Friday, October 28, 2011

Home Made Tomato Paste





I am lucky enough to be part of a wonderful family who were always crafty and into making things. Lucky for me I married a chef and that craftiness has now extended into the kitchen as we often have lots of left over veges or excess from our little sustainable vege garden.

This time though, it was gifts from two other family members that resulted in 4kg of tomatoes! I like tomatoes but not enough to eat 4kg in time. We always save all our glass jars for such an occasion and made homemade tomato paste. We have made other variations including tomato ketchup, a nice tomato pasta sauce but yesterday was just about a base tomato paste recipe.

We usually add garlic and onion when we are cooking with tomato paste so we added it to the tomato paste recipe but you could leave it out if you wanted. To 4kg of tomatoes I added 4 finely diced pickling brown onions( the small ones or you could add 2 larger ones if you like) and 1/3 bulb of garlic which I crushed.

Put the onion and garlic in a pot and sweat on a low heat. This takes the bite out of the onion and garlic and leaves a nice flavour. Be careful not to brown or burn the onion or garlic.

Add the 4kg of tomatoes which I cut into quarters. They were Roma tomatoes so I didn't chop them too small.

Add 2 cups of water and bring to the boil.

Let it simmer, making sure you stir it regularly so it doesn't burn on the bottom, until the water and tomatoes have cooked down into a nice consistency. This may take a few hours.

You could add herbs or salt and pepper but I prefer to add these later when cooking.

Prepare your jars while you are waiting for it to boil down.
I usually scrub mine to make sure all the food is gone, put them through the dishwasher and then put them in a pot of boiling water.

Once you are happy with the consistency you need to blend your tomato paste. We have a stick blender and blended it while it was hot. Mainly because I don't like having to wait and it is easier to jar later, but you can wait for it to cool down and blend it in a bench blender.

If you have a hot mixture, you can put the hot mix straight into the jars (obviously tipping out any excess water), put the lid on and then turn them upside down for 10minutes. When ten minutes is up, turn them right way up again and they vacuum seal themselves!

If you elected for cold mixture, when you have added it to the jars you need to put the jars back into the pot with the water and heat them up until the vacuum seal button in the top doesn't pop back up again when you push on it.

If you are like me and burn yourself accidentally when you are doing anything involving hot things, take extra care once you have blended the hot mix, use a funnel to get it into the jars and handle the jars with tongs. It doesn't hurt to have a bowl of cold water, ice pack or other responsible adult around either!

Our mix filled 4 jam size jars. Make sure you label the jars with the date you made it so you know how old it is in the cupboard. You can make pretty labels and put some check fabric and string around the top and they may great Christmas Presents.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011



It's hard to imagine that it has been almost a month since the last blog. Time is certainly flying by at the moment. With just under 4 weeks to go before the arrival of the second sprout our little Nan's Garden family, things are starting to get a little hectic. That being said it is certainly time to do some planting and not neglect the garden so we have lots of yummy things to eat. At the moment we have been munching on Bok Choy, broccoli and the yummiest fresh asparagus.

What to plant in the Cool and Temperate Areas:

Seedlings
  • brussel sprouts
  • Chinese cabbage
  • Cauliflower
  • leek
  • globe artichoke
  • cabbage
  • capsicum
  • okra



Seeds
  • climbing beans
  • dwarf beans
  • french beans
  • beetroot
  • carrot
  • celery
  • cucumber
  • eggplant
  • lettuce
  • marrow
  • melon
  • parsnip
  • pea
  • pumpkin
  • radish
  • silverbeet
  • spinach
  • sweetcorn
  • tomato
  • zucchini
In the Subtropical and Tropical Zones
Seedlings
  • broccoli
  • Chinese cabbage
  • tomato
  • cabbage
  • capsicum
  • okra
  • silverbeet
Seeds
  • climbing beans
  • french beans
  • broad beans
  • beetroot
  • carrot
  • cucumber
  • eggplant
  • lettuce
  • marrow
  • melon
  • okra
  • pumpkin
  • radish
  • sweetcorn
  • zucchini
This is the time that all your veges love a hit of liquid fertiliser once a fortnight. We use our worm juice as a liquid fertiliser but you can get commercially available things like Seasol.

Happy Planting!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Spring has sprung

Don't forget to check out our competition below. You still have until Monday morning to enter. Special clues this weekend!


Time for a Green Thumb Update though.


