down to earth

I like using one product for many different things. It saves time and money. It saves fiddling around with too many ingredients. It's simple. It's been a long time since I cleaned the modern way - using a different product for the various household cleaning jobs. I use my home made soap for showering and for washing my hair and hands. It's also a horticultural soap so if any garden potion requires soap to be added, my homemade soap fits the bill perfectly. Soon I'll be using it exclusively for washing up, but that's another story and I'll write about it at another time.

Another good all rounder, and a great base for other cleaners, is homemade laundry liquid. When I make up a new batch of laundry liquid, I always make up one smaller glass bottle that I use for various cleaning tasks around the home. But today I want to write about making up a cleaner that is perfect for cleaning metal - including stainless steel, porcelain baths and sinks, and spot cleaning on painted walls. It also does a good job on appliances - like white fridges and food processors and painted cupboards. The recipe for making laundry liquid is here.

Add about half a cup of homemade laundry liquid (soap, washing soda and borax) to a small container and add enough bicarb to make a thick paste. Stir until it's combined. Adding 6 - 10 drops of tea tree oil will make the mix an effective antiseptic cleaner. If you stir this mix with a tea-stained spoon, by the time you've finished stirring, the spoon will be shining like a star. Use the tea tree version in the bathroom and laundry and the tea tree-free version in the kitchen. You don't want to wipe out your normal kitchen flora.

I keep this little jar of cleaner on my sink and use it for my new sink and stove, as well as for spot cleaning in the kitchen. It's gentle but effective and it doesn't scratch the surface of the metal. My guess is the jar would cost less than a dollar to make up and it will last at least a month of constant use. It's definitely a better option than buying Jif, Ajax powder or any of those cleaning gels.

I use laundry liquid straight on a rag to spot clean and sometimes, when the floor is particulary dirty, I add half a cup of laundry liquid and half a cup of white vinegar to my bucket and mop up. It works well.

Laundry liquid is also an excellent stain remover. Just take a tablespoon of liquid and rub it onto the stain. Rub it in well with your fingers, and leave for 30 minutes, then wash the item in with the normal wash. Most of the time, this treatment will remove the stain.

But now I'm really interested in finding other uses for laundry liquid. How do you use it? Do you use it only for laundry or have you tried it on other jobs in the home? What laundry liquid recipe do you use?

We have Kerry, Sunny and Jamie staying with us. Shhhhh, everyone is still sound asleep. It's so good to have them here, to see how much Jamie is growing and how healthy and strong he is. He's crawling, eating solids and drinking from a sippy cup now. Later in the morning, I'm going to take him on another trip into the backyard to see the chooks and the garden. It's a real adventure for him and I love being with him while he takes it all in and makes some kind of sense of it.

Jamie and Opa. Jamie is wearing the very cute tiger suit Sharon sent. Thanks Sharon and Claude! Below, Jamie is testing out his new wheels in the kitchen.

It's been another busy week here. I had Tuesday and Wednesday at the Neighbourhood Centre working on various things and preparing for our first committee meeting next Monday. There are so many exciting programs and activities we're working on or planning; I'm excited just thinking about the possibilities and opportunities ahead of us. It's a great place to work - I have a venue in which to share my skills and present workshops, I get to exercise my brain and I am surrounded by people who share a vision for our community that is equitable and just.

We had a new sink installed in our kitchen here this week. Our old sink had no drainboard, which is useless for someone with no dishwasher, and there was always water on the bench. Hanno did most of the work so we kept the costs down, we just needed our local plumber to connect the new tap and hook up water filter tap again. We have two equal size sinks with the drains at the back so we can stand things in the sink without them sitting on the plug. As usual, we bought the best quality we could afford and hope that it will be with us for as long as we live in this house. I've already made friends with it and see us organising and cleaning up after many family celebrations and ordinary meals in the future.

An interesting and delicious parcel of goodies in the mail this week.

Guess who did the taste test?

And this was what I found in the biscuit jar when I came home from work yesterday.

