Upper Murray Farmers Market

Today was the Farmers Market, over all the day was pretty quiet, a couple of new faces and lots of old ones. As always it was good to catch up with people we haven't seen since the last market. Ayala decided to get busy and cook nougat, coconut ice, rocky road and fudge. Kath picked heaps of blackberries, but had another stall at the other end of the park where the Arts Upper Murray group were having a craft market. Kath did get some time to take a few photos, but as she felt a bit conspicuous she took them from a distance.

Mary Grant and a yummy range of jams, pickles and sauces

Tom and Thea Newton from Tandara Gardens with a range of trees and shrubs

Fresh meat from Trevor and Sarah Klippel of Sugarloaf Herefords

The BBQ

Mt Mittamatite Bites

Looking up the park to the free range eggs and Lou Curven with her lip balms and body butters.

CWA ladies with cakes and jams

Jennifer Fennell with her photocards

Katherines sewing

Bonita Nicholas with lots of crafty things

The next market is on the Monday of the long weekend in March. It is all set to be a big weekend in town with the Towong races on the Saturday. Hopefully we will see lots of new faces at the market on the Monday before everybody leaves town.

It's not all about soap

Soap making has taken a back seat this last month, although I have made some liquid soap, more about that in another post. I currently have the best vegetable garden I have ever had, the tomatoes are ripening, we have beans galore, the snow peas and other peas are producing really well, as are the chillis, carrots, and beetroot.The mizuna has been beautiful and we are still eating it although some of it is starting to go to seed. One thing we have an abundance of is basil, I only brought one punnet and at the time it didn't look like much, but it grew, and grew. Yesterday I wanted to make some of my "green gunge" which is a salad / vegetable dressing made with whatever herbs I can find in the garden, garlic, lemon juice or cider vinegar, and olive oil. So I went out looking for herbs and started at the basil, it had grown so much that I only picked basil. I brought it in and decided to freeze it. So here are the photos of how to freeze basil, or any other herb so that it is in an easily usable form when you want a hit of fresh summer herbs sometime during winter. 

This is how much basil I picked, the red container is a 3.5lt

Chop it up, as fine or as rough as you like.

stuff it into ice cube trays.

When it is all stuffed in, fill the trays up with water. This is how much  all that basil chopped  and squashed down to.
Freeze it, and be prepared for some strange comments. Especially if you have a guest for dinner and he brings ice cream.

The frozen basil the next day, ready to put into freezer bags. 

A word of warning, the basil will stain your ice cube trays, but there are worse things in life than basil flavoured ice cubes.

Now  when you are cooking a bolognaise, or a casserole, or soup, whatever. all you do is throw in a ice cube of herbs for a beautiful fresh hit of summer.