Making Sense of Things

How to make kefir labneh balls at home

Making Sense of Things — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 20:33:00 +0000

This is just a short post to share a simple idea and another way to eat your kefir… kefir labneh balls.

First, make your kefir cheese like we described in this post.

Then, take teaspoons full of the cheese, roll them in your hand and put them in a jar with olive oil and whatever else you want.

We added rosemary and juniper berries in this lot. Et voila! How easy and beautiful do they look? I think it’s also a great gift idea.

… Read the rest

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow

Making Sense of Things — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:22:24 +0000

Recently I stumbled upon 365grateful.com and this has inspired me to start reflecting on my day for the things I’m grateful for. Hailey from 365Grateful was told by her life coach (a nun) that the secret to happiness was all about reflection and gratitude. Check out the inspiring little clip below.

The way Hailey reflected was to take photographs every day. I have also been taking photos of some of the every day moments and things that I’m grateful for… they are beautiful reminders!! When I look back on them I feel grateful all over again. I’ve included some of them throughout this post for you to see.

As you may have seen from Jean’s recent post, we both meditate, try to increase our awareness and presence in our lives. This little gratitude exercise has really helped us on that path. We believe that inner work is our greatest … Read the rest

Plant the seed of meditation and reap the fruit of peace of mind

Making Sense of Things — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 22:12:27 +0000

Are you prone to stress and anxiety? Do you suffer from one or several addictions (coffee, wine, chocolate, sex, legal or illegal drugs, or even your iPod, a football team, a famous star, etc – you pick!). Does your mind wander constantly and jumps seemingly without control from one thought to another? Do you tend to judge yourself and the world negatively rather than positively? Do you have trouble focusing your attention on a given task or feel agitated? Do you sometimes feel like you have a ‘fog in your brain’ whereby you lack clarity about what you want/should do? Do you suffer from conditions such as psoriasis, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome or generally have a weak immune system? Do you feel like you kinda know that you aren’t ‘on track’, but are afraid or lazy or unsure about what you have to do?

Well, the good news is … Read the rest

How to make mozzarella at home

Making Sense of Things — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:21:43 +0000

You might remember this post from the New England Cheese Making Supply Company… they liked our ‘How to make brie cheese at home’ post so much they posted it on their site and sent us a Mozzarella & Ricotta kit. We were so excited to try another type of cheese at home so this post is how we made it. The great thing about making mozzarella is that it’s quite simple, fairly quick and you can eat it straight away!

The following instructions are essentially from the New England Cheese Making Supply Company, with our own notes and experiences added. They have an excellent website for trouble shooting, www.cheesemaking.com, and even have a cheese tech, who can be contacted through their ‘contact us’ page to answer your questions. Check out this page for extra information though. Their kit definitely makes things easy too as it comes with … Read the rest

How to make sauerkraut and cultured vegetables at home

Making Sense of Things — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:23:12 +0000

Recently we’ve tried making our own sauerkraut. It’s so incredibly easy and healthy that it seemed silly not to try and of course, share it with you! This post shares two methods – with salt and with whey. The kefir whey version is quicker to ferment and ready for eating.

What is Sauerkraut?

Sauerkraut literally means ‘sour cabbage’ in German – it is naturally fermented thinly sliced cabbage. It has a distinctive tangy flavour and is often used on hot dogs, as a condiment to meals but also much more… as an ingredient in soups, salads and sandwiches too, for example.

Its flavour and preservation is a result of lactic acid that forms when the bacteria, the cabbage’s natural flora, ferment the sugars in the juice that is extracted from the cabbage by adding salt. You may remember the lactic acid explanation when we fermented butter too!

There are many … Read the rest

How to make kefir cheese

Making Sense of Things — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:40:29 +0000

Since we’ve been loving our kefir nearly daily at the moment, I thought we should take a small step further to make something other than smoothies from it. When I started looking online I was amazed by the variety of recipes using kefir as an ingredient – cheese, ice-cream, sourdough bread, cookies, pancakes, pizza bases, soups and more. So, one step at a time! I decided to take a very small step indeed to make a very simple type of kefir cheese.

Now, this cheese isn’t a hard cheese… but its not quite like cottage cheese either. I really like Dom’s description that the flavour and texture is similar to quark, or the condensed yoghurt-type curd, labneh. It’s very smooth and creamy. We ate loads of this delicious cheese when we were in Jordan and Palestine recently so it seemed perfect to make a kefir version.

How do you make … Read the rest

How to make muesli, granola, cereal… or whatever you want to call it!

Making Sense of Things — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:01:19 +0000

When Jean eats a bowl of cereal from a standard pack of muesli, nearly half the pack is gone! He’s a hungry man! It’s expensive, contains hardly any of those cashews advertised so prominently on the label and often has a heap of sugar added too! So, a few years ago I decided to make our cereal weekly at home. Now, we really miss it when we are travelling and feel we don’t get a proper start to the day without it. More importantly, what Jean realised is that no matter how high-fiber/high-protein the store bought cereal was, it wouldn’t really keep him full for very long and he’d need a snack mid morning. With our own cereal he isn’t hungry until lunch time.

This way we can get all the proportions of nuts, seeds and fruit we want (no skimping!!) without any added sugar. It’s just so easy, so delicious … Read the rest

How to make kefir at home

Making Sense of Things — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:34:04 +0000

When we were doing our cheese making course back in 2010, Elisabeth Fekonia gave us some kefir grains to take home. So we’ve been using these friendly microorganisms and yeasts to help balance our inner ecosystem and supply complete protein, essential minerals and vitamins B12, B1 and C. It is also an excellent source of biotin, which helps the assimilation and absorption of other B vitamins from the body.

Kefir has all the great health benefits of yoghurt and more, because whilst yoghurt works through a bacterial conversion of the milk sugars, kefir uses both bacterial and yeast actions! Kefir is full of probiotics while the calcium, magnesium and phosphorous from the milk is maintained for proper growth of cells and for maintenance of the body and abundant energy. As mentioned above, it is easy to digest because the yeast in the grains feed on the lactose in the milk! … Read the rest

Dear readers… thank you!!!

Making Sense of Things — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:10:34 +0000

Dear readers,

To kick off the new year, we’d like to warmly thank you for your continuous reading and support throughout 2011… Indeed, Making Sense of Things is growing, and was viewed more than 53,000 times in 2011! The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people, so if it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 20 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Here are some more crunchy numbers for you:

Most visitors came from Australia. The United States & The United Kingdom were not far behind.
We also had visitors from New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Israel/Palestine, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, Chile, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Zambia, among others… We’d love to visit you!
These are the posts that got the most views in

Read the rest

Aquaponics – eFISHient food production in Palestine

Making Sense of Things — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:12:12 +0000

Aquaponics in the West Bank

During our stay at Bustan Qaraaqa in Palestine, we have been lucky enough to volunteer one day a week with Phil and Lorena from Byspokes on aquaponic systems (their website is where the following information comes from). Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture, which is growing fish in water, with hydroponics, which is growing plants in a liquid. Since they arrived in the West Bank in July 2010 they have been researching, developing and trialing the FIRST EVER aquaponic system constructed behind the Wall!

They have been developing integrated aquaculture/irrigation systems and aquaponic systems to enhance food security in rural areas of Palestine, where as much as 44% of the population are chronically food insecure. In general, water and space for agriculture here are in short supply, and this is nowhere more apparent than in high density urban areas such as refugee camps. For the last 60 … Read the rest