Of all the elements that make up many convenience foods, preservatives are the ones that make the hairs on my neck stand up. Give me butter, fat, gelatine made from boiled cow heads, colouring that I know is crushed beetles, live bacteria and fungus. I'll take them all many times over before I knowingly consume food containing preservatives. Of course they tell us that all the additives they put in food are there to protect the food from invading pathogens, to add flavour; it's there for our own good!  And it just happens to be cheaper. These additives increase the profit margin for manufacturers. While cancer rates are increasing around the world, our health is being traded for profit.

I came across this article recently and since then I've read it a few times. I knew food manufacturers were adding all sorts to our food, but when I read this article, I was shocked. And terrified. One of my fears is that it's being using on what is supposedly 'fresh' food too. How did things get so bad? Why have our governments allowed this to happen?

I don't have any answers. My only strategy is to stay away from highly processed food but I do think we should all contact our local politicians and talk loudly and publicly about our concerns. Personally, I'd like to see better food labelling laws in every country. Surely we have the right to know exactly what is in our food and to make informed decisions over whether to buy or not. 

I have no magic wand that will make this better. It makes me resolve to continue to cook from scratch but I doubt even that will completely protect us. I hope you read the article and vote for it to change by using the power of your dollars when you shop. If we don't buy this stuff and start demanding better quality food through our politicians, then the "it just happens to be cheaper" will become less of a player in the way food is processed and sold to us.  Because the problem isn't just the fact that our food can be tampered with in this way but also that the labelling laws help hide that it has been done.

I've not had a lot of time for reading this week but here is my list for you. I'll be back to blogging next week so I'll see you then. Take it easy over the weekend. Spend some time doing something you love and enjoy the seasons as they change.

I enjoyed your post. I'm wondering, though, how much your slower more deliberate life is possible because your children are grown and gone? I have tried to be more deliberate in my life, but I have children and I teach them at home. It's certainly a challenge to take from your posts and apply them to my busy life, but I have learned from you and the others. What's really working for me is to take one change at a time. That was great advice. ~ Anonymous

This is a comment from those made yesterday. I'm sorry I can't name the person who wrote as she is only know to me as anonymous. Anonymous, I wanted to address your comment today because I think "living deliberately" can confuse some of us. My interpretation of deliberate living is that I have intentionally taken my life in the direction of my values. I needed to sit and think, and I needed to work out for myself what was important to me. I knew how I didn't want to live, but what exactly did I want? When I changed, I knew I didn't want to keep spending and rushing around like a loon but I had to replace that with something, and that required me to decide on what my core values were and how I could live by those values.

I deliberately focused on my values - generosity, kindness, independence, self reliance, self respect and respect for others - and I made my everyday life reflect those values. That, to me, is living deliberately. You make a deliberate decision to live a certain way and every day make sure your life stays true to that. It sounds like a huge commitment, and it is, but it is done in small steps, every day, without fail, deliberately following that path.

I read Walden by Henry David Thoreau about 15 years ago, well before I made my changes towards simplicity. I have no doubt that book, and in particular this quote below, influenced me more than anything else; although I didn't know it at the time and only made that discovery in retrospect.

It still takes my breath away to read those words. I am trying to live deep and to suck all the marrow out of life; I want to know if life is mean or sublime, and I want to know it by experience. I do not want to read about it in a magazine or a blog, I want to truly experience my life every day, and every day it is deliberately focused on the values I want to live by.

This was originally published on 3 August 2009

While I don't want to make DTE a question and answer blog, I do want to address a question Donetta posed last week. In part, she wrote:

I see your Dear Hanno laboring in the garden often in your images. What percentage of the physical labor are you able to tend to in the garden? You see many of us women have this heart and the efforts tend to come from our hand. I think it would encourage us to see that it is your combined physical efforts that achieve those awesome wonders grown on your hand. It is a very different story if the woman tends to much if not all of the hard labor of tending the earth. Truly Rhonda do you do the hard labor too?

Donetta and friends, our work here is truly a partnership. Sometimes one of us may do hard work while the other doesn't, but overall, it evens out. We have tended to divide our work according to what we like doing and what we're good at. We both work in our community, me as the manager of our local Neighbourhood Centre, which I do twice a week + extra bits and pieces at home, Hanno drives the bus from the Centre to take elders on shopping trips and to pick up food from the Foodbank. He does that about once a month. We consider that work is part of our normal weekly work.

