I really thought I'd written my last post here but I didn't know how bad it is out there. I went to Instagram to remain connected to you all but now it's self-destructing to get more advertising dollars so I don't want to write there anymore.  I used it one last time to let you know I’d written this post but from now on you’ll either have to check here to see if there’s a new post or sign up to Blogtrottr which I explain below.

Thanks for coming back to the blog with me and welcome to the newbies. Here we have no rules except for the requirement to treat everyone with respect and kindness. That's how I live my life so it's no surprise that I want that here too.  And it does need to be vocalised because there are new readers arriving here all the time and I want everyone to know what my expectations are.  I've been writing on this blog since 2007 and during the first few years I wrote everyday.  I had SO MUCH to say I couldn't keep it in. When I discovered this simple way of life, I wanted to share it with everyone and back then, no one was talking about living simply, at least not in the way I live it.

The focus here is on my home and up until now, my family as well. Of course I still have my sons and their families but my much-loved husband, Hanno, died in May 2022. Since then I've grieved, thought about my life and my future and came out the other end of that process knowing I want to continue to live according to my values and doing what gives me pleasure. I've always been a bit of a hermit and that hasn't changed so although my family visits me and I go out to see friends, my blog will remain one of the ways I connect with people. So my writing here will continue much as it was before. I'll write about my day-to-day life which always includes housework, gardening and sitting in the backyard thinking about life (and death). Other topics will pop up occasionally too - it will all be a reflection on what I'm spending time on and what interests me and hopefully you too.

I spent the last hour trying to find new ways for you to subscribe to my blog. Early last year, Feedburner retired and with it went an easy way to let you know I’d published a new post.  I found Push Notifications but don't know how to set it up and Blogtrottr which looks okay at the moment but might not work as I think it will.  I'll continue to monitor it closely and hope it sends you emails about new postings when you subscribe to it.  It looks pretty simple so give it a go and if I find any problems with it, I'll let you know.  I'll add the link to the right-hand column too. Of course, you might just want to drop by and check the blog yourself without receiving any notifications. That's fine too. If there isn't a new blog, read through my archives, there are hundred of posts listed in the right-hand column.  

I’d like to make a list of fellow, non-commercial, bloggers who are currently writing posts.  If you have an up-to-date blog which isn't about selling anything, send me a link and I'll check it out and will probably add it to the list.

Thanks for reading through all this. I wanted to get all the blog-related information out before I settle in and write about what I'm doing here.  I'll be back on the weekend with a post about the garden I've recreated in my backyard.  Thanks for being here. ☺️

ADDED FRIDAY AFTERNOON: 

A number of people mentioned they're using https://feedly.com and that reminded me that I had a Feedly account too.  It's a great site that allows you to make a list of the places you want to follow - news sites, blogs etc. I think it's better than Blogtrottr.

Gracie update: she wouldn't allow me to brush her face so I ended up cutting all the prickles out of her eyebrows, nose and beard with some little scissors. She was in the worst mood while I was doing it but when I finished, she raced around the backyard like a gazelle. Dogs eh.

I have known for a while that this post was coming, but I didn't know when. This is my last post. I'm closing my blog, for good, and I'm not coming back like I have in the past.  I've been writing here for 16 years and my blog has been many things to me. It helped me change my life, it introduced me to so many good people, it became a wonderful record of my family life, it helped me get a book contract with Penguin, and monthly columns with The Australian Women's Weekly and Burke's Backyard. But in the past few months, it's become a burden.

In April, I'll be 75 years old and I hope I've got another ten years ahead. However, each year I'll probably get weaker and although I'm fairly healthy, I do have a benign brain tumour and that could start growing. There are so many things I want to do and with time running out, leaving the blog behind gives me time to do the things that give me pleasure.

On the day the blog started I felt a wonderful, heartwarming feeling when I first pressed the "publish" button. I wanted to share what I know, help others live simply, get out of debt and be kinder to our planet. I think I achieved some of that but the amount of money still being spent on cars, clothes, holidays and things that will end up in land fill is heart breaking. 

