Category Archives: Self-reliance

The Next Step

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We are making progress on completing the lounge to the way we want it.

Some of you might remember this post from late February. Well there have been a few hiccups along the way but the window installation was finally completed today.

We will need to paint the frames both inside and outside and then I will see about choosing a blind. In the meantime, we will rehang the piece of fabric that has been covering the old window for the past couple of years. Bare glass is not a good idea at this time of the year.

The choice of louvres will be fully appreciated in the summer as they will provide good cross-ventilation.

Speaking of painting, we spent some time painting the pickets of our newish fence. It has been several months since it was installed but the weather has been either too hot or too cold and a few days ago we had rain to further delay us. Of course, we also seem to manage to be away or otherwise socially engaged. However, today was perfect. After a frosty start we were blessed with a glorious sunny day and no wind. Hopefully, there will be a few more days like today in the not too distant future to enable us to finish that project.

Ready to Wear

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Yesterday I mended a woollen pullover. I bought it last year at the op shop. It is 100% merino wool and looked to be in perfect condition when I purchased it.

When I was hanging it on the clothesline a couple of days ago I noticed a hole on the front – not far from the armhole or shoulder seam. The hole did not look like moths had eaten but more like I had caught it on something although I have no memory of doing that.

Anyway, I decided to darn the hole with my limited darning skills. Fortunately, I had some darning wool that was a very similar colour so I am pretty happy with the result.

A close-up of my handiwork.

It is definitely not perfect but will work OK especially since I mostly wear the pullover with a scarf and/or coat. The colour is reasonably accurate in the first photo although the blue is even a bit brighter..

Labour Intensive

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The last week of May ran away while I wasn’t looking so welcome to a new month and the first official day of winter here in the southern hemisphere.

Towards the end of last year I picked a good crop of garlic that I grew. In fact, I harvested 1.7kg of garlic. I have replanted some, given some away and used it as required for the past 6 months. There was still a substantial quantity left so I decided to make my own garlic salt.

I spent a good few hours carefully peeling and thinly slicing the cloves.

Here they are laid out on the racks and ready to go in the dehydrator.

15 hours later the pieces were dry and crunchy. Here is some of the results.

I then ground the dried garlic pieces to a powder and mixed them with an equal weight of salt.

This is the 300g of garlic salt which I now have ready to use in cooking as needed.

Although it was a fairly time-consuming project, I feel that this was definitely worthwhile.

A Mixed Day

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Like so many days, today was a mix of assorted small jobs that I managed to tick off my list.

The weather was overcast and we even had some very light rain but I had some handwashed items to dry. I used the very convenient extendable rack in the laundry to hang them up.

I also had a couple of cooking jobs. I had cooked some dried Great Northern beans some time ago and frozen them. I thawed them yesterday in preparation for turning them into my version of baked beans. We had some for lunch today and the remainder have been divided into single serve portions and are ready to be frozen. I ended up with 16 portions for relatively minimal effort. The recipe for my baked beans is here.

The other cooking job for the day was to make a slice for a conference we are attending tomorrow. This is the slice before I iced it this evening. It is easy to turn into a gluten-free option with a straight substitution of gluten-free flour for the regular wheat flour. The recipe is here. I added some cinnamon and ginger this time to spice it up and the icing was made with lime juice and the addition of more powdered ginger.

I am feeling rather accomplished because as well as things I have mentioned here, I have also taken up a new pair of trousers and mended a pair of jeans – both for GMan and ironed a few items from the washing of the past couple of days.

It is good to have everything pretty much up-to-date before we are in Melbourne over the weekend.

Ready to Roast

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It almost 2 years since I wrote this post with a recipe for pumpkin soup. After a long, hot summer we are finally experiencing some slightly cooler days.

Like all of my cooking escapades there is plenty of room for variation. A couple of days ago GMan was baking a couple of loaves of sourdough bread so I decided to make use of the oven being on to roast the pumpkin while the oven was heating up to the temperature required for the bread.

Pumpkin wedges brushed with a mix of balsamic syrup and olive oil.

After roasting the skin peels off easily.

A pot of deliciousness.

We had soup for dinner and there were another 10 serves to go in the freezer for future meals.

It was a productive kitchen day as I had also made a new batch of spreadable butter, deyhdrated the pumpkin seeds and some root ginger which had been in the freezer for a couple of years and GMan made the bread.

