With the rain and cold weather yesterday I started thinking of a good old fashioned baked dinner. My fellow Australians would know this as a meal that featured either roast lamb, chicken or beef which an assortment of vegetables and gravy. My vegetarian version of a baked dinner is pictured here. This is what we ate last night.

I often get requests to write posts about frugal vegetarian meals so I thought this might be a good time to do one. Let me say first that I don't consider myself to be vegetarian. I take emu oil capsules every day that require the death of the bird to produce, I wear leather shoes and sit on a leather sofa. I have disqualified myself from using the vegetarian term, but having said that, I don't eat meat.

My version of a baked dinner cost about two dollars for two portions. The meal is made up of potato, pumpkin, and onion - all peeled and baked in the oven with a little olive oil; steamed silverbeet and a portion of cauliflower bake.

A cauliflower bake is simply cauliflower washed and cut into flower heads and placed in a dish - microwave on high to half cook the cauliflower. Drain the water from it. Make a cheese sauce from scratch, pour that over the cauliflower and bake in the oven at the same time you're baking the vegetables.

CHEESE SAUCE
Place a tablespoon of butter in a small saucepan and melt over medium heat. Add a tablespoon of cornflour or plain (all purpose) flour and mix together. When the butter is melted and the flour combined, add about a cup of milk and mix. Make sure your heat is low now as you don't want it to come together too fast - that will create lumps. Add a cup of shredded cheese and mix in. Add salt and pepper to taste and a pinch of nutmeg. Keep stirring until the sauce is thickened and smooth.

It's been a busy week. I've worked every day since Sunday, and have today off but there is a training day tomorrow. After Friday everything will settle down again. Thank goodness. I'm tired.

I slept really well last night with rain falling on the roof and filling the tanks. Today I'll get reacquainted with the chooks and check out the garden. I have silverbeet to freeze, rosella jam to make and a basket full of button squash sitting on the table waiting for me. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with it. There are a couple of loads of laundry to do that will have to hang under shelter because today, and the next few days, we have rain.

As well as all the catch up work here at home, I'm working on a project that I can't tell you about yet, but will soon. I hope to get to that later in the morning after my chores are done and I have time to sit and think.

Overall though, today will be a day when I can regain my strength here at home, get things in order and regroup. This is the only place I can truly relax and recover so I will squeeze every bit of life from this day at home to be ready for what follows with all the joys and challenges that might pose.

I haven't had the time to answer emails for a while so there are quite a few of you waiting. I'll try to square them all away on the weekend. Thank you for being patient and for making contact. I thank you all for your wonderful comments over the past week. I've had the best time reading them, smiling, agreeing and learning about what you're all doing out there. It is very heartwarming to read your stories and I'm thankful for the time you take to be a part of my blog community.

I have often thought that modern society has divided into two camps – adults and children. This might seem quite obvious to you but I don’t mean it the way it sounds. I mean that governments, corporations, media and the advertising industry are the adults and all of us are children. They tell us, we listen. We are expected to be dependent and compliant, we are told constantly that we will be made happy with ‘stuff’, that part of modern life is to carry a large amount of debt and if we work hard, we’ll be able to pay off our life as we live it and retire at 65 to enjoy what we have. We have these messages coming at us every day about what’s right for us and how we should live, and we are encouraged to be dependent and work in the system so that big business remains healthy, the country prospers and we skill ourselves in how to earn a living rather than how to make a life.

Now let me be the first to say that I love being an Australian with all the advantages that offers. I’m grateful that our country has a sound financial base, a thriving business community and a compassionate welfare system. I don’t want that to change. I want us to. I want us to stop believing the messages that one size fits all, and to see for ourselves the value of stepping outside what is considered normal. I want us to grow up.

We need to stop listening to outside advice about what makes us happy and fulfilled and find out for ourselves. For me happiness was found in being at home and working everyday to give my family and myself a quieter, safer, healthier and more independent life. I grew up the day I discovered that work at home is satisfying and significant. That is when I stopped believing that more money and more possessions would make me happy. As I worked more in my home, I realised that for me, happiness was found in being independent of the shops, being able to make do from scratch and in leading my life away from buying convenience.

