Yesterday morning I walked along the verandah. It was sunny but quite cool and this was the vision that greeted me.
One of the newer hibiscus shrubs which has only been in the ground for about a month and there were half a dozen bright pink flowers. I am hoping this is a preview of things to come as these shrubs grow and we have a mass of dense foliage and brilliant flowers in front of the verandah.
Firstly, I would like to say thank to all of you who have sent your caring thoughts and healing wishes for my mother. She continues to improve and will be home again in no time.
Tonight I want to share some words from my friend, Patty. She posted this on Facebook today and I immediately thought that it may be useful to those of you who are struggling with the loss of a parent and the possessions that are left behind. Dealing with them can be a challenging and time-consuming process.
Some of us are struggling with our elderly parents; in our care, in their death; in recent passing. My garage downstairs is full of my parents’ lives, and every time I go to unpack it, and sort it, I am taken back to my childhood and the re-living of this emotion is draining and emotionally exhausting. As much as we loved our parents, there’s a lot of “stuff” to be dealt with, in a practical way.
I hope this might help you? The Amen is complimentary. Light a candle, and say this out loud. Tears are optional. It’s all release. No rules.
Parents Prayer
To my parents, grandparents, and my earthly ancestors who came before me, thank you.
Thank you for your love and guiding wisdom.
Thank you for loving me, every day; in every way.
Thank you for all of your hard work, your concern, and your complete acceptance of me and my spirit.
Thank you for your precious gift of life and love.
It is received with gratitude.
Thank you for our family, for all of the good times, for your precious memories.
I am now able to live my own adult life, and walk with my face towards the sun.
I shall swing my arms with happiness and freedom, knowing that this is what you want me to do.
Mum and dad, I release you, with love. Thank you for everything.
I love you all, forever.
I will remember you with respect and gratitude. Thank you.
I release you all, back to the universe. I release you all; back to the earth and beyond. Thank you.
It is so.
Amen.
Remember, it is the memories that are important and will sustain you. The stuff is a separate issue.
Well, hello! I expect you have been wondering about my disappearance.
The past 8 days since I last posted have been more than just busy. My mind has been totally consumed by other issues and I have not even considered blogging.
My mother underwent open heart surgery 6 days ago and is now recovering. She is progressing well and I will be back with more everyday tales soon.
It is a cool, crisp day here on the winter solstice. How about at your place? Are you in the northern hemisphere and enjoying warm days and the long evening twilight?
I look forward to hearing from you.
One of the challenges of growing your own food is dealing with the gluts of produce which invariably occur.
The issue today was passionfruit. We planted a passionfruit vine about 18 months ago and in now covers a large section of the perimeter fence of the chicken run. For several weeks now I having been collecting and eating passionfruit almost every day but today I decided to store some for when there are no fresh ones available.
My efforts yielded 2 trays of passionfruit pulp to be frozen and stored for later use.
The vine appears to have 2 different types of fruit on it. One of them is a common purple passionfruit but the other are much larger and are yellow when ripe and the pulp is a very bright orange and has a somewhat different flavour. You can see the different skins in the compost bucket in the following photo.
These will go back in the compost and eventually be added to the garden beds to grow more food.
I have previously written a post about making your own pasta from scratch. Barely 6 months after I wrote this post I made the decision to eat a gluten-free diet for the sake of my health. The pasta making attachment has languished at the back of the pantry and I keep promising myself that I will try making my own gluten-free pasta. Well yesterday was finally the day.
After searching the internet and using some ideas gained through making other gluten dough such as pizza bases, I decided to give it a try.
Here is my recipe:
2 cups gluten-free flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
10g psyllium husk
3 eggs
25ml water
25 ml olive oil
Combine the dry ingredients, add the eggs and then gradually add the water and oil. The mixture will not roll into a ball as it does if using wheat flour but it should be damp enough that you can squeeze it together in your hand. Mix thoroughly for about 3 minutes. Cover bowl with a damp teatowel to retain the moisture and work as quickly as possible.
Take a small ball of dough and knead well in your hands, press out into a thick disc and feed through the pasta roller on thickest setting. The dough will crumble but persevere and do it several times until the dough starts to feed through in sheets. Continue to fold and feed through until you have a good consistency and then feed it through progressively thinner settings.
Once you have the thickness that you want you can cut it into lasagne sheets or attempt the next step of making fettucine.
It is certainly more difficult to make than conventional pasta but I am hoping it will be worth the effort. Both the lasagne sheets and fettucine have been frozen so the final verdict will be when they are cooked. I am very confident that the lasagne will be successful but I will have to wait and see with the fettucine.
Based on what I have done so far, I would say that this has been a worthwhile exercise and I will tweak the recipe further if required.
Watch this space………..
Today it was time to clean and tidy up my pantry.
It is really not too bad but was definitely time to check for anything lurking in the background. I wiped out all of the shelves, decanted a few things into the new jars and generally re-arranged it to work a bit better.
BEFORE
The space on the bottom shelf is where the dehydrator normally lives but I was using it when the photo was taken. The pack in the bottom right-hand corner of the photo is some gluten-free bread mix which was 18 months past its best before date but I made it anyway and it turned out well. There is a second pack in the box which I might make up next weekend.