The blog will remain open so you can come back to read whatever you like but next Wednesday, I'll turn off the comments. For those that like the stats, I've written 2995 posts, there have been 91,222 comments and over 360 million page views. Thank you for being part of that.  I'm continuing my Instagram page so if you've got an account there, I'll see you around. It's much easier to write on Instagram because they have a limit on keystrokes so I'm pretty sure that can fit into my life.

You can find me on Instgagram by searching for rhondahetzel If you follow me, when I post, you'll see the post along with anyone else you follow.  I'll put up a link in my side bar this week to guide you there.

During the 16 years I've written here I've felt loved and appreciated and I thank you all for that. I also say a special thanks to the people who commented - that's what kept me going. Having that contact with like-minded folk gave me a better understanding of the world around me, helped me come up with ideas to write about and showed me that despite what we see on the news, the world is full of people who are trying to do their best.

Thank you for being here with me.  ❤️

COMMENTS ARE NOW CLOSED

I've written a lot about the various things I choose to do with my days now and apart from not being able to work in the garden, I'm a peace with my daily choices. What I've never talked about with you though, is what I choose not to do. Recreational shopping, smoking, reading fiction, flying, making soap, vinegar and yoghurt from scratch, growing food, travelling, sitting in front a some sort of screen day in and day out and hundreds of other things. I believe the things I do not choose are shaping my future just as much as what I choose to do.

When I get up each morning, I'm not catapulting myself out of bed like I used to but getting up slowly, thinking about my day, making decisions about the hours I'll spend within these walls, having breakfast, tidying up, drawing, talking to myself and Gracie and writing. I think that time weaves its own strange web and without me realising, the hours become another ordinary day. Another day I'm thankful for; another day in my past. 

Today I'm writing about the process of feeding ourselves. I suppose we know this process as cooking but it also involves preserving, fermenting, preparation, shopping, baking, and depending on the type of cooking you do, a variety of other processes that delivers food to the table. I'm currently working out ways to keep cooking from scratch and eating the foods I love without wasting what I buy.  I was pleased to see many responses to the information about the Zwilling vacuum-packed food. It's a good way to keep fresh food available for a long time.

But today's main topic will be some of the recipes I have on rotation in my own home. I'm not giving the recipes for each meal because writing out recipes is painful and the main reason I didn't write a cook book. But all recipes you choose should be edited to suit your own taste. When you find the meal you want to cook, look for a few different versions of the recipe and then edit your chosen one to your taste.  Here is my list of 40 favourite easy meals.

All the recipes here are for four servings. I used to serve two portions for Hanno and I and either freeze the other two portions or eat them the following day. Cooking this way helps you build up a stockpile of frozen home-cooked meals to eat on the days you're busy or too tired to cook. If, like me, you're cooking for one now, you'll either halve these recipes before you cook, then eat one portion and freeze one. Again this helps by building a small stockpile of home-cooked meals. Work out which spices you'll need to have on hand when you're cooking. If you're eating mainly European food - German, Italian, French etc., you'll need salt, pepper, paprika, and herbs, either fresh or dried. Asian food requires soy sauce, chilli paste or flakes, cumin, curry paste or powder, coriander/cilantro, turmeric, ginger etc.  You'll probably find the meals you like will use the same or similar seasonings. Grow your own herbs, it's easily done in containers and it will save you a lot of money over the year. Currently a bunch of herbs is between $3 and $4.90, depending on if you buy organic herbs.

If you're a solo cook, it might be better for you to buy your meat at the local butcher shop instead of the supermarket. The supermarket has only trays of meat and apart from $70 per kilo fillet steak, generally the trays are too big for a solo cook. However, if you want to buy a bulk tray of meat, that will save you money as long as you repack it into meal sized portions to freeze at home. A butcher will give you what you ask for - 2 sausages, 200 grams minced beef, two chops, a small piece of corned beef, a small whole chicken or a rack of 4 prepared chops suitable for roasting. They also have a range of bones for stock.

