A whole suburb of sustainable blogs!

I love writing my blog about our green and homemade life, and I love reading blogs about the sustainable journey that other people are on.  And now, there is a place where we're all coming together, lots and lots of links to sustainable living blogs of all shapes and sizes!  I think I'll be doing a lot of reading :)

I've put my link over there.  If you're keen to read more sustainable living blogs, go check it out:

A warm and lovely weekend

We've just had one of the loveliest weekends. Lovelier still because most of it happened without plans and in a simple way.

It started with rain at home on Friday night. Real rain that made puddles. It was so lovely that I went outside to dance in it for a while.

We didn't stay at home to enjoy the rain, but instead visited my mum, stepdad and teenage brother and sister for a casual tea. We helped pick some of their fruit and veg, Stu played a spot of cricket with my brother and we caught up with them all for the first time in a few weeks. I gave my sister her birthday present - a pair of crocheted leg warmers- totally unseasonal, but perfect for a girl who loves all things snuggly.

Leg warmers for my little sister (modelled by me)

Saturday morning, the boys asked if we could go to garage sales. For some reason, they were keen to go bargain hunting, so (armed with their money boxes!) we headed out to visit a few. One was the sale of some family friends. The boys spotted some boogie boards that they liked. They were prepared to pay, but were given them for free - best type of bargain! We didn't really find other bargains, though we enjoyed the browse, so we headed to the Warrnambool Sustainable Living Expo instead.

The expo wasn't very big, and we were a little disappointed that it was mostly stalls selling their solar panels, solar hot water etc, so not much for us. There was the new organic veggie box business there and we stopped to introduce ourselves and have a chat - they live in our little town and I think they're doing a terrific job of doing something that noone else was in our area. We were most dissapointed that there were quite a number of stalls handing out stacks of stickers, magnets and brochures. I try not to take brochures if I don't really need them as I feel it promotes waste and our kids are the same. It made me quite cross when stall holders said to take them anyway as they had heaps. But the worst of all was (this really made my blood boil) was the big box hardware stall that was giving out balloons on those plastic stick things - how does that promote sustainability? Piles of extra plastic off to landfill - not impressed.

There were however some good talks going on about growing food, backyard chooks etc which was good to see, though we didn't stop.

The most exciting thing for us at the expo was having a chance to look at some electric cars. They're way out of the budget, but fun to dream about!

After a family siesta, we headed out again for a fun family meal out followed by a concert that we all performed in (dancing and drumming) to raise funds for the Make-a-wish foundation. The concert showcased lots of different dance genres and schools from the area. It was a good night and I was made so proud by my family and all of my dance students who put on a fabulous demonstration of the joy, inclusiveness and beauty of belly dance.

Sunday morning was a true celebration of our evolving mini farm - the kids played outside in their pyjamas with their homemade toys. They caught escapee chooks to return to their homes and hunted for eggs. Meanwhile, I picked tomatoes and Stu and I prepared the kitchen for making another batch of passata. I peeled tomatoes, Stu washed bottles, then the boys came back in and all four our us ground the tomatoes and bottled them with a few basil leaves before processing the bottles in the Vacola. So much fun and I'm sure we'll be able to taste our smiles and laughter in each bottle.

Grinding up tomatoes

Cappings bottles is a team effort

The sun was starting to beat down by then, so after a brunch of fluffy pancakes with fresh fruit and homemade jam, we grabbed our gear for a trip to the beach.

We swam, boogie boarded, played in the sand and taught the boys to snorkel. Everyone was in such a great mood it was one of the best beach visits ever!
Sunday arvo, we topped of the weekend with a play at a neighbour's for the boys, a garden project planning session for us, a beer with another neighbour and a delicious home cooked dinner.

Fabulous weekend.

I hope your weekend was great too, and if not, I'll send a little of our sunshine your way.

Sweetcorn and veggie garden plans

I harvested all of our sweetcorn this week.  The whole lot was picked for a few reasons:

1. Most of it was ready
2. I can't water all of my veg beds anymore - there just isn't enough water
3. I need to start preparing beds for the winter crops

I've grown sweetcorn a few times now.  The first time was beginners luck and, though I didn't plant much, I ended up with lots of perfectly formed cobs.  The second time was a complete failure, resulting in about four poorly formed cobs.  This year was somewhere in the middle. I had a few perfect cobs, lots of poorly pollinated cobs (despite my efforts to hand pollinate) and some that just didn't form at all.  So my resulting harvest needed a bit of sorting.