I have moved a few things out of the pantry – a large coffee plunger which now lives on the shelf above the oven with the other coffee plunger and the teapot. The coffee grinder which we never use is going to the op shop along with a plastic container which belongs in the freezer but I never have it in there as it just wastes space and limits how much I can pack in. Finally, the pile of plastic plates and bowls (meant to be disposable but I keep washing and re-using them) have been moved from the pantry. I have kept 2 of each in the cupboard for the grandchildren but the rest will be stored in the sideboard for use at BBQ’s or other events. One day I may decide to offload them altogether but not just yet.
AFTER
I did not take a photo of the bottom shelf and the floor but suffice to say they look a bit better, too.
On Saturday or Sunday morning I generally make a menu plan of our meals for the coming week. This based on what is in the fridge, freezer, pantry and garden and is used to create a shopping list for any additional requirements. I try to incorporate a mix of fish, chicken, red meat and vegetarian meals.
The next couple of weeks are very unpredictable due to family issues and will mean that I am not at home some nights but potentially with very short notice. So I used a different method today and simply made a list of 20 meals for which we have the ingredients. We will need some additional fruit and vegetables during that time.
1 Pizza
2 Grilled salmon and vegetables
3 Tumeric chicken and rice
4 Pumpkin soup
5 Chilli con carne and rice
6 Nachos
7 Sausages and vegetables
8 Vegetable pie and salad
9 Hamburger patties and salad
10 Celery soup
11 Beef curry and rice
12 Tuna patties and vegetables
13 Shepherd’s pie and vegetables
14 Scrambled eggs with bacon and avocado
15 Chicken stir-fry and rice
16 Pizza
17 Chilli con carne and rice
18 Pumpkin soup
19 Lasagne and salad
20 Chilli chicken and corn chips
The entire plan is gluten-free. I make my own gluten-free pizza bases and hamburger patties, buy gluten-free sausages from Aldi, buy gluten free corn chips and lasagne sheets and use gluten-free flour as required.
I intend to work roughly from the top of the list and we had home-made pizzas tonight. This is how I make them.
Do you plan your meals? How closely do you stick to a plan?
Posts have been somewhat lacking this week as my real life is demanding more of my time and I have barely been online. Please bear with me as this will continue for the next couple of weeks.
I have spent a couple of days putting my decluttering skills to good use as I sorted and tidied the pantry in my mother’s unit. Although it is a one bedroom unit in a retirement village there is a small but functional kitchen with a walk-in pantry.
I did not have my camera with me to show you some before and after photos but I will try to explain a little of what I did.
There was some great organisation already in place. All of the small jars of herbs and spices live in a shoebox to keep them together.
The first step was to check for duplicates of items – there were a couple and then I decanted items that were in packets into appropriately sized containers. There was no shortage of storage jars and canisters. I then gathered like things together. The baking ingredients – flour, raising agents, coconut etc are all on one shelf. Dried fruit and nuts are together as are breakfast provisions.
One of the important lessons I discovered from this exercise is that we have to constantly adapt to changing circumstances. My mother no longer prepares her own evening meal so many of the things that I keep in my pantry are simply not applicable to her situation. I am aware that some of the ingredients that she has will probably not be replaced when they are depleted.
The other consideration is the size of the containers. The above photo is my pantry but the large red-lidded jars came from from Mum. I have now acquired another 4 as Mum no longer needs them. She simply does not keep that much of anything and the jars are quite heavy and difficult to handle.
I can see another bit of re-arranging of my own pantry coming up as I consider what other ingredients I will keep in the large jars and work out a way to fit them in.
Circumstances are constantly evolving as we welcome children into our homes, they grow and then finally leave home. Later there may be the addition of grandchildren or the death of a spouse. All of these things require us to adapt what we have and how we use it. It is easy for the essentials of one phase of our lives to become the clutter of the future so it is wise to review our needs regularly.
I would love to hear your thoughts on changing circumstances and clutter.
Winter
Another month over and I have totalled up the spending for May. It is not a pretty sight. Almost $6,000 gone this month in variable spending. Yikes!!
Here are the totals so far:
January – $5,144.53
February – $1,783.49
March – $4,350.56
April – $2,385.31
May – $5,961.54
I have amended the figures slightly to include everything that we have spent in the past 5 months – that is variable spending so does not include mortgage, rates, insurances, phone/internet etc.
May was particularly high as we booked and paid for airfares and accommodation in Melbourne at Christmas as well as paying for birthday presents for both daughters and a Christmas gift for one of them. Since they are both adults earning their own money we generally pay for something special such as an airfare and then buy a small gift to give on the day. The other category that impacted significantly was ‘House & Garden’ of just over $1,200 which included $860 for the plumber and electrician and installation of a new sump pump for the greywater system.
I thought that we would pull our horns in for June but we started the first day of the month with GMan buying a new pair of shoes for work at $209 since the others could not be repaired. The other not so good news is that the drive chain broke on the ride-on mower yesterday and we have yet to find out what that will cost to replace.
There are only 29 more days until the end of the financial year and I will be halfway through this tracking exercise which is nothing if not eye-opening.
organised castle 