Lovely Golden Melons

One of the few things that is growing in the garden at the moment are some lovely watermelon.  These are golden midget from Diggers.

The skin is a lovely butter yellow colour and the fruit are quite small which makes it great for just the two of us. Apparently they are quite well suited to cooler climates too.

The flesh is lovely and sweet too.

As with all heirloom watermelon these are not seedless.  So I have some to give away to anyone in Australia.
Please email me if you would like some feebegood at hotmail dot com

Stock Pile Challenge Pt 3

Yesterday's post prompted a comment from Linda wondering if I had stocked up before undertaking this challenge.  This made me realise that I had not addressed that point in my previous posts.

So just to clarify before starting this challenge I did not stock up on anything. The last time I shopped was the  22nd of January.   This challenge formed in my mind over the Australia day long weekend when we were flooded in.  And what I really wanted to know was, if without warning, we could not get to the shops how long could we last.

Linda also mentioned flour, and yep I have loads.  At a guess there is 2 kg Plain Flour, 2 kg Self Raising Flour, 500gm Wholemeal flour, 1 kg of 000 Flour, 4 kg Spelt Bread Flour, 4 kg Rye Bread Flour, 3 kg Wholemeal Bread Flour and 2 kg White Bread Flour.  Heavens that is a lot of flour for 2 people who would be lucky to get through a loaf  of bread a week.

So in the spirit of transparency here are our stockpiles... prepare your self...

324 Lt Chest Freezer - Filled with meat from the cow we had killed.
There are also blocks of chicken stock (the blocks on top and in the ice cream container)
There are also lots of frozen diced tomatoes.

This our second  225lt chest freezer. This one has the last of the meat chickens
we killed last year, frozen fruit and veggies, a spare loaf of supermarket bread and
general odds and ends.

The freezer above the fridge - More chicken stock, frozen leftovers,
ice, butter, crusts to make into bread crumbs, pastry
and a bag of frozen bananas

The freezer door - More frozen bananas, tomato paste, yeast
and cheese cultures

I don't actually like bananas but I hate waste so when they get soft and hubby won't eat them a freeze them.  I will have to use some to make a banana cake or banana bread.

Inside the fridge

The pantry - sauce and spice city

The pantry - Flour, legumes, carbohydrates, baking goods, crackers
seeds and nuts

Preserves, cereals and tinned foods

 Any way so you can see with your own eyes, this is why I think we could survive for a while.

Stock Pile Challenge Pt 2

For the month of February I am undertaking a challenge to see how long we can go without shopping.

I have allowed $15 a week for milk, fresh fruit and vegetables but really we will be aiming not to have to use this.
I should point out that this challenge includes all meals, with the exception of 2 birthday dinners that we are attending during the month.  We do not buy lunches and always take our own and living in the country takeaway is not something that features on the menu.

So far I have been working out our meals and any baking from what needs to be used up first.  I have made a carrot cake and used up some cream cheese in the icing.

Carrot Cake

We have also had oven roasted capsicums and grilled eggplant from the garden and hummus made from chickpeas from the pantry.
I had there have also been 2 frozen leftovers meals from the freezer.

Over the weekend bread was baked and yoghurt was made.  After all the rain we had last weekend the asparagus decided to send up a whole lot of new shots which we enjoyed grilled with poached eggs on the weekend.

I am feeling really positive about how things are going so far but then again it is only day 4.

Slow Living January 2013

Linking up with Christine again this month.  I am really glad that she is hosting this again this year it is great to hear what everyone is up to.

Nourish -Make and bake as much as possible from scratch. Ditch over packaged, over processed convenience foods and opt for 'real' food instead.
There has not been much baking this month as I still had a few batches of muffins and biscuits in the freezer. But as usual all of our meals are being cooked from scratch.

Prepare - Stockpile and preserve. Freeze extra meals or excess garden/market produce. Bottle/can, dehydrate or pickle foods to enjoy when they are not in season.