Sorting the harvest

I was able to serve us up a meal of perfect corn-on-the-cob.  It was the best we'd ever tasted!  So sweet and juicy - yum!

I was also able to serve us a stir fry with "baby corn" using the cobs that were immature and didn't form.  The boys were thrilled that I'd been able to grow one of their favourite veggies, but disappointed that "that was it" and that it was actually an accident!

And with all of the cobs that hadn't pollinated properly, I cut the kernels from the cobs, blanched them and froze them for use when I can't get cheap, fresh corn.

You know, we used to eat so much frozen corn and peas, I used to buy a bag of each weekly!  It was all the kids would eat in terms of veg, and it was so eeeeeeaaasy.  I would "cook" a bowlful to serve as a side dish, or chuck it into a pasta or rice dish.  These days, our veggie garden is so much more productive and the kids are much more experimental with veg (mostly because they don't have a choice!) that I barely buy frozen veggies.  I've also stopped buying any frozen veg that isn't Australian grown (mostly frozen peas, corn and potatoes are grown in New Zealand, which just seems sad to me), and so I have to buy a more expensive brand, and I'm less inclined to use it quickly.

So, now I have an empty garden bed and it is time to start preparations for the next big round of plantings.  Until last year, I pretty much didn't bother with a planting for winter veg, and then last year, I left it too late.  So this year, I have a pad and pen and lots of planting charts and I'm planning well. 

I intend to grow beetroot, purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, lettuce, coriander, wong boks, silverbeet and snow peas as our basic veg for the cooler months.  I'll also be putting in garlic and onions.  Two of my big veg beds will get a green manure treatment - soybeans in one and broad beans in the other.  The beans will give the soil a good dose of nitrogen and I'll also be able to harvest the beans - some for us and some for the chooks.

After such an incredibly dry summer, all of my beds also need a boost of organic matter, so I'll be adding in compost, horse manure (its not the best manure as it often results in weed growth, but its easy for us to come by) and also things like the corn stalks which I will bury beneath the soil to break down on their own. 

Some of the summer crops still have a month or so to go, but that's OK, those that are done will be clearing the space for the first plantings, and the plants that need to be sewn in cooler weather will go in later.

I plan to try to grow most of my new plants from seed again, and have ordered more seed for those I'll be planting.  Some things will be planted directly in the garden, and those that need to be planted in seed trays will be planted in my cold frame (the window in top will be replaced with shade cloth to make it a shade house).

So much to do, but I'm really looking forward to continuing to produce 90% of our families vegetables through the winter months.

So much Pizza dough! (and the recipe)

What could be better than sitting in your garden on a balmy Saturday evening with a big relaxed group of your friends and a cold drink in your hand?  All of that with pizza from the pizza oven of course :)

Having now mastered the skill of churning out yummy pizzas from our oven, we decided to invite friends around to share.  With a mixed bunch of friends around - workmates, belly dance students and local friends - we all got down to the business of making, cooking and eating pizzas, all while downing a few cold ones and enjoying the wonderful company.  The kids were up in the trees and the cubby house, chatting the the chooks and dogs and on the trampoline.  The occasional adult joined in the fun (back flips on the trampoline from one very energetic grown up!) and were delighted with the excellent behaviour of all the children. 

Before our guests arrived, our kids handed out important jobs to each of us.  I was on food preparation, Stu was on fire and cooking duties and they were the entertainment crew!  We all excelled at our jobs, if I do say so myself!  I prepared about three times as much dough as we needed, a stack of snacks and my share of pizza toppings, then, together with our guests who all brought along a contribution of pizza toppings, prepared amazing looking and tasting pizzas.  We handed these to Stu who, bright red and covered in sweat from the heat of his amazingly well prepared pizza oven, cooked them in a few minutes.  The first ones in the oven cooked so quickly that they burnt on one side before he could turn them!  But they all tasted good (and the chooks and dogs appreciated the odd crust that was a bit too charred).  The kids did a great job of entertaining the crowd - sharing and playing with all of the kids and occasionally chatting to the grown ups and giving shoulder massages later in the evening.

