down to earth

It just shows the resilience of insects and birds. The garden that Hanno used to tend, which supplied 80 percent of the vegetables we consumed, was busy with wildlife. Bees buzzed, birds came for water and nectar, kookaburras mined the compost heap for the grubs they knew were in there, and reptiles drank and sunned themselves - always out of Gracie's reach. Then nothing. There were no flowers or plants to visit, no water in the bird baths, no isolated containers collecting rainwater. I sat quietly in the garden yesterday afternoon and was so happy to see how much life there was. I didn't see any reptiles but the bees and birds were in and out, swooping and dive bombing and checking out the flowers that were there. They know there are more flowers coming and they will gracefully wait for their return. I will too!

This post will be disappointing for some of you because this is not the garden update. I still haven't finished. Everything is planted but the pots are not in the places they'll sit. Placement is the hardest thing to work out, especially as this is a flower garden and all flowers need sun. To make it more difficult, when I move the large pots - and these are holding 90 - 100kg of potting mix plus the weight of the pot, I don't want to move them again for a few years. I have to get it right. Spring will arrive in just over four weeks time so I have to place the pots where they'll sit all summer-long. Some plants, mainly the roses, can tolerate our summer sun, some can't so I'm trying to work out which plants can sit on the shaded side of larger plants. I'll get there, I just need more time to figure it out.

I got my hair cut! I think it's four years since it was cut and it was 11 inches below my shoulders. It feels so good to have it shorter again. It's much easier to wash and keep tidy and I don't get caught up in my ponytail when I'm asleep.

Last week I had a mobility assessment for my Home Care Plan. They sent a physiotherapist to assess me here at home. He did a range of tests such as having me stand and sit down as many times as I could in 30 seconds without holding on to anything. I did eight which he said was excellent! I also had to get in and out of bed, and stand in one spot and turn around in a circle. The only two I could not do were balancing on one foot and walking with one foot in front of the other - which required me to stand on one foot for a brief time. He asked me how I spend my days and I told him I'm baking, cooking, gardening, cleaning, playing with Gracie etc. just the normal stuff we all do, and he said I was well ahead of what he would expect of me at my age (76). I think the two I couldn't do are linked to my non-malignant brain tumour. It's always caused me to feel unbalanced and I think that will always be the case. So he scored me 90 percent which I'm happy with. Let's hear it for house and yard work!!

A new digital electricity meter was installed on Friday so there'll be no more people coming to read the meter. The bills keep rolling in - my Council rates notice came on Thursday so I'm making sure I keep my budget on point and always save money when I have the chance.

My sister will visit from the Blue Mountains in August and my friend Nicole Lutze will visit tomorrow for morning tea. I'm making a whole orange cake with orange cream cheese frosting. I've only got a few lemons and no oranges left on my trees so with the fruit I had in the kitchen, I just made orange and lemon cordial. It is SO delicious - MUCH better than shop-bought cordial. I also have 500ml of syrup to make lemon cordial during the week - that will be the end of the lemons. We had a lot of rain earlier in the year so the fruit was large and juicy. If you live in a warm climate, or have a warm spot in your garden, I hope you'll grow a lemon or orange tree. They're easy to look after and will give you the tastiest fruit you can imagine.

LEMON AND ORANGE CORDIAL

First, juice your fruit. If you get 2 litres of juice you'll need 2 litres of syrup.

You can use sugar syrup or weak sugar syrup, depending on your taste. I used weak syrup but if I was making lemon cordial, I'd use normal sugar syrup.

Normal sugar syrup is 1 kg sugar to 1 litre of water.
Weak sugar syrup is 500 grams sugar to 1 litre of water.

To make the syrup add the sugar to the water and boil it. When the sugar has dissolved, let it cool. Measure the amount of syrup you have and add the same amount of juice. When mixed together, bottle it and store it in the fridge. Dilute according to your taste - it will be about ¼ cordial to ¾ water.

If you end up with extra syrup, put it in a sealable jar and store it in the fridge. It will keep well and you can make your next batch of cordial with it.