But on a daily basis, Hanno likes working outside and does most of the gardening. However, I set up the gardens with one of our sons when we first came to live here 12 years ago, and carried on gardening over the years until Hanno took over when he retired about three years ago. Now, he does the day to day tending of the gardens, while I sow seeds, tend seedlings and look after the worm farm. I harvest and still plant a few things, but Hanno likes everything tidy and in straight lines and I'm not a straight line gardener, so I usually leave it to him.

These are the seedlings Hanno planted before the wedding earlier in the year. Shane and Sarndra married in our garden in June 2009. It was a beautiful family garden wedding, made better by the gardening Hanno did beforehand.

I do most of the inside work - the baking, cooking, cleaning etc but now that I'm writing my book and a monthly column for a magazine, writing is a large part of my daily work now, so Hanno helps with the laundry and some cleaning. Now that we're here by ourselves now, that is minimal. When we clean something it tends to stay clean - unlike when our boys lived at home; we do laundry about once a week.

We each work on our little projects - Hanno's are usually outside and mine inside. Hanno worked on making a new lid for the worm farm today while I recovered from a bout of the flu, the first I've had in years. When I work inside I'll do a project like the oil lamps, make soap, sew, knit or mend; at the moment I'm knitting a jumper for Hanno. When Hanno is outside his projects are things like mowing the lawn, making compost, tending the chooks, house and car maintenance.

I have to tell you, none of it seems like hard labour, although in the past I would have seen it as such. Now there is a gentle flow to most days. We rise when we feel like it, we work at whatever task or project we choose for that day along with the normal daily chores. At 10 am each day, tea is taken on the front veranda and we take the time to relax and talk about what we're doing and what we have planned. If we don't want to work, we don't. But we both know that if we want to live this way for a long time, there is work to be done, so we get to and do it. Not every day is a diamond but generally the work we do is enjoyable, gratifying and enriching - not only in what it gives our home but also in what it gives us.

How do you divide up the work to be done at your home?

This post was first published on 16 December 2009

We are back to a practical subject again today because I've been thinking about the word "germaphobe" and it scares me a little. I've come across this word a few times recently and I want to comment on it. We all know it makes good sense to keep a clean house, to raise children to wash their hands before they eat and, in general, to maintain good levels of cleanliness in the home. But you can be too clean.

Hang your dirty cloths and rags over the side of the laundry bin to dry while they're waiting to be washed.

Since television advertising started blabbing about the benefits of whiter than white and how we can rid our homes of germs, we've been brainwashed to believe that every germ is harmful, every germ must be killed and if we don't do that, we're not as good as our next door neighbours. What hogwash!

There are many medical studies around now that assure us that exposing children to pets and normal household dirt is good for them. It builds up the immune system and allows the body to naturally develop antibodies that fight those germs. Back a few years, when I was growing up, and even when my boys were young in the 1980s it was common for children to play out side. Out there, among the dirt, bugs and grass stains, not only were they having fun swinging on ropes and riding bikes, they were building bone strength, muscle tissue and healthy immune systems. Nowadays there is a tendency for children to play inside on computers and playstations, and inside is becoming increasingly clean. We have gone from the common family home with a dirt floor in the 1800s to stainless steel and the war against germs now.

We are surrounded by millions of bacteria and viruses but only a small number actually cause us any harm, the rest we live with, have evolved with, and being exposed to them has probably helped build tolerance to many of them. When we do our daily chores it's not necessary to rid the home of germs - it's impossible, and it's not a healthy option. Now, I'm not advocating that we leave our sink dirty and not sweep the floor. Of course we continue to do those things. We also need to wipe handles, cupboard doors, remote controls, light switches etc, but we shouldn't be using antibacterial wipes. Soap and water, vinegar or bicarb will do the trick. Using bleach, peroxide or disinfectant every day is overkill.

Wash you dishcloths once or twice a week, depending on how dirty they are. In between times, thoroughly rinse the cloth, wring it out and hang it over the tap or sink to dry. Few bacteria can survive dry conditions, they need moisture to propagate and thrive. Hang your dirty dishcloths and cleaning rags over the side of the laundry bin/basket so if they're wet they can dry out and not sit in the pile of dirty laundry, wet, waiting for a few days to be washed.

