Oaty Sweetened Condensed Milk Slice

Hi All,

Thought I'd share my 10-20 minute sanity saver for the days where I've completely forgotten to bake anything for school lunches and it's getting late in the morning.  I found a variation of this recipe on the internet one day, while trying to work out what on earth to do with almost an entire tin of sweetened condensed milk left over.  And it only takes a couple minutes to prepare.

The ingredients are as follows:

• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
• 50gm melted butter
• 3 cups rolled oats

Optional extras:

• 1 cup coconut (they're always best with this added)
• 1 cup sultanas, raisins or other dried fruit
• Zest of one lemon or orange

Simply mix all of the above in a bowl, press into a greased and lined 20x20cm baking dish and bake at 180 degrees Celcius for around 10-20 minutes, or until golden brown on top and around the edges.

Perfectly cooked

I like to ice mine with a layer of plain or lemon flavoured icing.  The kids love them, and you can add pretty much anything you find in store-bought muesli bars.

Love to all,
Mama Fern

Now we're cooking with... Sunshine!

Hi All,

Two of the kids and I decided to do some experimenting this weekend, making our own solar cookers.  I'd heard that you could possibly make one with just a piece of cardboard covered in tinfoil and folded in half.  I have actually tried those before, and they weren't great, but kinda worked...  So, we set to work and made a couple on Saturday.

Cooker number 1

Cooker number 2

And the waiting begins...

Well, they failed miserably (as could be expected).  We left them for a few hours, and all that happened was that the egg congealed somewhat, and didn't change at all.  Even near the hottest part of the day, when we covered the plates with glass, we still had no change whatsoever.

We decided to research designs and try again on Sunday morning.

Then Sunday morning came, and surprise, surprise...  It was heavily overcast :(  We delayed bothering with the new design since the primary requirement was to actually have some sun in the first place.

We went out shopping (and have hopefully finally found a replacement washing machine - yay!), only to realise that near the end of our shopping trip, the sun was blazing happily in the sky, free of cloud.  I had to inform the kids at this stage that as it was around 4pm, we'd have no chance of making the cooker and testing it properly, since the sun was losing it's heat...

But they begged to do it anyway, which I'm super glad happened, as it actually turned out to be at least a good time for testing our new cooker.  It was just before 5pm when we were ready to go.

The cooker was made from a plastic storage cube and a cardboard box, with polystyrene blocks as insulation in between the two.  We then covered the cardboard box with tinfoil, created some reflectors from cardboard and foil (yesterday's solar cooker failures, chopped into the reflector shapes).  After that, I put a small muffin pan inside (the only black cooking container I had that was small enough), and covered the cooking area with some clear cellophane.

Side view

Cooker set up and loaded with an egg

Close up as the cooking started

Finished result

As it was so late in the day, we didn't manage to get the egg fully cooked, but we tested the temperature around 5:30pm at a steady 60 degrees Celcius.  We took the egg out after the sun had gone behind the clouds for too long and we couldn't get any higher than 40 degrees.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to try out some muffins, but still - SUCCESS!

Love to All,
Mama Fern

Brand new home for the girls

Hi All,

So, after much coercion and begging on my behalf, my beloved went out and built me a new chook enclosure.  The girls are upset at the lack of roaming space, but we're finally able to start working on the garden.

I'll leave you with the photos of his hard work.

Love to all,

Mama Fern

The old area, where the chickens roamed free

Before Sam was let loose on the new area

Putting in the first fence

Coop moved into the new enclosure

My favourite builder, making a gate

Completed enclosure