On Tuesday, a parcel arrived from Buena Vista Farm Bikkies. The lovely Fiona from Inner Pickle blog sent a pack of her homemade ginger biscuits and a pack of biscotti with almonds. Both delicious, and I was really pleased to read that they were made from all natural ingredients with no preservatives - and with eggs from Fiona's chooks. Thanks Fiona. It was quite a treat for us. I picked up the parcel on the way home from work on Tuesday, around 4.30pm. By 4.31, I think, Hanno had sampled his first biscuit. He gave it the thumbs up.

When everyone else is awake this morning, I'm going to measure Jamie and talk to Sunny about summer shorts and singlets. I have fabric waiting here for pants for Alex, and have some ideas for Jamie too. It looks like I'll be spending time sewing over the weekend. That's just what I need to clear my head. I hope to do some knitting too and if I work at it, I'll finish off the cotton cardigan I'm knitting for Alexander. I hope your week is going smoothly.

I have another recipe for you today - stuffed cabbage rolls. These rolls can be stuffed with any ingredient that takes your fancy. I used pork belly, quinoa and vegetables, it could just as easily have been beef mince (ground beef), brown rice and vegetables or a vegetarian version with rice and vegetables. You could use kale or silverbeet (chard) leaves instead of cabbage. Use what you have on hand and what you know your family will enjoy. This is one of those recipes that can be adapted easily and may just become a family favouite. If you get the stuffing right, you'll be making this meal for many years to come.

I used quinoa in these cabbage rolls, though I usually make it with brown rice. I have to tell you the quinoa was not as tasty as the rice, it was okay, but I won't use it again in this dish. The nutty taste of brown rice goes extremely well with the hearty flavours of the cabbage and vegetables. Also, I generally use minced pork that I buy at the butcher, however, I had some pork belly in the freezer that was pretty tough and I didn't want to roast it. I trimmed off the fat, put it through the food processor and got some nice lean mince. But as I say, use whatever your family likes or what you have on hand.

This is what I used:

About ¾ of a whole cabbage
Half kilo pork mince (one pound ground pork)
1 large onion, chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
1 red capsicum (pepper), chopped
salt and pepper
tablespoon paprika
1½ cups cooked quinoa or brown rice
handful of parsley, chopped

METHOD

Take the core out of the cabbage and carefully remove the leaves without breaking them. You'll need about 12 full leaves. Fill up a frying pan with hot water, bring to the boil, place the cabbage leaves in the boiling water and leave for a few minutes. You want them to be wilted but still green. Remove the cabbage, place on a plate to drain and put to one side.

Brown the pork mince in a frying pan with a small amount of olive oil. Make sure it takes on a lot of brown colour without burning, this is what adds flavour to the dish.

Add the vegetables and spices then add the quinoa to the meat and vegetables, mix and stir well. Keep the pan on the stove, you'll use it again to cook the stuffed rolls.

Now it's time to fill the cabbage leaves. Take one of the cooled wilted leaves and place two heaped tablespoons of the stuffing on the leaf. Turn the sides in first, then roll it up fairly tightly. They won't need to be secured with toothpicks or string, they will stay firmly rolled as long as you're gentle with them.

When all the leaves are rolled, make a light gravy in the same frying pan the meat and vegetables were cooked in. To do this add 2 tablespoons plain flour, salt and pepper and brown this in the frying pan. If you need to add a little bit more olive oil, do it. The flour should not be dry, it should be like a thin paste. When this is brown, add two cups of cold water and stir well. Bring to the boil, making sure you scrape all the brown bits off the pan - these add a lot of flavour.

Place all the rolls in this gravy, put the lid on the pan and simmer in the oven or on the stove top for 15 minutes.

Serve with steamed potatoes, carrots and pumpkin and the gravy.

There will probably be stuffing left over. If so, it's delicious the next day for lunch wrapped in a crisp lettuce leaf.

I hope you and your family enjoy this recipe; it's a good one for cold nights. The trick to this, and most recipes, is to modify it to suit your taste, what you have growing in the backyard and what you have in the fridge.

