Harvesting!

Love it! There is nothing as good as going out to the garden and coming back with an armful!
I went and pulled some carrots this morning (1 kg with the tops trimmed) and half a kilo of cherry tomatoes of varying sorts. Dont they look good?


Carrots are for my Mum and Sister
 

On Sunday I cut some of my rosemary where the "branches" (do I call them something else??) had started growing roots and transplanted them in a bed along the back fence. I read that rosemary can be grown like a hedge and this is what I am going for. That particular bed keeps getting over run by Brides Veil, a thin grass runner and I can not keep it out, so I am going to let the rosemary takeover - with a bit of help from moi.

Rosemary after her cut



Two new rosemary plants

Since Dave is making my new vege bed I can afford to give up that spot. I would like to be more organised this winter and have us eating solely out of the garden for our vege. This means more planning and less dreaming about the garden!

2013

Happy New Year All!!!

No parties here last night, in fact I didn't here a peep. I did get up to watch the Sydney Harbour fireworks then went back to bed!

Today David and I have been cleaning the house, a very industrious start to the new year. Have a pile of stuff to take to the charity shop that got bigger today as we added more to the pile.

This is what I picked from the garden this morning, pretty good start to 2013I think. There is some rainbow chard, 2 potatoes, 2 zucchinis, carrots and some cherry tomatoes. Colourful and yummy. All the veg will be eaten tonight at dinner and the tomatoes with lunches or just as a snack.

I am hoping that this year will have more fun, more laughs, more gardening and less of the crappy stuff. I think being a bit more organised will go a very long way to getting rid of stress.

Carrots & Cups

Amelia and I picked 2 kgs of carrots on Wednesday. They are the last for a little while as I am fiddling about with the beds and having a good think about them. Wesley and I blanched and froze the lot on Thursday afternoon so there is a good lot put away. I also pulled another heap of beetroot and pickled them. I think we should have enough now to last us the summer.

I bought these Eco cups about 6 weeks ago and have been using them everyday. They are made out of bamboo and are 100% biodegradable. They have the look of melamine and are not dishwasher safe though you can use them for hot or cold drinks. I paid $20 for the 6. It will be interesting to see how they go with long term use! Part of you kind of expects them to go soft sooner or later!!! Ha!

Cleaning out the Fridge

Last night I needed to clean out the fridge so I got out the slow cooker! I went through and chopped up older vegies and tossed them all in with some browned mince. It cooked on slow overnight for tonight’s dinner – we love savoury mince!

Into the slow cooker went the last of the peas from Wesley’s Ag plot at school, from Mum and Dad’s place there was zucchini and green & yellow beans, our garden contributed carrots, onion, garlic, squash and capsicums. I’ve no idea where the tomatoes came from, either the market or
Coles I would say.

I have to say it is still gives a great feeling when the majority of a meal comes from the garden or rather gardens!

Sunday Strawberry Picking

In Friday's local paper there was an ad inviting people to come and pick their own strawberries this morning for $6 a kg. Yep only $6 a kilo! Well we went out this morning (minus Wes who had important teenage boy stuff to do) and it was really fun!Strawberries everywhere! Yum!

Amelia was picking, she restrained herself - we all did - and didn't have any taste tests!

Dave started loading up his shirt at one stage!

The smell is so gorgeous - really strong.

We ended up with 2.8kg of strawberries. You bring your own containers and they weigh them empty so that you don't pay for their weight. Not that they care too much as she only charged us for 2.5kg.

Thinking strawberry shortcake or strawberry muffins or strawberry milkshakes/smoothies or pavlova or any yummy strawberry thing. We will head out next Sunday and get another lot as I will make a batch of jam with them!

Mum, Can We Do Craft???

Most of the time I really enjoy hearing those words and luckily Sunday was one of them! I was already in sewing mode so when Amelia asked me it was easy fabric bookmarks. She got to cut, iron and sew them, though i guided the second one and she just used the pedal. Easy peasy.
Cherries are coming along! Yummy!! So decadent!
First onion pulled yay!

Harvest

Guess what I picked and pickled today???? Not hard to guess beetroot is it? Ha! Ha!
I got these jars out of it and I used a different pickling mix than I did last time, this one has cinnamon in it and all spice - I left out the cloves as I'm not that keen on them. This is a bit sweeter than the usual.

