/v4c4u76-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-2-chilli-sauce.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 3: Picking our first pineapple: https://rumble.com/v4c4wmx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-3-picking-our-first-pineapple.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 4: Carne Asada Fajitas: https://rumble.com/v4c4xli-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-4-carne-asada-fajitas-dinner.html Recipe: Some chillies - weight? amount? similar to what I had in the video, sorry, didn't weigh it 1 1/2 cups white vinegar, or feel free to mix other type of vinegar, i.e. apple cider vinegar 2 teaspoons salt 1/2 cup of water 1 teaspoon paprika or smoked paprika (I didn't have any smoked or would have used that) 1/4 teaspoon of xanthan gum (I used 1/2 teaspoon, which was just too much) Remove seeds and stalks of chillies. Place everything into a saucepan, and cook on high heat for 5-10 mins, or until the chillies have softened and changed colour. Use a stick blender to blend everything well. Sterilize your bottles or jars with boiling water. (Not shown in video) Strain sauce through a sieve to remove any skins or seeds that didn't get blended. Strain into another saucepan to keep the sauce hot while you strain the sauce. Remove from heat. Whisk through the xanthan gum, then transfer to your sterilised bottles or jars.

Crazy Cooking Sunday didn't happen intentionally. We needed to make and use up a number of things we had bought or grown, and it just happened that we ended up with a ridiculous day of cooking (and filming). - Breakfast: Pancakes with sliced banana, scoop of vanilla ice-cream and maple syrup (didn't do a video for this one - next time maybe) - Lunch: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl (this video!) - Dinner: Carne Asada Fajitas (video link below) We also: - Made a home-made chilli sauce (video link below) - Picked our very first pineapple to have with the fajitas This was indeed an epic day and I'm glad it happened. Video links: Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 1: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl: https://rumble.com/v4bx0cx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-1-teriyaki-salmon-poke-bowl-lunch.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 2: Chilli sauce: https://rumble.com/v4c4u76-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-2-chilli-sauce.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 3: Picking our first pineapple: https://rumble.com/v4c4wmx-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-3-picking-our-first-pineapple.html Crazy Cooking Sunday - Part 4: Carne Asada Fajitas: https://rumble.com/v4c4xli-crazy-cooking-sunday-part-4-carne-asada-fajitas-dinner.html Recipe: (Coming soon)

Picking the ripe Bishop's Crown chillies before a solid few days of rain sets in. These chillies are destined for a chilli sauce. I also needed to feed the chickens and give them some water in the light rain, so that I don't have to do it when it's pouring.

Time to reset one of the raised garden beds by pulling out anything unproductive or nearing end of life, choosing some seeds and chucking them in.

Going out to pick the remainder of the Shepard and Pinkerton avocados for this season. We lost a few of the Shepard to something (fruit bat, rats maybe - not sure), but the ones we got were great and better than many of the later season Hass avocados available at the shops. Flowers are starting to form on the Hass, Shepard and Pinkerton now, so hopefully we should start seeing a good crop of new fruit setting once the flowering is done.

A very quick growing and tasty bean. 8-9 weeks from seed to harvest. We cooked a good lot of these up with a Greek style lamb shoulder.

A beautiful scene of the Blue Mountains from Blackheath, Australia where I recently stayed with my friends for our annual weekend away.

I set this up on my front verandah, but I think next time the sky looks like it will put on this kind of display, I'll get the ladder out and set the tripod up on the roof.

This video shows harvesting the sweet potatoes from the vines I planted in one of my raised beds last year. This is the second harvest of sweet potatoes from that bed. Not quite as impressive as the first one, but still some reasonable sweet potatoes in there. I needed to fill the bed up again as the soil settles, so I emptied one of the compost bins and filled the bed up with that. I also showed how to replant sweet potato runners.

This video shows harvesting sweet potatoes from the vines I planted in one of my raised beds last year. This is the second harvest of sweet potatoes from that bed. This one is not quite as impressive as the first one, but still some reasonable sweet potatoes in there. I needed to fill the bed up again as the soil level had settled down a ways, so I emptied one of the compost bins and filled the bed up with that. I also showed how to replant sweet potato runners.

For anyone who thinks keeping chickens/chooks is all eggs and no effort... there is a bit of work involved. This is a once every 6 months or so type of job, but it does pay off in terms of providing a lot of compost (and fertiliser) that I can use in my veggie beds. I also make electronic music in my spare time. This video features one of my newer tracks. It doesn't have a name yet. If you think of a good name for it, hit me up in the comments below. Thanks for watching.

Glad I was awake early to setup the camera to capture this timelapse of the sunrise on a cool winter's day. Also happens to be my brother Carl's birthday. Happy birthday Carl! This one's for you.

