Workshops and weather

If you were wondering where we were yesterday, Hanno and I were out volunteering.  After an early breakfast of tea and toast, we travelled up the mountain, through mist and an occasional shower, to our neighbourhood centre.  As we arrived, so did Wendy (gee I miss those people I used to work with), then Hanno drove the bus into Brisbane's Foodbank and after our customary early morning talk, Wendy started her work and I printed out my notes for the second part of the soap making workshop.  We'd made bar soap the previous week, yesterday we finished off by making laundry liquid and talking about home made cleaners.  They were a wonderful group of women, all enthusiastic about cutting right back on the amount of chemicals in their homes and coming back for more workshops in the future.

So after the ladies left and I cleaned up, I had lunch with Beverly, heard about how the Bunya Festival went and started talking about the workshops.  Beverly said people have been coming in asking about them so we compiled a list and decided when to start.  Beverly said she'll do two - Crossing Cultures (indigenous awareness) and Bush Foods, a new volunteer will do Vegan Cooking, and one of the ladies at the soap making will do Baby Massage.  These will be in addition to those I'll do on breadmaking and sour dough, jams, sauces and pickles, organic vegetable gardening, chooks, worms, cooking from scratch, fermenting, the fugal home and blogging.  I'm going to phone a lady today to see if she'll do knitting and crochet for beginners.  It looks like it's forming into a very helpful group of topics.  They'll start in May, when the book is finished.

I'd like to thank Nicole, a young lady who surprised me by sending a beautiful box of natural soaps, lips balm, lotions, deodorant and beeswax candles.  Nicole said she has been reading the blog for three years and learned how to make soap from my tutorial.  The gift was her way of saying thank you for what she got from the blog.  Now she has a little Etsy business selling her beautiful products.  Thanks Nicole, I love what you sent.

This is the latest satellite map of the cyclone.  
Photo from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

So today I'm back at work on the book and while I write about food, Hanno will be putting my words into action.  We got some free tomatoes yesterday and he's going to make tomato relish and sauce.  More delicious home made goodies for the cupboard!  I'll tell him the recipe but he's is a pretty good cook so I'm happy to leave him to it.  He'll come in and ask if he needs to.  We'll also be keeping an eye on that huge cyclone/hurricane that's off the coast and moving closer towards our state.  It's 500 kms|310 miles wide and is expected to be a category 5 (winds 295 km/hour) when it crosses later tonight.  I have a bad feeling about this and even though people are being evacuated up north, I know many will be unable to leave.  I worry too about all the animals - both wild and pets left behind.  It's been a tough year so far with the weather and it looks like it will be much worse soon.  If you're up north I hope you'll be safe and can move to protected, high ground.  Don't worry about Hanno and I, we're further south (just where that cloud stops half way up the east coast), we'll get the rain but not much else.