I read a disturbing report the other day about how hazardous chemicals are being emitted when clothing and household linens are dried in dryers. This is from the University of Washington, it's important and I want you to read it by clicking on the link above.

I love the smell of pure soap and freshly laundered sheets and towels that have been washed in homemade laundry liquid and dried in the sun.

This is from MSN Today: "Fragrance may be the most common type of chemical in your house. Used in laundry detergents, fabric softeners, dryer sheets, cleaning supplies and disinfectants, air fresheners, deodorizers, shampoos, hair sprays, gels, lotions, sunscreens, soaps, perfumes, powders, and scented candles, fragrances are a class of chemicals that may take you extra time and effort to avoid. But it’s worth it. The term “fragrance” or “parfum” on personal care product labels can be a cover for hundreds of harmful chemicals known to be carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, and reproductive toxicants, even at low levels."

And this is from Wikipedia: "Studies show that exposure to polycyclic musks may break down the body’s defenses against other toxic exposures, and these chemicals are linked to increased risk of breast cancer and hormone disruption. Many of these musks were used in large quantities to scent laundry detergents. Levels of these musks in human bodies appear to be associated with the frequency of use of fragranced products, meaning that the more individuals use fragrance, the higher the levels of chemicals like galaxolide and tonalide."

We have to make sure the air inside our homes is healthy and while that's difficult to do, not spraying anything in the air or using synthetic fragrance at home can be a step in the right direction. If you're working in your home most days, it's important that you look after your health and not expose yourself or your children to polluted air. Don't use those plug in air fresheners, or any air fresheners, keep windows open when possible, and if you have to use a dryer, make sure the laundry products you use contain no fragrances.

Fragrance adds nothing to the effectiveness of the products you use. If you want to have added fragrance, make or buy plain laundry products and soap and add essential oils to them. Essential oils are natural compounds. Fragrant oils are a different matter. If you're using fragrant oils, I encourage you to find out what's in the bottle.

Some tips on how to remove smells without using air fresheners

This is a fact sheet about the hazards in some air fresheners.

Not all of these products contain hazardous chemicals, but many do. If you have of them in your home, please find out what's in them before you use them again. You may find what you're using is safe, you may find it isn't, either way, it is best to know.

I've been cooking from scratch since I started cooking nearly fifty years ago. It makes sense to me because it's tastier, I know what is in my food and it's cheaper. Of course there are many other reasons but I reckon those three oblige me to do it. I went through phases of adding gravy powder to my gravy, buying pastry cases because it was easier, and making stock with stock cubes, but none of them lasted long. My gravy didn't taste as good, the pastry I bought was capable of sitting on a store shelf for weeks, and tasted like it, and I discovered that making stock with bones and herbs was much more satifiying than boiling water and stirring in a cube of who knows what. I am much more cautious of synthetic food preservatives than I am of the fungus and bacteria they prevent growing. If I want to provide my family with healthy and safe meals, I much prefer to use fresh clean food, add only natural seasonings and cook it from scratch. I want to eat real food.

Humans have survived all these years without eating artificially preserved and flavoured foods and now it is our turn to control the food chain and what do we do? We change it, just because we can. We add compounds that we don't know the long-term affects of and we eat things because we like the taste, or the advertising. We're eating food prepared by people we don't know and most of the time we have no idea what's in it, how it was cooked or how old it is. And it's not just food, it's drinks as well. The obvious ones we should avoid are soft drinks/sodas but many fruit juices contain a lot of sugar, preservatives and are made with reconstituted juice. Water is vital for good health so it's not just consuming these laden drinks that's the entire problem, they stop you drinking water too.

If you're still using a lot of processed and convenience foods a good place to start is your breakfast menu. Stop buying boxed cereals and replace them with rolled oats. Soaking the oats overnight in warm water not only softens the oats to make them cook faster, it makes them more digestible. Make sure you pour off the water and rinse them well before cooking. Here is a recipe for soaked oats. You could also eat poached or boiled eggs with wholemeal toast, fresh fruit juice or fruit, or buckwheat pancakes with yoghurt and fruit. Of course, the pancakes and yoghurt would be made from scratch. Maybe you could add a weekly yoghurt making session to your kitchen tasks and store it in the fridge for breakfasts and desserts.

