Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Frugal Living’ Category

Garden Update

Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, tagged , , , , , on September 30, 2010| 66 Comments »

Congratulations, Soy!  Linda’s book will be on its way to you soon!

. . . . .

I can’t believe how fast our garden is growing!

Here’s what the first bed looked like in late August…

…and here it is today.  Over the past five weeks, we’ve harvested broccoli, a dozen lettuces, kale and several beetroots from this bed.

The cabbages haven’t been a great success – we planted them too close together, and possibly a little late.  As a result, they’ve been making lots of leaves, but not forming a tight ball.  They haven’t been going to waste though – the chickens absolutely adore them…

The broadbeans seem to be growing before our eyes at the moment!  We can’t decide whether to eat them young as Linda suggests, or to wait until they’re a bit bigger and shell them..

. . . . .

Bed number two was newly planted when these photos were taken just over a month ago…

…and it’s grown prolifically! In amongst the jungle of pea shoots, you can see kale, cabbage, broccoli, as well as carrots and lettuce.  We’re following Linda Woodrow’s plan from her book, The Permaculture Home Garden, which very cleverly allocates part of the space in each bed to growing feed for the chickens…

The baby pea pods are forming.  I’m very new to gardening, so I didn’t realise that each flower would turn into a pod.  Now I’m excitedly counting the flowers to see how many peas and broadbeans we’re going to get…

. . . . .

The dwarf peach and nectarine trees seem to be making lots of fruit, although it’s unlikely they’ll all develop…

. . . . .

Garden bed number three has potatoes, capsicums, eggplants and tomatoes – this single cherry tomato plant has grown like a weed and is threatening to take over the whole bed…

. . . . .

We have a blueberry plant growing in a pot, waiting for a permanent home, and somewhat surprisingly, given our temperate climate, it seems to be  fruiting!  Maybe it has something to do with all the bees who visit our backyard now…

In a patch of soil where the chicken dome was originally situated, a small crop of wheat is growing from the uneaten grain mix we were feeding to the girls…

Today’s harvest of sprouting broccoli will be eaten at dinner tonight, simply dunked in boiling water and dressed with a little butter and salt..

. . . . .

I thought you might also enjoy seeing how the chickens are travelling..here’s Rosemary glaring at me for spying on her while she was laying…

…and Queenie, being very vocal and reminding the others that she’s the boss!

. . . . .

If you live in Australia and would like to undertake a garden project like ours, we have one copy of Linda Woodrow’s book, The Permaculture Home Garden, to g!ve @way (the funny characters are an attempt to avoid the search bots – I want to g!ve the book to someone who actually reads our blog!).

I was buying a copy for our friend Ian the Chicken Whisperer, and couldn’t resist picking up an extra copy for you.  Linda’s book is tailored for Australian gardens, and is full of brilliant and inspired ideas – you can dip into it for suggestions, or go all out and follow her plan completely as we have.

To εnter, please leave a comment (before 14th October) and tell us  which state you live in and what your favourite vegetable is. And apologies to our international visitors, but we can only ship to Australian addresses this time!

Read Full Post »

Swings and Roundabouts

Posted in Frugal Living, Musings on September 28, 2010| 32 Comments »

Tonight, we had dinner at home.

We’ve been carefully growing a prize head of broccoli (well, it’s a prize to us!) – an errant seedling from our punnet of sprouting broccoli which grew into a large, old-fashioned cluster. After carefully removing the five cabbage moth caterpillars, we broke the head into florets and cooked it with anchovies and a clove of garlic, and then served it with our homemade pasta.

As we sat down together for dinner, I commented to Small Man that life is all about swings and roundabouts. The meal tonight cost us almost nothing – the broccoli came from the garden; the pasta was homemade using eggs from our lovely ladies. All up dinner for the four of us would have been about $3.

I tried to explain to the boys (and they politely refrained from rolling their eyes) that it’s all about finding a balance – we had the most wonderful dinner at La Casa last week, but eating out isn’t something we do all the time. That certainly doesn’t mean we deprive ourselves – furthermore, not dining at restaurants every night makes the occasions when we do go out special!

For us, frugal living isn’t about penny-pinching; rather it’s about  making conscious choices about how we spend our money, reducing waste, and most importantly, appreciating what we have and being content with the lifestyle we can afford.

Our philosophy is this: no matter what our circumstances in life, everyone of us has finite resources, and wanting…lusting…for more than we can afford is a sure path to misery.   So we’ve always worked to keep the bar low – we try to find excitement and joy in simple things, rather than lamenting the expensive luxuries we can’t afford.  And as I pointed out to the boys tonight, we were having a meal that we just couldn’t  buy at a restaurant – where else could you dine on broccoli less than an hour after it’s picked, or pasta made with eggs that were laid that morning?

. . . . .

For I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content.

Philippians 4:11b

Read Full Post »

First Harvest

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , , , , on September 21, 2010| 53 Comments »

To those of you who’ve been gardening for years, thank you for putting up with our excited ramblings.  I know this isn’t really a big deal, but because it’s all so new for Pete and I, being able to go out and harvest all these vegetables from our garden was an incredible thrill!

