down to earth

If you're looking for a nutritious and thrifty breakfast that will take only a few minute to prepare, go no further than rolled oats. I'm not talking about quick oats which are processed much more than rolled oats, I'm talking about the plain old traditional rolled oats your grandma used to cook.

Years ago, when I read in Nourishing Traditions that virtually all pre-industrialised people soaked or fermented their grains before making porridge, I related to it immediately. I hadn't been soaking oats before I cooked them but I clearly remember mum and dad, and my grandma, soaking rolled oats in water or milk over night for a quick and easy breakfast the following morning. Almost all cultures used to do this. It was common practice in many African and European countries, the Indian sub continent, Scandinavia, and some Asian countries to soak or ferment grains before they were eaten. I remember that recommendation being on the packet of oats when I was young. I don't think it's there now, which is a pity. If you make sourdough you're doing this by using fermented starter for your bread. It's the same principle.

All grains, including oats, contain phytic acid, which can combine with minerals in the gut to block the absorption of nutrients in the grain. Soaking or fermenting the grains beforehand releases enzymes to help breakdown the phytic acid and gluten which is present in many grains, especially wheat, but oats as well. Oats contain more phytic acid than any other grain so it's important to soak them.

All you have to do is to measure out the required amount of oats into a saucepan, cover them with water or milk, plus another cup, then add ½ cup whey, buttermilk, kefir or yoghurt. Place your saucepan in the fridge overnight. The next morning, you'll see the oats are soft and creamy, like they've already been cooked. Stir the oats, add more liquid if they need it and heat them for a few minutes and serve. They'll be on the table in less than five minutes. If you have a lactose intolerance, use water and a splash of lemon juice or vinegar instead of the milk based liquids. The Nourishing Traditions recipe has ½ teaspoon sea salt in the porridge but I leave that out.

When I was younger and my oats were cooked for me, my parents always added a knob of butter to the oats. Well, it turns out that cream and butter both help with the absorption of minerals contained in the oats. It also allows the oats to be absorbed over a longer period of time. Isn't it amazing what the old folks knew. And I thought they did it for the taste. :- )

And if you'd like a price comparison to seal the case, here are the prices for Uncle Toby's and organic oats at Woolworths:

Uncle Toby's Oats Quick Sachets Original 340g: $4.40 or $1.29 / 100g
Uncle Toby's Oats Quick 1kg: $6.76 or $0.68 / 100g
Macro Organic Oats Rolled 500g: $4.03 or $0.81 / 100g

We use Homebrand Rolled Oats 750g: $1.06 or $0.14 /100g. The Homebrand oats are good quality, Australian and taste just fine. You know how sometimes rolled oats have that powdery material in the bag? That's usually from some sort of insect that's been eating the grains. I've never had a packet of Homebrand like that and always the grains are whole and perfect.

So there you have it. Yet another food item that is as convenient as the modern version but more nutritious, and so much cheaper. So don't believe the advertising that tells you that you need the expensive quick oats and a microwave. Just soak your oats instead and you'll have a much healthier breakfast.

How do you prepare your oats? Will you try this?

After we changed how we lived, going from crass consumerism to a more mindful way of living, I looked around and thought that Hanno and I might as well be living on an island because we'd isolated ourselves so much from our friends and neighbours. All that mindless buying was still happening in the general community and in the rare instance of telling someone what we were doing, I was always asked the most pointed of disheartening questions: why!?!

Rye loaf with carraway seeds, made in a cake tin.

I knew I had to connect with like-minded people and the only way I knew how to do that was to volunteer to work in my community. I started working as a volunteer in a local neighbourhood centre and very soon after that, was appointed manager. We helped people with food parcels, warm blankets, clothes, budgeting, we offered a place to be during the day to connect and have coffee. I taught bread baking, soap making, and cooking from scratch. We set up a Centrelink office with a visiting worker one morning a week, we offered free workshops, a sewing circle, community garden, counselling and we had a variety of free services such as parenting support and playgroup, a free legal service, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. There was a Flexischool attached, with 25 students. Although I was tired at the end of every day, I was happy that I was surrounded by good people who shared many of my values. During the time I was there we moved twice, from one old house to another, and then to a magnificent two million dollar purpose-built facility. I stayed there for seven years and only left when Hanno nearly cut off his hand with a chain saw and he needed me at home.

Delicious butter cake.

Quite a few things changed while I was there. I stopped judging others, made myself available to help whoever came along and I began encouraging and supporting those around me. I'm still proud of those personal changes because I believe they made me a better person, but I'm far from ideal and still have a lot of improvements to make. The biggest change was in 2008 when the global financial crisis hit. Many jobs were lost and although Australia faired better than most countries, many people were in dire straits here. The community relied on the neighbourhood centre more and after I left there a couple of years ago, it continued to grow to be a significant part of a caring community.

Last year's flowering kohl rabi.

Surrounding yourself with like-minded people can happen in many different ways. Often there aren't the people in the community that you want to befriend but you can find them online. There are many people who comment here and the mutual feeling of friendship and support that has built up is amazing. I don't reply to as many comments as I'd like but I build up an idea of people just by reading their comments.

Volunteering in your community can place you in the middle of a group of people you'd never have met otherwise. It can be challenging but you can make it less threatening by joining a group whose values you support, such as the CWA, WI, a local craft group or church.

Support and encouragement can also be found in books and blogs. There are many others like me who write about the lifestyle changes we can all make. You might never meet the people who write what your read but just knowing you share similar tasks and seeing how others work can be incredibly motivating.

I'm heartened by seeing the changes that have happened in recent years. There are more people thinking about the consequences of consumerism and climate change and making positives changes to move towards simpler lives and sustainability. Farmers markets, local food and micro businesses have slowly moved into the mainstream making some food and lifestyle changes easier and cheaper.

Luffas waiting to be skinned.

There is no reason to feel isolated any more. Of course you have to make the move to connect with those around you, and it will take some effort on your part. If you're buying all, or some, of your weekly food and groceries at small businesses who make good soap and green cleaners, local producers of milk, vegetables, eggs and honey, the farmers of free range meat and chickens, then I'd be surprised if you remain isolated. The people who run those community business, and those you meet when you're shopping, will be able to tell you about community gardens, free workshops and activities you can get involved in. And when you do that, there will be no turning back.

How have you connected online and in your real life? What have you done that made a difference.

A few readers have asked me to do a post about blogging, which I'm happy to do. I think the internet is one of the most powerful changes that ordinary people have had access to in my lifetime. The internet is one of those systems that is usually controlled by governments, and mere mortals like us don't often get anywhere near such influential and important technology. I'm pretty sure that if they'd known what it would develop into, there would have been government controls and we'd be paying through the nose to use it now. But here we are, able to Skype each other from one side of the world to the other, we can see how total strangers live by reading their blogs and just by writing what we want to write, we can publish those words to the world simply by pressing a button. It's the stuff revolutions are made of. It's truly remarkable.

If you've grown up in the age of Facebook and Skype, you probably take the ability to communicate freely all over the world in your stride. But I'm still in awe of it and probably will remain so till I stop tapping away on this keyboard. I grew up in a time when the only way you could have anything published in the newspaper was by taking a degree in journalism, and even then you had to brave the overabundance of editors and filters before your words were seen by a reading public.

Blogs changed everything. The filters disappeared and we got genuine free speech for the first time; although that has a down side too. All of a sudden there was an easy to use, free platform that anyone with a computer could use. It was too powerful a temptation for me and I started blogging in 2007, this will be my 2347th post.

There are hundreds of websites with so called 'experts' who will tell you how to be a successful blogger but usually they equate 'success' with how to make money. I wanted to blog to get information out and to connect with people who understood what I was talking about. As a result, a diverse community has built up here. Some are quite vocal, some are silent, some email me with their news because they don't feel comfortable writing public comments. That's all fine by me.

If you want to start a blog, I'd suggest you sign up to Blogger. It's a free site, owned by Google, so the site very rarely has any problems with downtime or hackers. You can start off with a very simple template, which gives your blog the look it displays to the world and as you learn more about blog technology, you can modify it to suit your own style. If you have an iphone or a digital camera, it's a simple process to take photos and videos and with a couple of clicks, they'll be published along with your words.

If you were to ask my advice about starting a blog, I'd tell you to write the truth in the best way you know how, to respect your readers, to be polite and interesting and to write about what you know. Decide straight away why you want to blog. Do you want to stay in touch with your family and friends? If so, you can have a private blog and invite those you know to join you. Do you want to develop your voice and an audience? You'll have a lot of competition, you'll have to write well, be interesting, write to your subject in an original and convincing way and in the beginning, you'll have to write every day, often with no audience.