That is what worked for me. I want you to find your own happiness. I can’t tell you what will make you happy, only you know that. I can tell you that happiness isn’t one thing. It’s a whole lot of tiny fragments that you find every day that add up to a deep feeling of contentment and knowing you’re doing the right thing. And I know that you won’t find true and enduring happiness in any shopping mall, I can only encourage you to look in places unexpected, and to show you through my blog that it is easy to live well outside the modern perception of what makes a good life.

I’m not telling you to give up your job if you work outside the home, I’m not telling you to live as we do. I am saying that whatever you do, fashion it to suit yourself so that it gives you a life worth living. If you are working hard at an outside job make sure you give yourself time to enjoy what you’re working for. If you’re working at home, be mindful of happiness and what’s around you, not just getting the job done.

Many people are stressed in their day-to-day lives and worried about their future. I think that is sometimes because they don’t feel in control of their own lives. Prices are rising, the climate is changing and often it all seems too much. But don't let that stop you, don't be scared into standing still, because that is the very time you need to do something. If you can gain independence by changing in some way, do it. I felt a growing independence when I started learning how to look after myself and I realised I did not need to shop to provide all I needed to live. When I knew that I could step away from what I was expected to do and instead do what I wanted, I started to build my own unique life. I moved away from the life prescribed for me by outsiders, I took my life by the throat and gave it a good shaking. In a sense, I grew up. I stopped listening to what I was being told, I identified how I wanted to live and then worked towards it, and that, my friends, has made all the difference.

It's easy to get caught up in posts about producing food when we're trying to live a frugal and sustainable life but the truth of it is that there are other things we can be doing in our own homes that will help us move towards a simple life. Food and groceries are the easy ones because they are products we use everyday but other things can help up live well and remain green, and be doing it quietly in the background.

Above is a photo of part of our roof. Further down, unseen in this photo, is an unused satellite dish that we used to use for our pay TV, but what I have photographed is far more exciting than that - in this photo are our solar hot water unit, some skylights and a whirlybird. Australia has been making solar hot water systems for at least 30 years that I can remember. We have had solar hot water for 25 of those years. It's fairly cheap to install and free to run. Ours can be plugged into an electrical socket in case of a few days of cloudy weather, we rarely use that. When we know bad weather is coming, Hanno and I are very conservative with our water usage until the sun shines again. That way we have enough water for showering and we don't have to rely on electrical or gas to heat it. I think we've plugged into the grid with our system maybe twice since this unit was installed, which was about five or six years ago. This unit and our previous ones have all been Solarharts and we have never had a problem with any of them.

There are two skylights in the photo but we have three installed, they are in the kitchen, the spare bathroom and laundry room. We installed them because we needed more light in the house and I didn't want to have lights on all the time. Shortly after we came to live in our home we built verandahs front and back. We needed sheltered areas for drying clothes, storing bits and pieces and an area for the dogs to sit out of the sun and rain. But our main reason for adding the verandahs was to create cool air around the house. In the style of the old colonial houses, we wanted to create cross ventilation of cool air through our home and for this reason, our house is comfortable in all but the hottest summer weather. The air is cooled just outside the windows and doors, and by opening the windows and doors the cool air flows in one side of the house and out the other. There is more information about passive design here.

There is a price that is paid for that cooled air, the rooms are darker because of the verandahs. No sunlight reaches the windows and while that is fine, it makes the rooms inside darker. Enter the skylights. They give us good natural light every day and have paid for themselves over the 11 years they've been providing that light.

Whirlybirds are a great idea in any hot climate. We have two and they've made a big difference to the heat retained in the house during summer. True, there are days when nothing like this helps, but there are many days when it's hot outside but okay inside because the hot air is constantly escaping from the roof.

I've blogged about our rain collection tanks before. We have two tanks that hold a total of 15000 litres and that is the water we use to keep our vegetable garden going. The tanks silently collect rain water, with no help from us, and that water is stored until it's needed on the garden. If you can harvest some of your rain water it will be a great help in maintaining a sustainable vegetable garden.

So that is some of the hardware we're using here but how could I leave a post about home production of simple needs without mentioning sewing and knitting. The ability to sew and knit will help you keep your family clothed. Mending will help you look after the clothes you have and will keep them wearable for a much longer period. I think of the days I used to throw away clothes that needed mending as the 'dark ages'. That was when I had more money than sense and before I realised that by teaching myself a few simple skills I would be a much better custodian of my belongings, and in doing that would cut down dramatically on what I need to buy.

Simple living isn't all about cooking from scratch and stockpiling, it's a holistic approach to life that relies as much on your silent partners working away in the background, and your ability to reskill, to look after what you have and to produce as much as you can at home. Sometimes there is a price to pay to have the hardware installed, but often our lives are made easier and greener by just learning how to do something we couldn't do before.

I would be really interested in hearing about what you have at your home that helps you live simply. Do you have water tanks, knitting needles, a sewing machine, solar panels or a solar oven? How have you reksilled yourself? What do you know now that you didn't know last year? If I walked down your street today, what would make me know that yours was that one house where people were getting back to basics and living a simple life?

According to our local news, grocery prices will continue to rise along with the fuel price in the coming months. Almost everything we consume is reliant on oil – either when it is made or when it is delivered, or both. With this in mind, Hanno and I decided to do two month's shopping instead of the normal one month when we went to Aldi last week. Our trip to Aldi takes us about 30 kms from our home so we squeezed every drop of value from the fuel we used by also buying bulk supplies of baker’s flour, nuts, seeds, yeast, dried fruit, lentils and beans, as well as biscuits for the dogs and grain for the chooks.

Apart from buying milk, cream and cheese from the local dairy – where it is cheaper, and maybe potatoes, we won’t have to restock for at least two months. We will live off our stockpile, our garden and fresh eggs from the backyard. The stockpile is full now and we will be saving money, time and fuel because of it.

I have written about setting up a stockpile here and here. If you're new to this concept, please read the previous entries before you carry on with this post.

Our shopping trip took about five hours and the last thing I wanted to do when we got home was to pack everything away. I was tired and all I wanted was a cuppa and a sit down but I soldiered on and before we knew it the stockpile cupboard was full, the fridge packed and the freezer filled to the top.

I have several places to store food and supplies – items that are currently being used go in the pantry, which is in the kitchen; extra (unopened) food items are stored in the stockpile cupboard at the side of the kitchen; cleaning goods and soap-making supplies are stored in the laundry; toilet paper and tissues in the spare bathroom.

We have a chest freezer to store all our flour and dried goods like nuts, seeds, beans etc. We usually don’t eat meat but we have a stockpile of minced beef for the homemade dog food in the small freezer, when we buy fresh fish that is also stored in the small freezer on top of our fridge. There are a couple of large bags of bread flour and oats that were being stored in the freezer, we replaced them with the new supplies and the older bags are now being stored in the spare bathroom and will be used next.

The main thing to remember when you’re restocking is to rotate your stock. This is a simple matter of moving what is already there to the front and placing the newly bought goods behind. I make sure all my items are grouped with similar items so when I go looking for baked beans they’re all together, just like the canned tomatoes and the honey. However, having written that, I have not done it. I've rotated the stock but everything now needs to be grouped and I haven't had time to do it yet.

It’s a good idea to check your cupboards before restocking. If they need a clean out, do it before your new supplies arrive. Check for dust, pantry moths and bugs. If you're going to store food at home, your storage areas must be kept as clean as possible.

If you’re driving to the shops a few times a week to buy a few items, you’re not only wasting your time, you’re using more fuel than you need to. Now is a good time to rethink how you buy your food. If you would love to have a little shop close by, where you could find all those things you forgot to buy and where items are always on sale, create that store for yourself in your own home. Because, my friends, that is what a stockpile is - it's your own open-all-hours convenience store offering the best prices.

Now that we see prices rising so frequently, don't just accept it as a sign of the times, do something positive. Start a stockpile, or stock up your stockpile as much as you can, because as sure as eggs, the more you can buy right now at a good price and store at home, the more money you'll save.

Hello ladies. I hope everyone is having or preparing for a relaxing week-end. Here in the US, we are celebrating Memorial Day, a time we remember our fallen soldiers and the start of the summer holiday season. I would like to wish everyone here in the US a safe holiday. The Seed Swap is going quite well, and I hope everyone will receive their seeds in the next week (Mindy-yours will be posted Tuesday). The Shopping Tote Swap is finishing up, but I am missing quite a few photos to post on our flickr photostream . If you have received your tote and have not sent me a photo, please try to get one off to my e-mail as soon as you can so I can post it with the others (my e-mail is: cdetroyes at yahoo dot com). There are a couple of you who have sent me photos that I could not upload to flickr. If you notice that your photo is not there and you have sent it to me, please re-send it in jpeg format. I also would like to know if everyone has received their parcel, as I know of several problems, some with lost parcels in the mail and some with buddies who have sent their parcels late. If you have not received yours, please e-mail me and let me know your swap buddy's name. I will try to sort out all the problems in the next week. The Shopping Tote Swap was a large swap, and usually with that many swappers we have a few glitches that I need to fix. The photos are two of the last tote photos that I have received. Tomorrow I will talk about some changes we will be making to the next swap, to better fit into our simple lives.

