Replenishing Supplies

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We arrived home from holidays last Friday afternoon and in next to no time we were back into building up our food supplies.

Our kitchen overlooks the vegetable garden and I could a sea of red cherry tomatoes rambling everywhere. This, coupled with the fact that we had almost entirely depleted our stock of tomato sauce (ketchup) meant that this was a high priority on my ‘to do’ list.

The recipe for the sauce is here.

I made another batch of gluten free pizza bases. I make 6 at a time and freeze them ready for an easy meal.

Recipe for the pizza bases is here.

GMan got in on the act and restocked his homemade sourdough bread.

Finally, I picked a bucketful of Davidson plums from our tree (indigenous tropical fruit) and made what I regard as the best jam in the world.

I have included links to the recipes for the tomato sauce and pizza bases.

I will do full posts about the jam and sourdough in the not too distant future.

Also, don’t forget to check the recipe index on the blog. The link to the page is ‘Recipes – Food’ at the top of the blog.

Functional or Fad?

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It is now about 2 months since I capitulated and bought an airfryer.

I had not really investigated what an airfryer was or how they worked but when I heard them being mentioned in a couple of Facebook groups I dismissed them as another unnecessary kitchen gadget. My first real-life experience of them was when we were invited to dinner a couple of months ago. The potatoes cooked in the airfryer were absolutely divine.

GMan came home and started researching various options. Coincidentally, Aldi had them in their special buys the following week so we decided to bite the bullet and see whether all of the hype was worth it. For us it has certainly proven to be $70 well-spent.

Apart from the rather obvious benefit of being able to replicate at least some deep-fried food with minimal oil there are also considerable energy savings from using the airfryer rather than a conventional oven. Food cooks more quickly and it does not heat the entire kitchen.

The airfryer is also quick and easy to clean.

My first attempt was chips which were an absolute winner. Since then I have cooked salmon, arancini balls, marinated chicken pieces, garlic and eggplant slices as well as nachos.

For the nachos, I lined the cooking tray with baking paper and assembled the nachos as per my ‘recipe’ here. 8 minutes at 190C in the airfryer and dinner was ready.

I served these with a side salad of coleslaw.

Gorgeous Green

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One of our plans during our holidays was to do some painting. This may not sound like much of a holiday but we were happy to help out our daughter who lives interstate.

A recently completed renovation had completely transformed the bathroom and just needed some finishing touches of paint. The vanity, doors, wall and floor tiles are all white or very light coloured so she was looking for a strong, dramatic colour for the remaining small areas of wall. Green was her preference, however, there are many choices. After one previous false start with a test pot we narrowed our choice.

The internet is a great resource and much better than simply looking at a colour chart in a shop as we have done in the past. We were able to compare technical specifications such as the depth of colour, reflective capacity and formulation. Finally, there are photos of completed rooms so we were able to visualise how our choice might look with a substantial portion of white contrast.

Here is the result of our handiwork.

The colour is Dulux ‘Plasticine’. I would love to know how they come up with the names for some of these colours.

This is the image which confirmed that our idea would work. Although it is not a bathroom it does have a substantial portion of white or light coloured elements. The tan/natural colours were the inspiration for the light fitting in the toilet.

Discovered in the Dumpster

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A few days ago I went to the large communal rubbish bin when I was visiting a unit complex. I intended to deposit a couple of items into the bin, however, when I opened the lid I found that the last item which had been added was a large plastic storage tub. I expected that it had probably been discarded due to it being broken.

After a quick inspection it was obvious that the container was perfectly intact and there was even a lid to go with it. A quick wash and it was as good as new.

This will be perfect for packing/storing some of my stash of fabric.

A Cover-Up

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In my last post I mentioned sorting photos on my computer. The added bonus is locating photos which I had taken with plans to use them in blog posts which were not written. These are still relevant and will appear intermittently.

Today I want to share a sewing project from April last year.

Although we both use laptops for our computing requirements, we do still have a large monitor on our desk. As its use is occasional at best I decided to make a dust cover for it.

In order to make a discreet cover for black screen on a black desk I naturally chose black fabric. A remnant of strong black cotton in my stash was perfect. I found a piece of soft white wadding from the backing of an old bed valance which had seen been better days and been unpicked for use in future projects. I used the wadding to line one side of the cover. This provides additional protection for the screen.

I mitred the corners using the same method as the bottom of the Boomerang bags that I make.

It is a simple and useful item made entirely from from salvaged materials.

The covered monitor is barely noticeable when sitting on the desk and not in use.

Clutter -Free in ’23

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The title of this post is taken from a comment I read a couple of days ago in a Facebook decluttering group.

My first task for the new year is not physical clutter but that insidious beast – digital clutter.

