She writes:  "I am 25 and live in Portland, Oregon, USA. I am still at a very mobile stage in my life and have lived a lot of different places in Portland, but this apartment is by far my favorite! I will be so sad when I have to leave it. Here is my kitchen sink right after I've washed a big batch of dishes! I love doing dishes by hand, and this is a great sink for it. The window over the sink faces south, so it's always full of light and allows me to look over my backyard and the garden that I share with my upstairs neighbor. My apartment is part of a big Victorian house and I am on the ground floor, so I also have a backdoor (to the left of the sink) that goes straight into the backyard. I love doing dishes and looking out over my garden and the one in the adjoining yard. Right now it is early spring in Portland and you can see I have just cut some of the first flowers for vase on the windowsill. I have lots of hyacinths, tulips, lilies, and daffodils blooming along the back fence right now.

You can see my little compost bucket just to the left of the sink, I have a big bin in my backyard, into which go kitchen scraps from my apartment and my neighbors', my boyfriend's apartment a few blocks away, and from the kitchen at my office. You can also see the plastic bag full of more bags to be washed- I always reuse produce bags and take my own with me to the store. The white holiday lights stay up year round, as standing at the sink after dark blocks the light from the ceiling lamp- the holiday lights give a lot of extra light to help me see what I'm doing, and I think they're very attractive too! The white cleaning rag over the middle of the sink is cut from an old towel- old pieces of towel are used only for cleaning countertops, the stove, etc. to keep them separate from the ones used for the dishes. This kitchen is such a pleasure to work in, it's small but pretty with lots of storage place, and the big two-basin sink which I really appreciate!

I keep a blog on my own efforts towards simplicity, sustainability, and healthy living. The link is http://batchworthlane.blogspot.com. I also wrote a cover story last year for Mother Earth News magazine about my upbringing on a self-sustaining homestead. The link to that article is http://www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-Homesteading/Growing-Up-On-A-Homestead.aspx. You have to click separately on the image gallery link for the photos."

Living this simple life is quite different to how I imagined it would be.  When we first changed our spending habits, stopped buying stuff and began to conserve rather than consume, I believed we would live a quiet and thrifty life punctuated by the sound of us saying no to whatever cropped up.  Surpise! That hasn't happened.  What has happened is that we have more friends now than we have ever had, we do more, are more involved with our community and our lives have opened up and blossomed.  We smile a lot more.  We are happy.  I think that happiness comes from letting go of expectations of what we might possess and being open instead to what we can give.  

On a day to day basis, we are working more now than we ever have, but the work is satisfying and enriching.  Our daily work is directly related to what we need rather than what we want.  When I worked for money I had to deal with people I'd rather not talk to, I had to work according to the clock and someone else's idea of a fair day's work, and the work was irrelevant to me, apart from helping me earn a living.  We are working for our lives now rather than working for a living. What we do now consumes about the same amount of time, but we never have to put up with people we dislike, we have frequent breaks and complete days off when we want them.  We reap a full measure from what we put into our days.

I was wrong to believe that voluntarily living on less money might result in a miserable or quiet or meagre life.  Not buying books and magazine has lead me to our local library - a definite bonus resulting in more books, magazines and DVDs than I could ever go through.  Doing voluntary work has fed my soul and led me to a fine group of like minded people with whom I now share my life. Giving up recreational shopping has not only given me more time, it has given me my life back; a life that I have fashioned to suit myself rather than the advertising industry and merchandise.  Instead of dreading going to work, we cultivate soil, clean floors, built fences, cook, bake and sew, and feel thankful for the opportunity to do it..  This feels right.

You have to have the right mindset to live as we do but getting into it was really easy for me. I think I was ready for it, or overdue.  One week I was out spending and feeling miserable, the following week I was working on building a life that didn't include shopping at all but gave me the freedom to pick the elements that would work for us, and leave the rest.  I felt like I'd discovered the key to a new and wonderful world. And I had.   There are many things that have changed as we've moved through the years of simple living but one thing I still feel is that feeling of control of my own life and a crazy exhilaration knowing that the world is mine.

