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.

I wish I could offer you a definite direction Rebecca, but this is one of those problems that is not so easy to solve.  As you know, our readers offer excellent advice and so I'm hoping we might get some helpful suggestions for you to try.

And now it's over to you.  If you're young and have moved into your own home, how did you do it?  Please share your experiences and thoughts on this as I'm sure Rebecca will be one of many who will benefit.

Let me start this by saying there are many ways to sterilise food by water bath.  This is how I do it and having been doing it for many years. I'm still here to tell the tale, but be warned, you need to do this carefully.

If you're a keen home cook and have ventured into making sauces, relish, chutney, bread and butter cucumbers or pickled beetroot, there will come a time when you might want to sterilise your jarred products so you can store them in your pantry  for eating later in the year.  I've written before about how we in the warmer climates tend to do less preserving/canning than our northern hemisphere friends - our gardens produce food almost all of the year, and here where I live it is quite easy to keep a kitchen garden going all year.  So instead of putting up our beans, carrots, soups and stews, we tend to eat our vegetables fresh, or if there is an excess, we freeze it.

Preserving/canning plays a part for us when we make a great pasta sauce or excellent relish, that is much tastier, healthier and cheaper than the store bought varieties, and we want to make a lot of it to use in the following months.  This is when we need to preserve/can what we cook.  Sauces, chutney and relish, in fact most foods with herbs and spices in them, will improve in flavour when preserved and left to develop flavour for a couple of months.  If you've never done it before, or only do a small amount each year, it's probably not financially sound to buy special equipment.  Here is a good way to sterilise your preserves in a water bath, without special equipment and by using what you already have in the kitchen.

Use modern recipe books for preserving|canning, or recipes from a trusted source, don't rely on very old canning books - some of the old methods of preserving|canning were unsafe.   When you first start doing this, use small quantities and small jars; when you know what you're doing, go bigger.  

You'll need a large saucepan like a stockpot, if it's not a stockpot, it has to be a pot big enough for all the jars to sit under the water.  I use recycled jars that have already been used for jam or honey.  You'll need metal lids that have plastic coating inside the lid to stop the food acids reacting to the metal.  Most of these lids have a little metal indent button that will indent when it's sealed correctly. Take a bit of time with the jars, they could be the difference between success and failure.  Check the rims by running your finger around the opening.  Make sure there are no chips or cracks and the lids are not dented or rusty.  Wide mouth jars are best because it's easier to fill them.


To sterilise your jars, wash them in warm soapy water, rinse, then place them in a low oven - 150C|300F for about 20 mintues.  You want to fill hot sauce into the still hot jars so do this while the sauce is cooking.

When you fill the jars, you fill it almost to the top, without spilling over the side.  You want a bit of what is called head space because some foods swell and bubble when they're heated and need this space to expand.  If you don't allow enough headspace the food might force the lid up and you won't get the jar to seal properly.  The general rule is  7mm|¼ inch for jams and jellys and 12mm|½ inch for tomatoes and fruit.

Before you fill the stockpot|saucepan, place either a round cake rack that fits well on the bottom of the pan, a folded tea towel or folded newspaper on the bottom of the pan so the jars don't sit directly on it.  Instead of using a wide mouth canning funnel, scoop the jam up in a medium sized jug to fill the jars.  Instead of canning tongs to lift the jars, you'll have to use the same jug to scoop some of the hot water out of the pot and when the jars are uncovered, pick them up with a tea towel folded a few times.


PLEASE BE AWARE: Low acid foods like meat, beans, carrots, peas, soup etc are not suitable for this type of preserving|canning.

Go here to read an older post of water bath processing.

ADDITION: Here our tap water isn't really cold and it's fine to use tap water on hot jars to fill the pot.  If you're in a colder place, you'll have to heat the water in the pot first, then place the jars.

I don't know why more people don't make jam.  It's something all our grannies and great grannies knew a lot about.   If they didn't make their own jam, they went without it.  Unlike us, they didn't have shelves of jam waiting to be bought at the local supermarket.  But I think that jam is inferior to what you make at home and if you look at the ingredient panel, many jams are full of additives and not just the few simple ingredients that make up homemade jam - fruit, sugar and lemon; sometimes, depending on the type of jam, there is pectin as well.  I wonder what it's made from, where the fruit grew, how old it was when it was processed, was it fine fruit or leftovers that couldn't be used for much else, how far did the fruit travel to the jam processor, how far did the jar of jam travel to get to me.  If I can improve on any of those things, I'm ahead.

To make our nectarine jam, Hanno washed the fruit, including quite a few that were under ripe, and cut them into chunks.  He discarded the seeds but used the skins.  You need a wide saucepan for jam making because you want maximum evaporation.  All the fruit went into a big stockpot and weighed - four kilos (almost 9 lbs).  We knew then we had to add half that weight in sugar.  He washed two lemons, cut them in half and threw the half lemons, squeezed of their juice, into the pot with the fruit.  The pot was set on the stove and while he prepared his jars, the jam started cooking.  Frequent stirring is needed because you don't want burnt jam and you want to squash the fruit.  We used the potato masher to get the consistency we wanted.  Thirty minutes later, the jam was ready, the lemons removed and the jars filled.