If you're new to this kind of cooking, set up your systems first because it is having a stockpile with a variety of food, having your kitchen well organised, and your list of meals that will support your cooking and make things easier for you. Here is some extra reading all about home cooking and providing nutrition. It also contains my own list of 40 meals I cook on a regular basis. If you're serious about home cooking, it's helpful to build your own list. It will provide constant and long-term inspiration. 

• Beef casserole

• Cottage Pie 

• Lasagne

• Roast chicken with herb stuffing and gravy

• KFC - Korean Fried Chicken

• Bangers and mash and curried sausages 

• Stuffed cabbage rolls

• Meatballs

• Spinach Pie

• Kartoffel Puffer

To find more recipes on my blog, go to the side bar under my photo and search for simple terms such as chicken, not roast chicken, or just click on Home Cooking in the list of topics on the bottom of the page. Good luck with this. If you can organise a list of favourite and easy meals, get your kitchen ready and create a small stockpile or pantry, cooking will be easier for you. Don't forget to delegate jobs too. Kids and partners love to cook, peel, chop and test taste. 😉

I am so grateful to have such a wonderful group of readers. I don't say this often but your comments really do keep me blogging. When they drop off, I do too.  So thank you for being here with me and thanks for the thoughts and prayers you send me. It's such a lovely thing to be thought of by people near aand far.  I think of you too. Every time you comment, I build up a picture in my mind of what you're like - how you talk and wear your hair, how you make a cup of tea and harvest flowers or tomatoes. I carry those picture with me and sometimes when I sit on the front verandah, someone from here sits in my brain for a while and makes me smile.  So thank you all for that and for giving me the time it takes to visit and comment.  

 💛 ~ 💜 ~ 🧡

At the beginning of the week there was a bad smell in the house. At first I wondered if Gracie had found a mouse and killed it but mice in the house in summer is very rare so I searched for another cause. My nose lead me to the bathroom, the bathroom I don't use. It used to be the main bathroom but when we added another bedroom with en suite, that became our main bathroom. The old bathroom is used by visitors and if they use the toilet, that is where they wash their hands.  The room also contains an old freezer, a cleaning cupboard and a shower. As soon as I walked in I knew I'd hit pay dirt - the smell was very strong and I could see the freezer light was off.   🫢  Then I remembered, I'd used my robo mop at the end of last week. That one electrical switch in the room has a dual purpose. It charges the battery on the mop and it runs the freezer and has done for over 20 years. I must have forgotten to turn the switch on again when I removed the mop cord. 😑    

When I opened the door on the freezer my head nearly lifted from my shoulders. 😵‍💫 I put it down again but I could see rotting steaks, mince, two roasts, homegrown chard, a large bag of fresh ginger and chillies picked from the backyard. There was also two litres of lemon juice ready to be made into cordial for the second half of summer and about 5 kilos of bread flour I'd been storing in there.  Funnily enough, the loss of the food was a distant second place to worrying about the smell. 

This freezer was bought the first year we lived here. It was a medium sized freezer that served us well all that time and never caused any problems. It had started to rust in a few places and enamel paint chips on the outside wall fell off sometimes in the last year, so I knew it was on the way out. I didn't want to replace it but I knew I had to start thinking about getting rid of it. I don't live a freezer lifestyle anymore - no live-in family, no bulk meat purchases, no bread making and no garden to harvest from anymore.

When I tried to move it, it wouldn't budge an inch. So I rang my son Shane. He told me not to worry and he'd be here the following day to get rid of it. And that's exactly what he did. He moved the freezer out of the house and onto the trailer hooked up to his car and took it to the dump. It was like losing an old friend. But when I thought about it, it was another decluttering exercise. Yes it happened out of the blue, yes, I couldn't rescue any of the food it contained, yes, it made a mess but if it hadn't happened like that I would have had to slowly use the food in the freezer, turn it off for the final time, cleaned it out and ask Shane to take it to the dump for me.  In this instance, I think the faster option was better.