Last Wednesday was Sorry Day in Australia.  Sorry Day has been held on May 26 each year since 1998 to commemorate  and remember the history of mistreatment of Aboriginal and Islander people and of the forced removal of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families over a period of 150 years.  These children are now known as the Stolen Generations.  In 2008 the Prime Minister of Australia apologised for the mistreatment of all those people.  I will never forget that day.

One of the volunteers at our Neighbourhood Centre is a remarkable woman called Beverly Hand.  Beverly is an elder of the Kabi Kabi people who live in this area.  Unfortunately there are very few Kabi Kabi people around now.  Beverly and I threw open the doors of the Centre for Sorry Day and about 50 people attended our Sorry Day event.  After morning tea there was a DVD about the Stolen Generations, then lunch and music was enjoyed by everyone there.  After lunch we gathered in our large room  for an explanation of aboriginal history from the 1700s to the present day.  Then Beverly presented a framed copy of  the Apology to me to be hung in the foyer of the Centre.  Beverly asked me to read it out to those gathered.  It was a very moving day marked equally by sadness about the past, acceptance of the present and optimism for the future.

This is what I read:

One of the great benefits of eating food you have cooked from scratch is that you know what you are eating.  The ideal is that you buy all the raw ingredients, then you add what you want to add.  But what happens when you buy things like sausages?  They're raw, but what's in them?  Who would know.  In Australia, sausage, by law, must contain 50 percent meat - but that meat may come from any part of the animal.  And what about the other 50 percent, what's that?  Well, you could ask your butcher and be guided by what he says, but you could also make your own sausages at home.  It's simple.

Homemade sausages are a great way to play that trick that mums all over the world play with their younger children - hide the vegetable.  If you finely grate carrot, pumpkin, celery, onion or cabbage, often it goes unseen into little bellies.

When you make sausages you need to use meat that has a small amount of fat on it.  The fat helps with the flavour and to bind the meat together.  When you cook the sausages, a lot of this fat melts and drains away so you're not actually eating it.  Making sausages is a great idea if you buy your meat in bulk, or hunt, because you can use all those pieces that might go into a casserole or you have no other use for.  I don't use casings for my sausages - often sausages are encased in intestines - and if you want to use them, you can buy them from your butcher and fill them.  I find they're just as easy to cook with no casing of you mix them well and them put them in the fridge to firm before cooking.

Regarding the mincing/griding of the meat. One of the meats will have to be very finely minced/ground so that it binds the sausage together.  I like to have little pieces of pork in the sausages so I don't mince the pork as finely as the beef.

These amounts are approximate as it's not essential to be exact.  The meat below made 8 fat sausages but could make 10 - 12 long thin ones.

½ kg/1 lb beef with some fat - very finely minced/ground

½ kg/1 lb pork with some fat - not so finely minced/ground

½ cup dry breadcrumbs - I used crumbs from the shop but you could just as easily use stale bread that you dry out in the oven, then pulverise in a blender.

a couple of leaves of sage - or any other herb you like

salt and pepper to taste

You could add any spice, garlic or finely grated vegetable that you like - I just used the ingredients listed above.

Combine all the ingredients and work it well using clean hands.  Working the meat around in your hands to thoroughly combine the ingredients, helps the proteins stick together, and will keep the sausage together as it's cooking.  Form sausage shapes and place them in the fridge until you cook them.  I'm not careful about shaping, I'm sure you'd do a better job than I did.

If you're cooking for children, you might like to dip the sausages in plain/all purpose flour, then beaten egg and finally breadcrumbs. That way you'll get a golden crumbed sausage in which you could hide many nutritious vegetables.

Cook the sausages in a little olive oil on all sides,until they're brown, then lower the heat and allow them to cook for about 15 minutes more.  I served ours with some gravy, herbed mashed potato and green beans from the garden.  Delicious! and no MSG, unknown meat bits, colourings, preservatives or intestines.