As we didn’t make it to the markets last week, our vegetable crisper was decidedly empty, which made being able to wander outside to pick all these edible greens even more of a buzz.  And we certainly haven’t emptied the first bed – just selectively chosen the plants that were ready, and the ones that needed pulling out to allow room for others to grow.

There was (and still is) a mountain of spinach and curly parsley growing…

We cut the sprouting broccoli (apparently you need to keep trimming it, or it flowers and dies), thinned the overcrowded carrots, and pulled a couple of baby beets to try.  Pete also pulled out a perennial leek, replanting all of her babies for another day…

Finally, six small heads of lettuce came out, leaving room for the others to continue growing…

Our perfect Sunday lunch…Caesar salad, with homegrown mixed lettuce (cos, oak, butter), homemade sourdough croutons and a dressing made with Harriet’s freshly laid egg…

…and lunch today was a stir-fry of mung bean vermicelli, spinach, broccoli, teeny weeny carrots, leek and egg, seasoned with peanuts, fish sauce and lime juice.  Happy days!

Read Full Post »

Dustbaths

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , , , , on September 7, 2010| 30 Comments »

I know what you’re all going to say, and you’re right, we probably do have the most spoilt chickens on the planet.

They’re fed the best food we can afford to give them, from whole heads of cabbage to sourdough pancakes to oven roasted tuna. And because we’re running a chicken spa, they also get a custom dust bath every couple of days.

With the recent wet weather, it’s been hard for the girls to find a spot in the chook dome to take their dust baths – an essential grooming process, necessary to keep them clean and parasite-free.  So…we’ve half-filled an old recycling bin with carefully sifted dry dirt, and this goes into their coop every afternoon for an hour or two.

It’s hysterically funny to watch them – they line up and take turns in the tub,  rolling around in the dirt and flicking it under their feathers to clean them.  They end up coated in a fine sheen, which makes them look as if they’ve been dusted in talcum powder.

Despite being brutally windy yesterday, the sun was quite bright, and I managed  to record this clip of Francesca undertaking her daily ablutions. I thought you might enjoy a glimpse into poultry preening…

. . . . .

For more chicken posts, please click here

Read Full Post »

Frugal Living #5: Small Things Matter

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , , on August 31, 2010| 59 Comments »

I really can’t complain about our living costs.   Since we started along this path of  “quasi-sustainability”, our food expenses have dropped dramatically.  Paradoxically, we’re eating better than ever before, with very little  pre-prepared or heavily processed food in our daily diet.

It’s tough economic times though, so we’ve again reassessed to see where we can save a bit of money without feeling like we’re depriving ourselves.  We’ve already made lots of big changes, but there’s still room for a bit of tinkering.  These things won’t save us a fortune, but it’s surprising how quickly it all adds up!

Homemade pasta

As I mentioned in a previous post, we used to struggle with homemade pasta.  So much so that until recently, we’ve always purchased it from our mate Joe at Peppe’s Pasta, at $7.50 per 500g.  Now that we have our trusty Ottolenghi recipe down pat, we’ll be making this at home. And since our girls are reliably laying five eggs a day at the moment, the pasta will only cost us $1.20 per 500g!

Homegrown lettuce

Everyone talks about how wonderful it is to have homegrown herbs, but I’ve only just realised how fabulous it is to grow lettuce!  It’s ready to harvest within a matter of weeks, and I go out every morning and pull a few leaves off for the boys’ lunches.  If you have room for a small herb garden, even if it’s in pots, I’d recommend you plant a little lettuce as well.  If nothing else, it might convince the kids to eat their greens!

No more pinenuts

I  love pinenuts, but they’ve recently become prohibitively expensive – good quality ones from Lebanon or Spain are between $60-$100/kg.  I now happily substitute slivered almonds, which are a tiny $12/kg from Harkola. There’s always a bag hidden in the fridge somewhere.

No more packaged dips

Not that we were buying many, but it’s so easy to make dips at home that we really don’t need to spend money on them anymore.  In addition, the commercial versions tend to have a lot more oil and salt than our homemade ones.  We make our own hommus, taramasalata, roasted beetroot dip and nasturtium pesto – more than enough variety to fill a nibbles tray.

Aldi

Friends, if you’re not buying at least some of your groceries from Aldi, then you’re probably spending more money than you need to.  I know we certainly were.  I think the notion that Aldi products are inferior is a misconception – they may not always be better than what you can buy at Woolies or Coles (although sometimes they are), but they’re usually comparable in quality.  And they’re almost always cheaper!  Aldi also have a great organic range, with items you won’t find in other supermarkets.

Emergency meals = no more takeaway

I once read somewhere – I think it was in Shirley Conran’s Superwoman – that one of the best ways to reduce stress in the kitchen is to have a list of emergency meals written down.  These need to be easy to prep and preferably quick to cook, with minimal washing up.  It was suggested that the list be taped to the inside of a cupboard, where it could be referred to whenever exhaustion might otherwise drive you to pick up the telephone and order $60 worth of takeaway.  Our list includes dishes like baked bean toasted sandwiches, risotto and survival soup. Our boys adore them all!

If you have any money saving tips, please share them with us.  Every little bit helps!

. . . . .

Previous Frugal Living posts:

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »