Bad Blogger

Oooh. I'm a bad blogger aren't I? LOL. My intentions are good and I have a lot I want to share. My brain is just a little limited at the moment. Hopefully I'll blog more as it improves. I've been wanting to blog about my experiments with apple cider vinegar for months now. I'll get to it soon (I hope!). :-)

Groceries

Well I was quite happy with our grocery spend of $398.93 for February, even if it is a shorter month. January's groceries came to $441.27 so that was good too. I feel like we've made a reasonable start to the spending for the year.

Today I made a spaghetti type sauce in the crockpot:

600g mince (cost $4.00)
large tin tomatoes (approx $1.00)
2 tins beans (usually used dried beans but didn't have any soaked or cooked and I've started keeping a few tins on hand for convenience sake - costs a little more than dried but still a cheap way to bulk out meat) ($1.60)
grated zucchini from freezer
2 large spoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons minced garlic
couple of handfuls of oats to thicken it a bit

This will do us for 3 meals so works out pretty economically. Tonight was Taco's and the kids couldn't gobble them down quick enough. I'll probably use 1 lot with spaghetti. I tend to use wholemeal spiral pasta rather than spaghetti as it's easier for the kids to eat - they love it. The 3rd meal with either be lasagna or a repeat of one of the other meals depending.

I love it when I can cook 2 or 3 meals of meat at the same time. Makes for an easier workload down the track. :-)

It will be interesting to see what March's grocery bill ends up like.

Healthy Apple Slice

I've been experimenting a bit lately with trying to improve the quality of nutrition in our diet. We don't do too badly but like most things there's room for improvement. One area we haven't been doing too great in until recently was the use of refined (white) flours and sugar. So I've been trying to gradually find ways to replace these.

This is a recipe that I came up with recently when I was trying to find a low-fat, low-sugar cake to serve to visitors. It's actually a cake but with a heavier texture than most cakes. You could bake it in a loaf pan but I use a square cake dish and it's not as deep, more like you'd expect a slice to be. You also get smaller pieces that way so you're not consuming "too much". :-)

HEALTHY APPLE SLICE

2 cups wholemeal self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 dessert spoons honey (fairly generous ones)
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup apple sauce
2 fresh apples peeled and chopped

The best part about this recipe is that you basically chuck it all in a bowl and mix. I didn't add the apples until the rest of it was mixed together though. I have a salad server with a hole in the middle of it that I find just right for mixing the ingredients together. I'm sure any spoon would be fine though.

Topping: Once the batter was in the pan I sprinkled the top with oats and cinnamon before baking (did you know that both oats and cinnamon are good for diabetics?).

It takes about 40 minutes in my oven on around 180C but you might have to experiment a bit with your own oven - no 2 ovens seem to be the same. One good thing about it is that if it's undercooked a little it's not so noticable as it's a heavy-ish texture already. You don't want to overcook it though.

Once it's cooled you just cut it up into pieces - all pretty easy really. I love the fact that it doesn't need icing.

Here's the recipe I adapted it from:

FUDGE CAKE
1.5 cups SR flour
3 Tbsp cocoa
1 cup castor sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp imitation vanilla essence
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Whisk ingredients together and bake 35-40 minutes at 180C. They use a ring tin in the recipe. You could use whatever you have. I'll often double this recipe if I want to make a cake or I've used it for making a kind of brownie (again in my square pan). If I'm making "brownies" with it I just dust the top with icing sugar. Otherwise you can ice it with chocolate icing.

You'll notice this recipe doesn't have egg, milk or butter/margarine in it so it's suitable for people with allergies to these things. Just make sure you don't ice it with butter icing if you're going to give it to someone with dairy allergies. :-) Not having these ingredients also makes it lower in fat (and you can lower it more by substituting half the vegetable oil for apple sauce like I did for my apple slice) and also fairly frugal.

Happy Cooking!

Jodi

Wee in the Pool

My 3 year old is so precious. He's quite verbal but can't pronounce all of his sounds yet. Friends of ours recently put in a swimming pool and we've been to have a swim a couple of times this summer. Unfortunately his word for "swim" sounds more like "wee". So we head off for a swim and he says "I'm going to wee in the pool". LOL. Even funnier is when he says "mummy going to wee in the pool". Moments like this you just love having kids. They never fail to bring a smile to your face over something. Naturally I'm very quick to point out that "wee" is his word for "swim". :-)

Sun, Sea n Surf

Well we're back from a week away at the beach. It was wonderful to spend some quantity time with our kids and very relaxing.

