Slow cooked lamb shanks

When it is freezing cold outside this is my go to meal in the winter months. My shanks come from our Wiltipoll sheep we kill for our own consumption on our farm. I was given this recipe by my mother-in-law many years ago, and I have tweaked it to include more legumes to bulk it up.

 

It is pretty easy to put together in the afternoon and throw it in the oven. It's a good one when you are entertaining, so you aren't slaving in the kitchen while you can be relaxing with your beer/wine and guests.

 

 

 

 



 



Gather your ingredients

 

 

 

 

Here are the massive shanks

In it all goes

Steaming hot out of the oven

Lamb Shanks



 

 

 4 Lamb shanks

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 medium sweet potatoes

2 brown onions

2 tins of chopped tomatoes

1 tin of chickpeas (Drained and rinsed)

1 tin of lentils (Drained and rinsed)

2 tablespoons of dried rosemary

2 tablespoons of minced garlic

1 tablespoon of dried Basil

1 tablespoon of dried oregano

1 litre of beef stock

 

 

Gather ingredients together and chop onions into slices, peel and chop sweet potatoes into large chunks.

 

Place large cast iron casserole (Le Creuset) dish on high heat on your stovetop. Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and place the lamb shanks in browning them all over.

 

Once they are browned, add onions and all the herbs and garlic. Brown them slightly.

 

Add the chickpeas, lentils and sweet potato browning them slightly too. Add tinned tomatoes and stir it all up mixing thoroughly.

 

Add the beef stock. You can alter the amount you use. I like to cover all the shanks and vegetables with it as it will reduce down with cooking.

 

Place in oven at 150 C. for about 2 - 2.5 hours. give it a stir occasionally to check it. I put the lid on after about an hour or so when the sauce has reduced a bit so I don't lose all the liquid.

 

You will know when it is ready as the meat will be tender and falling off the bone.

 

I served this with brown rice this time, you can use white rice, polenta, couscous. Really, it goes with any grains you may have on hand. It is healthy comfort food and oh so warming on our chilly winter nights.

 

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 











A three-legged cow

Have you ever seen a three-legged cow?

No?

Me neither, until we discovered this.

We found this little one two years ago and we could hardly believe that we had a three-legged calf. It is extremely rare, and my husband had never come across one before. My husband's father had never come across one either, and between them both they have clocked up a lot of years producing beef cattle, so it was quite the unusual find.

We were surprised that it could get up off the ground with only one front leg after it's birth. I guess a lot of them can't, so this one is a proven fighter. The fact that it could get off the ground and keep up with the herd was amazing.

As you can see she was prancing around and happy as Larry with her mother. We named her Hoppy.

She ended up getting pregnant accidentally as we really didn't want her to get pregnant. We thought it may be too hard on her. The bull pushed through a fence, so here were with our pregnant heifer.

 

 

 

 



We were really worried for her as the bull was a Charolais and they produce huge calves. We waited and watched her every day.

 

When we went away for a football weekend, we got someone to check Hoppy for us as we were sure she was close to giving birth.

 

 

Fortunately for us she had her calf unassisted and while we were at home. A beautiful healthy calf. She is so good with her baby.

 

 

So glad she is ok since heifers are notorious for having trouble with their first calves. She should be alright now.

There you have it, the three-legged cow. She will hopefully produce many calves to come and she is pretty good company wandering the house paddock.

Catch up post

Hi, remember me and this blog?

No of course not I haven't seen you in ages!

When was the last time you posted? About 6 months ago!

Oh really? No way! It definitely has not been that long!

Perhaps you should close the blog if you are going to be so slack with your posts?

Hmmm.......

Nah!

Perhaps I should just do a catch up so it doesn't look like I have dropped off the face of the earth.

I'll try that instead.......


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While I have been slack on the blog front life has been humming away with so many things to keep me away from the blog. I will try to condense 6 months into this blog post and then hopefully start posting a bit more often than I have been.
 
We spent the first 4 months of the year swimming and doing swimming carnivals. Amazingly my boys went well in their school carnivals and then their regionals. The Diocesan carnival followed and amazingly F made it through to Catholic State (Polding) with his relay team. He was so excited to make it to Sydney for State. And we had never got that far before, so to say we were all excited was a bit of an understatement!
 
 

So exciting!

 
The Sydney Aquatic Centre at Olympic Park is so huge! The boys kept eyeing off the waterpark over the other side all day. After the race they got to relax and have a play.
 
 

Waiting is nerve wracking.

 
And they won!!!!!
 
