Simple Living

Our journey to living more simply will be ongoing and never-ending I think. I am constantly re-evaluating the things we are doing, the how, the why, the what, when and where. I received this book by Rhonda Hetzel a few weeks ago, and I really do love it.

Although it's really quite a simple book and I didn't really learn anything 'new' from it, it is so beautifully presented, and such a gentle guide and, hmmmm, kind of a tap on the shoulder saying "hey, remember this stuff, you know it.........it works, keep trying!"

The biggest thing I have taken from the book is the message for Mums who choose to stay home and not return to work outside of the home.The message, the way I perceive it, is this (in a nutshell): your work in the home is important, incredibly important.

 Although our governments and society in general are constantly trying to have us believe that contributing financially is more important than contributing to society through the work that is being done in our homes, raising our children.............this is not necessarily true.

 Every day we head out in to the world, perhaps to school, to work, to catch up or care for family and friends, or any one of a million other reasons, whatever it is.

Whatever happens each day, it may be fabulous, it may be awful, it might just be ok.............at the end of the day we head for home. It should be a haven.

This is where we are raising our children and nurturing our relationships, taking stock of how we choose to live, taking care of ourselves.

In my ever so humble opinion there is too much pressure on women with children to be organising alternative care for their children so that they can return to work. Makes so very little sense to me. In my wildest dreams never did I plan on having children so I could pass them on to someone else to raise while I worked.

I truly do not feel that my government, society, my community in general, give those mothers who stay at home to raise children any support or encouragement to do what they do. Sad, really, how driven by the dollar our world really is.

Holy-going-off-track, clearly all of this is very much on my mind at the  moment............this was to be a post about bread and bircher muesli, believe it or not. Doesn't take much to get me off track sometimes.

 I simply believe that when Mums do choose to stay at home and raise their children, the world benefits from this, it's good, and there should be encouragement and support (I'm not referring to financial support when I refer to support for SAHM's, simply the kind of support where SAHM's will no longer be made to feel like they are lazy leeches of society) for those who choose to live this way.

I am getting off my soap box now, to talk bread. Promise.

I started making bread a month or so ago, I'm still trying to nut it all out.

Started out using a free standing mixer to knead the dough and baking in the oven. I quite like doing it this way but it means that we  always have our fresh bread in the afternoon, and not in the morning when we really want it.

This is one of my oven baked loaves, so yummy on the day of baking........the next day, and subsequent days....not so much. My bread is still coming out a little 'doughy', so maybe it's just because of that.

 
This also, obviously, an oven job, is a Spinach and Fetta pull apart. I wasn't a huge fan, it was a little too 'spinachy' for me. Surprizingly though, the kids liked it. After they got over their initial 'That looks yuck' thoughts that is.

We were given a bread making machine by one of my sisters and have used it a couple of times and will use it again. The big plus for me with the bread machine is the fact that you can have fresh bread (and the beautiful fresh bread aroma) ready to go when you get out of bed in the morning. Just sitting there on the kitchen bench waiting for you! That's gold.

The big negative is that the bread machine is a decent sized appliance and if you have an itty bitty kitchen like me.........where in the world are you going to keep that sucker? Also I really do like doing it the way I was, but there's no way we'll ever get to wake up to fresh bread in the morning with me doing it that way.

Haven't decided for or against either way yet. Going to give it a bit more time.

In other kitchen adventures, my little boy who really is just not that interested in food that's good for him, decided he wanted to try bircher muesli. We have a selection of reading material in our loo, for those who like to sit and ponder. Clary is one of these people. He often sits in there singing his little heart out, loudly. You just know when Clary is sitting on the toilet.

One day he called me to his office in the toilet to show me a recipe in a magazine he'd found in there. I didn't think too much of it, but he later brought it to my attention again. It was for bircher muesli and he was keen. I hadn't had bircher before because although I thought it sound kind of nice, I also thought it sounded kind of cold and gloopy. Which it is. But yummy! Perfect for summer (it's Autumn here so probably won't make it again for a while), and perfect just to have as a snack, as well as for breakfast.