Of course, no one had time to take any photos of all of this fun, so I can't share any, but hopefully you get an idea of what a great night it was.

Sunday, we declared a day of rest and recuperation after a busy day and night preparing for and enjoying the party.  But my garden had other ideas.  With the fruit and veg ripening at a cracking rate now, I am having to pick, cook and preserve each day.  I peeled, chopped, minced, dried and bottled for most of the day.  It was hard, hot work, but Stu turned the split system air conditioner back on at the switch for the first time since October.  Air conditioning felt like such an indulgence, but with our solar panels producing more than three times the amount of power we usually use, and with us not yet being paid for any fed into the grid, we figured we deserved the indulgence.

Then, faced with huge quantities of leftover dough and pizza toppings (perhaps I did my job too well), we decided to get the oven going again.  This time, we made a huge quantity of mini pizzas that cooked beautifully!  They are perfect lunchbox size too, so after enjoying a couple for tea, I cooled the rest and put them in the freezer for easy lunches for all of us for the next week (and remembered to take a photo!).  Then, oven still hot, I cooked our first successful loaf of bread in the pizza oven (my secret being - cook it in the cast iron casserole pot to give even, moist heat), closely followed by my second successful loaf!  A dozen muffins and a huge nectarine crumble followed the bread. 

Mini pizzas!

With the store cupboard gaining another 14 jars of preserved food, the freezer full, lunches and desserts sorted for the week, I called it a day and took an early night ready for another day of heat and preserving.

I had a lot of requests for my pizza dough recipe on the weekend, so thought I would share it here.  It's from one of my favourite cook books - both for the recipes and the gorgeous presentation - The Thrifty Kitchen.

Pizza dough (serves 2)

(for our family, I make double which makes enough small pizzas for tea and leftovers)

2 1/4 cups plain flour
7g dry yeast (that's one sachet)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup warm water

Mix all of the ingredients together until a dough forms. 
Knead for about 5 minutes. 
Cover and put in a warm place for an hour. 
( If I'm doing pizza for tea, I make this at lunchtime and put it in a big airtight container in the fridge for the afternoon.  It still rises beautifully.)
Take a handful or two of dough, knead slightly in your hands and then roll out to use for pizza.
(We roll ours out on wooden boards with a good handful of semolina below the dough.  The semolina stops the dough from sticking, allowing it to be transferred to the oven floor or a pizza stone)
Add a small number of toppings and cook on a pizza stone which has been heated in a very hot oven or BBQ for about 10 minutes.
(or on the floor of your stinking hot pizza oven for a few minutes!)
Enjoy!

Loving the sunshine

Happy valentines day folks. Do you celebrate valentines day in your home? So close to our  wedding anniversary, we have never bothered, but we always say it, and this morning I decorated Stu's morning cuppa with a heart and served my little loved ones heart shaped toast.

This year though, I'm getting an elaborate gift for valentines day - 20 solar panels on my roof!

They're making me power right now, so the cuppa I'm having this arvo and tonight's dinner are being cooked using our very own homemade power! How cool is that? We won't be getting any feed in tariffs for a little bit though until the power company comes and reconfigures our meter box.  But this valentines day I'm loving the sunshine even more as this amazing technology makes us clean energy to power our home.

These 20 panels face west, so will produce slightly less power than if we'd had a north facing roof, but  they will still make more than enough power for us through the summer months and will come close to meeting our needs in the rest of the year. We will still be grid connected and so will always have access to plenty of power, but we've also secured a great feed-in tariff, that will be locked in for 3 years, with  an energy provider who only buys power from renewable sources. So every kWh of power that we use will be green power. Gotta love that!

And one more thing I love - sharing all of this with you! This is my 100th blog post, and that makes me very happy. Thanks for reading, commenting and sharing. Have a great day.

Sun dried nectarines

Stu and I picked half a box full of nectarines on the weekend. The tree is still laden - we just picked the ripest ones.

Beautiful, plump, sweet smelling white nectarines.

Monday morning, he asked what I was going to do with the picked fruit. I told him we would eat that lot fresh, I planned to bottle the next box as there weren't quite enough to warrant a bottling day in this lot. He looked from me to the box with raised eyebrows and then took some to work to share with his workmates.