Well, won a bronze medal anyway! It was absolutely the most nerve wracking experience watching the race. So close and so much cheering. F swam his fastest time ever that day.
 

Bronze medallists
 

 

Parents were allowed to go downstairs to take pics of the winners on the podium. Then we signed forms and paid levy's to go on to the next level. PSSA (NSW State swimming). We spent a couple of days in Sydney doing other jobs. We never stopped going to Sydney in term 1. We went down for swimming, Scholarship exams and interviews for H. We did a trip to Bathurst for soccer trials. We slipped in a few trips to see family in Orange on our way home from Sydney. We were never at home that term and I kept our suitcase out and kept washing and repacking it any day we were home! That along with the swimming training made it a pretty busy time.



 

 

End of the day.

 
 
 

The cattleyards

 
 
While plenty of excitement was going on for us, home was looking pretty dry all the same. We were fairly worried that we may be in for more drought, but luckily we got some crucial rain and we have sown our crops. Thank god for that!
 

Easter hunt

 
 
 
 


Nervous wait again.

 
 
Back to Sydney for more swimming, this time in the PSSA carnival. It was an extremely tight competition and came 8th in their heat. 22nd overall out of 40 school teams, which is pretty good as our boys don't get to swim year round like some schools. We don't have a heated pool so only swim October to April. We have great coaches and the boys did their best.
 
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This little one is old enough to start playing Rugby in the under sixes. So we have been travelling most weekends for that too.

 
The Rodeo came to town. And it was a glorious winters day for it. Beautiful sunshine and bucking broncs.

 

 
 The boys also made it to the Diocesan Spelling Bee. They came first in their school for their age groups so another trip away to do that too. They went really well in all the rounds and made it to the "unseen" words which is the words they did not practice off the given list. They had to figure out how to spell them off the top of their heads which was rather tricky. Hard to tell their placing, but F came in the last 20 kids out of 65. 

 H made it all the way to the final 5 kids out of 65. He was so very close to winning or coming second. He is kicking himself now as he had the unseen word correctly but though it seemed too short and added an R to the end of it. They went well though and it was a great experience to have. All that practicing spelling in the car all the trips to Sydney pays off!


So there you go, 6 months in condensed highlight form.

Not counting all the mundane stuff no one wants to hear about...

No broken drought here....

We got a small amount of rain this week. Only 15mm all up. Unfortunately nothing to get excited about though. My garden greened up, but that was it!

These pictures were taken recently on one of our properties hardest hit by the drought. The cattle  pictured were sorted and sold in the week after the photo was taken. We sold some more this week, and we are waiting to see if this small fall of rain will trigger some bigger falls for us.

We will wait it out and see what comes....

A Gold Coast holiday

Well it's back to reality for us out here in Cattle and Cushions territory. We are all back in School and Preschool, and trying to get used to the frantic pace a new term brings. We got an extra week in the school holidays due to our location in the western division.

We call it heat week. The extra weeks holiday is heaven for us as it is so hot when our kids go back to school. I am so grateful that we get that heat week as it gives us a chance to go to the beach without the extortionist prices of peak holiday season!

I am trying to get my head around all the busy routine happening again with the early starts, the packing of lunches and the morning rush until the bus pickup. And swimming and cricket thrown into the mix makes it a busy time.

All holidays we have been swimming most days, the boys do swim training in the mornings and then we have a swim late afternoon in our pool.

It has been a long, hot, dry summer for us. And we have now hit a wall with our feed running out, with our remaining cattle needing to be sorted and sold from our property. It is quite heartbreaking to see the rain avoid us and the hot weather killing what is left of our feed here. I have avoided talking about it on the blog before as it was just a dry time, and we all get those every few years. But now it is fully fledged drought. We didn't get a decent crop this year, and we have been selling cattle all year as it got drier, destocking our place as much as we could.

The bullocks are all gone and now we are down to selling unfinished ones to feedlots. The quotas are filling fast as we are all running out of options here. The smaller cattle will stay until we wait for rain so we can spread them out a bit. We run on a low stocking rate, so we have had a bit of room to move for a while.

Yes, it is a bit crap. It isn't anywhere as bad as the 2002 drought yet, but incomes will stop and small towns will suffer from the drought. The government (as always) is a bit slow on the uptake and are only recognising the problem now. The horse has bolted. Some people have been feeding for over a year now and feeding subsidies were needed ages ago. And freight subsidies were needed 9 months ago when we had the good sense to start getting rid of cattle when it started drying up.

We are waiting for rain and once it does things will turn around. I am hoping this next change will bring a bit!


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So onto the good part of my post.....