Rhubarb Is Ready

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I have been away from the blog this past week as other things have taken precedence. We have enjoyed visits from two groups of guests. I has been a delight to show them around our town and the surrounds.

Here are a couple of photos taken from the summit of Mt Tarrengower which overlooks the town.

An almost full moon as we looked east towards the town.

Sunset in the opposite direction.

Our house guests of the past few days departed this morning so I need to get back to some food prep and meal planning. The first step was to cut a generous handful of rhubarb from one of the clumps which are happily growing near the back fence. We usually have some stewed fruit on our cereal each morning so I chopped and stewed the stalks and have containers of stewed rhubarb ready to go in the freezer.

An Average Autumn Day

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Although I often post about the significant and eventful happenings here, there are many days that just hum along as we do the things we do. I find this particularly so during autumn as the extreme heat and occasional storms of summer are behind us.

Autumn weather brings a benign mildness as the leaves begin to turn and we continue to harvest the last of the summer produce.

An outdoor view.

Picked from the garden.

The tomatoes I grew were from gifted seedlings from 3 different sources. I am not sure of all of the varieties but some were definitely ‘Beefsteak’ which is now my favourite tomato. So, when I discovered that one of these tomatoes had been attacked by some wildlife I decided that it was the perfect specimen from which to salvage some seeds.

Tomato seeds drying on some paper towel.

I did two loads of washing which included our bed linen. I remade the bed with the freshly laundered linen after it had dried in the warm sun and breeze.

An inviting bed at the end of the day.

Pruning and Planting

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We have plenty of plans for developing various aspects of the garden further but in the meantime we are pleased with the parts which are established.

GMan recently participated in a one-day workshop on pruning techniques and more particularly, the benefits of summer pruning of fruit trees. He has since purchased some new equipment and yesterday he applied his newly-acquired knowledge and pruned our 3 espaliered fruit trees. There are 2 Nashi pears and a nectarine.

Meanwhile, I have planted a punnet of pea seedlings.

The summer garden continues with tomatoes and zucchinis ripening and ready to pick every day or so.

I have at least a dozen packs of grated zucchini in the freezer which I can use to make zucchini quiche throughout the year. Of course, we have had fried tomato and zucchini as a side dish with plenty of meals recently.

The tomatoes have been especially prolific. I used 6kg to make sauce and there is more than enough to eat with almost every meal. There is nothing like the flavour of homegrown tomatoes.

This is what is on a rack on the kitchen bench at the moment as I constantly use some then add more from what I harvest almost every day.

Netted Nashi

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I showed you a few months ago in this post that we had netted the entirety of our three espaliered fruit trees – one nectarine and two nashi pears. That decision proved to be really successfully with us not losing any fruit to the birds and other wildlife.

We have removed it gradually as the fruit ripened on each tree. First, were the nectarines, then one nashi and a couple of days ago we removed the netting completely and picked the nashi pears from the last tree.

There were well over 100 fruit.

GMan had stewed and frozen all of the fruit from the first tree and did about another 40 of these. I am now experimenting with dehydrating slices of them for snacks and have given some to the Community Pantry.

The next job was to fold the netting up and put it away for next season. We spread it out so that we could remover any leaves or debris and it noticed a jagged hole of about 8cm across in the middle of the netting. I am not sure whether it was caused by an errant branch growing through or a possum munching through it.

Anyway, I decided to mend the hole before packing the netting up. It is nothing fancy but will work well.

A few days ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a hands-on workshop on ‘Summer Fruit Tree Pruning’ in a town about 45 minutes from us. This seemed like a perfect opportunity so GMan has signed up and is going along on Friday. Hopefully, he will be able to apply his new-found knowledge to our trees.

Stocking the Pantry

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Today has been a mixed bag, as usual.

Bed changed, 2 loads of washing done, some volunteer admin work and visitors this afternoon for wine, cheese and chat.

Somewhere in between all of that I made time to make another batch of tomato sauce for the pantry.

We have almost finished the last bottle from last year and this is the first time in several years that I have almost run out. I am hoping to make more batches to stock up.

I had less tomatoes than the recipe so I did some quick calculations to reduce the other ingredients proportionally. I took a fairly easy option by chopping the tomatoes and onions in the food processor before simmering them with the sugar, vinegar, salt and spices. You can find the actual recipe here.

We are expecting tradesmen tomorrow to remove and replace some doors and windows so I will hopefully have interesting before and after photos to share before too long.