I was beginning to think that maybe he was right - we wouldn't eat all of those nectarines before they started to mould, and there was to be another lot picked in only a few days. But I was right too - there weren't enough to bottle in that box,  what to do?

Then Lachie, who was chomping down a bowl of our homemade muesli for breakfast said "gee I love dried fruit mum, it's the best thing ever". Lightbulb moment! I would dry some nectarines for using in our breakfast muesli! Only one snag, I don't own a dehydrator. I considered popping a post on Facebook asking to borrow one from one of the friends I know who have them (perhaps I should even buy one of my own?). And then I remembered this post on drying tomatoes and realised that I do own a dehydrator - a big one affectionately known as Roary by our family - our car.

With the car parked out of the carport in the sun, even on a relatively mild summers day, it gets hot in there. So I chopped up my nectarines into 8 wedges each, dunked the wedges into a little citric acid in water to prevent them going too brown (lemon juice would have worked too, but my tree has no ripe lemons at the moment and the only lemons available to buy in summer are imported from the USA), arranged the wedges on trays and put them onto the cars dashboard.

Fully dried nectarines - free from the sun :)

I turned them every couple of hours* and by the end of the day they were well on their way, but still quite moist inside.  I've tried drying before and know that if you want things to last, they need to be really dry.  So I left them for another half day in the sunshine, after which they were deliciously leathery and well dried. 

Preparing for bottling

I used about 20 nectarines which filled three baking trays (the pieces spread out so they weren't touching).  This made about 2 cups worth of dried nectarines.  I've put some more in the car now, and will probably do another batch or more before the tree is empty as we go through a good amount of dried fruit in our house.  We'll still give some fruit to family and friends, eat plenty fresh, and today, I've used my "new" Vacola that I bought on Ebay to bottle a batch for out of season fruit snacks and desserts.  The birds will get some, but the beautiful bounty from that tree (that we grew from a tiny seedling in just 7 years) will not go to waste.

Our nectarine tree in the foreground.  It was planted as a 15cm seedling in late 2005.

*the first batch I put with their cut side down on the trays, so turning was essential, as the fruit stuck to the trays as it cooked in the sun.  I've since put in another batch, this time skin side down on the trays.  They don't need to be turned and may dry quicker as more of the flesh is exposed for dehydration.

Discovering bartering

I've always loved the idea of bartering, but never found opportunities to do it. In the last couple of weeks I've discovered several such opportunities and I'm loving it!

I'm doing some casual tutoring for a teenage friend. I really enjoy stretching my brain and using all that stored up knowledge from my science, maths and teaching degrees, and because I'm keeping the sessions casual, it doesn't really feel like work. I tutored her a bit last year and her mum paid me for the sessions, but this year, I asked for no cash payment. Instead, her mum (who happens to be one of my best friends) will be doing some other things in return. Today, she baked us a delicious banana bread and later in the week, she is going to fix my iPod for me - something I don't know how to do, and would otherwise cost me quite a lot of money. I don't expect something each week, but get so much more enjoyment out of the payment in goods or services than if it was cash.

We happened across another trade this week, completely by accident. Stu took in some zucchinis and nectarines for his work mates, and one of them sent back, empty jars and egg cartons and has promised to hunt out her unused vacola jars for us too. The excess food isn't a loss for us, but a saving and a treat for her. Getting rid of jars that are unused and taking up space in her home is beneficial for her, while receiving free, useful jars for preserving our crops is wonderful for me!

Next week, I'll be doing some sewing for a dance student's mum who doesn't have the time and expertise to do it herself. She offered to pay me for the job, but I think I will ask if she would like to barter instead - I know she doesn't have a lot of spare money, but as a dairy farmer, she should be able to trade raw milk that I can use in my cheese making.

I have been reading with much interest about 'crop and swap' community gatherings and would love to be involved with one someday. But for now, I'm enjoying trading my goods and services for much appreciated others. I think I will make this my newest challenge, to hunt for opportunities to barter.

Do you barter? What have you traded? Any suggestions?

11 years

Eleven years ago, we got hitched. A white wedding in the botanic gardens with family and friends present. Despite the February rain and the unseasonal chill, it was a beautiful day.

The last eleven years have been full of adventures and boring days; great times and not-so-great times; laughter and tears; new arrivals and sad departures but through all of it, we've been together. As promised in our wedding vows - best friends always.