There is always something to do in the garden at the moment. I love the photo above, it is of Hanno planting tomatoes with the chooks watching him. (Clicking on the photos will enlarge them.) So the new tomatoes are in, most of the potatoes have come up and seem to be growing well, and the silverbeet seeds, planted directly in the garden, have sprouted.

Hanno used some old pavers to make an area in the garden for me to put my herb pots and a bird bath. We've always had the pots there but they were sitting on the ground and weeds were a big problem. This should make everything neater and easier to manage. You can see in the photo below that I've moved a few pots over, these are a curry plant and chillies, as well as the bird bath. I'll do the rest soon.

Further over the silverbeet and cucumbers are growing like there is no tomorrow. We are packing as much as we can into our vegetable garden. With prices sky high and set to rise even more, we need to grow our own food to make sure we continue eating the freshest organic food possible. If we had to buy most of our vegetables, we wouldn't have this variety, and I doubt we could afford to buy all organic produce.

I wrote about pineapples yesterday and that brought about a lovely surprise. There was a phone call from a local lady, Sue, who reads my blog. She had some spare pineapples, her husband works on one of the farms, and she wanted to know if I wanted a few. She came over later in the morning with four lovely looking pines. Naturally I made one into a jug of pineapple crush later in the day, but these are left for more crush and some pineapple jam.

I met Sue a couple of months ago at a lunch for presenters of local budgeting courses. She helps run a back to basics group in my town and was invited along to the lunch to meet up and connect with us. I have invited her ladies to my Frugalistas morning tea that we will have at the Centre soon. I have started the Frugalistas because the last group in my budgeting course wanted the opportunity to meet on a regular basis to stay motivated and swap ideas and recipes. This is a good way for all of us to make the most of our collective knowledge and to pass what we know on to others.

Early on in my simple life I didn't understand the true significance of community. It's now clear to me that in these tough times, community is vital. We need to build strong communities, we need groups that have reskilled themselves for the coming changes and we need to support each other by sharing what we know and helping whomever we can. We will survive well with strong communities, without them, there will be problems.

I believe it is vitally important to learn whatever it is we need to know to keep our homes functioning well. We need to know the basics like how to garden, cook from scratch, preserve, make non-chemical cleaners, soap and bread, and whatever else is needed in our own homes. There are many ways to learn at home using books, blogs, the internet in general, or friendly neighbours. When we have our own homes in order, we should look to our communities to learn more, and to share what we know. It might be that you are the first person in your local area who knows this. If you are that person, or if you are one of many, I encourage you to step up to the task and lead rather than follow. If you have any local sustainability workshops, sign up and learn what you need to know. If you're already there and have skills others need, see what you can do to teach those in your community.

In my local community we have an important and informative weekend coming up:

Sunshine Coast World Environment Day Festival
Saturday May 31st 2008, 9am-4pm

University of the Sunshine Coast

Saturday 31 May 2008, 9am - 4pm

There is more information available here.

A few people asked about growing pineapples. The photo above was taken yesterday and is of the pineapple I'm currently growing in Hanno's kale patch. He's not amused. ;- ) I expect this pineapple to fruit this summer. There are some very good instructions for growing pineapples here. The pineapple is a symbol of hospitality so it makes a great summer drink to offer your guests. Good luck with your pine tops.

A wonderful parcel arrived a couple of days ago. It was from my swap partner Tracy. As well as sending some great seeds, she also sent a Down to Earth hessian tote bag (!!!) and an Organic magazine. The seeds are long black radish, evergreen bunching shallots, moon and stars watermelon, climbing princess beans, lemon cucumber, red iceberg lettuce, giant Russian sunflower and dragon carrots. I am going to have a lot of joy planting and growing those plants and I'll have thoughts of Tracy on her sheep stud while I go about it.