We have had to forgo a family holiday for about four years due to  dry times, wet times, hot times and it is always hard for us to get away in January with it being hot and busy. And it is always so expensive to have that beach holiday. So we were really looking forward to doing something with the kids this time.

I did a lot of ringing around in the holidays and could not find anything available for our family of 5 when we wanted it. I did a fair bit of internet research and I was nearly going to give up on it when I found a property management site and gave them a call. It turned out to be pretty good value as we got 8 nights for a lot less than 7 with some other companies. We ended up going to Turtle Beach Resort in Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast for two nights and the other six in the Q1 at Surfers Paradise.

I love the Gold Coast! It is tacky and full of tourists, but the beaches are second to none, and when it rains there is still plenty to do without being stuck inside and bored. With kids that is essential!

Turtle Beach is great, we had a holiday there about 4 years ago and it is so family friendly and quiet. Close to everything and it has a couple of places to eat inside, so if you have a short stay you don't even have to leave the resort if you like. It has a wood fired pizza place and a cafe inside, so you don't even need to cook if you don't feel like it.

The only thing I find that Turtle needs to improve on is the lack of swimming pool space. There are four pools in the complex and they are quite small. It is good in a quiet time, but as we arrived on Australia Day weekend the pools were packed to capacity! Still a great place to stay though - just better in the off-peak season.

http://www.turtlebeach.com.au/

In this pic it looks quite deserted though as it was 7.30am in the morning and the boys did a few laps before the masses arrived.

The next six days were spent at the Q1 building in Surfers Paradise. It was another great place to stay too. 

Q1 - the tall one with the spike on it.

Used to be the tallest residential tower in the world with its 78 floors. It is now the third highest, but still the tallest in Australia.

http://www.q1.com.au/

We stayed on the 20th floor and we had a corner unit facing the canals with a ocean glimpse. North West facing so it was better for drying clothes. My washing would only take a day to dry instead of two in the Queensland humidity.

The main living area

The kids bedroom

The master bedroom

Master bedroom again

The second bathroom

The main bathroom

Looking from the master bedroom into the main bathroom

The ocean glimpse

A bathtub with a great view

I tried to take the pics before it got too dishevelled by the kids flopping down onto the beds. It was very modern and spacious and suited us down to the ground.

The beach was across the road and there is a few really good restaurants downstairs. Everything you need for a great and easy stay. BWS liquor store, an IGA supermarket down the road, and so many places to eat you need never cook anything! And there were so many cuisines to choose from -Persian to Malaysian and everything in between.

Looking down the coast towards Broadbeach.

Looking up the coast towards Main Beach.

Looking down towards Broadbeach

Our view by day

And by night

The weather was pretty good. We had some overcast days which brought 5 minute showers which cleared to some lovely days. The ocean was a bit choppy and rough some days, but we managed to get in a good lot of beach time. We fit some putt putt golf in, lots of pool time and driving around checking out the sights. I have relatives up in the area, so we caught up with them too.

Of course we squeezed in some theme parks. We chose Dreamworld and White Water world this time. I have been to Dreamworld many times and it is always a huge day out. To do the two parks you really need two days to devote enough time to them. The lines were pretty good, not too much queueing since everyone else was meant to be back to school, so it made it much more worthwhile.

I am fairly game, so I usually do the scary rides with the boys. The Giant Drop was nearly my undoing though! So not a fan of that one.........

White Water World was quite good too, fairly quiet and we did the park by lunchtime. And we went back into Dreamworld to do a couple of favourite rides before calling it a day.

Tigers at Dreamworld

I really don't understand why the keepers just hang out with the tigers all day. When I took this photo, they had done a show hours ago and weren't due for another one for about two hours time. I know they are mainly hand-raised tigers, but in light of the tiger attack on a keeper that happened not so long ago there, I wonder why they still do this? Seems a bit dangerous to me!

Dolphins in the water

The boys went fishing too, they were all excited to go deep sea fishing, but the water was too choppy and dangerous. So they did a calm water fishing trip and they went around the rivers and estuaries near Runaway Bay. They took them out to The Spit and close to Stradbroke Island where the ocean meets. Caught 7 lovely fish in the end. A few Flathead, bream and snapper. We got them filleted, boned and packed in ice to take home.

Seriously, the BEST fish I have ever eaten! I crumbed them and fried them in a frying pan. I used regular breadcrumbs for some and I tried some panko on the others. So beautiful and fresh!

There you go, our Queensland holiday in a few pics. Our last heat week with little H as he will be going to boarding school next time we get one.

Back to reality now and back to facing the drought and plan C of what to do with the remaining stock we have.