down to earth

I make salmon rissoles or fishcakes fairly regularly as they're a cheap and easy meal that will stretch one can of salmon to feed four people. However, I made this during the week and Jamie didn't like it. He ate what was on his plate, just as he always does, but when we had leftovers the following day the first thing he said was: "not those fishcakes!" Luckily for him, there was only one left which I had, he and Hanno finished off the chicken cacciatore from the day before.

For those who do like this kind of pantry food - we always have salmon and potatoes in the cupboard - it's a good standby when you need to rustle up a meal and all the meat is frozen. You can bulk it out with potatoes, breadcrumbs, vegetables and eggs so it ends up being very tasty and nutritious.

Ingredients

2 large or 3 medium potatoes
1 can of salmon (415 g)
1 large or two small eggs
1 cup breadcrumbs - use ¼ cup in the mix and ¾ cup to coat the rissoles
1 large onion, chopped
½ bunch fresh parsley or green onions, chopped
½ red capsicum/pepper, chopped
salt and pepper
chilli flakes or fresh chilli (optional)

Cook and mash the potatoes and allow to cool slightly. Add potatoes, salmon, eggs, ¼ cup breadcrumbs, onion, herbs, capsicum/pepper, salt, pepper and anything optional to a large bowl.

Mix together well and shape into round balls, then squash down to make a thick disc. It's up to you how large or small you make them.

Add ¾ cup breadcrumbs to a bowl and coat each rissole with crumbs. I use Panko for extra crunch. Put the rissoles on a plate and allow them to sit in the fridge for an hour, if possible. This will help the rissoles stay together when you cook them.

Heat olive oil in a frying pan, add the rissoles to the pan and fry on medium heat until they're golden brown all over. That will take about 15 minutes. Drain on paper towel or clean cloth and serve with a salad. I have mine with chilli jam as well.

I use the Aldi premium red salmon which is around $8, you could make a cheaper version by using pink salmon. I estimate the cost of making these would be around $15 and if that feeds four adults, or two adults and two children, that's a good frugal meal containing omega oils and vegetables.

I hope you try them.

I often tell you how peaceful it is here in our one lane, dead-end street. There's not much passing traffic except for the migrating birds that visit us on their way to who knows where. Apart from the work we do in our home to support the life we want to live, not much happens here. It's ordinary days lived by ordinary people. But last week all hell broke loose and we just sat back and observed.

Just beyond that picket fence is our usually quiet street.

After a few days of intermittent rain, on Monday night a tree came down at the end of our street (two doors down) and it took out the power pole supplying electricity to the street. Hanno woke up in the middle of the night and saw the Energex team set up out front trying to restore the power as quickly as they could. He got our torches out and when he came back to bed he told me what had happened. When I got up and looked outside, the men were working away in silence with shielded lights giving them light to work by but directed away from the houses. By sun up, the power pole was back up, trees cut down and the next couple of hours were taken up with the lines being rethreaded along the power poles and the connections to the houses checked. Our power pole suffered damage and we had to put in an insurance claim. We were told the power would be on again around 12 noon but ours didn't return until 2.30pm - just as the ice cream was starting to melt in the freezer, surely the measure of a prolonged power outage. It might even be the international standard. 😎

Fruit bread and butter pudding.

Then on Friday, Sunny came in to collect Jamie after work and asked why all the police were in the street. She had to drive past many armed police and thread through police cars to get to our place. We had no idea what was happening but found out later from a neighbour that there had been a big drug raid, lead by the SWAT team, in a house a few doors down. Gulp.

A family meal. You can always tell where I'm sitting. It's where the big cup of black tea is.

All the while we continued doing our daily chores and apart from living without power for 14 hours and knowing these things were happening around us, we were not alarmed by the outside world moving closer to us in our street. We're in our haven here and we feel safe.

I've been knitting a fair bit and I'm pleased to have finished my year's worth of dishcloth knitting. I started another shawl after the dishcloths and that's progressing well. I'll be doing a knitting post very soon so I'll save the details for that. I've baked, cooked, watered plants, and sat awhile in the garden in the early morning and thought about our new season garden that we will plant in March. It's not far away so I'd best start thinking about the seeds I want to plant. They need to be ready to go in the ground in eight weeks.