Our challenge today, to choose one photo for each year that represents just one of the high points of that year. It was tough to choose just one, and we've had to leave out so many holidays, pets and good times, but here they are - 11 years of us.

2002 - We got married! 

2003 - We went to Thailand for the 2nd time

2004 - We brought home our baby boys
(and despite the look on Stu's face, were thrilled!)
 



2005 - We bought our new home.

2006 - Our beautiful dog Buddy joined the family.

2007 - We began renovations on our house - removing the old chimney.

 

2008 - My belly dance journey began

2009 - We took a family holiday to the Gold Coast.

2010 - Little Hurley became the baby of the house, a friend for Buddy.

2011 - A family trip to New Zealand.

2012 - We renovated our kitchen!

2013 - Relay for life as a family with our school. 
A great way to spend your wedding anniversary.

It's been an amazing 11 years and I can't think of anyone else I would rather have spent it with.

This week I'm an event organiser.....

A lot of my time lately has been taken up with preparing for a belly dance camp I will be hosting in May this year, and I thought it was about time the blog saw a bit more of my life as a belly dancer!

In 2009, as a fledgling teacher, my friend Sharon and I hosted our first ever Night Bazaar.  It was held in the gardens of the local nursing home and we had dance groups from all around come and put on a wonderful, colourful show for the locals.  We had a number of stalls and people came to pinic on the lawn, enjoy the show and shop. We were thrilled with the success.

Some of my students at our first ever Night Bazaar.

In 2011, we hosted another Night Bazaar, but this time, went out on a limb and combined it with a camp.  We expected about 20 of our closest dance buddies to show up, we hoped another teacher might teach a dance workshop and we thought we would put on a little show too.  Well, the camp was a massive success!  We sold out, had to put on an extra set of workshops (and still had more teacher's asking to teach), had a fabulous show, lots of stalls and people standing outside the venue just to see in!  We were, again, blown away!

Me as a student in a "ballet for bellydancers" workshop at the 2011 camp

Some of the fabulous performers at the 2011 Night Bazaar

We were immediately asked when the next camp would be.  It was tempting at the time to make it for the next year, but we knew that most of our supporters are mothers, without a massive amount of disposable income and that perhaps doing it every year would make the event stale, so we scheduled another for 2013.

Last October, I started advertising the camp.  By Christmas time, I had sold 40 of the 50 camp places, had 3 fabulous teachers from Adelaide, Melbourne and Geelong in place to teach workshops (I'll also be teaching), was set to be the Victorian host of the ShimmySkirt project and well on the way to preparing for camp.

Our logo for 2013.  Copyright Meenkeel Gypsies, Koroit Belly Dance and Elissa Taylor 2013

This week, I have only a few places left to sell, and have been busy allocating people rooms, checking payments, sending letters to all of our campers, planning workshops, planning menus (yes, we feed them too!), liaising with screen printers and our designer for tshirts and sorting out the performance.  In the next few weeks, I will have to speak with the venue and work out how many tickets I can sell to non-campers for the performance night and have a meeting with my fellow committee members to move along the preparations for food, stalls and a fundraising raffle.

Its an awful lot of work - voluntary work that I'm not trained for.  But I love it!  I love the organising and planning and the fiddling around with the fine details.  But most of all, I love that I am able to put on a wonderful weekend that people look forward to.  A weekend full of feminine joy, friendships, giggles, makeup and dressing up with friends, performing, teaching and learning, and community spirit.  I can't wait!

Rocket chai!

It's been raining here. It is so lovely to watch the droopy shrubs perk up and the veggie patch looking vital again. And our tanks are full! The loss of our bore water connection this summer had me worried and I was beginning to think we might end up needing to buy water during those long, hot and dry weeks when I was having to pour our rain water on the garden to keep our veggies alive. But with full tanks at the start of February, I feel confident that we'll be OK. That's important to me. I feel that even if we can't be self sufficient for everything, it is important to be able to look after the basics - simple cooking, growing a few edibles, home maintenance and gathering enough water and managing its use so it is enough. Clearly we want to be much more self sufficient than that, but that is my base line.

