Well, it's mid morning, I'm just about to put the kettle on for tea and I've done everything I wanted to do. I just took a photo of H out in the back garden. Look at the box of kale he picked! That's all for him, but to be honest, it will be a few day's meals with his kassler and sausages.
I buy organic flour for my bread. I figure if I'm baking it should be the healthiest bread I can manage. Organic flour is cheapest when you buy in bulk. That's easily done by finding a local bulk food shop. They're all over the place but rarely advertise so you have to go searching.
Here I can buy a 5kg bag of Kialla Pure organic flour - either wholemeal, rye or white for around $10. It's cheaper again if you get a 10kg bag. A 500g pack of good quality dry yeast is $4. I also add a spoon full of salt and sugar or honey - I calculated those to cost around 5 cents per loaf. I'm saying the water is free, I know it's not but the cost is so small it's not worth adding it. Suffice to say the 5 cents for the salt and sugar will cover the water too. You'll get about 9 loaves from a 5 kg bag of flour and about 50 loaves from the pack of yeast. So that works out to be around $1.63 in ingredients. Say we add 5 cents for the amount of gas or electricity to bake the loaf and you'll get your organic loaf for $1.68. An organic sourdough or wholemeal loaf costs $5 at Woolworths.
So, for a year's worth of bread, eating five loaves a week:
HOMEMADE
$1.68 x 5/week = $8.40 a week OR $8.40 x 52 weeks = $436.80/year
BOUGHT FROM WOOLWORTHS
$5 x 5/week= $25/week OR $25 x 52 weeks = $1300/year
Which works out as being $863.20 a year more for bread if you buy it rather than make it fresh at home. That's $863.20 more just on bread alone!!
Of course there are many other reasons for baking at home - no preservatives, you are able to modify certain ingredients as you need to, it tastes better and it is the freshest bread, but I think the economic argument is a convincing one to start baking at home. And when I say home baking, I mean with a bread machine too - the same figures apply, although you'd have to factor in the cost of your bread machine. A bread machine will pay for itself in a year.
I am happy to answer any questions you might have on home baking, or any other topic for that matter. Just pop a comment in or email me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Now that my sons are almost 26 and 27, I find it difficult at times to remember back when they were this little. This is Kerry on the left and Shane on the right. They were 4 and 5 years old when this photo was taken. They've still got those twinkles in their eyes and are still the most beautiful people you could hope to meet.
This quilt was made by my sister when she sat with our mother as she was dying.
I want to encourage all of you who aren't yet making things by hand to take the plunge. People sometimes limit themselves because they think what they will make won't look as good as what they can buy, and therefore will be useless.
Mass produced clothes, gifts and household items are over rated. Often they are exact clones of what has come before them and what will follow - there is no humanity in them. Machines were developed to produce consistency of product with few flaws. That is fine when you need consistency for safety or some other valid reason, but it becomes bland and repetitive if it is not.
Our individuality marks us as being different to our siblings, friends and those around us. We mark that individuality by truly being the person we are, by our clothes and what we choose to have in our homes. It is a confident statement to be able to make something exactly as you want it to be and feel good about using it. You are tailoring your own life in the way you want it to be, feathering your nest with unique pieces that reflect you and your distinctive complexity. The special things we create mark time in our lives, they hold history and make you think of certain people and happenings. They are more than utilitarian objects.
It amazes me to look at some blogs and see what women are working on in their own homes. Clothes, knitting, bags, and household items that look more elegant and reflective of human qualities than that mass produced sameness of a machine. A machine will rarely place a stitch in an odd way, a machine will work to exactly the same specifications each time and is incapable of putting diversity into anything. We can though. We can make any shape, we can place our stitches where we want them to be, we can blend fabulous colours, we can make family treasures unlike anything available in a store. And the good part of making it yourself is that it is unique and rare ... and it is of you.
A small addition: The quilt in the photo above is an important part of my family treasures. The mass produced things sitting on it may have cost more than the quilt, but in the overall scheme, they are worthless. When they wear out, they'll be thrown away, or composted and never thought of again. I will never throw this quilt away, it will always hold its history and be the quilt that my sister made for mum. That is priceless.
It was going to be too time consuming to convert the drawings to PDFs so here are some that you can "save as". Jenny, I'm assuming that it's the "give more expect less" sampler that you like. Here it is. I'd love to see it when you've finished. If this is not the correct one, let me know.
And another ...
There are others, if there is anything in particular you like, email me and I'll email the drawing back. I'd add new ones over coming months.
I've just noticed that some of them have lost lines in the translation here, just fill those in before you start tracing.
I started the sourdough starter on July 1 with one cup of flour and one cup of rainwater. Then my back gave me a lot of grief so although I could see the starter sitting on the bench, I didn't look at it until yesterday. I really thought that I'd have to come here, apologise, then start all over again. But it just goes to show you what a strong force natural systems are. The sourdough survived very well on it's own - with no feeding - and now it's puffy and fermenting. I gave it its first feed early this morning. It looks happy so I'm going to bake with it and hope to make my bread tomorrow, after it's had two more feeds.
My starter this morning.