You can also use honey or maple syrup but it will add that flavour to the cordial. I've never make cordial with anything but granulated sugar.

Today I'm cleaning and rearranging the back verandah. It's a real mess. It's a wonderful place to sit on a winter's afternoon and Gracie loves being out there with me. So it's a good investment of my time to make the place look and feel good. I washed the bench seat cushion covers yesterday and when they're on again, I'll finish the outdoor setting chairs, three of which still have to have their arm rests attached. Lunch will be lamb curry and rice, leftovers from the baked leg of lamb I had yesterday. I'll end my day doing my Woolworths grocery order and sending that in so they can deliver it in the morning.

I hope you have a wonderful week and enjoy the work you do for yourself and your family. xx

ADDITIONAL READING

This was what my garden looked like last week, then last weekend Kerry and Jamie added the rest of the pots. I think you'll be surprised at how much is there now but you'll have to wait until next week to see it.

These are just some of the supplies I had stored in the bush house. All of them have been used now and new potting mix bought this morning.

There are two of the roses I'm growing - the pink one is called Pinky and I've forgotten the name of the other rose. I have it written down so when I present my gardening post next week, I'll have it for you along with the names of all the other roses. I have a mix of Old English roses, Floribunda bush roses and miniature roses as well as lavender, salvias, butterfly bush, gaura and pelargonium.

I thought I'd be writing about gardening in this post but I'm not ready to present the garden to you yet. It's taken me much longer than I thought it would because I've lost a lot of my strength. After I do a couple of things, I have to sit down. I'm using a walking stick when I'm walking on the grass now ☹️ and that's slowing down much of what I'm doing. I ran out of potting mix yesterday so this morning I went to the local farmers' co-op to pick up another six 30 kg bags. They were loaded into my car and after driving home, I've only managed to get two of them out. I'm using my trusty green plastic trolley that I used to declutter the house last year. I can lift a bag out of the boot and let it fall into the trolley (difficult), then wheel the trolley through the garage to the clothes line (easy), then wheel it over the grass to where all the pots are (difficult). And the icing on the cake is then I have to sit down for ten minutes to recover! grrrr. Apart from all of that, I'm enjoying the process and I only have the smaller pots to deal with now. I think it'll look lovely when it's finished.

She's watching her bedding dry.

Gracie and I are doing well. I've just brought her bedding and blankets in after washing them so she'll be wrapped up warmly tonight. The temperatures have dropped and although it's not as cold here as it is in southern Australia, it's dropping to 6 or 7 or 8 every night this week. I'm warm in my bed because I have an electric blanket and two doonas! LOL yes, two, otherwise my feet get cold.

I did my fruit and vegetable shopping at the local roadside stall this week. I love it there. They sell produce from local growers and backyards, much of it is organic or chemical-free and all of it is fresher than the fare at Woolworths.

I made a madeira cake, aka pound cake, through the week. I used my little bread loaf tin and baked a really tasty cake. Here is the recipe I used. If you haven't made one of these cakes before, it's a different texture to a normal cake or a sponge, it's heavier than both of them but it moist and full of flavour. I used a light icing made with plain icing sugar and orange juice. It would be a good cake for lunchboxes.

I've heard terrible things about the weather across the US, I hope you've not been in the areas of extreme heat, storms or floods. I hope the time you've had at home has been comforting and productive. Have you baked a cake this week? Or maybe you've been sewing or preserving. Let me know what you're up to.

❤️ 😊 ❤️

ADDITIONAL READING

A week in wildlife

‘Africa’s most resilient lion’ and his brother filmed making 1.5km swim across dangerous African river

Self sufficiency vlog

Rose syrup and garden vegies

The first time Hanno and I walked onto the land I still live on, in 1994, I was underwhelmed to say the least. Everything was dry, there was a small brick house sitting in the middle of a very large block of land but no fences, verandahs, tanks, solar panels, gardens, pathways or a driveway. The house looked lost and lonely but when I walked into the backyard, it was all there waiting for us. I could see remnant rainforest snaking along as if it was growing on a waterway. Sure enough, there was a flowing creek - it runs from Maleny to Pumicestone Passage in the Pacific Ocean - surrounded on both sides by old rainforest trees and vines. I loved it and although I really didn't like the house, I knew we could change that but we'd never find land like this again. We bought the house soon after and moved here in 1997 when Shane finished school. Hanno and I were both working then.