Don't you just love the names of the old heirloom vegetables. The hybrids are named by scientists, and it shows. They have names like L9 smooth or Kandy Kwik. pffffffffffffft. I much prefer climbing princess beans, dragon carrots, pink Brandywines and Turks Turban pumpkin. You just know those names come from the people who grow food and who often name the vegetable because it looks like its name or for someone they know. Their is a rich heritage tied up with vegetable seeds. I hope we don't lose it.

I have another drink recipe for you today. It's a drink for summer or winter - in the summer it's very cooling, in the winter, because it's high in Vitamin C, it's a good drink for the flu season.

I live in an area that grows lots of pineapples and when it's pineapple season - now - I take advantage of it and buy a local pineapple every week; they cost between $1 and $2. Pineapple crush contains a lot of fibre and vitamin C and some vitamin A, iron and calcium.

You'll need a blender to make this drink.

PINEAPPLE CRUSH

Cut the skin off the pineapple and test a small piece of the fruit for sweetness. Cut the pineapple in quarters, length ways, and remove the core. Then cut the flesh into chunks.

Place half the chunks into your blender, if the pineapple is not sweet enough, add sugar to your taste. Our pineapples are always sweet here so I never have to add sugar.

If you're going to drink it straight away and it's summer, add one cup of water and one cup of ice. Blend the pineapple until it's pouring consistency. Pour into a glass, add more iced water until it's right for you, top with a mint leaf and enjoy.

In winter, leave out the ice but blend with two cups of water. Again, add more water to it before you drink.

This is a delicious and healthy drink that will add a lot of fibre and vitamin C to your diet. It's a great drink for children because there are no preservatives or colourings and if you don't add sugar to it, contains only natural sugars. It would probably also make a good icey pole treat for the children mixed with a little yoghurt, and frozen.

I'm at home all day today. :- ) I'm going to catch up on my cleaning, tidy the sewing room, do some laundry and check out the garden and the chooks. I'm also looking forward to reading the magazine Tracy sent while I sip tea on the front verandah. I hope you enjoy your day too.

After a few days writing about budgeting and money I want to balance the scale today on what really spins my world. I want to tell you about those things that make my life a total joy. I used to live my life creating what I then thought was happiness buying new things at the shop every week. That is a very hollow kind of happiness, if indeed it is happiness at all. It fills you up instantly, but quickly deflates, leaving behind a bigger space than there was before. I think that's why I kept spending. I was hoping to fill the void within me.

That emptiness has gone now. The space has been filled with optimism for the future, contentment with the present, and acceptance of the past.

In no particular order, here are the things that I'm really loving and grateful for this week.

As I drove home from work yesterday I felt a feeling of quite satisfaction after a very busy morning alone at the Centre dealing with people who needed help and someone to listen to them and an afternoon of paper work and a meeting with our volunteers. We have a fine bunch of people there and we meet to connect with each other, to talk about problems they may have had during the month and to do a bit of training on various procedures. It was a great meeting, I am ever grateful for the help the volunteers give and proud to be a part of their group.

My sister Tricia gave me a scented orchid a few years ago that is flowering now for the first time. When I come home, or when I wake in the morning and come into the kitchen where it is sitting, I can smell a subtle fragrance like the finest French perfume.

My sewing room is waiting for me.

All those chickens in the backyard are a total delight. They have settled in well and are growing their gorgeous feathers and quirky personalities each day. Their favourite things now are sunshine and warm porridge. Which, when you think about it, is not a bad combination.

I am grateful to Tracy who sent me a wonderful parcel as part of the seed exchange. I will take a photo and show it tomorrow. Thank you Tracy. I will send you an email as soon as I finish this post.

We have fresh eggs.

I love the thought of tonight's dinner, whatever it might be, because tonight I will look forward to the next few days here where I will garden, knit, sew, sit and think.

Our shed is holding a large haystack. :- )

I feel loved. I am blessed to have my immediate family and my two sisters Tricia and Kathleen.

I am grateful I have buttons, knitting needles, pure cotton and wool to knit with.

I'm pleased I discovered how to live well, and happy I can share those discoveries with you.

I am happy being green and frugal, and grateful I know why being so is vital and significant.

I suppose I could keep tapping away on this subject all morning but I will leave space for your input because I just know there are one or two thing you'd like to add about your world.