Spring Rain

I may not appreciate the spring extremes of super hot and cold rainy days but my garden sure does.  Everything is looking healthy and growing so fast I can barely keep up with pinching out sideways growth and training vines and tomatoes up stakes.
 

Kale, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Iceberg Lettuce, Spring Onions and Oregano - with old nesting box bedding as mulch.

My cucumbers, tomatoes and zucchinis all have tiny little fruit starting to form, seeds are striking  with very little encouragement and I'm sure that the white cabbage butterflies are being snapped up by the chickens before they can get to my tender young kale, broccoli and cauliflower.

  After taking my boys to the local doctors office this morning for a checkup and immunisations, then fueling up at the cafe with hot chocolates, we headed home to do some seed sowing.  I've set myself up a table in the corner of our carport to do my potting - which is an excellent spot out of the heavy spring rain.  Today I planted sunflower, zucchini, chives, lemongrass seeds and moved the marigolds that Mr 3 planted in my lettuce only poly-garden to my watering-can door stop.

Runner Beans reaching for the sky

Old watering can turned into a planting/door stop

This garden is the best I have every grown.  Beautiful sweet LIVE lettuces, copious amounts of spinach and spring onions and the occasional radish and Asian vegetables.  I'm loving it.  We're slowly spending less and less at the green grocer to reflect the increased productivity of the garden.  And even better, I know where everything has come from and it is all spray free.

Poly-gardens - the first one has been mostly harvested with new seeds planted this week - the second box is ready to go

 The chicks are growing at an amazing speed - they pretty much double in size each week.  Emmy Lou is doing a fantastic job and the chicks are wondering father and father from her side as they grow and gain confidence.  Loving our little bit of the good life.

Cheap Cheap Yoghurt

We go through a kilogram of yoghurt pretty much every week.  It only costs us $2 for a 1 kilo batch of low fat natural style yoghurt - a kilo tub at the supermarket costs $7!

Each month I purchase one plain Ezy-Yo sachet for about $3.60 - this makes us 4 kilos of yoghurt.  I half fill my yoghurt jar with water and add 100g of skim milk powder (125g is if you're using standard milk powder).  Then add a quarter of the yoghurt sachet, that's about 35g.  Give it a good stir, top up with water and put in your yoghurt maker for 10 hours.  So easy, so cheap and so good for you.

The yoghurt sachets are pretty much milk powder with active cultures - the cultures multiply to fill the jar so it's still works out fine only using a portion of the sachet.

Pesto in the Garden

After a very hot weekend it was time for a very quick and simple dinner for me and my 3 hungry boys.  Pappa Bear got the BBQ going with home kill sausages while I chucked some pasta in a pot, bashed up some basil, parsley and pinenuts then grabbed lettuce, borage flowers and spring onion from the garden.

My window sill is under control and the pesto was delicious.  It would have much nicer with homemade pasta - but kneading pasta is not something I want to be doing when it's almost 27 degrees in the kitchen.

The breeze and evening sun in the garden was wonderful, so we ate alfresco with Emmy Lou and her chicks at our feet snaffling up anything our babies dropped.  Bliss.

Not the flashest meal, but when you're hungry and dinner only takes 20 minutes then it's perfect!

Pesto

Pinenuts
Olive Oil Fresh basil and parley
Parmesan (or just plain cheese like colby and a pinch of salt)

Put a drizzle of olive oil and a handful of pinenuts in a pan on medium heat.  Keep moving nuts around in the pan till they are nicely browned then remove from heat.   With mortar and pestle bash up four or five handfuls of basil/parley leaves till they almost form a paste.  Pour in the oil and pinenuts and stir to break them up (or totally pulverize them if you like your pesto smooth).  Lastly, stir in some grated Parmesan.  I didn't have any Parmesan in the fridge, so I just used Colby and added a good pinch of salt - all good.  Serve with bread, on pizza, stir trough pasta like we did with a little more extra virgin olive oil - there's loads of uses for it.

Time for Pesto?

I think my kitchen window sill is going to start attracting wildlife if I don't give it a trim.  Sweet Genovese Basil and Coriander in tin cans and a Giant Sunflower from the School Gala (which needs to be moved to the garden).  I'll think up something to go with Pesto in the next day or two and post the results.

My tin cans are not the flashest thing on this earth, but they do the job and were pretty much free.

Herman the German

My lovely sister-in-law gave me some of her Herman starter last week.  To be precise, Herman the German Friendship Cake.

To start with, I didn't read the instructions in full - so thought all I had to do was mix and add ingredients every 5 days.  Turns out you're supposed to give Herman a good old beating every day - oops.  Any way, we reached day 10 yesterday (baking day).  I was too busy with Friday play group, chasing chickens and tending to the garden to bake so Herman was divided and baked this morning.

The idea is that you quarter Herman, bake with some and give away the rest - but that's something you cannot really do at 6am, on Saturday, in your PJs.  So with a monster batch of Herman starter and hungry kids I decided to keep quarter for another starter, make 2 cakes and whip up pancakes with the rest.  Let's just say the kids aren't hungry any more and I now have a good way to use up extra Herman starter.

The Herman cake calls for a lot of sugar and some cooking apples, which I don't have.  I replaced apples with ripe bananas from my fruit bowl and halved the sugar.