I still have no driveway but all the other things we thought would be essential to our way of life we added later as we had the cash to buy them. We had a Solarhart solar hot water installed, along with our first water tank and two skylights and we put in a vegetable and fruit garden and bought another flock of hens. Hanno built a chook house, all made with recycled materials on a cement slab. We gutted the kitchen and got a cabinetmaker in to rebuild a kitchen I could work in and in 2000 we added another bedroom and bathroom. About ten years after we arrived we added a larger water tank, giving us the ability to store 15,000 litres/quarts of rainwater. In 2011 our first solar panels were installed - seven panels that saved us a lot of money. In 2023 I had the old panels removed and 18 panels added to the roof; they still save me money. It's been slow and steady progress and all paid for when we had the cash ready. Doing that gave us a lifestyle that didn't rely on credit cards or loans.

And every year the land we lived on became more productive and beautiful.

If you grow some of the food you eat you'll save money, even if it's just the green leaves (lettuce, spinach, bok choy etc) or herbs. All those plants will grow well in containers.

We paid our mortgage off in eight years, mainly by paying fortnightly instead of monthly and putting every extra cent we had on the mortgage. That might have been savings from our a lower than expected utilities bill or not spending what we expected to at the supermarket. I built a stockpile cupboard so I always had ingredients for every meal, I baked our bread - making a tasty and nutritious loaf for $2.50 instead of the $5.00 at the bakery. EVERY saving went to the mortgage. There is no doubt about it, it was tough but on the final day, when we paid that last payment, I was joyous and thankful that we'd pushed through the difficult times and done it. Living without a mortgage gives you a real sense of freedom and independence.

Afternoon light in the kitchen.

I'm well aware that many of you might be struggling with rent or paying off your mortgage at the moment, we all know the cost of living is frightening. There have been times in the past when we could have looked to our politicians for hope and help but I think those times have changed. Just this morning I read our opposition leader flew on a $23,000 private jet flight to speak to people in Tamworth about the cost of living! Good grief, how can anyone think that's okay?

I wash Gracie's blankets every week and she often sits there for a while watching them. But not the day I took this photo. I tried to get her to sit there but she wouldn't have anything to do with it. Grrr.

I don't have any fancy answers to the cost of living crisis but I do know that it won't last. Over the years I've been through many financial crises and every one of them ended. There will be a time in the future when you'll look back on this and remember how you soldiered on and I hope you'll be proud that you did. Remember that all the small steps add up - in paying off debt, saving for what you need and changing your life to something different. Everything takes time.

Take care of yourself, enjoy every day and take it easy.

ADDITIONAL READING

Elephants call each other by name

Clean v green: ‘disgust wins out’ over eco ideals when doing laundry, study finds

20 easy chicken recipes
The life sabbatical: is doing absolutely nothing the secret of happiness?

Is there asbestos in your makeup? Why women with cancer are suing big beauty brands

It looks like I live a traditional, old-fashioned life and yet I believe my lifestyle is revolutionary and rebellious. Yes, I bake bread and cakes, preserve food in jars and cook all my meals from scratch. I happily live a thrifty life, I never follow fashion - either in clothes or opinions, I don't draw electricity from the grid, my water usage is estimated by the water company as being that of half a person (!), I drive less than 1500 km a year and I haven't been on a plane since the 1990s. I live on less than $30,000 a year and am thankful to save about $100 a week of that. I don't have a credit card but I do buy books, fabrics, including lots of linen, hobby supplies, toys for Gracie and anything else I need or want, and I do that with cash.

This is my square loaf but I didn't put enough dough in the tin for it to rise into a square. Oops.

I might be doing the work that was done by housewives in the past but I have different reasons for doing my work and a lot of it is focused on the environment, the cost of living, slowing down and wanting to live a peaceful, happy life. But none of that just happens automatically, it takes a plan, hard work and determination, and it comes in stages.