I also harvested all the broccoli and some of the cauliflower. I blanched the lot and now can't buy any more freezer stuff unless I turn on the big freezer and I don't want to do that as we haven't had the seals redone on it yet and the frosting up drives me nuts! We also picked some carrots both orange and purple, though I couldn't use some of the purple ones as they were affected in the same way as the parsnips. I only have a few more things to pull from that garden and once they are out I will give it a good build up and deal with the too much nitrogen issue.

We also picked peas, spinach and celery! It was pretty fun. Wes helped me do some weeding and Amelia planted her sunflowers. I could have had a sleep in that warm afternoon sun. It was a struggle not to just lay down and snooze!

My first Pea

Here is my first picked pea. I picked it on Friday afternoon. Isn't it glorious?


I have picked some more today, so the pea is not so lonely anymore. Wesley tasted garden peas for the first time today and now loves them! So I had alot more then what I have now - I know better to put myself between a growing teenager and food!
It makes you wonder how many other foods on the "yuck" list would make it to the "yes please more" list if they tried the home grown type.

August Gardening

Today (as I have said) we are having our first real rain of the month, twenty seven days into it! There have been some great successes and some failures.
On the failure side - or rather "learning experience" side we have the parsnips. The looked great, leafy with good looking tops, then I pulled a couple. They grew for about an inch then went all "rooty" for lack of a better description. I have left the others in there for another couple of weeks in the hopes of a miraculous recovery - i'm not hopefull.

Also the dwarf peas have failed to fill their pods. I am thinking that next year I will plant them in a different spot as the place they are in is very shaded. Its a learning curve. UPDATE! Today I found a few pods with peas. How long does it take for the pod to fill with peas?Happily there are lots of good stuff, onions and garlic are looking good, carrots, spinach and beetroots are giving a steady stream of yummies and the broccoli is ready to be picked. Still waiting on the purple carrots, rainbow beetroot and celery they should be good by mid September and the first cauliflower has been picked.

Time to start thinking Spring plantings. I am thinking of going for cherry tomatoes, grape and black russians. Potatoes ... maybe Desiree and Kipfler, last year the Atlantics didnt do too well at all. Going to have green and yellow zucchinis and planting the apple cucumbers again.Spring is full of possibilities, maybe even chooks if I keep working on Dave!

A Little Bit of This and That

I did some spending today. Some of it was bargains that I will actually use too! I found Wes a pair of sport shorts for $10 (rather than the nearly exact same ones at Premier for $29), 2 packtet of Christmas wrap for 25c each, So I have about 30m of that now. I bought some ham for lunch, a punnet of strawberries of the strawberry lady for $2, I got a bottle of shampoo and conditioner for $2 per bottle (which was on my grocery list for this week) and a bottle of rinse aid for $2 which the Finish brand goes for about $7-$8. I also noticed Crazy Clarks has deodarant for $2, even Lynx roll on!

I spent $1 on this tablecloth and 6 cloth placemats from a garage sale. I am planning to use both in sewing projects throughout the year. Can't tell you too much!

I finally cut out Amelia's second dress that I will , hopefully start to put together tommorrow.

Potatoes. The Desirees did really well but the Atlantic.. not so much. I started harvesting them as a couple of the Atlantics I pulled for dinner looked like they were going soft, so I took it for a sign. Got stacks of mulch for the rest of the garden now!

Dave cooking tea. We had meat with coleslaw, pineapple, cucumber, beetroot and new baby potatoes. Was delish.

Here is Wesley's desk sitting waiting for all that glorious homework that will be coming his way this year. How lucky is Wes? (He will say not that lucky at all! LOL!)

The other thing I spent money on was morning tea. That was $22 but since Dave and the Kids had been deprived of their usual treats I thought it money well spent to stop mutiny. Tomorrow is the Day we will be cutting back the Austar. We are going to that basic package with paying an extra five dollars for the SciFi channel per month as both Wes and Dave watch that. Amelia is already mourning Ceebeebies.

Back to Baking

Firstly an update on my "Mindfulness" for 2011. I think I am going ok. I did our groceries for a fortnight and it cost $150.00 - with meat. I didnt buy anything I didnt need, no specials for a raining day, no back to school stuff that I can buy cheaper elsewhere or any one off speciality items, you know that ones where you buy it for a recipe that only needs one teaspoon and then it sits at the back of your cupboard until it expires and you throw out the $5 worth of unused stuff? That stuff.