When Shane removed the freezer it was clear by some stains on the floor that it had been leaking for a while. I cleaned the corner of the bathroom with bleach, then with disinfectant and washing up liquid in almost boiling water, finished it off with dry rags and set up a drying rack in the space.  I have to admit, I miss that old freezer. It was such an important part of our first year living in our home and one of the first appliances I bought with visions of home productivity in mind. After I bought it, I set up a stockpile cupboard and a pantry and those three things - the freezer, stockpile cupboard and pantry helped me think in creative ways about home cooking, baking, fermenting, creating a food budget, food storage and cutting back on food waste.

I'll miss the old girl but in the future she'll help me remember what life was like for the Hetzels when we picked her up from the shop and brought her home. I didn't fully realise her potential at first but she helped me answer a lot of the food questions I'd started thinking about. She allowed me to buy bulk meat from a local farmer for a fraction of the supermarket price and she provided space to place newly purchased dry goods - flour, oats, rice etc. - so that if they contained any insect larvae, it would be killed in the freezer.

I guess it's strange feeling sentimental about a freezer but it really did kick start how I changed my thoughts about food production. And I'm pleased the end came fast and that Shane was there for me when I needed help. It's a pity about the smell though. 😵‍💫

Kerry, Sunny and Jamie gave me a Cuckoo rice cooker for Christmas.  I used it for the first time today because I made chicken curry for my main meal. It's a pressure cooker so it makes rice in 6.5 minutes. All I had to do was wash the rice until the water was not milky, add the rice and water to the cooker and turn it on. It worked out its own cooking time according to the weight of the pan and it kept the rice warm until I used it. Made in South Korea, I expect creative technology and I can see myself making more rice dishes because the rice it makes is much better than the rice I used to make. 😁

Many of you know my good friend Grandma Donna who blogs at Generations Before Us. Her blog is full of wise ideas about living simply as well as wonderfully nostalgic photos of her home. Recently Donna started a forum and I told her I'd tell you about it. This year she and her husband are conducting a study into 1930s living - you can read about that on her blog. The forum is a way for the people doing the study with her to swap ideas and get support. There's also a general chat area so you can socialise with like-minded people, everyone is welcome. If you click the link to Donna's blog, look at the top of the page and click on  Forum to go there.  You have to join but there's no hidden agenda.  Donna's not well at the moment so it may take a little while to be welcomed into the forum, but it won't take too long. I'll be there to greet you. 🥰

Queen Anne's Lace cut from a ten foot high plant in the back yard.

Although I'm feeling okay overall, I'm having trouble writing another blog post. The ideas I have in my head don't become the words and sentences I want to write so I've decided to take a break until the new year. I'm sorry to disappoint you but I have to look after myself.

I'm looking forward to Friday when we're celebrating Jamie's last day of primary school with a family lunch. I'll spend Christmas here with my family coming over for lunch and, of course, the cricket started today. So along with my daily chores and sewing a set of new aprons, I'll have plenty of slow work to keep me out of trouble.

Thank you for your kindness and comments during what has been a life-changing year for me. I hope you enjoy the holidays and can spend time with your loved ones.

This post is about a few small things that I've wanted to write about for a while but larger topics overtook me. My life is full of small things that are a part of something much bigger. I'm constantly reminded that not all people live as I do and usually it's the small things that people are interested in. I get that because without time set aside preparing for the bigger things, nothing runs smoothly. For instance, food - shopping list, cleaning out the fridge, checking the pantry etc.; cooking - peeling and cutting vegetables, defrosting meat or fish, menu plan so we know for sure we have what we need during the week; washing - soaking, stain removal, making laundry liquid etc.; gardening - saving kitchen scraps and making compost, sowing seeds etc.; maintaining relationships - keeping up with family and friends' messages, making time for occasional online, face-to-face talks, keeping a calendar with birthdays and important days, invitations for meals and morning teas.  You have to put time and effort into relationships. Life is made up of the big things, but without the small things, the big things fall apart.  So here goes.