Doing housework makes you feel better and I know that because often when faced with a job I don't want to do - mopping the floors and cleaning the cupboard under the kitchen sink come to mind - I make sure I do the best job I can because when I finish, I feel fantastic. And when I clean under the kitchen sink, I keep going back to admire my work. 🙄

During the week, I picked 25 chillies from the herb garden for Sunny and family. Sunny chomps away on chillies like they're apples. I have two small chilli circle slices in my entire dish.

Yesterday was the second anniversary of Hanno's death. I thought of him more than usual, some visitors came to my home and there were a few phone calls. Of course I think of him every day but it’s not in the context of grief but rather affectionate memories of our life together and how we built a better life for ourselves that involved working sustainably rather than focusing on money.

Grandma Donna and I have been continuing with our talks and last week we discussed soaking flour. I'll talk about that when I understand it more and teach myself to use it in my baking. I love talking to Donna, she says I have an accent, which of course I don't but I love listening to her southern American accent. We have so much in common, it's like having a sister that I've never met on the other side of the world. Life is made richer with genuine friendships - I hope your life is enriched by them too.

Here are Pip and Gracie getting to know each other.

I also spent time with another dear friend, Nicole Lutze. She brought her puppy Pip with her so both Gracie and I were delighted. For morning tea I baked a decadent French Apple Cake with no milk or buttermilk but with double the butter. It was delicious. I made sure I sent half of it home with Nicole so I wasn't tempted to eat the whole thing.

When I make bread, I usually take off a small piece of dough and freeze it for pizza. This is the pizza I made this week.

My work today will involve reorganising the freezer and cleaning the fridge, clipping Gracie, tidying the back verandah and moving a few more things from the front verandah to the back. Yesterday I made Gracie's food for the next couple of weeks, beef, barley and vegetable soup for my meals for the next few days; I also pruned all the plants on the front verandah. It's a good time to do that - the plants don't grow much over winter and it gives them the chance to rest and then they're ready to burst into new life in spring. If you wait until spring to prune, the plants will have to recover from the pruning before they put on new growth. So with all that under my belt, when I finish this post to you, I'll be sewing for the rest of the day. I haven't had a chance to sew for ages. It's mainly mending and creating a few bits and pieces for my home. I want to make a little curtain for the inside of the front door, I need to finish off some aprons I have cut out and I want to make a new cover for Gracie's bed. What are you doing today?

Chinese style chicken with pak choy.

I got my flu vaccination last week. The first time I went for it, I had to postpone because someone I had close contact with got Covid. I've never had Covid and I don't want to get the flu or RSV either so I'm careful about where I go and cleaning my hands as often as I can while I'm out. I doubt that will change in the future because new viruses seem to be present in the community every so often.

I hope you're well and not caught up in the rough weather that seems to be happening all over the place. Have a great weekend and spend some time with the people you love. Thank you for your visits and to everyone who comments, thank you, I love knowing what you're doing and I love reading them.

ADDITIONAL READING AND VIEWING

Cheese, please! Eight everyday foods that are great for gut health – and aren’t kimchi, kombucha, ’kraut or kefir

The life of a former cafe owner who enjoys being close to nature

Small order of monks living hidden lives in South Canterbury hills (New Zealand)

How relevance deprivation syndrome has liberated me in my retirement

Top 10 Dogs of the Week

‘We call it our farm’: meet the Australians swapping supermarket shopping for farm shares

Thinking of getting a solar battery? Consider these things first

Canned tuna recipes

I received an email during the week from a reader who has been mourning her husband for seven years. She said she's given up on housework and only does what must be done. She said the rest of the time, like me, she sits and thinks about life with her husband. I had to correct her because that's not what I do, I gave up sitting and thinking about life with Hanno because that’s not how I want to live. I want to be self-reliant and productive. I work all through the day and while I work, I remember sometimes what Hanno and I did together. I realised I had to get on with my life, that Hanno would have expected that and I didn't want to give up. My purpose now is to create the life I want to live in the home I want to stay in. Having a purpose helps me get through many things and it also helps me to keep going. Being thoughtful in all areas of my life, not just housework, helps a lot too. It helps me understand what makes tasks easy or difficult, it helps me decide what I should do and what doesn't matter that much. All actions have consequences, and more importantly, inaction has consequences too.