When I have some spare time I do an hour or two on my family history. Cupboards have been cleaned out, the fridge tidied, decluttering is in full swing (again), we've been teaching ourselves how to groom Gracie, I've been sewing, mending and organising my sewing room. The morning chores start with the bed being made and the kitchen tidied and the hours progress slowly from there. Our main meal is eaten at lunch time and a nap taken is after lunch. We have the pleasure of Jamie's company until next week. He's been such a help to us and he makes us laugh. When he goes back to school in a couple of weeks time, I'm going to do a few more cupboards so we'll go into the year with most of our cupboards clean and organised.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And life goes on.

I did a similar recipe in December but I'm posting this one today because I want to show how I dealt with our leftover Christmas ham, and it just so happens to be another baked frittata. A frittata is like an omelette that you can cook either on the stove top in a frying pan or in a baking tray in the oven. Either way, frittata is a great addition to your cooking from scratch repertoire because they're nutritious, easy and quick to make and they're extremely versatile. Generally they're a cheap option too and they become even more frugal when you use the vegetables you need to use up that day and eggs from your backyard. Frittatas may be eaten hot or cold, I prefer a cold slice, and are a great addition to the lunchbox or when travelling on the road, if they can be kept cold of a hot day. It's easy to adjust this recipe to make a vegetarian version and we often have it with vegetables only.

You can make a nice short crust pastry to hold the frittata mix or you could use three or four sheets of frozen filo pastry but it works really well with no pastry so that is usually how I cook it. You just have to make sure you grease the baking tray well or cover it completely with baking paper.

The ham we had this year was the best ham we've had for a long time. We enjoyed it with our family for Christmas day lunch, and over the following week as a ham and egg breakfast, ham and egg sandwiches, ham, tomatoes and potato salad, ham and cheesy pasta. Gracie had a couple of ham meals and the chickens enjoyed the skin. It was well used, that ham.

But when it got down to where I could see the bone, I cut off all the ham I could and left just the bone and gristly bits. That was wrapped in a couple of freezer bags and is now in the freezer to make soup later in the year.

Leftovers Frittata

This is the basic recipe for all my frittatas:

8 or 9 eggs, beaten (nine if you have a couple of small eggs)
1 cup grated cheddar cheese (or cheese of your choice)
250ml (one cup) cream
crushed garlic
salt and pepper

Once you have the basic "custard", you add whatever you have in the fridge that you think your family will enjoy. It goes well with most vegetables, I always include onion and garlic and often use capsicum, peppers, chilli or zucchini. I've also used baked pumpkin, eggplant, leeks, peas, herbs and asparagus. If you want to stretch the meal or have meat eaters who aren't impressed with a frittata, add sliced cooked potato and mushrooms. They add a lot of substance to it.

Here is the step-by-step process in photos:

Add ham, red onions, green onions, salt, pepper and herbs to pan, or whatever vegetables and seasonings you want to add. Cook until the vegetables are translucent - about 10 minutes on medium heat.

Break the eggs into a large bowl, beat the eggs until the yolks and whites are mixed together, add a cup of cream and cheese and mix in. I add the garlic to the eggs too instead of to the frying pan. I think it cooks better in the eggs.

Pour the egg mix into a greased and lined baking tray, add cooked potatoes, vegetables and ham/bacon/chicken and stir gently into the eggs.

Place in the oven at around 170C and bake until the top is golden but still a bit wobbly. Over cooking eggs will make them rubbery. It's much better to slightly under-cook them because they continue cooking in the tray for a little while after you remove them from the oven.

How did you go with your Christmas leftovers? Did you manage to use them all without wasting anything?

I grow a few food plants in the bush house over summer, in particular, oregano and mint, and they thrive in the partial shade. In late December the oregano starts overflowing out of the containers and long tendrils of oregano hang down inviting me to do something with them. I much prefer using fresh ingredients when I cook. I only freeze or dry what will be wasted if I don't save them. However, oregano and mint are two herbs that take on a different flavour when they've been dried. When they start growing abundantly in summer, that is the time to get the garden scissors out and start snipping so I can use them fresh and dried in my cooking. It helps if you have a black dog following you around while you cut. 😊 Dried oregano is a wonderful addition to Mediterranean food, especially sprinkled over pizza, but is also essential in homemade tomato sauce. Mint is best used fresh in drinks, sauces and desserts but dried it can be used to make mint tea or mint sauce or added to stews. Remember, dried herbs are much stronger in taste than they are when fresh so you won't use as much.

Three pots of oregano growing strongly.

This is the mint with a couple of snake trees growing alongside.