As you can see in the photo, I haven't been to the hairdresser for almost two years. My hair is usually in a ponytail now to keep it relatively neat and off my neck during summer. I decided not to get it cut short again and to wear it in plaits/braids in a circle around my head. I used to wear it like that when I lived in Germany in the 1970s and it always felt comfortable. I think I'll be able to plait/braid it early in the new year.

As usual there was washing to do which had built up over some rainy days we've had here.

Munstead Wood standard rose.  You can see where this rose is standing in the next photo.

The weather is surprisingly cool at the moment so I hope to get the garden finished this week and all I'll have to do when it heats up again is water the plants and harvest. I'll write about the garden when I finish fiddling with it and show the photos I've taken. It's nothing fancy but it fills my heart up and makes me happy. The garden is on the edge of the verandah and spills out on both sides of the garage door. The rubbish bins are there too - beauty and practicality, I rate them equally. I would never have thought such a space was garden-worthy but now it makes complete sense to me.

I finally got someone to mow the lawn, it cost $210. I didn't want to get a teenager in to mow because I wanted someone who had insurance, just in case. I'm very happy with the work he did and I'll get him back again. I wish the grass didn't grow so fast.  😳

In my previous post I had a photo of some pastries I made recently.  They're very tasty, don't take much time and they'll give you a quick and easy change from your usually baking.  You'll need:

• 1 or 2 sheets frozen puff pastry
• 1 egg yolk + teaspoon water
• jam - I used apricot jam
• tinned fruit or homemade stewed fruit - I used apricot halves

Before you start assembling the pastry, preheat the oven to 230C/445F - the pastry needs high heat to puff up. 

I cut the pastry into four portions but they were two big and when I ate the first one, I cut it in two. Next time, I'll use one sheet and have three rectangles instead of the four large squares I made with two sheets. Work out the size you want and cut the pastry accordingly. Each pastry has a double layer so cut all the pastry the same size so you can double up. Cut a hole in the top layer, (see photo above) that's where you place the jam and fruit. Brush the egg wash in between the two layers and add the pastry with the hole in it on top of another piece of pastry without a hole - that's the base. Use whatever jam and fruit you have on hand.

When the pastries are made, brush them with egg wash - that's egg yolk with a teaspoon of water in it. That creates the golden colour. Put the pastries in the oven and bring them out when they're golden and puffy. When they're cool, you can drizzle water icing on them but I think they're sweet enough without it. They can be frozen and reheated in the oven on a low temperature.

I've been meaning to tell you about this kitchen brush I've been using lately. This isn't a paid promotion, I bought my brush and it does a great job. I use it for my frying pan, saucepans and sometimes I clean the sink with it. It's the German Redecker dish brush ($29.95) and I bought mine here. Although I've used mine a lot, it's kept its shape, no bristles have fallen out and the handle doesn't seem to stain. If you're looking for a good kitchen brush for a reasonable price, I recommend this to you.

When I had spare time this week, I worked on my replacement aprons. I like to have several aprons in the cupboard so I have a clean one to work in every day of the week.  I've worn out most of my aprons that I've used for the past ten years so I thought I'd replace all of them in one go. Aprons do a wonderful job keeping your clothes clean while you work in your home and if you put a big pocket on your apron, you can collect eggs, put pegs in the pocket when you hang out the washing, or just collect bits and pieces that you find around the place. Just don't put scissors in your pocket because if you fall, it could cause a serious injury.  Aprons are so easy to make so if you're not a sewer yet, it's a fantastic first project. Here is a YouTube apron tutorial and here's another. I hope you give it a go.

Thank you for the lovely comments on my last post. It really makes a difference when you comment, not just for me but for all bloggers. I appreciate the time you take to connect with me.  xx

 

It felt like that existence shattered when Hanno died and I wasn't sure if I would still feel that my home was a safe haven. Last week, I turned that corner. I've been working in my home every day since Hanno died. With no real plan or definite ideas about what the future holds for me, I've been establishing new routines, organising things to suit me and not 'us' and I slowly worked to put life back together, piece by piece.  I'm happy to tell you I feel I'm almost there. Of course, there is a deep sadness I feel every day and I doubt that will go but I also feel optimistic, strong and independent.