The Cook Book

From the category archives:

Projects

Grow Your Own Kitchen Garden In Wine Barrels – Launch of www.WineBarrelGardens.com.au

by Clair on March 24, 2009

wine-barrel-garden1At the start of Spring last year (08), we embarked on a project to grow our own salad vegies and herbs in half wine barrels. It has been over 5 months since we first planted out the barrels and the project has been an overwhelming success (apart from one little incident with very hungry caterpillars) and completely rewarding! Not only does our balcony look much prettier (we put roses in the barrels along with the herbs and vegies), but we have been able to harvest from them for every meal and have saved buckets at the fruit shop.

We wouldn’t have been able to get this project off the ground, however, if it wasn’t for David Gowenlock, who sourced, delivered, and helped us plant out the barrels. Dave is a qualified horticulturist, and knows pretty much everything about plants (I wasn’t exactly born with a green thumb, but I am learning), so he was the first one we turned to when we decided we wanted to grow our own herbs and vegies.

Given the success of the project, and the number of friends, family and people who have visited thecookbook.com.au that are interested in starting their own wine barrel gardens, we have collectively decided to launch Wine Barrel Gardens online.

We (the team at The Internet Incubator) have produced the website, order flow and created an online marketing campaign for the launch, leaving Dave to do what he does best, produce wonderful gardens!

If you are interested in growing your own herbs and salad vegies, then I highly recommend you have a look at the website www.winebarrelgardens.com.au. If you live in the Sydney metropolitan region, Dave will deliver and install on site (saving you all of the heavy lifting and planting!) your very own salad and/or herb wine barrel garden. He can even provide rose, lemon or olive tree upgrades, and care kits (to save you from a nasty caterpillar attack). You can order online with a credit card or paypal account and have the barrels delivered to you in around 5 working days. Take a look at the site for pictures of the beautiful finished wine barrel gardens.

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New gluten free, dairy free, nut free, sugar free and meat free categorisation on thecookbook.com.au

by Clair on March 13, 2009

Given that food allergies seem to be on the increase and people general are becoming more interested in the health benefits of food, I have decided to introduce categories across the site to help identify and search for recipes that are gluten free, dairy free, nut free, sugar free and meat free.

New categories on thecookbook.com.au

At the bottom of every recipe, you will now see ‘Tags: …’ showing if a recipe is gluten free, dairy free, nut free, sugar free or meat free (have a look at the screenshot to the right).

When you come to the site, you can also search for recipes that are gluten free, dairy free, nut free, sugar free or meat free by typing these keywords into the ‘search this website’ box at the top of the page.

Please note that whilst we have taken as much care as possible to ensure correct categorisation, you need to ensure that the ingredients you use meet your allergy/food requirements. For example, some brands of ready made chicken stock may have gluten in them and some brands of ready made biscuits (used for cheesecake bases etc) may be manufactured on equipment that processes nuts.

'Search this website...'

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My Top 5 Favorite Cookbooks of All Time

March 5, 2009

I’m often asked where I draw my inspiration from, and the answer is all of the restaurants we visit, cooking shows I watch (much to the annoyance of PS) and magazines I read, but most importantly the cookbooks that I own. I don’t have a huge collection (and I think this surprises some people), but [...]

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Caterpillar Carnage

February 4, 2009

Since beginning our wine barrel garden at the start of summer, we have enjoyed the fruits of our work. It is incredible how much actual food you can get out of two wine barrels! The biggest producer has been the lettuce, while we have still supplemented our summer salads with the usual bags of leaves [...]

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Grow Your Own Kitchen Garden – In Wine Barrels – Mid Summer Update!

January 15, 2009

It was mid November last year when we planted our wine barrel garden (visit this link for the original article). Its now January and you won’t believe the transition. Here are some photos to give you a idea of how it’s all going. Since planting we have had a pretty good summer in Sydney, all [...]

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Grow Your Own Kitchen Garden – In Wine Barrels

November 25, 2008

The more you read and watch material relating to cooking there is a common but simple theme that rings true; use good, fresh produce (and organic where possible). I have been taking this mantra more literally than most people for a long time now (some might say slightly over the top); imagine for a moment [...]

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Grow Your Own Kitchen Garden (Herbs, Fruit and Vegetables)

November 18, 2008

Growing your own herbs, fruit and vegetables is a great way to introduce kids to new flavours, vegies (god forbid they might put something green in their mouths) and cooking. It also means cutting back on your weekly fruit and vegie bill, and satisfaction from growing your own produce. If you don’t have very much [...]

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Ideas for Centralising & Storing Collected Recipes

November 18, 2008

A great idea for organising all of those recipes that you have collected over the years (cluttering up your cupboards and drawers on bits of paper!) is to purchase an address book and write them in. By using an address book you have all of your recipes in the one place, making it easy to [...]

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