Moments of Clarity

I’ve been making a concerted effort at the moment to borrow one movie a week from the library and to watch it. And I saw a beautiful movie the other day – A Single Man (with Colin Firth). It's the kind of movie that rolls around in your mind afterwards and one thing I really took from this movie is the notion of moments with clarity.

Those moments of colour in our lives that remind us of who we are, who we love and how much our life and ourselves mean to us.

And last night as I attended our local lantern parade to celebrate Winter Solstice, I was reminded of this…

:: The companionship I feel as I watch our local community come together to celebrate

:: The pleasure in watching my husband and my son cuddle, play games and walk the streets looking at all the lanterns and fire twirling displays (Little B’s favourite)

:: The warmth at meeting up with friends old and new in the streets from kinders, volunteer groups, dancing, f & v shop

:: The joy of watching Little B & his bestie squeal with delight as they see each other from the sidelines during the parade

:: And the yearning I feel watching my belly dance class perform…I haven’t been able to dance for the last two terms since the times of the class changed. But I yearn to be back there with them xx

Cooking up a Storm

I’ve been spending lots of time experimenting in the kitchen over the last few weeks. I’ve discovered a couple of new vegetarian cookbooks (River Cottage Veg Everyday and The Global Vegetarian Kitchen – and no I’m not a River Cottage groupie LOL)

I’m trying to cook with a greater focus on seasonality especially where veg is concerned. Summer I find easy but with winter, I want to branch out from the normal stews and soups we make.

I made the most delicious Cauliflower Soup with Garlic Croutons last week, and this week hope to make a Chickpea and Cauliflower curry.

 

Also my other aim has been to move Little B away from just toast for breakfast. He was recently diagnosed with hypoglycaemia after fainting at kindy, so it’s low GI all the way. But this has been a bit tricky because he has so many allergies (rules out eggs, some kinds of dairy, nuts).

But some new ideas have been:

:: Buttermilk Pikelets with stewed pears

:: Home made Baked Beans on the obligatory toast

:: Frijoles Con Queso

:: A breakfast smoothie (using Quark instead of yoghurt) with a low gi muffin

I’m trying to get him into some sort of breakfast routine in preparation for school next year. This may seem odd but Little B likes to know exactly what breakfast is, whereas the rest of the day he’s a go with the flow and adapt kind of boy. But with breakfast he is shall we say rigid in his ideas!!

Long Weekending

Over the long and rather brisk weekend, we managed to get outside to enjoy some much needed sunshine…

:: Raking up all the leaves (with helpers in tow)

:: Cooking some rather yummy oat & spelt biscuits (nice with beetroot dip)

:: Digging, digging and digging over one of the veggie beds so that our faithful magpies and kookaburras can eat up the curl grubs its infested with

:: Taking our budding inventor to see the Wallace & Gromit inventor's exhibition at Scienceworks

:: And when it all got a bit too hard ;-) settling down with a nice book

Hope you had a lovely Jubilee weekend as well.

Slow Living Diary May 2012

Once again, I am joining in with Christine from Slow Living Essentials for a monthly reflection of slow living…

NOURISH: Big on the agenda has been lots of nutrition to keep us fighting fit. Have used our Super Chicken Soup to fight off colds/flus a fair bit for Mr B (and it’s worked a treat!!). Made a huge batch of blueberry muffins for me with some frozen blueberries left over from summer.  

PREPARE: I’ve started making two loaves at a time when baking our bread, helped by now buying bread flour in 10kg lots – this saves me heaps of time and a bit of money too. I’ve also been bulk cooking snacks for Little B (aka 18 muffins at a time). I’m also trying to have a few meals in the freezer as back up at all times (this month its mainly soup & Gozleme).

REDUCE: We’ve been using up old steel fence posts in a variety of ways (see Enhance :-) We’ve taken a left over curtain half, lined it with an old polar fleece blanket and it’s become our front door curtain. Our front door is made of a series of old paneled art deco glass that moves and leaks and is freezing – this curtain has raised the temperature in our house overnight by 2 degrees.

After doing a little course at the local library on home brewing, Mr B put out the call to friends to find the best place to buy equipment. Lucky us, someone gave us a secondhand brewing kit that they didn’t want – it’s only been used a handful of times. Bonus!!

GREEN: We are focusing strongly on nutritional medicine to stay well (a big step for Mr B who likes his cold & flu tablets). Made up a big batch of our home-made cleaner, so that I always have some on hand. We've been using microfibre mops to keep our wooden floors shiny and clean and in the vain hope it might keep the dust down. So far so good...still dusty though :-(

GROW: My swedes were growing really well but seemed to be taking away from the co-planted peas, so we pulled them all out and ate them in soup. Still yumming up baby spinach in sandwiches, soup and smoothies.

CREATE: I’ve learnt to crochet properly *happy dance*. It’s been great fun learning from a lovely teacher – and I’m well on the way with my scarf. Only a few squares left and I’ll have something new & in my mind glamorous to wear.

I also made a bunch of flannel handkerchiefs for Little B. He prefers something really soft to wipe his nose and who could resist scooters in homage to his daddy??

DISCOVER:  I’ve been reading up a storm this month. My absolute two favourites have been the River CottageBread Book and Permaculture Pioneers. But I’ve also enjoyed Heidi Swansons cookbook - Super Natural Everyday, and Dr Caroline Hungerfood. She’s an Aussie GP who focuses on a nutritional medicine which I’m a big fan of.

