Maintaining The Castle

A New Corner

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Posted on August 4, 2012

This afternoon The Duke and I did a bit more sorting out in the workshop. This area is almost the size of a double garage. It has a workbench and storage cupboards built-in as well as various other storage that we have acquired.

Keeping it neat and tidy is difficult as there always seems to be a project in progress. However, we do need to keep some state of order as it is located between the double garage and the downstairs entry to the house.

We had some shelving that had come from my parents’ home and we decided to rearrange things and put the shelving up.

Here it is in the corner next to the door into the downstairs entrance foyer. There is also plenty of space to store our garden shoes/workboots/gumboots.

I am not even sure what I will put on the shelves yet but I am really pleased that they are installed.

It is another small step towards getting and keeping things organised.

Falling Into Place

Freezer Finds

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Posted on July 30, 2012

My freezer is one of the most useful appliances I have. I am able to buy larger quantities of some items and avoid going to the shops as frequently as I would otherwise and of course it is wonderful to be able to store excess produce.

I have 2 freezers – one is the bottom 1/3 of my refrigerator in the kitchen. It has a narrow shelf at the top and 2 large pull-out baskets. The second freezer is the size of a bar fridge and lives in the study.

Since we are going on holidays in 3 weeks I have been trying to use up some of the food that is in the freezers with a view to being able to empty and turn off the stand-alone freezer. The first thing to do was to make an inventory of everything that is in them so here is the list.

Ground coffee
Pineapple (fresh, very ripe so will be juicing it)
Refried beans (homemade) 500g x 4 packs
Ice-cream – 3/4 of a 2 litre tub
Grated cheese – 4 large containers (I buy 2 kg block of cheese from a local factory and grate it)
Spreadable butter blend (homemade) 500g x 2
Grated zucchini – 400g packs x 2
Beef curry – 6 serves
Lasagne – 2 serves (lunch sized)
Chili con carne – 2 serves
Beef & vegie casserole – 6 serves
Tomato/pasta sauce (homemade) – 750ml x 2
Lasagna sheets (homemade) x 12
Fettucine (homemade) – 2 serves
Gravy beef – 500g x 2 packs
Chicken breast fillets x 4
Sausages x 2
Bacon (shortcut) x 7 slices
Sausage rolls (mini) x 5 – thawing for lunches today with salad
Sweet pastry (homemade) x 1 quantity
Savoury pastry (homemade) x 1 quantity
Baked sweet pastry (was tart shell which broke)
Sliced white bread (homemade) – 7 slices
Gluten free bread (1/2 loaf)
Breadcrumbs (soft and toasted)
French stick (sliced and in a bag)
Fruit muffins (crumbled in a small container)
Mashed pumpkin (to make pumpkin soup)
Lemon zest
Lemon juice (2 litres)
Lemon juice (ice cubes – about 4 dozen)
Lime juice (ice cubes – about 4 dozen)
Sliced limes – 2 containers
Orange juice – single serves x 3
Banana x 1
Passionfruit ice cubes x 15
Turkish bread rolls x 4

Bag of meat scraps

The freezers are a constant dynamic as shown by the following changes in the past 36 hours since I made that list.

Lasagne – ~~2 serves~~ (lunch sized) – now 1 serve
~~Fettucine (homemade) – 2 serves~~ – used
Chicken breast fillets x 4 – now x 3
~~Sausage rolls (mini) x 5 – thawing for lunches today with salad~~ – used
Lime juice (ice cubes – about ~~4 dozen~~) – now 3 dozen
Orange juice – single serves x 3 – now 8 serves – 2 used and 7 more added after juicing the remaining oranges from the tree

I have also added another 2.5 litres of lemon juice.

From my inventory I have made a menu plan and will be using more of the contents over the coming weeks.

I am confident that I will be able to empty the small freezer before we go away. I will post an update of the list in a week or so.

How do you manage the contents of your freezer? Do you keep a precise list or just a general idea with the occasional complete inventory? What do you mostly store – excess produce, bulk meat, prepared meals or baked goods? I would love to hear your story.

Cruel to be Kind

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Posted on July 28, 2012

I always feel cruel at this time of the year as I have to clip our Border Collie dog in preparation for the tick season which usually begins at the start of August. Sometimes I have left it too late with very serious consequences for both the dog and my wallet.

Today was the day and here is the ‘before’ photo.

It is not a particularly good photo as Psycho dog was determined not to co-operate. He co-operated even less once he saw the clippers, however, once I convince him that it has to be done he just stands still and quivers.

I used to pay to have him clipped but then eventually decided that I could do it myself. It has only taken 3 haircuts to recoup the cost of the clippers. While my efforts are not up to show standard I think he looks quite respectable.

Here is the end result.

Once it was all done I washed him with handmade neem soap and then dried him off with the hairdryer and he does look rather gorgeous. I think he will be wearing his Drizabone coat a fair bit for the next month while the weather is still quite cool – particularly at night.

It was imperative that I got this done before we go on holidays as the housesitter will need to check him regularly for ticks and that is nearly impossible while his coat is long.

That is another job ticked off my ‘to do’ list before we head off.

Name & Shame

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Posted on July 26, 2012

I have been busy with work recently and so not much time for my creative pursuits – gardening, cooking and sewing. However, I have been making an effort to finish off some jobs that have hanging around.

Many have been things that I keep meaning to do such as reviewing our phone and internet plans with the current providers. I wrote about this project a couple of days ago and you can read it here. I have decided that the exit fees for our mobile phone contract are too high so we will stick with what we have for the moment and be more vigilant about reviewing the SMS messages that we receive advising that we have used 60% and then 80% of our data quota. I did discover that we can negotiate a new plan once we are within 3 months of the end of our current contract. I have made a note in my diary for the end of December to do this.

Despite not getting quite the outcome I had hoped for, I am certainly not naming and shaming our telephone or internet providers. I am saving that for our electricity company!!

I have written several posts about my battles with Origin Energy since I began this blog in March 2011. I will not bore you with links to them all here but if you put ‘electricity’ or ‘Origin Energy’ into the search function on the right-hand side of the page you will find most of them.

Yesterday, I made yet another phone call to Origin regarding the non-appearance of our latest bill/statement. The meter was read on 28th May which is almost 2 months ago. This has happened every quarter since we had the solar panels installed in November 2010. Despite numerous assurances about ‘the system’, ‘a block on your bill’ and other nonsense being sorted out it never happens and I am just about about breaking point.

As usual, the people who answer the phone copped my wrath, always prefaced with “I know it is not your fault directly”. This time I have the name of the person who took my call initially as well as the contact in the Solar Billing Department. I have advised that I will be sending a letter to the General Manager with a copy to both of the people with whom I spoke directly yesterday.

We have been receiving electricity bills for over 30 years and they have arrived in the mail, as regular as clockwork, within 3-5 working days of the meter being read. This has been the case year in, year out without fail until we had the solar panels installed.

Suddenly, when we are in credit rather than having a bill to pay, we do not receive any notification until I ring up and beg/plead/argue/debate the issue every 3 months. Initially, we were advised that credit would only be paid every 12 months or if we wanted it more often it was up to us to ring Origin and request the payment. Previously, I had an automatic direct debit set up to pay our electricity bill. It is clearly far too difficult for Origin to set up a simple direct credit to my bank account every 3 months when my electricity account is in credit!

I have to battle to even find out how much credit is owing to us while Origin get interest-free use of money which is rightfully ours. Shame on you, Origin!!

Things have improved marginally in the past 18 months. I discovered yesterday that I can now make an online request for payment of any credit balance into my nominated bank account. All I need now is to receive the statements for our electricity account in a timely manner so that we can use the money which we have accrued through the purchase of solar panels and judicious use of electricity.

Origin Energy – lift your game and get this sorted out – NOW!!

I suspect that I am not the only person with billing issues since installing solar panels and I am very keen to hear if anyone else has a similar story to tell. Please leave a comment at the bottom of this page or on my Facebook page. Alternatively, you can email me. The email address is at the foot of this page.

I am particularly in the experiences of other Origin customers, but please feel free to comment, regardless of which provider you have.

To my overseas readers – do you have similar problems?

Review & Save

1 Comment

Posted on July 24, 2012

I have most of our regular expenses set up so that receiving and paying them requires the minimum amount of input from me. This means that we receive as much as possible via email and many of the payments are direct debit.

One downside of this ‘set and forget’ arrangement is that it is easy to lose track of exactly what you are paying for. It is important to regularly review plans and contracts and make sure that they are still meeting your needs. Telecommunications is one area where plans are constantly evolving and being upgraded, however, if you do not ask you will be left on your existing plan. It will still be as good as when you originally chose it but may be lagging behind newer options.

Yesterday I looked at our home broadband, mobile broadband, home phone and 1 mobile phone. Both our home and mobile broadband are with one provider while the telephones are with another. Our telephone provider had contacted me several times about bundling our broadband as well, however, I did not capitulate to the sales pitch and decided to research it all on my own terms.

Firstly, I contacted our internet provider and although the plan I had was the best available for us I discovered that they could upgrade us to a faster speed (about 6 times faster) at no extra cost. Naturally, I agreed to that suggestion. I also confirmed that I could maintain the mobile broadband even if I happened to choose to change my home broadband.

Next, was some research about the bundled products from our telephone provider via their website. I discovered what a good deal I had with my existing provider as I had more download and greater speed at the same price as their bundled offering.

My other concern was that our most recent telephone bill showed that we had exceeded the data allowance on our ‘smartphone’ so had incurred some additional costs. I rang the company and discovered that the $29 capped plan advertised on their website is superior to the one we have had for about 15 months. The call and data caps are $300 and 400Mb per month whereas we are paying the same price for an ‘old’ plan which includes $150 of calls and 200Mb of data – exactly half of the service for the same price!

I am in the process of finding out how much time we have left on our contract and what the penalty would be for breaking it because I think it is likely that the penalty will be less than the risk of exceeding our data cap again for a month. If that is the case I will accept the penalty and upgrade the the newer plan.

It definitely pays to spend some time reviewing your regular expenses and seeing whether you have the best arrangement for your circumstances or simply if the current plan offers value for money.