Just to give you an idea of your competition and the work load:

according to Wikipedia, in 2014, there were around 172 million Tumblr blogs and 75.8 million Wordpress blogs. Blogger is the most popular blogging platform in use, however Blogger does not publish their statistics. I've seen an estimate of there being about half a billion blogs world-wide.
bloggers who blog every day have five times more traffic than those who blog every few days or weekly.
quality content and page design are the two main factors in building your audience.
you'll get more links and readers if you use photos on your blog. Readers are more likely to connect to genuine bloggers and photos can be a way of telling your truth.

I didn't follow any of the commonly given advice when I started blogging, and still don't now. I think success is down to two things: good writing and good luck. I certainly think it's a wonderful way to improve writing and photography skills. Here are a few of the things I think are important:

Write well and often.
Know your subject.
Share what you know.
Encourage others.
Don't expect to build up a huge audience writing about your pet bird. Your subject matter needs to be fairly broad to attract readers.
Don't expect overnight success.
If you really think your blog is good but after a year you still have no audience, don't give up.
Visit other blogs writing the same topic and leave comments. If they're interesting comments, other people may follow the link back to your blog.
Don't steal words or photos from other blogs.
Read a guide to internet copyright.

Like most other new activities we learn, blogging takes a bit of patience, some applied psychology and a willingness to do your best. Apart from that, it just takes time. Good luck!

Having a blog like this is like having a top notch psychologist on standby, 24/7. When I blow a gasket about something and mention it on the blog, all you lovely tender hearts ride in on white stallions and lift me up again. Thank you for your comments over the weekend. It's really nothing that it happened but it's everything that you reacted to what was said in the way you did. ♥︎ I've said it before but it's still true, my readers have the kindest hearts and I'm thankful every day for it.

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With not much time over the weekend, I've chosen to do another pictorial post today. I recently restored thousands of daily life photos from a portable drive to my laptop. I hope you enjoy browsing through them.

Homemade bread and meat loaf. One of my favourite sandwiches.

There is often food-related work happening in our kitchen. Here is Hanno helping get nectarines ready for jam.

These apples were just a few of the dozens of apples we were given a couple of years ago. I forget what I did with most of them but I know there were a lot of apple turnovers and pies made.

Above and below: making pasta.

Want to walk down memory lane with me? Here are my sons, Shane and Kerry when they were little boys. Shane (right) would have been six there, and Kerry, five.

And here we are in this torn photo from the late 1970s. I still have a giggle when I see this photo.

There is always a drawer to be cleaned and tidied.

And cook books to read.

Tricia made this very pretty table cloth one year when she was visiting. It's made of scraps, old tea towels and pieces from my stash.

You've heard of Sarah plain and tall? This is Kathleen frizzled and round.

These gawky girls didn't know what to do on the first day they arrived to live with us.

This scene is a few minutes from our home. Yes, they are zebras and giraffes.

It's Australia Zoo, the home of the Crocodile Hunter. This is a crocodile waiting to be fed.

I often write about Jamie being here but here is Alex when he stayed with us last Easter. I don't see him nearly as much as I'd like because Shane and Sarndra live a few hours drive away, but I think of him every day.

Sorting through our vegetable seeds.

Time for morning tea and a homemade biscuit, and always fresh bread ready to be sliced.

I was asked recently what is the secret to a happy life. There is no secret. It's a long time since we earned the big dollars, but life is better now. It doesn't take much effort to make a happy life. Usually it's paid for in work rather than dollars and it is made better by sharing with our family. And that, my friends, is it in a nutshell - family, hard work and sharing.

We've lived here for 18 years, longer than we've lived in any other home. Before we arrived here, we'd moved 22 times. We're still refining our home, still settling in and allowing ourselves the luxury of changing things to suit our age and idea of ourselves. I still think of my home now as 'the new place". I guess I feel that because so many things changed when we moved. We developed a new way of living here and changed ourselves right down to the core in the process.

When we moved in we spent a couple of thousand dollars on the garden, we bought new furniture, added a bedroom and a new kitchen. We were supposedly putting "our stamp" on our home. Funny, no matter how much we spent, it never felt like much in those early years. My life was caught up in work, I didn't think about home; it was part of my life but it wasn't part of me. Of all the surprises that came my way in the past 18 years, knowing the relationship I have with my home now is one of the biggest. I feel that the house and land are a part of me now, part of my family and part of my history. I have no doubt that on the last day I'm alive, I'll be here, enjoying the birds, the aroma of the pine forest and the splendid feeling of warm, comfortable isolation I feel every day I live here.