That four kilos of fruit made two litres of jam - or eight normal sized jam jars.  Now, lets see.  The fruit (4 kg) cost $12, 2kg sugar cost about $2.50, two lemons about $1 and the gas to cook it on and to sterilise the jars, about 50 cents, which comes to $16.  We got eight jars, so $2 per jar for top quality jam.  That's about $3 - $4 less than the premium jams at the supermarket, and we know exactly what's in ours.  We still have a couple of bowls full of nectarines for eating fresh and another tray for more jam.  That will probably happen on Wednesday because today I'm going back to the neighbourhood centre to do a soap making workshop.

We didn't process our jam in a water bath because it will store very nicely in the fridge for at least six months. Had I wanted to keep it longer, I'd have processed it further.  And that's what we'll discuss tomorrow - processing jam in a water bath the frugal way - with no special equipment.

It doesn't matter why you make jam - because it's cheaper, better quality, you know what's in it, it's local or because you want to make as much for yourself as you can and keep your skills up to date - it's a lovely thing to do and it's really easy.  So start collecting old jam jars to recycle for your own jam and when you see fruit that's cheap and so good you can't walk past, grab it, take it home and be a jam maker.  You won't regret it.

Thank you all for contributing your ideas on how to save money.  I have to confess, we already do most of the things suggested and seeing them as comments validated our frugal choices. I think we'll have to start thinking about our Etsy shop soon or I'll have to find some more writing work.

 I'd like to continue on this theme with some thoughts on being frugal and then I'll go to to using leftover food.

First let me say something about being frugal.  There is a debate in the English newspapers at the moment about penny pinchers and tightwads as if it's a bad thing.  Being frugal with some things so you can buy the things you truly need and want, or to live in a way that is unusual by today's standards doesn't make us mean, cheap or miserly. It simply means we have gone outside what is "normal" and we dare to use our money on what enriches us and not what others think we should have.  If you've been frugal for a long time, or if you're new to the neighbourhood, you're doing a wonderful thing for yourself and for the planet.  Keep doing it.  The peace of mind that comes from paying off debt, living debt-free, and not wasting time in shops so you can spend more time with family or doing what you love, far outweighs any pleasure gained from spending money.  It's sad that most people don't know that but don't let it put you off your path.  Be confident in your frugal choices and march to the beat of your own drum.  It's the only way.

On current estimates, we all waste thirty percent of the food we buy.  Just think!  That's like taking $100 to the shop, throwing away $30 and coming home with $70 worth of goods. It's insane.  Most of us cook too much but that's not a bad way to cook.  I usually cook enough for four meals most evenings, even though there are only two of us living here.  The leftovers are either frozen for the following week or eaten the following night, saving time and money.  If there is only enough leftover for one meal, use it for lunch the following day, or add vegetables or rice to it and serve it up for two. Don't let it sit in the fridge to turn into a science project; don't throw good money away.

I remember my mother baking a leg of lamb for Sunday lunch, that night we'd have toasted lamb and salad sandwiches for tea.  Monday night we'd have lamb curry and if there was any lamb left over, it would be shepherds pie the following night, made by mincing the lamb with one of those manual metal grinders attached to the kitchen table.  I loved that job.  With that in mind, last week, after we had our half lamb leg roast, we had lamb sandwiches and then lamb curry the following night.  This is the recipe for it.

This can be made with any leftover meat, chicken or fish, or freshly boiled eggs, or just vegetables.

1 large onion, chopped

1 large carrot, sliced

1 stick celery, sliced

plus whatever other vegetables you want to use

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 clove garlic

2 tablespoons curry powder or paste

salt and pepper

1 can coconut milk, or stock or plain water if you have neither

a portion of leftover meat or fish cut into cubes. If you have no meat, or are vegetarian, boil some eggs and serve them with the curry sauce.

* Place the onion, carrot and celery in a frying pan with a tablespoon of oil and cook until the onion is transparent.

* When the onion is cooked, add the garlic, salt and pepper and tomato paste and stir for 30 seconds.

* Add the curry powder|paste and stir to allow the curry spices to release their flavours.

* Add coconut milk|stock and meat and stir throughly.

* Bring to the boil, simmer for 30 minutes or until the coconut milk|stock has halved in volume and the sauce is thick.

* Serve with boiled rice.

You could use any cooked vegetables that were in the fridge as well in this and if you had no rice, serve with potato, polenta|cornmeal or a piece of toast or bread on the side.  It's delicious and filling and will make sure you get the full measure of the money you spend on your food.