down to earth

There is a busy day ahead of me. My back pain is almost gone and I need to catch up on my housework. First step will be to check the sourdough starter as later in the day I'll be baking my first sourdough bread. I'll put on a load of washing before breakfast and when H wakes up we'll eat together. He shouldn't be too long because our cat Hettie is serenading him with her wild howls right outside the bedroom window. LOL Breakfast today will be eggs and tomato on rye bread and black tea.

After brecky I'll make the bed, hang the washing on the line, sweep and wash the floors and make the bread. Morning tea break on the front verandah will be tea and biscuits - I made some chocolate chip biscuits yesterday so they are still nice and fresh. I'll do a bit of knitting while I have my break too. I'm knitting fingerless gloves for my sister and my friend Kathleen.

When we feel rested and inclined to work again, I'll clean the bathroom and the laundry room. My elder son Shane is coming over on Sunday and I want to make some brownies for him. I'll freeze them so he can take them home and have some home made treats when he wants them. Hopefully the bread will be ready then and we'll eat lunch.

After lunch I'll be making another apron, similiar to the crossover strap one in Jewels blog (thanks Robbie). I have some lovely yellow cotton fabric that's been waiting for a project just like this one. I have about six aprons now but most of them are old and need replacing. I'd like to have some new aprons that I feel proud to wear when I have visitors staying.

I won't be making dinner tonight as H would like to pick the kale in the back garden and cook that will some kassler and smoked pork sausage. He likes making that himself, although I help a little by adding apple cider and pepper, he hasn't yet got the knack of seasoning, so I add this and that and he is delighted with how good his meal tastes. I never tell him, I want him to think he's created a masterpiece all by himself. I'll be having leftover Italian bean casserole for my dinner. I still have lemons to juice so I might also make a lemon dessert of some kind, but if I don't have time, that can be tomorrow's chore. If you have some good lemon recipes, please share them with me as I'm drowning in lemons and all the people I know don't want any more.

I hope there will also be time late afternoon for knitting, a look around the garden and a talk with the chooks and dogs. And hopefully I'll tidy my work table before I go to bed. If I don't get it all done, tomorrow is another day.

I'll be back later to add to this and to read your comments. ; )

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.

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.