There are plenty of lemons growing and new flowers for follow-ups too. I juiced one of these lemons during the week and I got two cups of juice from one lemon.

So with all that in mind I'm putting into action a feeling I'd been harbouring for a while - I started planting vegetables and herbs again! I'm growing a small group of vegetables and herbs that I eat almost every week and I'm doing that in the old sandbox garden. I won't be breaking soil again or dealing with weeds, everything will happen in the sandbox or pots. First to go into a pot was ginger, I have a chilli bush growing in the sandbox that's full of fruit and I'll keep that going when I harvest the chillies. I'll soon buy six rainbow chard seedlings and they'll be planted in the sandbox. I have five pots of parsley going and I just received heirloom seeds for perennial Welsh onions and the Australian heirloom Crystal Apple cucumber. I'll use the ginger throughout the year in tea, cordial and ginger beer, I'll make enough chilli jam for the year, eat some fresh and share the rest with Sunny and Kerry. All my other fruit and vegetables will come from the supermarket or roadside stall.

The old sandbox is full of weeds at the moment. I've removed about half of them but I have to take it slow because bending over makes me dizzy. I think I'll finish the weeding during the week and I'll sow seeds for the Welsh onions and Crystal Apple cucumber in a tray to grow a bit before I plant them out. I'll probably have to bring in some bricks to create a stable place for the pots to sit on. When I get into it properly, I'll take more photos and write about the new garden and pots.

It will do me good to get into the backyard again, especially in the afternoons. My housework will be finished, there'll be shade over the garden and the birds will be there. I’ll be able to see and hear small birds chirping, whip birds cracking their whips, kookaburras laughing and occasionally, cockatoos screeching. If I hear swooshing overhead, I’ll know the man up the road has released his homing pigeons for their afternoon flight. They will be wonderful afternoons.

Here's my girl. Gracie recently found a snake skin on the lattice at the end of the verandah. When I wandered down there to see what she was carrying around, I saw she'd bitten the tail off the skin and was about to eat it! She WILL eat anything but we're still the best of friends.

I wonder if you've found soup bones at your local butcher or supermarket lately. I had no luck when I looked and the last time I bought bones, they were ridiculously expensive. So I'm changing what I've always done in the past and when I eat chops, T Bone steak or other meat with bones, I'll cook the meat and cut the bones out before I serve the meal. Those bones will go into a container in the freezer and I'll use them for soup and bone broth. I've made a few small changes lately. I grind my peppercorns in the little food processor and keep a small jar next to my little salt container instead of buying peppercorns in a grinder.

The square bread is still filling my kitchen with a lovely aroma once a week. I'm very happy with the recipe and haven't made any changes, which is unusual for me. To save on plastic bags, I bought a small plastic container to keep it in after I slice the loaf. It can go in the freezer or fridge depending on the space I have available and what I'm eating that week.

I hope all is going well for you. After talking to Grandma Donna on Skype, I know about the terrible tornadoes in the US. I hope you've not been close to that and that everyone is safe and sound. If you're in the rain areas in NSW and Victoria, I hope that didn't result in floods for you. I send my best wishes to everyone who read this. 🥰

🧵 🪡 🧵

ADDITIONAL READING AND LISTENING

I've been going through old music from the 60s and 70s to catch up on some favourites and see what I missed. I listened to Led Zeppelin for a couple of months, then ELO, Radiohead, The Eagles, REM, Carly Simon and Janis Joplin. Now I'm obsessing over Dire Straits. I think their song Sultans of Swing, released in 1978, is a standout and the guitar playing is the best you'll hear on a pop song. The singer-songwriter is Mark Knophler, he is now 75 years old. I listen to it every morning and every evening and it makes me happy - not just for the music but also for the nostalgia. If you haven't heard it before, be my guest ... you're welcome.

I had a little nap after lunch last week and when I woke, the TV was on and I was on TV! I wasn't sure what was going on straight away but it turned out, I had been watching YouTube and it continued on and auto played a video of Morag Gamble and me. I thought you might like to see it too. Morag has some excellent resources on her blog so it will be worth it to check that out too.

I like food and budget strategy of the woman on Hometown homestead See what she has to say.

Batch cook, set fake deadlines – and delegate: how efficient people get stuff done

And here's one of my old posts that I think should see the light of day again. It's called Enough.

The comedy pet photo awards

‘Never go to battle hungry’: Australian chefs on their mother’s best advice in the kitchen – and beyond

I didn't understand the significance of caring for a home until I gave up working for a living and started building a slower life which involved housework. In the beginning I thought I was focused on a series of tasks that had to be done on a daily, weekly or monthly basis but about two or three weeks later it clicked and it all made sense to me. I wasn't just doing a group of individual chores, housework was helping me create a home.

I could see then that the cooking and baking were connected to the grocery shopping, gardening, chickens, the budget, recycling and family gatherings; cleaning was connected to the laundry, making soap, laundry liquid, green cleaners, home maintenance and the budget; the chickens were connected to the garden, recycling, cooking and the budget, and so forth. The budget was connected to everything. The separate tasks of housework made more sense when I realised it was like a patchwork and the elements worked together to create a simple lifestyle and a better life.

Looking after a family and the family home is one of the hardest jobs around and unfortunately, many of us don't give it the respect it deserves. It's often thought of as being domestic drudgery - hard work that never ends. It's true that housework never ends but if you want to live a simpler life in a home that's a safe haven, doing housework will enable you to do it. If you don't do the work, everything stays the same.

But you can take it in stages.

I keep forgetting to drink enough water so I fill this litre jug every morning and make sure I drink it all before lunch. After lunch it's filled again and I drink that litre during the afternoon. It's working so far.

I don't want you to follow what I do because I have the time to do a lot more than I used to do when I was a working mum and my sons lived at home. I think stay-at-home mums and dads and retired folk could easily do their own version of what I do. If you're trying to simplify, identify the stage of life you're at, work out the time you have available and do what you can with the time you have. One thing's for sure, you'll be able to do something. It could be making your own laundry liquid (it takes 10 minutes), baking a cake each week for school lunches, menu planning, once a week cooking from scratch or any number of things. Pick one thing and start doing it. Once you get that under your belt, add something else . When you transition to a different stage - maybe your kids leave home or you work shorter hours - you can take on more. It's all up to you.

Always focus on being thrifty and do what you can to save money. Reducing your debt will give you more options, life will be less stressful and you can move towards paying for everything when you have the cash, not on credit. There are strategies you can use to help you pay off debt, if you search for "paying off debt" or "budgeting" in my search bar you'll find the ones I, and thousands of others, use. It's not easy but the feeling you get when you pay off your mortgage or credit cards is indescribably wonderful.

Make your home what you want it to be. No one will come in and offer to do that for you, it's one of your power tasks and it can make or break you. All the time and effort you put into your home will make you a different person. It will open you up to the deeper understanding of what home is, it will slow you down to and help you to relax, it will give you a better understanding of debt and it will give you and your family a place where they feel safe. And in these uncertain times, everyone should have that. All the ordinary tasks it takes to make my home the place I want it to be, as well as the thinking, relaxing and silence, I choose to work on every day and they have changed me for the better. At the beginning of this I had no clue that would happen and it was one of the many things that surprised and delighted me in this lifestyle.

We all have different amounts of time we can give to our homes, especially if you're working outside the home. Don't be put off because you don't do what I do. Make your home and the work you do there unique to you. Do what you can in the time you have available and be satisfied with that. Times will change as you and your children get older and then you can do change what you do. Each decade of your life will be different so there is an opportunity to dive in or pull back according to how old you are. But whatever you do, never feel guilty because you read about what others are doing but you don't have the time to do what you want to do... yet.

