down to earth

Hello everyone. A few years ago I had a photo feature on my blog where I invited readers to send me a photo of their kitchen sink. Many photos arrived and for about a year I featured a photo a week with a description written by the sender. I've been thinking of starting another photo feature so we can all have a look around our community to see where we are spending time. And then Nanette suggested I start it again so now here we are again. I'll start off with my front verandah.

This is our front verandah and it's one of my favourite places here in my home. Hanno and I have morning tea here, we talk to visitors here and I often sit and think about the entire universe here, but not in a Stephen Hawking kind of way. My parallel universes are my front and back gardens. ;- ) We live in a sub-tropical climate and these photos were taken in early winter.

If you want to be involved, send two clear photos of one of your favourite places at home or in your yard. Just one place, but two photos from different angles. Ladies, you know the drill. Photos of sewing rooms, kitchens, patios, gardens, baby's room or wherever you feel comfortable and grateful to be there. I want the men to be involved too, we all know you're out there, so I'm including tool sheds, man caves, garages, under the bonnet of the car or at the stove or BBQ, if that is your favourite place to hang out. Write a short description of what you're sending, tell us the general region you're in, a little bit about your climate and why you love your favourite place. If you have a blog, send a link which I'll include with the photos. I think readers will want to visit you after the photo is up.

I'll publish photos from two people each week. Please size your photos at about 100 - 250kb, or 650 - 1000 pixels and that will allow me to reproduce a quality photo at the size I need for my blog. Send your photos now or next week or wait until you've had time to think about it and send then. This will carry on for a while. I look forward to looking at your photos and learning a bit more about you.

The email address is: d2eblogphotos@gmail.com

Well, it's taken a good two months to mess up my work table. That's good for me! I'm usually much faster than that. ;- ) But now I have the familiar piles of books, candles, fabric, scissors, camera gear, note books and pens completely covering my work space. Only this end of the desk gives me enough elbow room for writing on the computer. Time for a clean up!

I'm feeling particularly enthusiastic lately so finding the motivation to clean up this room was easy. I know I'm lucky to have this work space so it's up to me to respect what I have and keep it clean and organised. I see it as a gift to myself. A gift that will help me remain productive and creative and in touch with all of you out there who are all being productive and creative in your own ways.

Since I finished the bulk of the writing I've slowly been slotting myself back into my routines. I'm not quite there with everything yet, but work is proceeding in that general direction. Every day I feel more of a pull towards sewing and mending and for that to happen I need a clean and tidy space that gives me enough room to spread projects out and to sit and think about ways to work efficiently.

I've never been one who tidies up my tables at the end of each day. I have a friend who does that - when (her office) work finishes for the day, she spends time organising everything so it's ready for the following day. I've never done that, maybe I should, but I tend to be a bit chaotic and when I finish for the day, I just stand up and walk away. How do you organise yourself in your work or craft room? Do you tidy up when it needs it or do you organise at the end of every day? Or is there some other way? Let me know, I want to know what you do.

This room is an important part of my small life. It's where I have most of my ideas, I work here on writing and craft, I have phone conversations here - I need it to support the effort and time I put into my home, my family and myself. I feel the inclination towards sewing grow every day so I'm hopeful that some useful work will happen here soon. I've already got my first project waiting in the wings.

At the risk of sounding ancient, which I'm close to, or old-fashioned, which I often am, I want to write about dripping today. I know! Scary stuff in these fat-free times. But a little bit of fat won't do you harm. All things in moderation, so the saying goes. Dripping is what we used to call the fat that rendered down off roasted meat. Dripping is beef or lamb fat and pork or bacon fat is called lard. Dripping and lard were a valuable ingredients in many pre-1970s homes. Most households had a dripping pot which was usually aluminium, pottery or an old china bowl. Most dripping pots had a lid and a well fitted strainer to collect bits and pieces from the cooking. These were discarded or kept in the fridge until the next stew.

Tricia and I never had it but our mother, father and grandmother all talked, with affection, of eating bread and dripping. It was quite common pre-world war 2 to use dripping instead of butter on bread. I have fond memories of my mother's dripping pot, usually full, sitting in a dark cupboard, although I think she would refrigerate it now. And although I've never eaten dripping on bread, I still use dripping in cooking and I hope I can get you to make up a little dripping pot to try it yourself.

This is a little dripping pot I've just started - it's an old jam jar used for preserving, so the glass is toughened. I'm on the lookout for a proper pot and when I find one at the second hand store, I'll grab it, give it a good scrubbing and use it for the dripping I save.

I only have a fraction of the dripping my mother collected. Meat is leaner now, we don't eat meat everyday and often I make a sauce with the dripping and don't collect it. But I do save the dripping from our roasts and also from bacon. I strain off the dripping through a strainer or sieve and store it in the fridge until it's needed. After you've saved dripping from a few roasts, you'll see a small dark layer under a lighter colour layer of fat on top. The dark layer is full of flavour but when I use the dripping, I dip the spoon right down the bottom and take some of the dark layer too. Although you can turn the pot on it's head until it's set and have the jelly layer on top.

Dripping can be used to cook roast vegetables or to make delicious gravy. Whatever it goes with it give a lovely flavour to because it has the concentrated flavour of the meat in it. If you brown your meat in dripping when you're making a casserole, it will add an extra level of flavour to the meal.