 We took our oats and added grated pear and apple, a bit of a mix of chopped up dried fruit (apricot, raisins and cranberries, I think), chopped nuts (almonds and walnuts, that's what we had on hand) some apple juice, yogurt and honey, I think that's about it. Mixed all that up and popped it into the fridge overnight.

Clary did the grating and a bit of chopping too. It looked gloopy like this when we were done.

The next morning we stirred in some milk and a little bit of extra honey and enjoyed it. Yum.

Posting to the blog live from my rather old and weary, almost forgotten laptop. Make that very sadly posting to you from this faithful old thing. Faithful because somehow, after you wind her over and crank her up she's still got a bit of go in her. Unlike my usual computer which I haven't seen for weeks, since she suffered a massive hard drive failure :(

Aside from losing all that was not backed up (which I'm glossing over, yes, because I've spent enough days crying over it, lots gone, I'm moving on), I'm without Photoshop, more importantly I'm without the ACR(Adobe Camera Raw) component of CS5. Boo hoo. So, for now, my real camera is having a rest, and my apologies in the pictures in the post make your eyes bleed. Truly, I am sorry. But this show is going on, any which way it can at the moment.

I have a sweet, sweet treat to share with you, it's not healthy but it tastes good :) Of course, as always, it's simple, simple, simple. You really only need four things. Marshmallows. Custard. Ice block thingys (mine are ancient and from Tupperware). You need a freezer.

 I put two marshmallows in to each one. Each marshmallow is cut in half, so that's four pieces per ice block. I just cut them in half with my kitchen scissors. I drop the first one directly in to the mould and then stick the others (that's the beauty of it all once they're cut, their stickiness is exposed) to the 'walls' of the mould.

 All you've got to do then is pour in that yummy custard. I do it in two stages. First I put in probably three quarters of what I'm going to use before tapping out the airbubbles. You want to get that custard in to all the nooks and crannys or your kids are going to give you the evil eye when they get the iceblock with 'holes' in it. Trust me. After I've done that and saved myself from the nasty wrath of my children I top them up with a little more custard.

 Don't go filling them to the absolute brim though or it's going to get messy when you put the lids on. Pop them in the freezer overnight and enjoy!

 Of course, if putting sugar into your kids is a huge no-no, then you cannot beat frozen grapes. We have gone through massive amounts of these this summer. If you haven't tried it before then get out there and put some grapes in your freezer. They'll be ready tomorrow.

 I mentioned knitting in my last post (as in, I just said the word) and you may be surprised to learn that I'm sticking with it still. I am still trying. I've started and quickly discarded quite a few projects. Turns out I have a really short attention span. Who knew? Anyway I decided to give cabling a go when I saw a cute pattern for some wrist warmers and you could have knocked me down with a feather when it turned out to be much easier than I was expecting (usually with knitting it turns out to be much harder than I anticipate). I didn't have an actual cabling needle but very conveniently I sat on one of my double pointed needles and broke it in half and that seems to be doing the job of hanging on to my cabling stitches pretty well for me at the moment.

 I'll try and keep you up to date on how that project pans out.
Last night I was up late putting together one of my, ah, I'm-not-sure-what-to-call-them books? When I first started making them I called them journals as I filled them only with blank pages. Then when I made a couple, filled with bits and pieces to amuse my kids I called them 'Holiday Books'. Because they were made for the school holidays. Just in case that wasn't obvious. Sometimes I called them their 'Adventure Books'. It was all good when it was just between us. Now I'm selling a few to other people. What am I going to call them?

 I could call them the 'Mess Making Books' I suppose. Because I really do make quite a mess when I'm constructing them.

 But it is fun, if a bit fiddly (and imcredibly frustrating if I make a mistake in the process).

 I love picking out papers, envelopes and other bits, bobs and surprises to fill them with.

Speaking of books, I have started reading this 'Milly-Molly-Mandy' book to the kids. Up until now I have only ever read the books with plenty of pictures, most definitely a picture on every page. This book has each page full of text with just a handfull of pictures scattered through it. I wasn't sure if they would be interested but they are, and we're reading one chapter a night. I don't want to get too exited because we've only been going for five nights BUT there is a little part of me that is really hoping we can move on from this to Pippi LongStocking and Anne of Green Gables.