My home has become a centre point for me, I am made content and self-reliant by the work I do. I reclaimed my independence here and discovered how to live to my potential. The slower pace helps you see what might be ahead - both the good and the bad. It may not be everyone's choice doing household chores but I have been enriched by it and I doubt I would be as happy as I am without meaningful work to do every day. I don't want to live a life where I don't have to do any work, and I don't want to be dragged down by it either. I know now that if I do the work here that makes my home comfortable and safe, in return I get this feeling of sublime contentment. And I am thankful that homemaking slowed me down enough to discover that.

EXTRA READING:

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Thanks for all the birthday wishes. It's a lovely way to mark my special day. I haven't taken any new photos for this post, mainly because I didn't have any spare time and I thought it was a good way of featuring some old photos I'd forgotten about.

I'm having some work done on the front verandah and had workmen here to check what could be done. Just before he got sick, Hanno noticed some problems in the concrete on the verandah and he never got back to it. He was always focused on home maintenance and said that if maintenance wasn't carried out when it was first noticed, the problems only got worse and it took more time, energy and money to fix. So now, after waiting two years to have someone look at this, it looks like major work. They're going to remove the top layers of cement, with some thick patches of paint attached, then level and tile it all. Before that's done, I have to take all the plants and furniture to the back verandah. Shane was here on Tuesday to remove the front tank for me. I'm really happy he'll use it in his own vegetable/flower gardens. I'm not sure yet when the main work will start but I'll start my work over the weekend.

I've decided I'm not going to do the eCookbook. I had to resurrect Word which I was very happy to delete when I finished writing my books and when I looked at it again, I was lost. I spent the first six weeks relearning it. It's bad enough just dealing with the text but when I tried to insert photos, it was difficult keeping my place and working out where to insert page breaks. Over the past two weeks I've been trying different apps and I worked out it would take me another two months to finish the first book. I even tossed up the possibility of stopping the blog to keep writing the eBook. Then I started thinking about my promise to myself about only doing what I wanted to do, and I don't want to do the book. It was a purely financial decision to cover some expenses I had so apart from disappointing you - and I hope you aren't too disappointed, I'm pleased to leave it behind. And that will give me the time to write blog posts to my heart's content. I still get a lot out of my blog, I love helping people and sharing what I know and that is best done here, on this blog where I have no word or photo limits.

Most of the recipes I was going to share are on the blog, I was going to update them, but they are there. There's a search bar on the right side of this page so all you need to do is to search for what you want to find. And I'll make sure I add the foods and meals I'm cooking to my blog posts as I go along.

I made a big pot of beef, barley and root vegetable soup last week. I enjoyed that for a few days and also stored two litres of it in the freezer. In the middle of winter, when it's really cold, I'll defrost it, turn on my heater and enjoy it. I'm making pikelets this morning. I've made the batter and will cook them when I finish here. I have some double cream I have to use up and will make the choice of strawberry or cherry jam while I make a pot of tea.

Aldi seems to have lowered a few prices recently so I've been shopping there. I never shop at Coles but Woolworths, while saying they're dropping prices, it seems to be the same to me. If you're struggling with the cost of living now, I hope you can keep your head above water until things change again. It's difficult because there seems to be no way out but usually it's a matter of small things making a big difference. I've found some old posts that might help with with food costs but if you don't already cook from scratch, that is what will save you the most money, as well as be a huge improvement in the taste and nutrition of the food you serve.

https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2021/10/main-meals-cooked-from-your-rotating.html
https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2018/01/food-shopping-organising-recipes-and.html
https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2015/01/healthier-and-cheaper-cold-cuts.html
https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-german-beef-fest.html
https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2011/04/saving-money-on-meat-buying-in-bulk.html
https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2013/11/frugal-food-savoury-mince.html
https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2010/08/home-cooking-what-decadence.html

And finally, I have no doubt that those of you who follow Gracie closely won't be surprised to know she is still sitting at the bookcase looking for mice. She has also expanded her search areas to a cupboard in my office (she's there now) and another bookcase in the lounge room. 😑

I hope you're doing well in your home during these hard times. It won't last forever, we just have to keep going and take one small step at a time. If you have any tips for the rest of us, please share them in the comments. xx ❤️