I must admit for the first few days we didn't see a lot of sun. I do love the beach when it's overcast though. :-) On our first morning there I went for a jog along the beach and it was spectacular. The waves were more ferocious than usual and looked fantastic against the grey backdrop of the sky. The vastness of the ocean and the power in the waves makes me realise how small I really am in the scheme of things. It follows then that if I'm small (and by small I don't mean insignificant), my problems are small too. Well, it helps me to put everything back into some kind of perspective.

On the second morning I was treated to another wonderful sight. The sun was peaking through the clouds in streaks of light. You couldn't actually see the sun but it was such a wonderful example of how penetrating such a small amount of light can be.

From then on we had beautiful blue skies. It was warm enough to go swimming but not so hot that it was uncomfortable. Okay, so it was only warm enough on 1 day for me to go swimming but the rest of the family went swimming every day. :-) I'm fussy when it comes to going swimming - it has to be fairly warm. All up we felt that we'd had great weather for the week though.

I find something special about being at the beach. A real sense of peace and unity with nature. We're lucky too that where we go isn't a crowded beach and at times we were the only ones there.

So, we're home, rested, relaxed and ready to jump into work with heaps of enthusiasm and energy... Well, we're home, rested and relaxed anyway. :-) Neither DH nor I have been all that keen to jump in boots and all (still in holiday mode). But it is Saturday.

Simplifying in 2007

A lot of stuff I've read about the Voluntary Simplicity movement has really resonated well within me. It seems so easy to clutter up our lives to overflowing with things like work, stuff, activities, expectations and the like.

So while I haven't really set myself any New Years resolutions or goals for 2007, my general direction is that I'd like to simplify my life a little. Of course, simplifying takes many different paths for different people. I figure there's no right or wrong way to go about it.

Here are my thoughts so far:

Activities - Well with my illness we've had to declutter nearly all of our regular activities. The kids still have a couple but nothing too overwhelming. We've been trying to limit them to one activity at a time, particularly with sport. DS would love to be playing tennis, cricket AND basketball this season. But it's just too much so he has to make a choice. Winter sport is a little easier as there really is only football/netball and they're playing at the same location and time so multiple children playing isn't going to be sending us in all directions.

Work - I've already decluttered my 2 very part time selling jobs (were almost a hobby really but I did make a few $$ out of them). Our biggest challenge this year is that DH has cut back his workload. We feel this is a good move and at this stage it's only a temporary (1 year) measure. The challenging part is that our potential income is cut quite a bit. However, it'll be a good opportunity for us to really consider our future direction and what we really want out of life.

Stuff - Well I'm working hard on not bringing too much more stuff into our home (without at least some leaving at around the same time). I've always found shopping very therapeutic but never really considered the long term ramifications of accumulating stuff and spending money that didn't really need to be spent. So I'm working on reducing my hobby of shopping. Actually I've been working on that for a couple of years now. It's a slow process but I'm getting there. :-) I'd also like to declutter a bit more of the stuff that we're not making use of. It seems like a never ending process.

Decluttering Chemicals and other "nasties" from our lives - this is one area I'd particularly like to work on this year. I already use nearly all natural products for washing and cleaning etc but I think they could be simplified even more. There are some personal care products that could do with reviewing. I'm also working on cutting out chemicals from as much of the food we eat as possible. That in itself is possibly enough to keep me busy for the whole year. :-)

So there's lots to do and lots to learn. If I'm not careful I'll "unsimplify" my life in my attempts to simplify it. LOL. I guess it's just one thing at a time and see where the path takes us. If nothing else, I think we could be in for an interesting year. :-) I'm sure you'll hear more on this topic as the year progresses.

I know I'm about 10 days behind but HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone. I hope 2007 is everything you wish it to be and more. :-)

Reflections on 2006

Now that 2006 has finally passed into 2007, I thought I'd reflect on the kind of year it was and what I've learnt. It's warm today so hopefully I can think straight enough to finish this. :-) If I procrastinate much longer I'll be reflecting on 2007 rather than 2006. Not that anything would surprise me at the moment. I wished my brother and sister-in-law a great 2008 on their 2006 Christmas card. LOL. Temporarily lost a year there.