And ginger grown from a store-bought root is now growing well in three pots in the bush house. To the left of the ginger is a vanilla orchid vine and chilli seedlings

This was Gracie - with a sprinkling of oregano - after she followed me around in the bush house. I had to brush her down afterwards.

When the herbs are cut and in the kitchen, I gently wash them under the cold water tap, shake off the excess water and pat dry with a clean tea towel. Don't take the leaves off the stalks before drying, do that afterwards, it's much easier. Place a piece of parchment paper on an oven tray and arrange an even layer of herbs over the tray. Today I had enough for two trays.

You can dry herbs simply by tying them up and hanging them but during summer here the humidity is too high and bunched herbs go mouldy rather than dry out.

My oven operates in the temperature range of 30C to 270C so I turn on the oven to 70C and leave it for a few hours. The time depends on how mach foliage you have in the oven, it might take two to three hours. Keep the oven low and slow, you don't want to bake the leaves, you want to remove the moisture while keeping the flavour. If your oven doesn't operate on a low setting, put it on the lowest setting and keep the door slightly ajar with a wooden spoon. Check every so often and you'll see when they're dehydrated and ready to come out of the oven.

This is what it looks like when it's done. When stripping the stems, you want to keep only the leaves. The stems don't add much flavour to your food so throw them in the compost.

This is the part I love, I sit at the kitchen table with a cloth spread out and strip the leaves from the stalks. It's another one of those traditional tasks that connects me with all my great grandmas because I know this would have been something they would have done too. When the stripping is finished and the leaves are completely cold, place them into a clean jar and store in a dark cupboard. Make sure the leaves are absolutely dry because if they still have moisture in them, they will grow mould and you'll have to thrown them out.

I currently have rosemary, Italian and French thymes, bay leaves and basil in the garden but all those herbs lose their magnificent flavour profiles when dry. They're best left growing and used fresh. But if you have an excess of oregano or mint, grab your scissors and get a couple of jars of dried herbs in the cupboard to add that extra zing to your cooking.

Just one thing left to do. I want another couple of jars of these herbs in the cupboard to see me through the year so after cutting off the excess, I gave all the plants a good water then fed them with an organic fertiliser. That will promote rapid growth and I'll be out there again picking more oregano and mint in early February.

Before I start on my post, I want to thank you all for the beautiful comments left yesterday. I really do feel quite overwhelmed, but very grateful. Thank you.

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This is the first of my weekly home cooking recipes. I'll make up three new categories - recipes savoury, recipes sweet and recipes drinks.

This is a quick summer salad I made up last week. It's a good size for four people but you could make a smaller portion just by scaling down the ingredients - it would make an excellent lunchbox lunch too. It's a good recipe to have on standby because if you're busy, you can do it in stages and just put it together at the last minute. Use whatever vegetables you have on hand. I used onion (I put onion in everything), green onions, a can of corn, frozen peas that I'd cooked in the microwave for four minutes, finely diced celery and capsicum and diced cucumber. If you want a spicy version, add a pinch of chilli flakes.

The basis of the salad is rice. I used white rice because I wanted to add turmeric to make yellow rice, but any grain will do. You could use cooked barley, bulgar wheat, couscous or quinoa. The first step is to wash your grains and cook them. Boil in salted water for about 15 - 20 minutes. When cooked, pour them into a colander and allow that to sit until you need to use it.

Above: the prepared vegetables with celery salt and pepper.

I buy Atlantic salmon fillets from Aldi. They're from Norway, they're snap frozen in portion sizes and I think they're a very convenient way of providing fish for the table when fresh fish here is too expensive. I pan fried three portions to serve four people. When the fish is cooked, leave it with the rice for later. If you don't want to use the salmon fillets, tinned salmon, tuna, diced ham or roast meat would be good too. You could make a vegetarian version by using boiled eggs instead of the fish, or a vegan version by using just the grains and vegetables.

All you have to do now is to cut up your vegetables, flake the fish and mix it all into the rice. I made a light lemon dressing for ours but you could use any dressing you like or have in the fridge. About ½ cup will do, pour it over, add salt (I used celery salt) and pepper and it's ready to eat. I hope you enjoy it.

Well, here we are again, the beginning of another year. I hope you had a good break over the holidays and had a chance to spend time with people you love. We had a busy Christmas day and a quiet Boxing day with the rest of the time spent either relaxing or looking after the grandkids. Thank you so much for all the loving thoughts and cards sent our way. We appreciate your kindness very much.