I have been dicing and freezing capsicum for use through winter when the prices go through the roof.  I have also made up a huge batch of chicken stock that is now frozen in 500ml blocks in the freezer.

Reduce - Cut down on household waste by re-using, re-purposing and repairing.
Not much going on in this area at the moment.

Green - Start (or continue!) using homemade cleaners, body products and basic herbal remedies. The options are endless, the savings huge and the health benefits enormous.
Well the use of home made cleaners continues, it's a pity that the cleaning part has to happen too.

Lista Gandia eggplant and golden midget watermelon

Grow - plant/harvest. What's growing this month? What's being eaten from the garden?

The tomatoes didn't make it through the floods but the peppers, eggplants and melons are still going strong.
I also have a crop of rosellas coming along nicely.

Create - To fill a need or feed the soul. Create for ourselves or for others.

I am still practising my knitting and have been making birthday cards and doing scrap booking..

Discover - Feed the mind by reading texts relevant to current interests.
I am still reading books by the dozen so it was good to get to the bookfest with my best friend.  I have been reading a few fictional books and I also read Food Rules by Michael Pollan.  It is a quick and easy book to read and really talks about getting back to a better way of eating.

Enhance - Community
Planning for this years Classic Car Show is under way again and we have a meeting this week with our Mayor to discuss how the council can help and how he can help as well.  Our Mayor is a motoring enthusiast and was one of last years judges.

Enjoy - Life! Embrace moments with friends and family. Marking the seasons, celebrations and new arrivals are all cause for enjoyment.
January was a quieter month with time spent at home with hubby which was a nice thing indeed.

What have you been up to?

A Stock Pile Challange

Over the Australia Day long weekend we were flooded in and we had a few of our friends ask if we were going to be ok.  They were concerned about if we were going to have enough to eat and drink if we could not get to the shops for a few days.  We reassured them we were fine (which we were)  as we had been through worse than this back in 2011. I even joked to a few of them that we could survive for a few months out of our pantry.
And that is when I started to really think about the stock pile of food we have in the pantry. fridge and freezer.
There are at least 3 packets of dates that I know of, quite a number of packets of crackers, more tea than you can poke a stick at and some tinned fruit that has been around for more than a few years.  I also found some random ingredients at the back of the pantry including marshmallows and Turkish Delight.  I guess I was planning on making rocky road at some stage.  And don't even ask about the 20 odd frozen bananas in the freezer because i refuse to throw them out (does that happen at your place).

Are there other things that are just sitting there never getting used possibly going past their used by dates?
Are we stockpiling things that we actually hardly ever use?
Are there things that we use a lot of that we are not stockpiling and should be?

So how long could we actually get by without shopping?

My guess is quite a while.

We have 2 chest freezers, the small freezer on top of our fridge, the fridge it's self and the pantry full of food.  For two people this is quite a stockpile.
Now admittedly we had a cow butchered just before Christmas and we still have some chicken left from when we butchered our own so we have plenty of meat.
But unlike most of the country, this time of year is too hot for most veggies, so the garden is pretty bare.  There are some watermelons, capsicums, eggplants and tomatoes.  I have also just planted out another round of cucumbers and beans as the last lot got cooked in the hot weather.  But these will not be ready for a while.

So the challenge is to spend nothing on groceries for the month of February.  With one exception.  There will be a small allowance for milk, fresh fruit and vegetables of $15.00 per week and we will try not to use this if we can.  So I am not going to say we will spend nothing but what we do spend will be a small enough amount to ensure that we use up the frozen vegetables that need using up and that we really focus on wasting nothing.

I think there will be a few challenges over the coming month but I think a lot of them will all come back to organisation.  So I will really be making an effort with menu planning ahead of time. I will be getting creative in the kitchen and making sure all the odds and ends are used up.  I will also be making sure there is plenty of snacks in the form of muffins, biscuits and birdseed bars.

At the end of the month I hope to have cleared out a backlog of pantry items and frozen bananas and have a much better idea of the things we use a lot and should be stockpiling.  I will keep you posted of how things go during the month and what I discover.