Take the pressure off yourself to kill germs, your aim should be to have a clean home. You'll never eliminate germs completely. So relax, put the bleach bottle away, stop buying the antibacterial wipes and allow the short sharp exposure to pathogens in the normal home to build your immune system. If you do that, your immune system will not only protect you from colds and flu but also from more sinister ailments.

This was first published, without the photo, on 5 March 2010

If I could, I would send all of you the magic words that would change your life to what you wish it to be. I don't have those magic powers, all I can do is write what I know and hope that the way you understand those words helps you towards a better life. The best I can do today is to say: slow down. I received an email from a reader saying that she wanted the kind of life I'm living but doesn't know how to go about it. I wrote back to ask if she'd read the 2007 parts of the blog where I write about budgeting, paying down debt, housework, gardening, slowing down and being at home. That explains how I came to this life and the closest thing I've written to the kind of guide she was looking for. She wrote back asking if I could condense it for her.

No, I can't.

Hello everyone.  We'll be opening the forum at a new address tomorrow.  Today we're going to close the old forum and open up again tomorrow at the new place. If you're a forum member you'll receive an email with the details.  I hope to see you there soon. We're got a lot of great plans for the new venue.

This post was originally published 28 Dec 2010.

A feeling of renewal always comes calling at this time of year. The new year is looming, an old year almost gone and life is telling me to look around, take it all in, reassess, look toward the coming months and make sure that what we're doing will continue to make us happy and satisfied. I have been doing that reassessment over these past few days away from the blog. I've spent time with my family, talked on the phone with friends, thought about life during the small hours of the morning, and relaxed while looking out the window at the rain. It's been raining for a week, it's still falling now. I picked our garlic crop in the rain at 5.30 this morning. What a crazy and wonderful way to really experience this season and all its wild weather.

In a sense I'm living my dream life right now but if I were to believe many of those women's magazines, I should be yearning for my long gone youth, dying my hair, thinking about botox and clearing out last year's fashions to make way for newer versions. There is much more depth to my life. I am surrounded by a loving family, I have a major creative project to concentrate on, and the freedom to do whatever I feel like doing when each new day dawns. And even though I have that freedom, I choose to remain here, working in my home. From the outside it's just Hanno and Rhonda, two golden oldies, living a very ordinary life in semi-rural Australia; but our lives deceive, we live large. We have the freedom to choose how we spend our time - there is no boss expecting us to turn up for work, no watches telling us we have to be somewhere soon and no other controlling factors we need to be aware of. We have no debt and live frugally so we know that if we remain productive and live within our means, we'll continue along this path and feel the satisfaction and contentment it brings for a long time.

My main occupation at the moment, and for the coming months, is writing a book. After breakfast I come into this little room, close the door behind me, turn on the computer and start reading, editing and writing. Every so often, I check out the forum or emails, or I go out and wash up, make bread, prepare a meal, make the bed, knit or mend and those small actions, while giving me a break, make me feel I'm still contributing to my home. In reality though, Hanno is doing more that he used to and although he's not been gardening due to the season and the rain, he has been doing the washing and the floors, which frees me up to work on the book. Marriages that work well are fine things. 

And what of happiness? Yes, it's here daily, bubbling away in the background, like a tea kettle on a wood stove, always ready and always enough to be shared. I don't know what it is I did to deserve this charmed life but I'm sure many of you feel the same way about your own lives. You are touchstones, in a sense, a way for me to know that even though we live outside the mainstream of our culture, there are others who walk along with us. And now as I look towards tomorrow and next year, I know that I will continue to work towards my goals with enthusiasm, optimism and gratitude and if I can take you all along with me for the ride, it will be even better. 

The house from the back. You can see the solar panels, the solar water heater (right) a couple of skylights and the whirly birds. Of course, Hanno's ladder is there; he's often on the roof pottering around, checking or fixing things.

Fifteen years ago, when Hanno and I first bought this little house, we drove along a one lane street, turned onto a dirt driveway and saw a very basic house on a magnificent piece of land surrounded by pine and rainforest. We didn't know it at the time, but this home, of all those we have shared over the years, would nurture us, bring us closer together and ease us along the path to a more simple life. We made some improvements as soon as we moved in to better suit our family, put up fences to keep the dogs in, and in the time since then, we've been happy here and content to wake up each day within these walls.