Do you check what you are paying for from time to time?

Edible & Spreadable

11 Comments

Posted on July 15, 2012

What do you spread on your sandwiches? Butter, margarine, something else or nothing at all?

I used to buy margarine without giving it a great deal of thought, however, about 18 years ago I changed to spreadable butter that I make myself. My reasons are several:

Eliminate non-recyclable waste (margarine containers)
Health benefits (margarine is simply a chemical cocktail)
Easier to spread than pure butter
Know exactly what the ingredients are

This is the recipe.

SPREADABLE BUTTER

500g butter
250ml oil
150ml water
3 tablespoons skim milk powder

Allow the butter to soften but not melt. Beat butter using a mixer or food processor. Combine the other ingredients in a jug and stir well to dissolve the milk powder. Gradually add the mixture to the butter while continuing to beat. Beat for another 1 – 2 minutes until white and creamy. Spoon into containers and refrigerate. This made almost 1500ml so it is really quite economical. Actual costings would depend on the type of oil that you use.

I generally keep one container in the refrigerator and freeze the rest because we do not use a lot of butter and it will go mouldy/rancid if stored for long periods in the refrigerator. I use Pyrex glass containers as they can be put in the freezer and I am constantly trying to minimise the amount of plastic that I use for storing food.

This mixture can be used instead of butter in cooking and baking. The only exception I make is pastry as I prefer to use ‘real’ butter for that.

The type of oil you use is entirely up to you. I choose to use locally grown and produced organic olive oil which I buy in bulk at the Co-op in Maleny. Olive oil does have a distinctive flavour so you may prefer something more bland such as rice-bran oil. I do not consider canola oil as an option as most of the commercial crop is genetically-modified and I prefer not to use foods that contain GM products.

This is not a totally zero-waste exercise but it is certainly better than all of the margarine containers that you would otherwise use. I take my glass bottle to be refilled with oil. The butter wrapper is used to grease baking trays or line cake tins and then goes into the compost. I buy skim milk powder from Aldi in a 1 kg non-recyclable bag, however, I have recently discovered that I can buy this in bulk from Simply Good so will be doing that in the future.

Making Progress

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Posted on July 12, 2012

It is amazing the difference that a couple of days and a written list can make.

I feel as though I am making some progress now.

Buy travel pants – hopefully The Duke can do this tomorrow
~~Book appointment to have our tax done~~ – DONE
Arrange remote access to the business network
Buy enough cat and ~~dog food~~ for when we are away – Dog food is DONE – will buy the cat food tomorrow
~~Check and stock up on my medication~~ – DONE
~~Complete first draft of information for the house-sitter and email it to her~~ – DONE
Attend specialist appointment re my injured knee – have x-rays, referral and Workcover info ready for appointment on Monday
Cancel another specialist appointment
Pack for trip to Melbourne next week – 3 days of work then 3 days of holiday
Stocktake of food in the freezer and plan meals to use up as much as possible before we leave
Finish quilt for Izz’s birthday
Write list of birthday/Christmas gift ideas for Miss O and Izz
Measure Miss O and Izz with a view to buying clothes while we are away

Here are a few more things that I have thought of and added to the original list.

Organise to borrow a travel clothesline
~~Book car hire for trip to Melbourne~~ – DONE
Arrange accommodation for trip to Melbourne – partly done
Collate all of our paperwork for tax appointment
~~Change the linen on the spare beds~~ – DONE
~~Organise to borrow an electrical adaptor~~ – DONE

Being able to cross things off the list adds to the sense of achievement and produces a sort of calm. I know I can do it. I will be completely organised and ready to leave in a little over 5 weeks.

Shopping At Home

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Posted on July 11, 2012

In years gone by the phrase ‘shop at home’ usually referred to mail-order catalogues. This meant that you could peruse the pages for your choice of everything from underwear to saucepans. It was a service provided to people who lived in remote areas. Imagine the excitement when the carefully-chosen and long-awaited parcel arrived from the city stores (Myer and David Jones) to families on outback properties.

Shopping in the comfort of your own home was also a driver of many ‘party plan’ and catalogue businesses. These included Tupperware, Avon and Nutrimetics, to name but a few.

More recently, much of this shopping activity has been surpassed by buying online. I have bought things online, but usually only after considerable research. It makes shopping easy, so easy in fact, that I think some people have accumulated much more debt due to the ease with which they can part with their money or more likely, credit.

My shopping at home, today, was none of these. I merely walked downstairs to my store-cupboard and replenished supplies which would otherwise have necessitated going to the shop.

This morning there was no cereal nor much psyllium husk which I have on my cereal. So I headed to my cupboard and picked these two buckets.

Here are my pantry containers refilled.

This afternoon I ‘shopped’ again – this time for raisins and sultanas as I wanted to make a boiled fruit cake.

Having a store of staples means less trips to the shops which in turn saves time, petrol and opportunities to spend money on other items. It makes sense to me to have a supply of goods on hand in case of a range of possible emergencies or disasters. As well as food I keep a supply of other items such as toilet paper, toothpaste and soap.