I have been reading and thinking a lot about 'stuff' lately. How much of it I buy that I don't need. Or I buy because I think I should. For example, its back to school time and that means uiniforms and shoes.

Both of the kids cannot get away with last years uniforms, unless Amelia is happy with everyone seeing her undies and Wes embraces testicle separation. Shoes are our big ticket item. Last year Wes went through 3 pairs of joggers and 2 school shoes, Amelia went through two of each. Thankfully instead of just buying new school shoes I got them to try on the ones I had bought at the beginning of term 3 and they still fit! Bonus!

The joggers were another story. Wesley's had worn out and Amelia's had gotten too small. I told Wes that I was not going to be buying $100 shoes. I wasn't putting him in Dunlop Volleys but I had taken notice of the shoes his friends wear and the majority wear generic brands. With that in mind we firstly went to Target to see what they had, they were having a massive sale on shoes. Amelia was easy, as long as they have some pink on them she don't care, so hers came to the princely sum of $6.90 and Dave found a new pair of work shoes down to $9.80. Wes wasn't that keen to start with but then we found a pair of Spalding joggers (that looked just the same as a pair of New Balance we had seen previously) reduced from $40 to $11 and we had a winner, though we were going to have to buy a pair of inner soles for them as the ones that come with the joggers were a bit thin. Went to the chemist and got two pairs of innersoles for $5.50. I put the second pair in his black school shoes. So all up for the school shoes I paid $23.40!


Then in a frenzy I came home and cleaned out Wesley's room. It took 2 hours. Every shelf, cupboard and drawer got the treatment and we ended up with 3 bags of rubbish and 1 bag to Vinnie. We found so many pens, pencils and notebooks I doubt we will have to buy any anytime soon and his room looks pretty good.


Mindfullness came into this dinner. Nearly all the vegies are home grown, though not necessarily our home. We are trying tofu for the first time. I am hopeful. It makes economic sense to replace just one meal a week with tofu. It's roughly $3 for 600g for tofu so at least half the cost of the cheaper meats. It is probably better for you too as we humans eat too much meat! I know we rarely eat a dinner without it.

And referencing the title of this post I have made a committment to go bake to baking. I have been slipping back into old habits. I have no excuse. However Dave and I are going to get back into baking bread and baking our crackers, biscuits etc rather than buying. The above is Banana bread.

This is me blanching zucchini. I read on a website you can blanch it so I am going for it. It is such a shame to have to give so much away when I could be storing it for later on. Don't get me wrong, I am more than happy to share the zucchini love but it is good to keep some for yourself too!

Chocolate and Sultana Muffins

Now back to stuff. I think when it comes to budgeting I suck. I really try and I usually do a good job but my downfall is stuff. Or you could unkindly say shit. So I have been trying to focus on not bringing anymore stuff home from the shops. This doesn't include necessary items but just that extra stuff that jumps into your hand. For example, you go into the supermarket for ONE thing and that one thing ends up costing $20 because of all the other one things you have picked up. Turns into a very expensive loaf of bread. So this week we are focussing on the extras. I have my fingers crossed!

Peaches

When we were at Mum and Dad's place yesterday, they gave me a heap of peaches. Specifically though Dad wanted me to have a go at preserving them. I have done beetroot before but never fruit. I consulted my trusty book and decided on a medium syrup. I made up three bottles of them and they have sealed. The rest will make up a batch of peach jam tomorrow.

This is the peaches before going into the vacola.

Potato!

Introducing ....... my first potato! Taaa daaa!

In this pan (other than the mince) everything is home grown (mine or Mum & Dads). This is tonights tea, savoury mince.

Gunnedah Christmas Trip

Dad's harvest; it just happened to be sitting on the table.

The birthday girl, with her present from Mum and Dad.

Oooo a zucchini patch kid!

Megan's harvest. I have to say I am a little suspicious of the asparagus. Can't put my finger on why though.....

Meeting of the minds.

Dad's vegetable garden.

Two best cousins.

My gorgeous table runner that Mum made me.

A Girl Bag

Well I am rather impressed with myself, I made the bag from Little Girl Pearl's blog. It was so much fun and it looks great (I think). I also managed to give my sewing machine a service so now it is working a treat. Did I say it's reversible? Cause it is!