I am still in awe of the land we live upon. I never say we own it because as far as I'm concerned, we are merely the custodians here until we pass it on to our sons; and in truth, the land probably owns us. We wake up surrounded by trees, sometimes we hear the rushing of the creek that is our back boundary, and when I walk into our back yard, even after living here 11 years, I often just stop and look, amazed at what I see. All my life's roads have lead to this place.

Our gate has been closed these past few days and if I didn't know better, I would say we had been cast adrift, completely cut off from the rest of the world. There is peace here, we hear birds call, sometimes a train in the distance, but apart from that, it's a wind rushing through the trees type of silence that feels alive with activity and energy.

There has been the undeniable whiff of self-reliance in the air over Easter. I've baked bread and nut slices, made a simple evening meal each night, set the table numerous times, washed dishes and clothes, swept, lit candles, watered plants on the verandah, watched rain fall and thought about my life here, on this land with my family, and you, my blog family. I also worked on my project, did some writing, knitting and a stocktake of the soap, yarn and fabric I have on hand. There are a hundred things I could do, and one by one I get to those that need my attention, all else can wait until its time. It's been a beautiful Easter when we both worked to produce what we need here and mended a couple of things to keep them going a while longer. After such days, it's easy to go to bed pleased with the work we've completed and tired enough to sleep deeply until the next morning.

The simple life, full of the home tasks of cooking, mending, cleaning and growing has been the way of life for the majority for many hundreds of years. But now, in the context of our modern times, when shops are full of fashions, leaf blowers, designer dog collars and pre-cooked food, it feels like it's in sharp contrast to how most people live. Working with one's own hands and producing the goods we need to live is truly empowering but the wonder of it is that is so easy to do. These are just life skills that are easily passed on to all of us by example, by watching others.

I look at TV sometimes and I wonder if what they show is real. Are the streets really that mean in cities? Do people really kill each other over drugs and money, and for no reason at all? Is road rage real? What life skills are being passed on by watching all that? I suppose I know the answers to all those questions and for now, on this Easter weekend, I've been content and well and truly happy to stay cocooned here, listening to the rain, stitching and knitting, and wondering if living simply can make a significant and real difference outside my gate. I wonder if Hanno thinks these same thoughts. I wonder if you do.

Thank you for coming here to share our days, it still amazes me that you do. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and lives with us here too. Welcome to the new readers, warm hugs to all the older ones. Let's all work towards getting the simple message out to all those who surround us in the normal course of our lives, and show, by example, that this way of living not only empowers and enriches us, it builds contentment and greater expectations.

Tricia's husband died suddenly a few years ago and she spent the next couple of years deciding whether she would sell the family home and move to a smaller place. She now lives in a beautiful six bedroom mansion house on the outskirts of Sydney. There is a library, chandeliers, four hectares of bushland and a heated pool set in a beautiful secluded garden with fountains. This last couple of months she's started packing up, decluttering and selling or giving away a lot of her unwanted possessions.

She drove up from Sydney in a car packed to the roof with things she wanted to give to me or to the people at our Neighbourhood Centre. The first day she was here, we took a lot of those things with us and gave them away to people whose needs include the blankets, pillows, coats etc she gave.

She also brought some things she thought I would like. One of those things was mum's button box.

We were both born in the 1940s and grew up as part of Sydney's working class in the 1950s. I guess we both did well for ourselves and although I became middle class, I have always thought of myself as working class. I feel comfortable with those values and the collective flaws and strengths that helped shape us.

Our parents left little in the way of material possessions when they died but what I have of my mother's I really cherish. She gave me the amethyst ring and pendant she was given for her 21st birthday, I have a small fruit knife that was her mother's - it has a bone handle with the name 'jean cullen' carved in it, a little green glass that she liked and some very fine Orrefors glasses that I drink from when I'm sick. I also still have a stainless steel wok she gave me in the 1960s.

And now, the buttons.

I went through them yesterday and tried to remember where they were from. I wanted to see, with my mind's eye, the dresses and coats they would have been on. I didn't get far with that because going through the buttons brought back different memories to me. I remembered how mum, and every other woman we knew, saved buttons, string, ribbons, old zippers and fabrics 'just in case' they were needed. And that frugal philosophy was why I had that box of old buttons in front of me.

The buttons were packed in the small, brown, plastic containers that pills used to be dispensed in before the days of pre-packaged bubble packs and child-safe bottles; there were also two little glass vegemite jars. All these were held in a 1970s 'Fresh Pak' plastic box. It must have been one of the first plastic containers sold then. It is brown, with an opaque lid with the words 'Fresh Pak' on it.