Manually harvesting honey from a honeycomb, using a knife, a sieve, a bowl and my hands. Thanks to Steve and Karina for the honeycomb from their hive. [Video originally published Jun 22, 2022. YouTube to Rumble channel sync only synced some newer content and never completed the backlog. I have disabled it and will manually upload my older content, then post newer content to Rumble directly]

Welcome to The Quarter Acre Life. This is an introduction episode featuring a tour of the garden and the edible varieties of plants we're growing on our quarter acre property in northern Sydney, Australia. [Video originally published Jun 21, 2022. YouTube to Rumble channel sync only synced some newer content and never completed the backlog. I have disabled it and will manually upload my older content, then post newer content to Rumble directly]

This is a recipe I came up with a little while ago and it's been a breakfast hit with my family. Inspired by shakshuka, a North African recipe for poached eggs in a spicy tomato sauce. I make a fairly mild tomato sauce so that the kids eat it, then add plenty chilli sauce to my own plate. Ingredients: Diced tomatoes (I normally use 2 x 400g cans of diced tomatoes, but had fresh tomatoes this time) 1-2 onions diced 8-10 cloves of garlic 1-2 teaspoons of cumin 2-3 teaspoons of paprika 1-1.5 teaspoons of salt Dash of white vinegar (optional) Olive oil to cook the onions and garlic Chilli powder or chilli sauce optional 2 sheets of puff pastry Toppings/sauce options: - Dukkah - Caramelised balsamic vinegar - Plain yoghurt, lemon, salt mix - Crumbled Fetta or goats cheese - Creme Fraiche - Parsley - Coriander ... the possibilities are endless! Method: Dice the onion. In a medium sized saucepan on medium-high heat, add enough olive oil to cover the base of the saucepan and add the diced onion. Cook until starting to soften and turn translucent. Peel and crush the garlic and add to the cooking onion and stir through, cooking for another few minutes. Add the diced tomatoes and stir through. Cook for around 20 minutes, then add the paprika, cumin, salt, chilli (if using) and vinegar (if using). Cook for another 20 minutes or until the sauce starts to thicken and most of the liquid has cooked off. It's best made ahead and stored in the refrigerator overnight, but can be used directly from being cooked on the tarts. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Halve the 2 sheets of pastry and place each of the 2 halves onto a baking tray with some baking paper. Generously spoon on the tomato mixture, leaving a border at the edge of the pastry for it to brown. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until the edges of the pastry are golden brown. Poach up 1-2 eggs per tart. Serve with toppings/garnishes of your choice, and if you are like me, add a generous helping of chilli sauce.

This was the chilli sauce I made from the Bishop's Crown chillies that I grew and harvested, along with some of my Jalapeños and some what I think we Habaneros that my mother-in-law was given from her friend. It made a good lot of chilli sauce and using the heated jars with the pop-cap lids, the sealed jars should keep on the shelf in the cupboard for 6 months or more.... although it might last long enough to see find out. I do like chilli sauce. Recipe: 1 large pot full of chilli (whatever heat level you like) 1 litre vinegar 1 litre water 1 tablespoon smoked paprika 1/2 tablespoon onion power 1 tablespoon garlic powder 4 tablespoons salt (any salt without anti-caking agents) Roughly chop the chillies, removing the stems and any dodgy bits. Add other ingredients to the pot. Cook over medium-high heat for around 40-45 minutes, or until the chillies start to look soft. Remove from heat and use a stick blender to blend everything and smooth as you can. Boil the kettle and fill your containers with boiling water and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Put some hot water from the tap into the glass containers first to pre-warm the containers before adding boiling water or you can crack your glass jars. Strain the blended sauce through a sieve into another large pot. Stir and return to the stove on a medium heat to bring the sauce back up to just boiling. Carefully transfer the near boiling chilli sauce into the glass containers and seal the lids tightly. Leave the containers to cool and you should hear a pop noise when the pop-cap lids are sucked downwards by the cooling liquid and air in the container, creating a vacuum-seal.

I had a huge crop of Bishop's Crown chillies on the plant that is growing up through one of my avocado trees. I've never had such a prolific chilli plant. I made a really nice batch of chilli sauce from these (upcoming video). These ones are quite mild, so I added a few jalapeños (also quite mild) and some really hot chillis I was given... I think they were habaneros, but might have been something else.

The garden beds were once again starting to get overgrown, so another clear-out to make room to plant some onion seedlings I had planted in pots and needed to get into the ground. The other task was to harvest and clear the pumpkins which had self-seeded in the raised garden beds, likely from the compost I put into the beds. I like to keep the pumpkins on the roof of the verandah until I'm ready to use them. It allows them to ripen further in the autumn/winter sun and keeps them away anything that might want to eat them at ground level. It also means it doesn't take up any other storage space in my garage or in the kitchen. When I'm ready to use a pumpkin, I just pluck another from the roof! 😄

This video is not from my property. My brother and I decided to surprise our Mum for her 70th birthday by going to stay with my parents for a few days. They live a reasonable distance from us, around 8-9 hours drive or a 1.5 hour flight. We spent from Saturday to Wednesday with them and it was a really wonderful time. One of the "presents" we gave was us working together to dismantle their run-down, no longer functional chicken area that was destroyed by strong winds from a tropical cyclone a number of years ago. The chickens were re-homed to their neighbour for some time, but all of his and their chickens eventually fell prey to pythons and goannas! The area had become a very overgrown, unmanageable eye-sore and it was time for it to go. Now that it is cleared (with the exception of the old chicken coop itself which we didn't get around to moving) it will be far easier to maintain and look a lot nicer. Some of the corrugated iron and star-pickets are earmarked to become new raised veggie garden beds... but that is a future project. Happy Birthday Mum! I hope you had a great 70th.

Stacking the woodshed with a load of firewood I bought (4 cubic metres). I did need to split a lot of it once more, as I have a smaller wood heater and some of the larger logs are a bit awkward, which took quite some time, but the kids gave a hand carrying the firewood over after and the company made it more enjoyable. I've been a bit slack making and uploading videos recently. I have a back"log" (ha! firewood dad jokes) of videos to get through and will try to put more up soon. The tune at the end part is something I threw together and started working on recently in FL Studio. I may develop it further down the... track (ha! music dad jokes). I'm stopping now.