I have previously written on several occasions about trying to keep our emails under control. In fact, while re-reading past posts on the subject, I found mention of the ‘All Mail’ being between 1500 and 5000 emails at times. Over a number of years I have managed to consistently keep the total to less than 500, then 250 and even hovering around 150. The last few months have seen me cull them further to keep ‘All Mail’ to less than 100. Right now it is 66 which is very pleasing.

I found this post today which is a really helpful reminder of all the ways digital clutter can accumulate.

There are so many corners of your phone, computer and the internet where digital clutter may be lurking.

Every time I open WordPress to write a new blog post I am confronted by the fact that I have 73 posts in draft format. What?? But no more. Today I checked each and every one of those drafts that have accumulated over the almost 12 years of writing this blog and found that most of them were no longer even remotely relevant. The majority were not much more than a title or a few words. So, I had a great time deleting them all. I now have 3 drafts which I kept as I believe that they have the makings of posts worthy of publication in the future.

I do not keep thousands of photos on my phone as I regularly download them to the laptop and delete from the phone. However, I have not been as diligent as I could be with the next step of sorting and cataloguing them. The folder of ‘Camera Imports’ has multiple folders that have been downloaded in 2022 so I am working through organising them at the moment. Sorting a lifetime of photos is not a job for the faint-hearted so I try to break it into small blocks.

Keeping track of my ‘Contacts’ is another work in progress. I need to tidy and update them where necessary and check that the same information is on both my phone and the computer. Although it is not a digital issue, I do also have a physical hard-copy address book which I am not quite ready to let go of yet. I will cross-check the information in there with the digital contacts list.

I really think that the key to successful digital decluttering is a regular schedule of maintenance as outlined in in the post I linked above.

Do you have any particular tips to share on this topic. I would love to hear how you manage your digital resources.

Last Post (for 2022)

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I feel as though this blog has limped to the end of the year. Only 44 posts with a mere 12 in the second half of the year. The reasons are multiple and complex.

After 11 years of writing this blog it sometimes seems that there is nothing new to write about. Do I want or need to cover the same topics over and over again? Despite some misgivings I have decided that there is plenty I have to share with readers old and new. If you have any ideas, suggestions or requests please let me know and I will try to cover them.

I did not think that things could be much more challenging than 2021 when I faced my mother’s terminal illness and subsequent death. However, 2022 was equally difficult in many respects. I lost 2 friends, both of whom were younger than me, to cancer, this year. Others are dealing with health challenges, too.

While Covid has severely limited our ability and desire to travel overseas in the past few years, we have once again managed several trips within Australia. I have not documented most of the short trips on my travel blog in most instances for the simple reason of security. As well as our holiday to North Queensland we made several short trips interstate to visit family and friends.

The end of a year is always a good time to review what has gone before, albeit, without dwelling too much on the past. It also presents us with a clean slate and an opportunity for fresh beginnings. That is certainly likely to be the case here as we hope to complete the sale of our house and subsequent relocation in the early part of 2023. There will be plenty of adventures ahead for us.

Thank you for sticking with me in 2022 and I will be back in a bright and shiny 2023.

Happy New Year!!

Castle on the Move

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I can now reveal part of the reason for some of my extended absences from the blog. We are on the move. Our home of the past 17 years is listed for sale and we are ready to relocate.

Years of gradually decluttering and living simply are now paying off as it has been a relatively easy matter to have the house ready for prospective buyers to inspect.

Long-term readers of the blog will be familiar with glimpses of various sections of the interior of our home. The images below are some of the professional ones used in the listing of the property.

We are hoping the property sells reasonably quickly. Our plans include an interstate relocation so stay tuned for more exciting news.

Meanwhile, the regular posts will continue as we juggle the balance between keeping the house in ‘show home’ condition and continue our day-to-day lives.

A Simple Solution

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Yesterday I was tidying up the top of the shelves in my sewing room. I found a box covered with contact that contained knitting needles. I am not a great knitter but I have reasonable selection of needles. The collection is considerably less than in the past as I rationalised what I had a year or so ago.

I decided that the box was excessive and not the best way to store the needles I had kept. So, I dived into my stash of fabric and found a scrap of corduroy and a suitable salvaged zip. Here is the result of about 30 minutes work.

All packed up and easy to store on the shelves.

Remembering

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My posts have been a bit few and far between over the last couple of months as I am fully occupied with offline activities. I had fully intended getting things back on track with the blog in the past week but my world was turned upside-down when I received the news that a friend had passed away last Monday after a short illness.

I first ‘met’ Mimi online about 15 years ago and then in real life about five years ago. A truly wonderful woman who could simply light up the conversation with her presence. Mimi’s loves and interests were many and varied but it was was our shared love of frugal yet fancy cookery that drew us together,

Here are links to two recipes which began in her kitchen and have been firm favourites in our household for several years.

Refried beans

Balsamic syrup (I apologise for the lack of photos in this post.)

And finally, a link to her blog if you would like to discover a bit more for yourself. There is a wealth of grace, knowledge, love and inspiration here.

Rest in peace, dear one.