I can't give you an arm load of scratch recipes right now, although I have a lot of them on my blog if you care to look, but will encourage you instead to learn the various ways you can cook from scratch. Once you understand and master the techniques, you can make your own recipes up, according to your family's tastes and the food you have on hand. The commonly used ways of cooking from scratch include:

roasting
steaming
boiling
shallow frying
stir frying
grilling/broiling/BBQing
braising - slow cooking in a closed pot on the stove top or in a slow cooker or in cast iron or Pyrex in the oven

Of course, you'd also include raw foods, even though they're not cooked, they still have to be cleaned, prepared and stored so they're served at their best.

If you're just starting out and want very basic instruction on how to cook, as well as some good recipes to try, I recommend the Women's Weekly cook books. They've been around for donkey's years, I still cook from the Chinese, French and children's birthday party cooks books I bought 30 years ago, but I've also bought the slow cooking and the preserves cook books in the past year. They're excellent - they encourage simple home cooking using ingredients most of us have in the pantry. You can see the range at Fishpond but most of the newer ones should be available at your newsagent if you're in Australia. BTW, I have no affiliation with these cook books. I recommend them because I use them, they feature real food and they offer good value for money for new cooks.

And if we were sitting together around my kitchen table and you asked me for some advice about cooking from scratch, I'd tell you to stop buying "food" and buy only ingredients, don't use canned or packaged soup to add flavour and don't add packet mixes to your food. That will put you in control of what you eat and you'll save money in the process. I'd also encourage you to get into the habit of cooking double amounts. I do that all the time. So generally I only cook three of four nights a week, yet we eat from scratch every night.

Cooking from scratch will stand you in good stead if you're wanting to simplify your life, eat real food and cut back on food additives. If you couple that with setting the table with cloth napkins, a water jug and glasses, and gathering the family around it to eat together, you'll be doing just what your grandma and her grandma did. And that's a wonderful example to follow.

ADDITION: Melissa from Frugal and Thriving, a great Australian blog, sent me her ebook Plan, Cook, Save this morning. I've just gone through the recipes and read a few of the earlier pages and I have to tell you, I'm impressed. It goes into Scratch Cooking in depth and has quite a number of recipes for the home cook. I recommend it to you but you can read about it here and decide for yourself.

This is from the Angelica Organic Farm site "The bright white flawless looking Chinese garlic is bleached with chlorine. Most concerning is that Chinese garlic is still being grown using chemicals banned in Australia long ago and it is reported that raw human sewage has be used as fertiliser. To be able to allow it into our country, the quarantine department, AQIS, fumigates every single bulb with methyl bromide, one of the world's most dangerous chemicals for human and environmental health. It is kept in cold storage and is often too old by the time it reaches our shelves, which is why it’s sprouting or spongy when you get it."

I have been worried about the Chinese garlic sold in Australia for a few years now. The garlic we see on sale is pure white and very unnatural looking. I'm not sure how Chinese garlic is grown, processed and fumigated, but one look tells me I don't want to eat it. And yet Australian garlic is so expensive now. In my local IGA this week, Chinese garlic was $10 a kilo, Australian garlic was $49.95 a kilo. Who can afford to buy it at that price! Garlic in the USA is between $12 and $13 a pound, that's about half the price of our locally grown garlic. Mind you, most of us usually buy it in small amounts so generally, we don't realise how expensive it is because we only buy one or two.

Just out of the ground, our garlic sat drying out for a few days (above), then I cleaned them up a bit, (below).

And below is my rather miserable attempt at a garlic braid. I think I'll undo it today and try again.