We eventually put "our stamp" on our home but it wasn't by buying furniture or an instant garden. It was by living our ordinary days here. By doing house work and weeding and collecting eggs. The house knew much better than I did that buying things to feel at home is just temporary gloss. What it needed was time and love and years of bread baking in the oven and soup simmering on the stove. It needed the soft glow of candle light, the sound of newborn babies crying, the experience of hearing so much good news and some very sad news. I think all that living has been drawn into the fabric of the house now, even though it stands as a silent witness to what happens here.

Soon there will be the sound of another newborn baby's cry here, there'll be more out of tune renditions of "Happy Birthday", more garments produced with soft organic yarn, more Christmas trees being decorated, many more twinkling lights on humid summer evenings, more story books being read and maybe more books being written. And Hanno and I will live many more ordinary days here being totally fulfilled and made happy within the boundaries of our land.

A few years ago, I wrote that we should all bloom where we are planted and over the years since, many people have told me that they took that to heart. I think I wrote that with such passion because that is what we've done here. Our twenty-third move was our last because this home compelled us to slow down and just live. There was no other requirement, no need of fancy furniture and appliances. All it needed from us was to work within these walls, to take the time to notice and appreciate what is here and to add many more memories as the years slip by.

… it has become too easy in our time to assume that childrearing, housekeeping, and caregiving, along with all the varieties of manual work, are somehow undignified and unworthy. And we have attempted to lighten and improve them by means of gadgets and institutions. But I would argue that these are the most basic and the most noble vocations. How can we live, or how can we live for very long, as a people if we don’t take care of the children, keep house, and give care to all things needing care? I think the hierarchy that places work done away from home above work done at home is utterly phony.
Conversions with Wendell Berry, University Press of Mississippi 2007.

If I had to choose only one author to read for the rest of my life, it would be Wendell Berry. He is not afraid to speak the truth, no matter how unpopular it may be. I try to follow his example. His books inspire me to be a better woman, wife, mother, grandmother, writer and yes, housekeeper. He reminds me of the fine tradition I'm part of and why it's so important to humanity.

And despite what I just wrote, I do "get it". I understand why housework is seen as dull and boring. I thought that myself when I worked outside the home and before I slowed down and changed how I looked at the world. House work interrupted what I wanted to do. It didn't occur to me that the work of my home was something that was capable of giving satisfaction and pride. Over the years, housekeeping has gone from being a full time occupation, a job that women took pride in, to being a something that's supported by appliances, short cuts, life hacks and convenience foods. Now, instead of being creative work that changes with the seasons and is different in every home, the housework of convenience and technology is monotonous and uninvolving. It's work we either put off or try to get through as fast as possible.

Whether you work full time in your home or full time away from the home, housework never ends. There will always be something you can do in your home and it's up to you to end your daily housework when it suits you. I wrote about that in my book and it's still as true today as it ever was. I think you have to have a fundamental change in mindset to understand what housework is, the importance it plays in life and that without it, we don't amount to much.

I feel very comfortable now in my role as homemaker. I also feel comfortable being a working author. One doesn't cancel out the other, they're both important to me; both contribute substantially to my happiness and how I view the world, both require intelligence and creativity. We are all capable of doing more than one job, much more. I think those who feel trapped by housework and those who just don't do it, have not made their homes into the places they need them to be. I found that when I thought about my home, when I changed things around to better suit how I work, when I took control and started working how I wanted to work, when I understood that house work is a creative process, it got better and easier, and I was happier. Making my house a home is a work in progress where there'll always be something to do, something to change, plans to make and something to look forward to. And that is the difference. If your home is part of your life plan, when it stops being just a place for clothes and sleeping. It becomes part of a inventive process that makes your life better, so it's just common sense to do the work to make sure it continues.

Housework is done by women and men now, and by some children. It's not as narrowly defined as it was before - women's work. So why is it still seen by so many as dull and tedious. Why don't we understand that if we want to live in a clean, comfortable home, serve healthy food, send our students and workers off every day to learn and earn, or be one of the workers or students who goes out well fed, clean and happy, that we have to work to make it happen. Nothing will ever be handed to us on a platter with a card that says, you deserve this. So never underestimate the power of house work. It makes everything else possible.