Gracie has settled in well and will soon be 5 months old. Hanno and I are learning how to groom her. It's like shearing a sheep. Her coat is wirey and thick and although she doesn't like being clipped or brushed, she seems to like having less hair. She is a real scallywag though. She loves running off with balls of wool that someone (ahem) seems to leave around the place. She always goes for the best yarn - in the photo above she has my organic fine merino, but she takes the organic cotton too. 😡

I spent time over the break watching test match cricket and knitting a new set of dish cloths. I'm using up the end pieces of organic cotton used over the past two years on various projects. The old dishcloths are not completely written off yet. They'll be transferred to the rag bag and used as cleaning cloths for another year or two.

I hope to teach myself how to crochet and needle felt this year but my main project will be to work on my family history so that I'm happy to give a copy to my sons, grandchildren and sister. Those of you who have put any time into genealogy know that it's never finished but I do want to feel as if I've discovered as much as I can to give me, and us, a sense of who we are and where we came from. Family history is important to me and I sometimes see patterns from past lives repeating in ours. Consequently, I've added a family history tag to my side bar. I'll talk about this in greater detail if there is some interest here because I do think this is part of a simpler life as well as being a valuable lesson in self awareness and acceptance.

Leftover passionfruit cheesecake portions, prefrozen in wedges to be frozen again in plastic bags.

Over the holidays I made sure I had time to think carefully about my plans for this year. I thought about closing the blog and forum but after mulling it over for a few days, I realised I'm not ready to close up shop yet. There are still things I want to share with you and I have strong connections with many people here and on the forum that I don't want to break. As soon as I decided to continue on into my tenth year, it felt right. I doubt I'll be blogging when I'm 80 but I think I still have a few years left in me so I hope you'll continue to read.

One of the most requested topics in the past year has been simple home cooking, so I'll be doing a weekly recipe during the year. It won't be anything fancy, it will be the food we eat here so I can photograph the stages to present along with the recipe. I hope you enjoy that. I've also been asked by many readers to revisit some of my older topics such as budgeting, housework, baking and household sewing. That's on the agenda for this year too.

Thanks for coming back. It will be interesting to see where we go this year. ♥︎

I visited my dear friend Rose in her home town over the weekend. It was a long drive so I had a lot of time to think about Rose, my family, my online family, my home, little Gracie and what I want to do next year. I need to be alone when I think about important and complex issues and it takes me a long time to sort out how I feel and what I should be doing. But the end result for me is that I go forward with a clear plan in mind and, usually, the belief that I'm doing the right thing.

A nurse took a photo of us and when Rose looked at it she asked me to share it with you.

The afternoon I spent with Rose was a delight. She didn't know I was coming so when I walked in she was surprised. We talked all afternoon, we laughed and read some threads on the forum, Rose's mother, Mavis, and husband, Tony, came in for a short visit and we carried on chatting. Rose is in a good room. It has a balcony and it overlooks the Pacific Ocean and although she is confined to bed she can look out onto the wide blue yonder.

A country pub in Queensland.

Many people have said that it was a long drive for such a short time but I don't look at my trip that way. I believe that good friendships and family relationships need help to survive and flourish and when that happens, especially during difficult times, it strengthens the ties that bind more than anything else. I don't care how long it took, how difficult it was, how much it cost, it was worth it to be with Rose when she needed another friend at her side. I believe it was time well spent and that our friendship and the physical demonstration of it, will help her in coming days. It will help me too.

Rambling along the backroads is such an interesting way of travelling. You see people, animals and places you never see along busy highways. The interaction of people in and with their home towns is an inspiration to me. As you know, I often stay at home for weeks at a time so it is important for me to get out occasionally and experience community life as it unfolds. Driving through small towns and sometimes stopping to have a break or a cup of tea, gives me valuable time to observe ordinary folk like me going about their days. Seeing people out and about, sitting on verandahs, at the farm gate, shopping, gardening or playing with children in the yard confirms my belief that it is strong families who make a country strong and resilient. And as I travel onwards, it reminds me that home is the most important place for all of us and that returning home is an important and significant part of every journey.

And when I returned home, Hanno and Jamie were here and when Gracie saw me she ran around with her ears down and tail up, making funny noises and not really knowing what to do next. I slept well that night. I've spent time with a good friend, looked around this great country of ours and had many hours to think of today and tomorrow. What had been unclear in my mind about the coming months is now clear, I have a firm plan for the coming year and I feel enthusiastic and primed for what's ahead.