I'm really pleased to open the new series of work space photos with Margy's place in Canada.  This, my friends, is spectacular!  Margy writes:

"Hello from Powell River, British Columbia, Canada. I live in a float cabin about twenty minutes by boat up Powell Lake. We bought it in 2001 as a summer cottage, but now that my husband and I are retired, we spend about 75% of the year living here. We love the remote lifestyle. We have propane for the stove, refrigerator and lights. We also have solar and wind power for some electric lights and to charge devices such as our satellite radio, computers and cell phones. We have chosen not to have television or the Internet. We check in with those things when we go to town for supplies, mail and other city chores. In the first picture you can see my cabin. It is anchored in place with steel cables and a log called a stiff leg. In the foreground is my floating garden. I grow tomatoes, squash, potatoes, peppers, lettuce, beets, onions, asparagus, strawberries and herbs. We don't have much space, but pack a lot in. In the background is our floating woodshed. Our woodstove keeps us toasty warm all winter. Stairs lead to shore and our outhouse.

Here's my kitchen. I get water directly from the lake below with a hand pump. As you can imagine, we are extremely careful with greywater. What goes down could come back up. We boil the water before using just to be safe. The cabin is 20X21 feet with a sleeping loft. The kitchen is at one side of the downstairs great room. One thing I like about my kitchen is that it's so handy. I have everything I need, but nothing extra. Thanks to blogs like Rhonda's, I've learned a lot about becoming self reliant. You see, I'm a transplanted city girl from Los Angeles, California. Last year I tried canning and making jam for the first time. I've also learned to make bread using my own sourdough starter. It's been great fun and I know i'm going to enjoy it for many more years to come. Thanks for visiting my little kitchen up the lake.

You can read more about my kitchen, cabin and off-the-grid living at my blog http://PowellRiverBooks.blogspot.com."

I think we're are gaining ground.  There has been a shift away from the purchased conveniences of modern living, women and men are beginning to see the light and more and more homemakers are returning to older and non-commercial ways of doing the house work and cooking.  It does my heart good to see how many younger women and men are expressing an interest in home cooking, knitting, mending, repairing and reusing, as well as making green cleaners and soaps. There is a move towards traditional home arts.  Here in Australia, fabric, yarn and craft stores are reporting record sales, and cooking has become popular again!

These traditional ways of housekeeping and home maintenance, passed down over the years by our grandparents, were replaced by convenience foods, cheap clothing and appliances, and when they started to disappear, most of us were too busy to notice.  The global economic crisis came along to show us that when we are given convenience on a plate it is at the expense of other significant things.  Many were surprised when they realised they could do a whole lot more in the home than they thought they could, for less money, while producing better quality, and they actually enjoyed doing it.

I believe it's a question of dependence versus independence.  Convenience encourages dependence.  If we buy food already cooked or half cooked, we forget our traditional foods and how to cook them.  If we always buy our clothes, we forget how to make them.  If we buy our knitwear, we never learn to knit.  There was a time when we never thought about having our nails "done", when we cut our own hair, fixed cars and lawn mowers, or we relied on friends and neighbours to help us do it, then we returned the favour by helping them do something we had the skill to do.  Now convenience and the cheapness of food, clothes and appliances makes us dependent on shops instead of each other.  We work to earn the money to pay for these things instead of learning how to do make them or repair them ourselves.

In my ideal world, mothers and fathers would teach their children how to live an authentic life in the modern world.  They'd make sure their children had the life skills they need to look after themselves, they would teach through example and they would be the people they want their children to become.  But we don't live in an ideal world, all we have is this one and while it is far from ideal, there are some thing we can all do to make our own family healthy, practical and competent.  From a young age, teach your children how to cook simple food, mend little things like toys, knit, recycle, plant seeds, harvest water, and how to care for what is theirs.  Giving them the responsibility of caring for a pet will teach them about nutrition, time management, gentleness and unconditional love.  Many parents think that teaching a child how to read before they go to school is a major achievement, but they need much more than that.  They need those practical life skills, those things they will enjoy learning while they're still young.  They will grow up confident and self reliant if you teach them these things, show them they are important part of the family and rely on them to help with the family work.  Giving to children only teaches them how to take.

I don't expect everyone to take up their knitting needles, start dressmaking or learn how to make a traditional meal from scratch, but I do see a move towards some of those things.  And the good thing is that many people realise that making and doing for oneself is a positive and life affirming thing; they enjoy it.  It has been a long time coming but the move is on and who know where it will lead us.  Now, more and more people are realising that we can change the way we live and because of that almost anything is possible.  I think real change is just around the corner.