 
 Herman Pancakes

1/4 of a 10 Day Old Herman Starter
1 Giant Freaky Frida Egg (1 or 2 normal eggs would work too)
4 T Plain Flour
1t Baking Powder
Splash of Milk

Beat starter, egg, flour and baking powder together.  Add a splash or 2 of milk and stir again.  Keep adding milk till you get a pancake batter consistency (or leave slightly thicker and make pickelets).  Grease your frypan and cook on med-low heat as the sugar in the starter tends to burn if you cook too high.  Flip pancake over when bubbles appear on the surface.  Cook the other side for a minute or so.  We had our with Fig and Ginger conserve that I got from Peplers Fine Foods - just down the road.  Beautiful.

Seasonal

Living off one income has it's challenges, but by thinking carefully about what we buy, sticking to seasonal produce and putting a little time and effort into making plenty of homemade food and cleaning products we save heaps of money at the supermarket.

I was talking to a lady at our local farm supply shop yesterday (while I brought chicken food) about how I only go to the supermarket once a month with a budget of $360 dollars for a family of 4 (that's $90 a week) and a weekly fruit and vege shop which averages at $30 dollars.  She was amazed and couldn't understand how we get by on so little.  We don't just 'get by' though, we eat varied and interesting meals, which change with the seasons.

Eating seasonal is very important if you want to cut down on your shopping bills - heck, we never have capsicum when it's out of season - why would you?  They cost up to 5 dollars each in winter, which is madness, that same $5 can buy you something like 4 heads of broccoli, or 2 or 3 big pumpkins, or a truck load of carrots, even a fortnights worth of onions and potatoes!
The same goes for fruit, in season and fresh is always best, and cheaper - so don't buy sad looking oranges that have spent goodness knows how long shipping over from the US, grab a bag of fresh, kiwi grown pears, apples or kiwifruit for nearly half the price.

I generally stick to produce that is under $4 a kilo - so tomatoes are off the table for a good part of the year.  My husband loves them on sandwiches but at nearly $2 for an average sized tomato it's just silly, so we're agreed that for something moist and juicy in his lunches over winter we opt for tinned beetroot (which we by in bulk when it's on special).  A big tin for $1.80 will last him a week - that's if the kids and I don't get into it - the bank account and Pappa Bear are happy.

Most fruit and vege shops put ads in the local rag, so look over the specials and plan your meals around the fruit and vege you can load up on for a bargain.

I have lots of other things to share with you on budgeting, but washing is waiting in the machine and dishes are calling.  So till next time, take care and start getting seasonal.

A week in our piece of paradise

It's been an awesome week.

We started our week with new arrivals, 8 little chicks.  They are all growing super fast and are sporty some small wing feathers.  Then we did our monthly shop so our larder is full to the brim - I stocked up on all the basics, flour, butter, oil, tinned tomatoes, wheat bix, milk powder and soap - and come in well under budget, bonus.  While I was in town I also popped into the green grocer for our weekly shop of fruit and vege - loving that asparagus and strawberries are in season - yum!

Sleepy Sunny Chiks

 On Thursday night I went out with my sister-in-law for a ladies night and AGM for our playgroup - and I was voted in as Treasurer for the executive committee. Exciting times, it's great that I can get involved with something to benifit my kids - and others.

We spent Saturday at the local school Gala - they haven't had one for 6 to 7 years, I hope we don't have to wait that long for the next one, it was awesome.  My baby bears and I wondered around buying plants, sweet treats and watched the firemen making fireballs with hot oil (don't ever put water on a oil/fat fire - BOOM!).  Mr 3 got his face painted as batman and had loads of fun running around in a semi-inflated hot-air balloon.  He is super chuffed with his fire engine poster on his bedroom wall, a real fireman gave it to him.  Then he spent the evening telling Pappa Bear all about the firemen rescuing someone from a crashed car with the jaws of life - I had to spend quite some time reminding him that it was just a show - he was worried the boy that got to be rescued was sick.  Cute little man.

We finished the weekend with Nana and Poppa making a surprise visit from town.  Our baby bears spent the afternoon going up and down our drive with Nana, Poppa and their cousins while mummy and daddy worked.  My husband illustrates for a kids bi-monthly magazine, I help out by colouring in his cartoons using photoshop - we make a good team.  Nana and Poppa stayed for a BBQ hamburger dinner with home made burger buns and lettuce from the garden.

This week was started clearing out our basement - I had chicken feed everywhere along with hay and a collection of cardboard boxes.  Now my basement is clean and orgaisied - finally!  It's a job I've put off for ages.

One more thing before I go, I want to show you an egg from my 'Freaky' Frida.  She produces 2 yolks a day.  She is a New Zealand Shaver so has been bread to produce a lot of eggs, but this is crazy.  If she doesn't lay a double yolker in the morning she will randomly plop about a second 'softy' during the day.  A softy is our name for a an egg for a very thin, rubbery soft shell.

The pale egg is from our Langshan hen, it is about a size 6, it is quite skinny and long.  The dark brown is from our other shaver, Dixie, about a size 7, short and fat.  The last egg is Frida's, and it is huge!!  Long and very round and fat.  It has to be a double yolker.  The photo doesn't really do it justice - the Frida egg is at least twice as big as the pale Langshan egg, I can't close my fingers around it.

Freaky Frida