What to plant in the Cool and Temperate Areas:

Seedlings
  • brussel sprouts
  • Chinese cabbage
  • onion
  • globe artichoke
  • cabbage
  • capsicum
  • okra
  • silverbeet
  • tomato
Seeds
  • climbing beans
  • dwarf beans
  • beetroot
  • carrot
  • celery
  • cucumber
  • eggplant
  • lettuce
  • marrow
  • melon
  • parsnip
  • pea
  • pumpkin
  • radish
  • spinach
  • sweetcorn
  • zucchini
In the Subtropical and Tropical Zones
Seedlings
  • broccoli
  • Chinese cabbage
  • onion
  • spinach
  • cabbage
  • capsicum
  • silverbeet
  • tomato
Seeds
  • climbing beans
  • french beans
  • broad beans
  • beetroot
  • carrot
  • cucumber
  • eggplant
  • lettuce
  • marrow
  • melon
  • okra
  • seed potatoes
  • pumpkin
  • radish
  • sweetcorn
  • zucchini

Don't forget all those wonderful Spring flowers that help with the butterflies and bees!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011


Flowers for Nan's Birthday Competition

It's Nan's Birthday today and to celebrate I thought we would give her some flowers and one lucky follower an Blanket Buddie Owl of their choice! All you need to do is correctly identify these 12 flowers that are currently blooming in Nan's Garden. I will give you a few clues to help you along the way.

All you need to do is send us an email at info@nansgarden.com.au with your 12 answers and we can choose a winner.

Competition will close 9am September 12th.

If more than one person correctly identifies the flowers, we will choose the winner from those entries using random number generator.
All correct entries will receive a little something though!Photo 1: A type of berry


Photo 3: A herb


Photo 4: A herb with a citrus twist!


Photo 5: A herb


Photo 6: A stone fruit


Photo 7: A type of berry


Photo 8: A type of vegetable


Photo 9: A type of Berry


Photo 10: a Citrus


Photo 11: A vegetable commonly used in Asian cooking


Photo 12: What happens when you leave a certain white vegetable too long!

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Soaking Saturday!




What to do on a wet Saturday. Start with a bit of Egg Drawing. Hubby's effort on the left and the finished product by little miss S! I was particularly impressed with the eyebrashes (eyebrows) and facial hair - he even had ears.

Then a lovely day at the 5th Ave Markets - Thanks ladies for a wonderful day.

Popcorn and a Peebo and Dagwood Dvd.

And who can beat jumping in Muddy puddles in a new raincoat. (Poor hubby is out shoveling dirt!)

Friday, August 19, 2011






A walk in Nan's Garden this morning. Spring is certainly getting ready to bloom!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011


Things have been sadly neglected in Nan's Garden lately. This past week or so we have been trying hard to update the website but I forgot how being pregnant slows you down! Just a little reminder to let you know we are still here. Here are some of the things growing in Nan's Garden at the moment.



Wednesday, June 8, 2011




The garden, just like our blog has been a little neglected lately. As some of you may already know, one half of the Nan's garden team is expecting (not nan...... I don't think she or I could cope with that eventuality!) so I have been a little slack with updates. But it is the start of June and time to plant all those wintery goodies.
Suptropical and Tropical gardens love.......
Seedlings into the garden.
Chinese cabbage
cauliflower
celery
chives
asparagus

Seeds into the garden
broad beans
climbing beans
dwarf beans
beetroot
carrot
cucumber
garlic
lettuce
melon
peas
seed potatoes
pumpkin
radish
rhubarb crowns
shallots
sweet potato
zucchini

Cooler places love.....
Seedlings into the garden.
cauliflower
celery
leek
silverbeet
artichoke
asparagus


Seeds into the garden
broad beans
lettuce
melon
peas
seed potatoes
rhubarb crowns


Its also time to plant deciduous tress and prune existing trees.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Time to refresh






I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year break. This year our tradition Christmas had a small face-lift; still spent with wonderful family but in slightly different locations. A bit more travel but nice for a change. This year we continued our tradition of baking a Christmas goody basket for the adults in our family group. Thanks to the ladies at Details Details for the packaging!


It is also time to refresh the garden. With all the rain and more rain and more rain, most things in the vege garden are looking a little tired or at worst rotten. This morning, before the rain, we spent time pulling out celery, trimming rhubarb, picking eggplant and planting the heads of our seeded lettuces. It is now time to choose some new things to plant in the garden for the coming months. If you are in the subtropical and tropical areas, some great things to plant in the garden are
SEEDLINGS
broccoli - YUM
brussel sprouts - Nan's favourite ( although I'm not sure why - each to their own Nan)
cabbage
artichoke - but don't talk to me about it as ours hasn't flowered in 2 1/2 years!

SEEDS
climbing beans
cucumber
lettuce - check
sweetcorn
sweet potato - remind me to tell you a great way to cook this which is soooooooo easy and we learnt in China.

This year we would like to make some changes in Nan's Garden too. We would love to bring you products that you have been searching for or dreaming about. We would love to hear your product ideas. What you want, what you love and even what you don't like! Please comment below, on facebook or email us at info@nansgarden.com. One lucky person will even receive their product suggestion for free!