Getting back to the basics

I'm a broken record. The rationalization and impetus for seemingly every one of my posts in the last month has had something to do with my (and my roommates') unemployment. So what the hell... here's one more.

Recently, we've been dedicating ourselves to the simple things in life. Specifically, we're starting to make things from scratch. Because (a) we have the time and (b) it's cheaper. A win-win! (And according to this article, we're apparently not the only ones who feel this way. Stupid GFC.) Here's what we've been up to:

Brewing beer

I covered most of this in this post from a few weeks ago. And Little Bear Brewery is still going strong! We just bottled our fourth batch of beer -- modeled after Newcastle Brown Ale -- and are about to start work on a ginger beer. To the left is our wheat beer, nicknamed Wheat Bear. It has a really great aroma and nice initial taste, but the aftertaste is currently a bit bitter. We're hoping that this gets better with more time for maturation.

Even more exciting is the stash of beer that we're starting to build up. Behold (part of) our stockpile, currently at 114 bottles!!


That's 85.5 liters (22.5 gallons) of beer!!

Growing vegetables

This has mostly been Shorty's labor of love. On our balcony, we now are growing the following: tomatoes, roma tomatoes, basil, coriander, peppermint, spring onions and lettuce. They all still need some time to grow, but once they're ready, we can cross those items off the weekly shopping list!

Some tomatoes and herbs.

Lettuce.

In the works for the future is some rocket (arugula), chili and a lemon tree.

Baking bread

Shorty's girlfriend was kind enough to give us her family's bread machine, which had been collecting dust in their garage for the last few years. Our apartment, on the other hand... we're putting it to extreme use.

After starting off with some basic white breads, we're starting to spread our wings a bit. Recent experiments have included French bread (as seen to the left), cajun jalapeno bread, pesto and pinenut bread, banana bread and herb bread. There's another thing to cross off the shopping list... although now we're buying a lot of flour.

Homemade pasta

The beautiful thing about the bread maker is that it does so much more than make bread! For example, it makes pasta dough. Taking advantage of that, I made some ravioli the other day. This was a brutally long and painstakingly monotonous process -- it takes forever to flatten the dough, make the filling, drop it onto the dough and then seal the dough around it -- but the result was very nice.

Below is a picture of some ravioli (with much pasta sauce on top) and homemade bread with garlic and cheese. Good stuff.


I also made some linguine (or something resembling it) last night, which was much easier to do. Maybe I'll just stick to that in the future.

Homemade pizza

Another use for the bread maker: pizza dough! Short took the lead on this one, and created several different pizzas the other night. Here's a sequence of pictures of him making it:

Spreading out the sauce -- in this case, barbecue -- on the dough.

Adding some cheese.

The toppings: chicken, onion, red pepper, hot pepper, etc.

Some more cheese!

The final product.

Coffee

And lastly, Short surprised us last week with a cappuccino/espresso maker! So now we're making ourselves fresh lattes and cappuccinos and whatnot.


A return to the basics! We clearly have the time. It's saving us money. The perfect win-win.