To make gravy, I take two tablespoons of dripping, add 1½ tablespoons of plain flour, salt, pepper and a small sprinkling of paprika (for colour). Stir the dripping and flour together over a medium heat and let it brown while you stir. When you reach a good rich brown colour, add enough water to make a gravy to the consistency you like.

If you're raising your own beef or pork, you probably know more about rendering fat than I do and you're might be using it in your soap as well, I'd love to hear from you to know how you're processing that fat and what you're using it for. But if you have a small amount of dripping left when you cook and usually throw it out, try this and see if you like the extra ingredient and the ability to use as much of the animal as you can.

It's always good to get value for money, no matter what your income level or age bracket. However, if you're in a low income group or on an average income with high costs, getting value for the money you spend in essential. I think you have to get into the habit of always looking for ways to save and not wasting what you already have. When you develop that habit, there is a long list of things you can do.

For most of us, apart from rent/mortgage payments, food is our biggest expense. So it follows that if you can save money on food, you've been making a real difference to your own budget. I'm taking it as a given that we're all cooking from scratch, even though there will be some who don't, it is the best starting point for all of us - for our finances, our nutrition and our health. This is one of the ways I use to stretch a chicken so that it not only gives us meals we enjoy, the meals are easy to make and instead of a small chicken feeding us for one meal with leftovers for lunch the next day, this one covers our main meal for three days.

I started off with a small free-range chicken, of 1.5kg/3.3lbs. On the first day I made a stuffed roast chicken with vegetables. The stuffing was stale bread, a small onion with sage, parsley and an egg from the backyard. It was delicious and satisfying. The following day I had one half of the chicken left, still on the bone. I removed the leg and breast, then chopped the carcass in two and put it in a pot with about 1.5 litres/quarts water, salt and pepper and with the lid on brought it to the boil and simmered it for about an hour. The herb stuffing seasoned the stock perfectly and gave it a real boost. For about the last 5 minutes of the simmering, I put the chicken in the stock and warmed it up. Two teaspoons cornflour in the stock thickened it slightly and on the second day we had skinless chicken mashed potato with onion and parsley, some pumpkin from the previous say, peas and a little of the chicken gravy made with the stock.

On the final day of the chicken, I noticed the chicken stock was set like a jelly in the bowl because so much magnesium, collagen and glucosamine had leached out of the bones. A truly nutritious broth. So, all the meat was stripped from the bones, the thick gelatinous stock reheated with the chicken pieces, parsley, salt and pepper added and boiled with a hand full of small shell pasta - a delicious satisfying soup on a cold winter's day. And that was the end of the chicken. It was only a small bird had it been a bit bigger it would have done us for four or five days, but then I would have frozen a couple of meals for later.

It's a simple thing to stretch out food like this. It doesn't take any extra time but you have to have the idea to do it and know what you're doing. Making a list of ideas to stretch out chicken, fish, beef etc. is a great way to start. There must be a hundred ways to serve a chicken but I hope you add this to your repertoire because it will give you value for the money you spend on the chicken and you'll know you're providing healthy and nutritious food, with no waste. How do you stretch your food dollars?

This is what today looks like: I'll let the chickens out soon, give them some warm porridge and watch as they push past each other so they can be the first out the gate. It's been raining here on and off for about a week so there'll be worms and bugs for them to catch; extra protein in their diet to turn into delicious golden yolked eggs. Then I'll feed Hettie before I go back inside to have breakfast, after which, I'll wash up. Today's lunch will be roast chicken with fresh herb stuffing, Brussel sprouts, potatoes and pumpkin. A hearty meal on a cool day will keep us fuelled up for work in the afternoon.

But this morning, apart from preparing the roast, I'll make bread rolls and clean out the fridge. The bed needs to be stripped and clean flannel sheets put on the bed. That will make one load of washing which I'll put on and Hanno will hang out. I washed three wool jumpers yesterday so hopefully they'll be dry enough to press and put away. While the press is hot, I'll also do a small pile of tablecloths and pillowslips sitting there. That's not the end of the ironing but the rest will have to wait a little longer. I don't want to spread myself too thin today. After we eat lunch, I'll wash up and surface clean the kitchen then sit down for an hour. There may be some knitting done then. I'm knitting Hanno some mittens in pure Merino with a strand of baby Alpaca for extra warmth. Since he had an accident with a chain saw and nearly cut off his hand, the circulation in that hand is a bit slow and it's always cold. These mittens are to warm up his hands while he's on the computer or watching TV.

After lunch, finally, I'll be able to do some work with the new plants and pots I bought on Tuesday. I'll start potting new plants in the pots and if time allows, I'll repot a few hanging baskets. On the weekend, I'll need Hanno's help to move some roses in the front garden so I can plant new salvia and Chinese lanterns where the roses once grew. There is a lot of pruning to be done out there but I think that's a weekend job too.

So many things to do, but I'll get to all of them, eventually. All of it has waited patiently for me for these past few months, another day or two will make no difference. I have to do a small amount of grocery shopping, dust and rearrange my cook books, bake a cake, scrub the outdoor table on the back verandah, clean and organise the green house, clean the bathrooms, make soap. Oh, the list could go on and on. I'm sure you know the score and have similar, if not identical, work in your home. It's nothing fancy, just ordinary day stuff, but it feels so good to be doing it again. What are you doing today?