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.