For fun I’ve also read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (a totally new dark adult spin on Alice in Wonderland).

ENHANCE: This month Mr B made a scarecrow for kindy out of old steel fenceposts. Kindy has had a problem in the past of vandalism and ye old scarecrow has been stolen or flung onto nearby roofs. Not anymore…he’s now made of steel and concreted into the ground!! LOL Have joined a local craft group to learn more crochet skills. We’ve also again joined in the fight by signing a pledge to stop a McD’s being built in our area.

ENJOY: I’ve actually been enjoying some quality time with Mr B. We’ve been making an effort to have a date night once a month, and to also make sure that we hang out and chill with each other a few nights a week to stay connected. It’s easy to get lost in the swirl of work, volunteering (which we both do), kiddo and social commitments.

And really who could resist The Highway Rat on his way to dress up day at kindy the other day xx

Super Chicken Soup

Of course as luck would have it, after Little B was sick recently, Mr B caught the cold as well. With Mr B an adult asthmatic we generally hate anything with a cough. So we quickly turned to an old standby – our Super Chicken Soup which we find speeds up recovery or in some cases stops the cold /sore throat etc completely in its tracks before it can take hold.

We morphed together this recipe from 2 different recipes  (Bec’s Kill Anything Soup on Simple Savings and Jude Blereau’s Chicken Soup to Heal All Ills in Wholefood for Children).

4 chicken legs (skin off)

4 cloves garlic (finely diced)

2 red chillies

1 tsp grated fresh ginger

1 tbsp coconut oil

5 cups water

1 finely chopped carrot

1.5 good handfuls of baby spinach

1 packet of udon noodles (chopped)

Put chicken legs in with coconut oil and sauté slightly. Then add rest of ingredients except noodles. Cook for 30 minutes, then take chicken out and pull meat off the bone. Put chicken back into soup. Add noodles and simmer for 15 minutes. Add salt & pepper to taste.

This meal is quick, yummy and really clears the sinuses. We make a similar version for Little B sans the chillies. We also puree everything together for him to make a smooth soup and he just gobbles it up. Mr B prefers the soup clear with the vegies, chicken etc floating around in all the garlic/chilli goodness.

I make this as soon as I know either of the boys are sick and it seems to really help. Definitely helps them either not get or get over chest infections really quickly. Which as chief cook, nose wiper and all round go to girl, is nothing short of a bonus!!

Fabberdiculous Bread

I love making bread :-) It’s one of the things that I really enjoy doing and love to experiment with.

But bread making can be temperamental and moving to the new house, I found that our bread wasn’t proving properly (due to temperatures). I resorted to putting it on a heat pad which worked but the bread wasn’t as nice (I now know I was overstretching the gluten). I even resorted to using the breadmaker to make the dough and then baking it in the oven, but still not as successful as it used to be.

So what to do?? After seeing an episode that River Cottage did on bread, I borrowed the River Cottage Bread Book from the library. And voila – I had my answer. This book has 30 or so pages dedicated just to the process of making bread and on reading this I could plainly see what was causing the problem.

A few tweaks here and there and I’m making beautiful bread again. In fact, I’m prouder of my bread now than before. It looks and tastes like it came from a bakery.

I also like the fact that this recipe makes 2 loaves at a time. I’m all for time saving at the moment in the kitchen as I have to cook so much. So spending half as much time to make twice as much bread is simply wonderbubble**!

** Faberdiculous & wonderbubble are lovely made up words courtesy of Mr Mentor the Inventor (from Grandpa in my Pocket)

Winter Preparations

Picture courtesy of here

With the cool weather we’ve been having for most of May, I started our normal preparations for winter early this year.

We’ve had our woollen underlay’s and flannelette sheets on our beds for quite a few weeks already. But after really cold night last night, our extra comforters came out and have been pinned to our doonas and put back inside their dust-mite covers. We use these comforters as emergency evac linen during summer (they live in the boot of my car).

Our hot water bottles have been in high demand!! LOL

We’re really wary about the increased cost of utilities and having never experienced a winter in this house, we are being fairly frugal with the heating. It goes on for 2 hours in the morning and 3-4 hours in the evening and the rest of the time we turn it off or keep it set to 17 (unless Little B is really sick). So far, so good – the house doesn’t really drop below 17 degrees (yet!!)

I’ve aired out our jumpers and winter jackets, and dug out all Little B’s winter clothes. So with frugal and green living during winter in mind, it’s all about layers here at the House of B – I’m more likely to pop on a beanie or a second pair of socks than to turn up the heater.

We also have lots of snugly blankets to cuddle up with when reading, crocheting or watching tv at night. There’s definitely something romantic about snuggling up in blankets, when it’s dark and chilly outside.

We indulge in lots of warms soups for lunches & dinners, plus we've been cooking lots of casseroles and warm oriented foods for lunches. Also nothing hits the spot like a warm drink...Little B loves to snuggle and read library books over a cup of hot carob. Plus we keep warm working in the garden, baking, and playing during the day.

Finally, Mr B is going to put in some insulation batts underneath the floors of the bedrooms to stop some of the cold coming up from underneath in those rooms at night. This is a fairly expensive exercise so we aim to do it room by room as finances permit :-)