Sourdough relies on the wild yeasts in the air you breathe and the beneficial bacteria in your particular environment. Each sourdough will be different, each will have its own individual taste. Isn't that wonderful. I didn't want dust or any bugs to crawl into mine and as I didn't want to put the lid on the jar, which would stop the entry of the wild yeasts, I came up with a simple and old fashioned way of gently protecting the starter. It allows air in and out but covers it at the same time.
It is a piece of thin cotton, you could also use loose weave linen, with some beads on the corners to hold it down. I have several of these milk jugs covers that I use for various things and here is the one I made for the sourdough. I'm going to make another one of these when I have more time. This was a rush job to quickly cover the starter. It's a simple and quick project that you might like to try. It will only take an hour to complete. You need a square of fabric, beads or buttons and embroidery floss, which is a bit sturdier than sewing machine cotton.
I wonder how the other starters are going? If you started one, pease let me know if it's fermenting or if it's changed in any way.
I'm really happy to be able to sit here now without the pain of the past few days. When you're usually healthy and something like this lays you low, it puts a lot of things in perspective.
I was very touched by your messages of support and the good wishes sent my way. I tell you, when I was at my lowest and came to check the blog it made me smile to see that many of you were thinking of me. I really appreciate your kindness. There are hugs all around today.
I'm still taking it easy and I've been banned off working at home today so I'll have some time to spend on the computer. As I haven't done any photos for a couple of days, I thought I'd post these stitcheries of mine to make up for the lack of pix. If anyone wants to do any of these themselves, I still have the original drawings and would be happy to load them on the site so you can download them and start stitching.
Come back later in the day as I'll be writing about the sourdough and will share a little sourdough related project I worked on while sitting still.
Hello everyone. I have a pinched sciatic nerve so I can't sit at the computer for long. The good news is there is an improvement since yesterday and I hope to be back tomorrow.
Thank you for all your good wishes. I really appreciate it. : )
I'm fighting to go to work today as my hip is still giving me curry. I hate being sick or incapacitated in any way so I refuse to stay home. I'm going to talk H into coming to work with me so he can do all the running around and help the ladies set up for sewing circle.
While I was sitting around doing next to nothing yesterday, I got to thinking about how much the simplicity and sustainability lifestyles have gained momentum in the past 18 months. When I helped start the aussieslivingsimply website, there was almost nothing being written in Australia about how much we all needed to change. Then the drought and weather patterns started to catch everyone's attention and it started to slowly change.
I think the internet and blogs have taken a leading role in getting information to people so they can think about what is happening and what they need to do to be ready for a new way of living. As usual, politics and mainstream media continue to follow while they falsely believe they lead.
Last week I was contacted by a Today Tonight producer. This man wanted to know the best place to do a story on small community living that incorporates bartering and growing food. I suggested Crystal Waters, which is a permaculture village close to where I live. It's been going since the 70s and is still a thriving village. The producer knew nothing about simple living but had heard about peak oil, however, that was the full extent of his knowledge in this area.
So I guess that program will be on in the next month or so. I don't watch TV at 6.30 so I doubt I'll see it but I hope they do justice to such an important topic. As much as I doubt the integrity of mainstream media in general, we do need it to get the message out to ordinary Australians that they must change. This program probably won't be important in the overall scheme of things but I hope it is part of a momentum of information about change that needs to happen. Fast.
I've been making yeasted breads for a long time now and I think my bread is pretty good, even if I do say so myself. There's always room for improvement though so now I want to try my hand at making sourdough. Part of my simple living philosophy is a desire to make as much as I can here at home and to buy fewer products as the years go buy. I use a very good French yeast now but I can no longer justify that in terms of food miles, so when I finish the packet I'm using now, I won't buy it again.
Enter the sourdough. It is made with the wild yeasts in the air. These yeasts are captured in the sourdough starter, multiply, and when the starter is mature, the wild yeasts and other beneficial bacteria give the bread a unique taste and a good lift.
I started my starter this morning and I invite everyone who reads this to start one too. Together we'll see what we can make of it. I'm a novice when it comes to sourdough, I've never made it before, so we can all help each other and hopefully, we'll produce some decent bread.
I have a book on baking but all their recipes advised the addition of commercial yeast to boost the starter. I would like my sourdough to be authentic, so I searched for more information to see how artisan bakers make their bread. I'm not saying I'll never use yeast to boost the mix but I want to at least start out with the authentic starter. This is where I got my information from: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm
So let me know if you're joining in and hopefully in a couple of weeks, we'll all have some good bread.
I've been out in the garden enjoying the mid-afternoon sunshine and pouring a little rainwater on the vegetables. We have some dutch cream potatoes, carrots and English spinach picked for dinner that we'll have with the last of the tuna bake. As usual, I had my camera with me in the SIDE pocket of my apron. : ) I took these photos in the long shadows of a cold winter afternoon.
Don't forget, you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
H is already talking about picking this kale next week to have with his smoked German sausages. I'll be having boiled eggs and pumpkin soup on those nights. He's been happy that it's growing so well as it's the first year we've planted it and it's really taken off.
I love terracotto pots in the garden, not on the ground but upsidedown, like this.
This is the garden right next to the chookery. You can see beyond the fence to the bananas, palms and loofahs.
Now I'm going to prepare the vegetables for dinner and sit with some knitting. I've been hobbling around with a sore hip all day and I need to sit for a while.
Thank you for stopping by.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