Garlic is slow growing but if you grow it in the backyard, in the soil or a container, it's quite an easy crop. We buy organic garlic cloves early in the year and put them in the fruit drawer of the fridge to fool it into thinking it's winter. After about four weeks, we plant it out. This is one of those once-a-year crops, if you get it right, and store it well, you'll have enough for the whole year. I'm not buying garlic again - Australian garlic is too expensive and Chinese garlic is too scary.

We harvested our garlic last week when the tops started going brown but still had some green in them. The bulbs were big, there were plenty of cloves on each of them and they had a lovely purple papery skin. We had one fresh straight away that night, roasted in the oven with some lamb. Delicious! The rest of them are now hanging outside on the back verandah drying out. I tried to braid them and while it looked good and tight when it was laying flat on the table, now that it's been hanging for a week, it's loosening and looking a bit untidy. Still, the main point is that we have good garlic, grown in our backyard - thrifty and local.

As you as concerned about garlic as I am? Where do you get yours from? Of course it's not earth shattering, we don't have to have garlic, but it is good for our health and good garlic tastes divine and makes other food really shine. I'd like to see all of us growing our own so I've searched for the information below to help us all do that. I wonder if you will.

Chinese garlic in USA

How to grow garlic in Australia

How to grow garlic in pots - USA

Garlic in pots - UK VIDEO

Growing garlic in pots - UK

Garlic and Apples from China in USA

Last week I was interviewed by the lovely Georgia at ABC Capricornia radio station; that interview was played on air on Monday. I've agreed to do a radio spot with them, once a month, from next Monday. I'll be on at 3.30pm. It goes state-wide in Queensland, but not the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane or the Gold Coast. I'm not sure if there are podcasts. It should be fun, I'm looking forward to it because as well as talking to Georgia on air, I'll be answering listeners questions if they call in. More people are interested in how you and I live now and I am really pleased I can help them with their own changes.

Earlier this week some readers asked for the recipe for peach whey cake. I generally make my recipes up as I go - this one is just a plain butter cake mixed with whatever fruit you have on hand. I say fruit but it could just as easily be nuts, cocoa, coconut, dates, sultanas or raisins.

PEACH WHEY CAKE

Grease and line a cake tin - I used a round one about 7.5cm or 3 inches deep.

Ingredients

3½ cups self raising flour

¾ cup sugar

250 grams/½ pound butter at room temperature

Approx. 1 cup of whey - or milk if you have none

3 eggs

a splash of vanilla

peach jam

peaches - either fresh, from a tin or your home preserves. If the peaches are fresh, slice very thinly.

Method

Turn the oven on to 180C.

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix with an electric beater till combined. Then turn up the beater and beat for about two minutes until the batter is thick and creamy. If you need more liquid, add more whey or milk as needed.

While the batter is still in the bowl, fold two tablespoons of jam through it. It doesn't have to be fully incorporated, just streaks of jam through the batter.

Pour the batter into the cake tin and cover the top with the peaches (or whatever fruit you're using). If you're using apples, you could use strawberry or raspberry jam in the mix. Customise the recipe according to what you have on hand. If you have no jam, no problem, just leave it out.

Bake in the oven for about 35 - 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. When it's cooked, you'll be able to smell it and it will be golden brown on the top. Turn it out onto a rack to cool.

~~*~~

I'm doing another workshop today at the Neighbourhood Centre. This time it's fermenting. We'll be making yoghurt, vinegar, ginger beer and sourdough starters. It looks like being a good day. I hope you enjoy yours too, whatever you're doing. I'll see you again tomorrow.

I'm preaching to the converted here when it comes to homemaking and the importance it holds in our lives. There are so many homemakers here, from the traditional to the not-so traditional. Some of us are stay at home mums with children to raise, some work in corporate, retail, health or education sectors but still very much retain the homemaker's focus and find that the time spent at home well and truly prepares us for the work we do to earn a living. We have female and male, single and married homemakers, we have gay and lesbian homemakers, we have feminist and traditional homemakers, we have homemakers with many children and some with none. Some live alone, some are part of large families. Some homemakers combine volunteering with their home duties, some are forced to stay at home due to illness or disability but take pride in being a homemaker, doing as much as they can for themselves. Along with all the ways we differ, come all sorts of variations on how we work, income levels that effect what we do and how much we do for ourselves, and personal circumstances that dictate where we live and how we work.

