{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  Inspired by soulemama

Baked Fruit Bread Custard

This is a great filling dessert while the nights are still cool. It has more of a baked custard feel (less bread, more fruit) than a traditional bread and butter pudding. It’s also low GI. It’s a mixture of recipes from Low GI Food and Jude Blereau’s Coming Home to Eat.

I’ve become quite a fan of desserts at the moment. They fill Little B up (he has hollow legs) and Mr B (he works hard physically) plus they are quite nourishing when made from natural whole foods.

4 slices sourdough bread (or fruit bread or wholegrain)

1 tbsp jam (your choice)

½ cup dried peaches (or any fruit of your choosing, we used diced bananas)

2 eggs

¼ cup sugar

1 tsp grated lemon zest

500ml low fat milk

freshly grated nutmeg

- Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Spread the bread slices with jam, and cut each bread slice into quarters and arrange in a 1.25 litre ceramic baking dish. Scatter with chopped fruit.

- Whisk together eggs, sugar and lemon in a bowl. Whisk in the milk. Pour over bread and sprinkle with nutmeg. Set aside for 5 mins to allow the bread to soften.

- Put the dish in a roasting tin of hot water. The water should come halfway up the sides of the dish. Bake for 35 minutes or until set.

Cloth Pads

Wemoon natural menstrual pads

In recent years, more people are turning back to cloth nappies in a bid to save money and reduce their environmental foot print. And some mums on considering these options for their children, start to contemplate the use of their own disposable menstrual products and it’s environmental impact. After all a child is only in nappies for roughly 3 years, whereas a woman may menstruate for 35 years.

Approximately 20 billion pads and tampons are discarded each year in North America alone. That has a massive environmental impact when you apply it to multiple countries. It’s also estimated a woman may use 11,000 tampons in her lifetime . So let’s assume there are approximately 3.5 million women in the world (currently WHO says there are 1.07 women to every man) . That means 37,997,784,000 tampons / pads are used in their lifetimes.

Obviously this isn’t a realistic figure as there are women who use cloth, have gone through menopause, are pregnant, too young or too old. But still that figure is staggering. In one household with 3 women alone, they will use 33,000 menstrual products in their lifetime.

But there is another key reason to use cloth pads or cups such Lunette cup, and that is exposing your nether regions to a cocktail of chemicals. Using disposable pads / tampons can expose you to dioxin and the cotton used to make these products has been sprayed with insecticides. Dioxin is part of the bleaching process and has been linked to cancer, endometriosis, immune system suppression, heart and liver disease and hormonal disruption.

Scary thought if you are putting it month by month on your girlie bits.

Conventional cotton is the most pesticide sprayed crop in the world. Pesticides are endocrine disruptors and your ovaries are part of the endocrine system. 

So what to do?? There are so many different options in cloth pads and menstrual cups. The most well known menstrual cup is the Diva Cup with the Lunette Cup following not far behind . Both are easy to use once you get the hang of them. Cloth pads are just like using a cloth nappy. They do need soaking the same as cloth nappies. There are so many different kinds out there and which you prefer will be an individual choice. Again much like cloth nappies.

I’ve been using a lunette cup and cloth pads since my period returned when I stopped breastfeeding Little B. They are so easy to use. I soak the pads in a bucket of cold water, and then throw them into the wash. They dry really quickly. I started off buying a few different kinds to see which ones I preferred and then bought the rest when I settled on my choice. The change was easy, painless and I felt better reducing my environmental impact.

But if you’re not up to making a change to cloth, then at least use organic products such as Jolie Tampons  or Natracare to reduce the impact on your girlie bits.

Lazy Sundays

Artwork by Art Harrison

Cooked

- Chicken Noodle Soup

- Plaited rolls

- Pear Crumble

Listening to

- I Am Sam soundtrack

Reading

- The other half lives by Sophie Hannah

Project

- We started on our back deck area renovation. Up went all the fence extensions to block out our neighbour who is too close for comfort.

- Then we planted a few succulents as we begin our new garden bed along the same fence line. It's a sort of desolate area that needs cheering up - next stop some salvias.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  Inspired by soulemama

Meet Brad ;-)

So what do you do on rainy days if Spotlight has had a sale on yarn:

Meet Brad

Brad with his work hair on the farm

Brad with his party hair

Brad with his skate boarding hair (and obligatory skateboard)

And finally some food for brad (sponge cake and sandwiches)

This has been a really fun game for Little B. He loves making pom poms and the majority of them are being used as pretend dogs LOL. We hope to knit a fried egg next and maybe some more sandwiches.

Dont leave us

I'm sad to see so many people leaving the blog-o-sphere at the moment because they feel they have nothing to say :-( People like Julie from Toward Sustainability, who I am very sad to say has decided to stop blogging. I also think a lot of people are feeling pressured to produce particular kinds of blogs (as Eat at Dixibelle's explains quite nicely here).

I don't think about risks much. I just do what I want to do. If you gotta go, you gotta go ~ Lillian Carter


I think we all have something to say and that we should blog from the heart. It's not a popularity contest and we should blog with passion and as much honesty as we choose to share LOL. I also think Sonia made a great point about apologising about our blogs here.

Not all blogs can be 1950's sugar pie happiness. I'm another blogger who feels that peak oil is important. Mr B and I have every intention of living off the grid in the future. But I'm also a mum with a multiple allergy child, so cooking takes up way too much of my life. Hence you will see a fair bit of that on this blog.

This nation was built by men who took risks - pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.  ~Brooks Atkinson

I'm also learning new skills as I want to be as self sufficient as I can be. I'm a crappy knitter but I am improving with practice. I spend far too much time being bossed around by a 3.5 year old but that's my choice as a SAHM. I'm also passionate about day to day things like unstructured play, and waldorf / montessori play ideas for children; being plastic and toxic free; and my love of gardening grows all the time (and I so didnt start off as an outdoors girl).

Why not go out on a limb?  Isn't that where the fruit is?  ~Frank Scully

This is me - I'm not looking for approval, or to be the same as the majority, or to win a popularity context. I love being part of this big group of free thinking interesting women and men blogging around the world.

Come back ladies we need the wide and varied contributions of many to this lovely blogland!! Write the things you'd like to read and discuss in the world, we'll all be better for it.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth ~ Katherine Mansfield