2006 has been a difficult year for us in many ways. I remember school going back at the end of January and feeling so overwhelmed and tired that I had no idea how I was going to make it through the year. Perhaps I sub-consciously knew that I wasn't well and that making it through the year was going to turn into a much bigger challenge than I'd bargained on. DH and I always seem to be busier than we'd like and 2006 was shaping up very early to be no different to any other year. Despite our hearts desire to simplify life, it seemed we weren't succeeding very well. The wheels seemed to be turning faster and faster and we had no idea what we should cut out. It seemed like everything we did was important to us and we just couldn't make the decision "not" to do any of the things we were currently doing.

In May I had what felt like complete burn-out and the doctor later described as a nervous breakdown. That brought life to a screaching halt. Over the course of a couple of weeks I went from flat out to flat out on the bed. My brain and body just started to shut down. Figuring a few days rest was what was needed I succumbed to the desire to sleep all day. A few days turned into a few weeks turned into a few months. DH was flat out in a different way. Not only was this the busiest time of the year for him on the farm but he now had a wife to look after as well as a house and 3 kids. We went from not being able to decide which activities in our life to cut out, to having to cut out everything. I guess that's one way of simplifying. :-)

By about September it was becoming clear that I wasn't going to just "bounce back" to my usual self in any hurry. The doctor then told us that we needed to expect it to take at least 12 months for me to get back on my feet. At this stage we started considering some longer term changes that we might need to make.

In October we had to face the fact that what had started out looking like a reasonable year on the farm was turning into a complete fizzer. Ordinarily this wouldn't be something that would distress us too heavily (you have to expect a drought from time to time in farming), however, this is our 3rd drought in the past 5 years (we expect around 1 drought in 7 years on average in our area). We knew finances were going to be tight. It turned out to be our worst financial year on record so I imagine it'll take us a little while to get back on our feet again.

The interesting thing about the drought was that it turned my illness into a blessing. I've had days where I really thought I was losing my mind and you can't help but wonder if you'll ever live "normally" again. Some of that was my body adjusting to the medication and so it was short lived. It was still a timely reminder of how fragile life really is. We can get so caught up in having money and things that we forget that the most important things in life are not things that money can buy. We realised that money or no money, each day we have with one another and our wonderful children is a blessing. Tomorrow brings with it no guarantees and while I'm not saying that considering financial needs for the future isn't a wise thing to do, we do need to be careful that we aren't doing so at the expense of losing today.

As the year wore on we just felt more and more blessed with what we have. We live in a country where it's unlikely we'll ever go without food. How many people in this world can say that? We placed some pictures on the wall of our overseas sponsored children and sponsored Rickshaws and it's been a real blessing to us to focus on how much we have in comparison to so many. At times we've been guilty of losing our perspective on life and thinking that we're "deprived" when in reality we aren't even close to being deprived.

Changing our perspective on life and money wasn't the only blessing to come out of my illness. One of the highlights I remember was watching my 5 year old daughter who was just learning to read, share her readers with her 2 year old brother. It became a nightly before bed ritual for him to climb into her bed next to her while she read him a story. In fact, for a long time he referred to books as "readers" rather than books. I've seen all 3 of my children grow in so many ways while I've been ill.

DH has changed a lot this year too. He's been learning to cook (which I think he's quite enjoyed) as well as wash and do other household tasks that normally might have been taken for "granted". I noticed he didn't try and tackle the ironing though. LOL. He's found himself learning to be more patient with the kids and has also learnt how tiring getting them ready for school truly is. He's also a lot stronger in his resolve not to allow his family to interfere in our lives as they have in the past.

I've learnt to go a bit easier on myself. That it's part of taking care of my family to take care of myself. I've had to let go of a lot of my perfectionism. Letting my kids go to school with less than perfect hair or go out somewhere in clothing that didn't match. I just didn't have the energy to make things any different. And guess what - the sky didn't fall in! LOL. I've also been learning a lot about depression and what it is and how it works. And I've been learning ways to improve our diet and general health (not that we were particularly "unhealthy" but like most things, there's room for improvement). I also discovered that despite not working in a paid position, I really do make a financial contribution. It was amazing how much more money was spent while I was ill. The food bill went up as did the electricity bill. And poor DH did destroy a few items of clothing while he was learning to wash. LOL.

It's also been interesting seeing other people step into roles I used to have. All the time you do something, no-one else will volunteer to take over for you. But when there's an empty space created, it's surprising who may step up to fill it. It's been positive to see some of my friends grow in this way.

So, 2006 was a pretty awful year in a lot of ways, but a very powerful, high growth year in others. I know at times it's easy to wish away the bad times, when in reality they are just as important to our lives as the good times. That doesn't mean I'm not wishing for a far better 2007! :-)