I spilled each container out so I could have a good look and along with all the buttons came a flood of childhood memories. It really was a different world then. Now that I look back on it, we, and almost everyone we knew, were what we would now think of as 'poor'. But we didn't feel like that. We had everything we needed, we never went hungry, we took our place within a strong and happy community and we knew everyone, not just in our street, but also in the streets surrounding us.

I was too young and silly to know what people really focused on in their lives then but in our home we rarely talked about money or possessions. My mother taught me valuable things like caring for others, self respect and respectfulness, she told me it was good to be kind, brave and thoughtful, she demonstrated every day the value of hard work and she showed me, by example, the importance of positive role models. So although there may not have been much in the way of physical possessions given from her hand to mine, she left me with the soul of a frugal, hard-working woman and for that I will be eternally grateful.

These are the buttons I will keep. The rest of them will go back to Sydney with Tricia and probably spend the rest of their days, not as they were intended - as a functional part of clothing or furnishings - but as a silent reminder of the days when thrift was a part of almost every life and we all saved things 'just in case'.

Thank you all for the good wishes and love sent during the week when I announced I'm writing another book. It's a wonderful opportunity at any age to write but to do it when I'm nearing 70 is a beautiful gift. The process of writing enables me to think about what we value and how we live those values, and in the end, I feel regenerated and that every morning is a brand new beginning. What a life! I'm delighted to write about it and so thankful to live it as we do away from the mainstream.

I hope you have a lovely weekend watching the seasons start to change. Stay safe, I'll see you again next week.

Old-fashioned recipes

Last week I wrote about soaking your rolled oats before you eat them and the benefits that  come from that. Today I thought I'd continue on and talk about soaking other rye and wheat grains before they're eaten; today's post is about bread. The reasoning behind all this is that grains soaked before cooking are easier to digest than those that aren't, and if they're soaked in an acidic liquid such as whey, buttermilk, yoghurt, or water with lemon juice, the grain will release most of its goodness instead of a small portion of it. It's all got to do with humans having only one stomach so unsoaked grains pass through too fast to be broken down. That causes digestive problems for some people and the grains don't have enough time to release all their goodness, which affects all of us.  Other grain-eating mammals such as cows, goats etc. have more than one stomach, or several compartments in their stomach, that allow them to process their food a lot longer than we do.

This bread is good on the first day and lasts to a second day but the crust and the bread itself aren't like a soft sandwich loaf. It's drier and the crust is crunchy.

 It makes delicious toast and that's how we have it on the second day.

If you don't like that texture, try the rye mixed loaf below which is more like the texture of a sandwich loaf.  Both are excellent as toast.

This is the half white-half rye loaf. It's the one I like the most because I think it has a better texture than the white loaf. 

If you read about how to make bread in Nourishing Traditions it's a long process that I don't have the time nor the inclination for. I'm sure it produces very good bread but I'm a regular bread maker and need my bread to fit in with everything else I do in a day. I'm happy with the so called five minute bread, that I make up and allow to sit in the fridge for a few days.  It's well and truly soaked by the time I bake my bread.

I found very similar recipe in my Maura Laverty classic Irish cook book, Full and Plenty, that I'm going to try this week. Her recipe for "yeast bread (overnight method)" was published in 1960. I'll share that recipe with you next week when I post about the bread I make.

The way I do the five minute bread is to make up the recipe in Artisan bread in five minutes a day, but with a tweak. You'll need a storage container capable of holding the mixture that will sit in the fridge for at least overnight, and for a few days after that. That takes care of the soaking. You can double the recipe quite easily if you have the room to store the dough and then you'll only make up one batch of dough for several loaves of bread.

The book says it makes four one pound loaves (that's just under two kilos).

I do this step in the morning, the day before I want the bread. 

Before mixing them together, mix the top group together, then the second group together. Then add half the liquid to half the flour and mix together thoroughly. If you have a big mixer with a dough hook you can use that because it takes an effort to mix this. I do it in two batches and use a spatula. When the first batch is finished, tip it into your storage container and start the second batch.  When both batches are in the container, mix them together with your hands, put a tea towel over the container and leave it on the bench to start rising. 

After about two hours, take the tea towel off, put the lid on but don't press it down to make it air tight. The dough will let off gas and it needs to have some means of escape. I use a Decor long plastic bin and have the top attached at one end and sitting on the top other end.  Put the dough in the fridge and store it there until you're ready to use it, but you can use it at any point after this first rise.