We come in all shapes and sizes. There is no one-size-fits-all. There is no one right way to do this.

One of the things that unites us though is the common feeling that generally we're undervalued as homemakers. We know the work we do at home is vital for ourselves and our families but it's also part of what builds good citizens and strong countries. Usually, if someone doesn't understand or disapproves of what I do, I shrug my shoulders. I really don't care. Not everyone can like me or what I do, I'm realistic, I respect their right to have their own opinion. However, this is different, this is a commonly held view that is just wrong on so many levels. I love what freefalling said in her comment on the last homemaking post: "I kinda feel like I have a wonderful secret that only the enlightened are able to share." I think that is spot on. But then Cityhippyfarmgirl writes: "This is a subject that is close to my heart as I've been a stay at home mum since I had my eldest. I know our choices are right for us, I know I save us a bucket load of money for everything I make from scratch, and source from different places. I know my kids are getting the best start in life that I can give them, and yet still those occasional outdated comments that will come from someone completely irrelevant (bank teller, person on the street etc) cut to the bone." When I read that, I feel it too.

Personally, I love it when I read of a homemaker who works in ways familiar to me. I like reading about people who have made a success out of working from home or working in a tough environment. But I also love to read that Richard has just bought the CWA cook book and he has cut back his outside working hours; that Liz wrote: "I was amused this week when my female housemate, my teenage daughter and me were out fencing the paddock for our new house cow, while my husband was inside cleaning and looking after the children."; and that Shannon and Mel are moving towards a formal commitment with their girlfriends. We are all different. Even those who appear to be very similar to us are different in many ways. Some of us work in our homes, some of us work outside them and some combine the two. And that is fine. How boring it would be if we were all dressed in grey, with blonde hair and freckles. It would be equally boring if we were all brown-eyed red heads, or all dark skinned, or all fair. Diversity is what makes the entire natural world so interesting and wonderful. I would love us to all be proud of whoever and whatever we are and to celebrate that diversity, not be threatened by it.

When I first started blogging about my version of a simple life most of the bloggers on this topic were writing about the politics of climate change, peak oil and group action. Very few wrote about home, family, house work or personal change; I think they were seen as mundane topics and too ordinary to be of any consequence. Well, I thrive on the mundane and ordinary, I dived in! I believed then and still do now, that any permanent change will only come when enough of us change ourselves first, then start working outwards. My change started when I returned to my home and started taking it seriously. When I realised that I could make myself happy by working at home, making this place as comfortable as possible for myself, my family and visitors, that was when I knew how profound and significant our homes could be. When I recognised that the work we do in our homes can enrich and empower, as well as being creative and satisfying, I knew that I had stumbled onto the mother lode. Our homes are our starting points - no matter what we do, home is where we start from and where we return to. Home is that important and it is the work done there that transforms the shell of four walls into a home that nurtures and protects.

I would like us all to form a united approach on this. If people don't understand us, don't know what we're doing, or wondering if we're sitting around all day watching TV, let's tell them. When someone asks you what you do, tell them: "I'm a homemaker. I'm looking after my babies/elderly father/volunteering/working part-time" or whatever it is you're doing, and "I'm learning to knit, cooking from scratch, growing organic food in the backyard, I'm working on cleaning the house without harsh chemicals. I make soap. I'm saving money at home so we can pay off our mortgage faster." or whatever your version of the way we live is. Tell them your "wonderful secret". If you just baked the best bread you've ever made, tell your friends and everyone else who will listen. If we have to listen to all the babble about "bling", smart phones, "I can't boil an egg", Jimmy Choo shoes and how they can't get by without their extra shot vanilla latte, then they can listen to us talk about how we finding meaning and satisfaction at home. Now that's fair trade! Let's tell everyone who will listen how we spend our time and do it with pride and a smile.

Let's be our own advertisement.