I'm at a loss to understand why foods go in and out of fashion.  It seems that people get sick of one thing, then go on to the next.  I'm the opposite, if I like something, I like it forever.  Is the TV program Masterchef only in Australia or is it in other countries as well?  Here in Australia, it's revolutionised the way people cook and has made cooking popular again.  I think that is a great thing but I don't like the emphasis on fine dining, it is not home cooking.  When we cook at home, unless it's for a celebration or special dinner party, I believe home cooking should look like home cooking.  Why make food into towers that are difficult to cut, drizzle sauces and oil, and strew flowers over a plate when what we home cooks are trying to do is present good nourishing food with a mimimum of fuss, several times a day, week after week. Restaurant food focuses on one plate, home food is best served, I believe, from the table with everyone serving themselves, taking exactly what they want.  Both have their place but if you're new to cooking don't confuse restaurant presentation with the more casual approach of the home cook.

Both my sons are fine dining chefs, so I do have an interest in both camps, however, I am an old fashioned cook.  I often read their ever growing collection of cook books written for chefs, and while I love both their cooking styles (one is French-based and the other mostly Asian), I remain firmly in the old fashioned camp. My favourite cook books are Nourishing Traditions and my old Barrosa Valley CWA (Country Women's Association) cookbook, circa 1950s.  But most of my recipes are in my head and while I do try new things occasionally, I generally stick to what I know.  The thing I really love about old fashioned cooking is that it often uses food that might be wasted, or foods that sit on the pantry shelf in a jar until it's needed.  This first recipe is a recycled food one and is one of Hanno's favourites.  

BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING

Stale bread, stale fruit bread, stale cinnamon rolls or stale fruit scones - about 3 or 4, cut in thick slices and buttered.  Lay these in a buttered baking dish.

Make a custard - 4 eggs, beaten, plus 3 tablespoons of sugar, a slurp of good vanilla, and about 600 mls/or a little over one pint of milk.  Whisk together making sure the eggs have broken up and mix into the milk well.

Pour the custard over the bread slices and allow to sit for 30 minutes for the milk to soak into the bread.  Then put it in a slow oven (around 170C/340F) for about 20 minutes.  You want it to be golden brown on top with a hint of milky wobbles in the custard.  You don't want the custard to be completely set when you remove it from the oven.

Serve warm with a drizzle of cream.

MUSHROOM BAKE

Cook about 300 grams/ of dry pasta shapes - something like penne, bows or shells.  Drain and leave in the drainer.

In a frying pan, saute one chopped onion, 250 grams/½ pound fresh mushrooms (or more) and one or two garlic cloves.  When the onion is translucent and the mushrooms have wilted, turn heat off and leave in the pan.

Make a cheese sauce - mine is: 2 tablespoons plain flour and 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, mix together and add salt and pepper.  Cook on low heat for about 2 minutes.  Add a dash of Tabasco or a sprinkle of chilli powder and stir in.  Add about 500mls/one pint of milk. I often use powdered milk for this.  Whisk this mixture together over medium heat until it starts to thicken, then add one cup of shredded cheddar cheese.  Stir the sauce until thick and smooth.

Then put the meal together.  In a lasagna dish, add the pasta, mushroom and onions and mix.  Pour the sauce over and mix in.  Top with some Parmesan and bake in a medium over until the top is golden brown.  Serve with a salad.

MIXED FRUIT BREAD

I kneaded the dough for this in the breadmaker.
375mls water
2 tablespoons soft butter
1½ teaspoons of nutmeg
1½ teaspoons of cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons milk powder
4¼ cups bread flour
2 teaspoons yeast

2/3 cup mixed dried fruit in the fruit dispenser, or thrown them in half way through the kneading process.

Place everything in the machine and turn on to the dough setting.  When finished, shape and place in your bread tin and allow to rise again.  When doubled in size, place in the oven on about 190C/375F.

Cinnamon Glaze for the bread (optional)
Mix ½ cup icing/confectioner's sugar with ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and add 2 teaspoons of water.  Drizzle or paint on with a brush.

Happy cooking everyone!

Thank you for your visits and comments this week.  I'll be going through the simple living comments on the weekend and visiting the blogs listed there.  I hope you have a wonderful and interesting weekend.  See you next week!  ♥