When you want to bake a loaf, about two hours beforehand, take a piece of dough suitable for the size of your loaf from the container. Place it on a lightly floured board and fold the dough into itself so you have a smooth top and uneven bottom. You don't want to knead the dough, just bring it togehter as a nice smooth loaf. Let the dough sit to rise and return to room temperature. It won't rise a lot, it will do that more in the oven when it's baking.

Make sure the dough has flour over the top because that will protect it while it rests and rises.

About 20 minutes before you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450F/250C and place a cast iron pot with lid in the oven to heat up. After the dough has risen (about 45 minutes) carefully place the dough into the cast iron pot and with a very sharp knife, slash to top of the dough. Place the lid on the top of the pot.  You could use a pizza stone to bake on, that is how they bake it in the artisan bread book.

Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake until the top is golden brown.

Remove from the pot and place on a cake rack to cool.

The method below is the same recipe, using a cast iron pot, but with the addition of the dough being baked in a loaf pan inside the cast iron pot.

You can leave the dough in the fridge for up to a week if you want to.  I think it makes better bread the longer it's in the fridge. I usually make a fresh loaf every second day and I get three fairly large loaves from one batch. If I had a large family or we ate more bread, I'd make up a double portion of the dough at a time.  I have to say Maura's recipe looks easier so I'm looking forward to trying it. I have a sneaking suspicion I'll like it. ;- )

If you have trouble making bread it's probably because you don't knead the dough long enough or you under or over proof it. This method takes all that away and replaces it with time in the fridge. If you've never made a good loaf, try this and see how you go with it. Or, maybe you just want to wait for Maura's recipe. And I don't blame you at all for that.

Baking without preheating the cast iron pot

I'm delighted to tell you that last Friday I signed my third contract with Penguin for another book: The Simple Home. It will be a hard cover, similar in size to Down to Earth. I had told my publisher that I wouldn't write another big book because I felt I'd said what I wanted to say. However, a few years down the track, I found that wasn't the case and a new plan started bubbling away in my brain. When I told Penguin what I wanted to do, they were very happy. The new book will be about the work we do in our homes that help us to live a simple life. It will be published next March. Yesterday was the three year anniversary for Down to Earth.

I've sold the world rights this time, not only those for Australia and New Zealand.  That doesn't mean it will automatically be in book shops around the world but Penguin will take both books to the London Book Fair in April so I'm hopeful that it will be published on a wider scale than Down to Earth originally was. Maybe the two of them will make more sense to an international publisher that one book by an unknown. Fingers crossed.

It means a lot of hard work in these coming months. I've already completed a few chapters but the deadline is June so I can't slow down. I don't want to just write a book, I want it to be a good book, the best book I can manage, and one that readers will use in their daily lives. There will be a photo shoot too. So if I don't write here as often as I used to, or if I'm missing at the forum, you'll know I'm here, tapping away on the keyboard writing something I hope you'll read early next year.

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

A cyclone is bearing down on the coast here as I write this. Cyclone Marcia will be a category 5 when it crosses the coast north of here. We're expecting wild weather and a lot of rain in the next couple of days.  I hope everyone in the cyclone's path stays safe.

ADDED @ 11.30AM FRIDAY: Hello everyone. I've had quite a few emails asking if we're okay.  Yes, we're both fine here. We have all we need and although we've already had 150mm/6 inches of rain, there has been no wind yet. I spoke with Shane this morning and they were fine then, they'd only had 40mm of rain but it was windy. Sarndra is 8 months pregnant so I hope they can remain in their home.  Kerry, Sunny, Jens and Cathy are all near us so they'd all have had a lot of rain but no wind. So don't worry, we're good!  :- )

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, 

how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, 

how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. 

Tell me, what else should I have done? 

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? 

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Blooming beautiful
What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living
How Australian food imports are checked (or not)
Season's eatings: sweet passion fruit tarts recipe
Children’s fashion: small people, big business
What record breaking snow looks like
Why do older women always have short hair?
How much sleep do you need?
Vintage doll cradle: step-by-step instructions
Fruit and vegetable stand: step-by-step instructions I love this
A new map of the world's ecosystems

Have a lovely weekend, my friends. Thank you for your comments during the week.

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. :- )

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?