While thinking about that, and hearing stories of people being without power and phone, and cut off from the rest of the world by floods and fires, I've started thinking more about our emergency plans. Hopefully, we never have a big emergency, but evem if we don't, we do often have to cope without power for a few hours, and I want those occasions to be easy to deal with. We are so reliant on power for the operations in our homes. Here, we have no natural gas and, in our home, absolutely everything is electric. When we have no power, it isn't only heating, cooling and the kettle that we lose, but our oven and stove are out of action and we can't even get water from the taps as they rely on an electric pump. If I know the power will be out, I put water in the sink to wash hands, fill water bottles and a thermos for hot water etc, but when it is unexpected, we're stuck.

So this is one of my goals for February. To organise a water supply that is not reliant on the power, or a non-powered way to access our tank water. And I'm also playing with ideas for how to cook and otherwise cope so that we don't feel that we have to go somewhere else or resort to takeaway dinners just because I don't have an oven.

Yesterday, we played with one of those ideas. We built a rocket stove in our garden using the simple plans from a Grassroots magazine. It was a very quick and easy build using things we scrounged from the garden - about 15 bricks, a tin can and the metal pot holder borrowed from the BBQ. We built it on the concrete behind the pizza oven, and the first version was on the ground. But it did really need to be raised so that it could be cooked on and fed sticks easily. We scanned the garden looking for something and spotted the no longer needed old toilet and a slab of concrete.  A quick rebuild and our rocket stove was complete. We were highly amused by our use of the old loo - Stu's parents who were visiting think we've lost the plot ;)

So the idea of the rocket stove is that it burns sticks to cook things in the pot at the top. It works, but not fabulously. For us, it was at least a two person job. Someone had to be sitting feeding in sticks constantly and tending the fire, while someone else found the sticks, broke them to the right length and saw to the food on top. It was fun though, and the boys got involved with the fire feeding as well.

Our stove wasn't exactly great and may need some adjustments, but we'll keep working on it (the pizza oven was terrible the first time we used it too, but we've learnt how to use it now). We did manage to cook something though. A large pot of homemade chai. It was definitely slow living (the chai took almost two hours!) but it was so much fun and boy did that chai taste good sitting together as a family sharing our 'rocket chai' in the garden. The slowest rocket in history!

If I can't get the stove to work better than that, it won't be a terribly popular cooking method. But if we were without power, I could at least boil water for tea and make a simple hot meal using only a pile of sticks and leaves from the garden as fuel.

And now, would you like to make some chai too? Here is my from scratch recipe - feel free to use a conventional stove to get somewhat faster results ;)

Chai blend

Crush the following in a mortar and pestle: 3 cinnamon sticks, 12 peppercorns, 12 cloves 4 whole crushed allspice and 6 cardamom pods.  Mix in 1 tsp crushed cumin, 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1/2 cup of black tea.  You can use the crushed or uncrushed equivalents if needed, just make sure they are still fragrant and fresh.  Store in an airtight container until needed.

To brew chai

Add about a heaped teaspoon of the above mix to about 2 cups of water.  Bring to the boil.  Boil for 3-4 minutes.  Add about a cup of milk (soy is nice, but cows/goats works just fine) and boil for a further minute.  Strain tea into mugs and add honey (or sugar or vanilla sugar etc) to taste. Enjoy!

A dal kofta platter

Linda who blogs over at The Witches Kitchen has been writing about platters this year. Beautifully presented, delicious, healthy and seasonal platters of food to share with a friend, the whole family or guests too. We love a good platter at our house. It is casual dining at its very best. Finger foods that can be mixed and matched to suit each diners tastes.

Platters are often used on Thursday nights at our place because Thursdays are busy for me. Last night was my first work night of the year, so a platter was called for and it was so pretty and yummy I just had to share.

Spinach roti from this recipe, made using our silverbeet and garlic and baked in the pizza oven on Sunday night and frozen.

Dal kofta balls from this recipe. I made the whole batch and we have enough balls in the freezer to have as a curry on the weekend with naan that I also cooked in the pizza oven.

Fresh lettuce, celery and grated carrot from the garden.

A simple homemade yoghurt dip/sauce (no recipe, just some yoghurt and herbs thrown together).

And a few other bits and pieces, including a dash of chilli tomato chutney (would have put fresh tomatoes on, but we've still only had one ripen this year).

Yum.