Tag: ideas worth spreading

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Digestion Suggestion: Peanut Butter Pudding

Peanut butter pudding served with ice cream
Peanut butter pudding served with ice cream

When one of us has a birthday we like to take the opportunity to have a proper weekend away. It only happens twice a year and we don’t get much time off together so we like to celebrate in style.  This year for Mr Vivi’s birthday we took a 3 day weekend in Brisbane, saw the Mummy exhibition at the Qld Museum and had dinner at Smoke which we’ve been trying to get to for over a year.  Great food, great wine and great company was surpassed only by the dessert special – Peanut Butter Pudding.

It was heaven in a little cup and the whole table almost cried when Mr Vivi knocked the glass over and we thought all was lost.  Never fear because I have toiled away in the kitchen since then to recreate the experience at home so you, too, can taste a little bit of the amazing meal we had at Smoke.  With the right ingredients this recipe could be made entirely gluten free.

I started with this recipe and have tweaked and twiddled until I got it just the way I wanted it. In truth, it’s just a really basic pudding recipe that I can flavour any way I like now, and I’m quite keen to have a go at it using Nutella or perhaps some of our Backhousia citriodora which is lovely in melting moments.

This recipe must be foolproof because Mr Vivi managed to make his first batch as I yelled instructions to him while I was trying to put my makeup on 20mins before we screamed out the door to a BBQ.  The secret is in using a whisk to get a smooth, creamy consistency.

So, without further ado, here is our recipe for peanut butter pudding.  I thought you deserved a sweet treat after your first week of Term 4.  Let me know what you think, won’t you?
Miss Vivi

 

 

Peanut Butter Pudding

1 3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
slurp of vanilla
2 1/2 teaspoons cornflour

Peanut butter pudding ingredients
Peanut butter pudding ingredients

Keep about 1/4 cup of the milk aside to dissolve the cornflour later.
Combine the milk, cream, sugar, peanut butter and vanilla in a saucepan.

Peanut butter pudding heating & blending
Peanut butter pudding ingredients on the stove

Whisk over low heat until the sugar is dissolved and the peanut butter has melted and blended through the mixture.
The mixture can be steaming hot, but don’t let it boil yet.

Peanut butter pudding blending cornflour
Peanut butter pudding cornflour and milk

Blend the cornflour into the milk that was kept aside.
Add the cornflour slurry to the mixture on the stove and stir with a whisk.
Bring the mixture to the boil while whisking and let boil for about a minute.

Peanut butter pudding boil and whisk
Peanut butter pudding brought to the boil

Take the mixture off the stove and leave to cool a little bit. Don’t let it set.
Pour the warm mixture into glasses or ice cream cups and chill in the fridge.

Peanut butter pudding in glass to chill
Peanut butter pudding in a glass to chill

Serve with cream or ice cream.

Peanut butter pudding served with ice cream
Peanut butter pudding served with ice cream
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Bring home the bacon: Australian Bacon Week

Thank you for shopping here butchers bag
This is the bag I brought home the bacon in - I can still smell the smokey goodness

 

Happy Australian Bacon Week to you!  This week here at the Chop Shop it’s going to be all about the bacon.

Australian Bacon Week is an initiative of Australian Pork to promote home grown, home-smoked bacon and raise awareness about the importing of frozen pork products.

The statistics on the Australian Pork website are pretty staggering:

  • over 70% of smallgoods in Australia are made from imported pork
  • 65% of bacon sold in Australia is made from imported pork
  • $8.5 million worth of pork is imported into Australia every week

Imported pork products come from countries with heavily subsidised agricultural industries so you would think that they would be winning the price war, but the pork and smallgoods that we buy from our local Gympie butchers is the same price or cheaper than the imported product from the supermarket.

The winners of the awards for Australia’s best bacon have been announced – check out the website and see if there is a winning butcher near you.

So, be a Porkstar this week and bring home the bacon from a local supplier or, if you can’t get to the butcher, look for the pink Australian Pork logo on the package and wake up smelling the bacon that came from a pig that grew up near you.

Miss Vivi

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Miss Vivi Section on Pinterest

Follow Me on Pinterest

I’ve joined Pinterest and I’m having a fabulous time! At first I was a bit sceptical about how it is used, but I signed up anyway just to give it a try.

I’ve decided to use it as a place to gather really good anatomy images, experiment ideas and other science images for you to refer to.

You know how frustrating it is when someone takes your work and presents it without giving you any credit, so please be courteous and credit the artists and websites if you use the images in the classroom. I have tried to link all the images back to their original websites so you can check out any copyright information they have and use the images appropriately.

I hope it’s useful to you and you find some fun there too. Feel free to point me in the direction of good stuff to share with other labbies. I’ll count it as an entry in the t-shirt competition if you do it before Easter.

Happy Australian Bacon Week
It's Australian Bacon Week

By the way, Happy Australian Bacon Week to you! It’s going to be all about bacon on this blog and the Facebook page this week.
Miss Vivi

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Every family needs a farmer

gympie beef and bean farm
Our neighbour grows beef and beans. This is the view of his farm from our back verandah.

It’s the Australian Year of the Farmer – and every family needs a farmer.  This family in particular needs farmers.

We live in the country.  Our property is surrounded by beef, dairy, macadamia, banana, deer and small crops farms.  Slowly but surely these farms are dwindling in size and variety as town moves out and the career farmers move on.  A local abattoir has recently closed and properties running a few pigs and cattle are now left without a nearby facility to have them slaughtered for their family meat.  Their choice, now, is to pay to have them transported over a longer distance to another abattoir, hire an on-farm butcher to come and do the job on the property or not bother growing their own meat.

If I hadn’t moved to Gympie Dissection Connection would not exist.  That’s no exaggeration.  Gympie is in the perfect geographical position to get good quality stock, get it packaged and get it on the road – and this is where I met Mr Vivi ♥  The closure of small and medium sized abattoirs threatens our ability to source good specimens for you.  You know how difficult it is to get stock out of the really big export abattoirs and that’s because they are under much more pressure to produce more meat in less time in order to remain viable as a business.

Since I started the business we have been buying almost all of our meat from local butchers and I can tell you the quality is head and shoulders above the meat I used to buy at the big supermarkets.  Home smoked bacon and ham, handmade sausages, t-bones from a beast that came from a local farm that the butcher could give me directions to if I wanted to visit, duck dressed at the abattoir and cooked in my kitchen on the same day – there’s nothing quite like it. And the value for money at the butcher is incredible.  We often buy a quarter of a beast or an entire pig and share it with another family.  Where else are you going to get Black Angus beef t-bones or free range shoulder ham on the bone for about $6.00/kg?

When you buy specimens from Dissection Connection you are keeping countless numbers of families afloat.  The meat industry supports Mr Vivi and I, the growers, the butchers, truck drivers, slaughtermen, admin staff, cleaners, electricians, plumbers, engineers and even the public servants that regulate the industry – just to name a few.

Abattoirs keep small towns alive.  They provide full time employment, apprenticeships and traineeships for people that would otherwise have to move to the city.  They bring people to regional towns that would otherwise not be able to grow and thrive.  And they keep you in meat for the barbecue.

Every family needs a farmer.  Every family.  When you buy specimens from us you are are buying 100% home grown Australian produce – not specimens chemically treated and imported from America.  Well done you!  Now – how about going one step further and grabbing some meat from the local butcher and having a barbecue with your mates this weekend?

Miss Vivi

ps. there are some great classroom resources on the Australian Year of the Farmer website

 

seven days without beef makes one weak
Australian beef growers bumper sticker on a ute I pulled up behind at the servo. The man in the background is the beef grower.