Huge changes at Wit's End; We're Homeschooling!

After many years of dithering about, wanting to Homeschool, doubting myself, wondering if I could/should do it, DH and I decided to go for it.

We're a Homeschooling Family!

I'll be setting up a side blog about our journey but shall be making it invite only to view/read.  Please feel free to flick me a message and if I know you irl or have known you for years online I'm more than happy to give you access :)

http://thechirpiesatwitsend.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/the-decision-made.html

Menu plan for February 2013

Breakfast choices

Yoghourt and fruit

Toast with toppings

Boiled eggs, rice, pickled vegies

Oatmeal with honey

Rosti with poached eggs

Lunches

1. Scrolls
2. Sandwiches
3. savory muffins
4. Quiches
5. Salads
6. Cornish pasties
7. arranchini
8. Rice paper rolls with fillings
9. savoury mince tarts (puff pastry)
10. chicken empandas
11. homemade sausage rolls

Need to bake 3 cakes per week,

yoghourt,

fruit tubs-

fresh fruit

Llelo and I to have leftovers from the night before's dinners.

Dinners

1. Vegetarian curries - potato lemon and coriander, dhal, dhosa, lentils with lemon and mint
2. Steamed fish packets Chinese style with steamed rice
3. Butter chicken and rice
4. Chinese style beef pot roast
5. Portuguese style fresh sardines
6. Hugh's vegetarian chilli
7. Fritatta Empty the fridge
8. Smoked fish, leek and potato soup (HFW pg 82) Changing this to smoked fish, chorizo and potato soup
9. Nigella's roast chicken (on red peppers with lemon in cavity etc), rice, roast spuds and vegies
10. Chinese Chicken Rice
11. Falafels, hoummous, pita breads, tabbhouli made with quinoa
12. Roast chicken wings with roast spuds, fennel and onions (HFW pg 131
13. Thai fish curry and rice 
14. Ham, black eye beans, potato and carrot soup (boil ham bone, add 1 tb worcestershire sauce, 1 tbl apple cider vinegar, 2 teas black pepper)
15. Quiches
16. Fish pie, peas and corn
17. Crab cakes rice  and salad
18. Beans and tomato soup (HFW 97)
19. Homemade baked beans and rice
20. Mackeral, celery, orange salad (HFW 208
21. Lamb, spinach and chickpeas (HFW 256) Fried polenta chips and salad
22. leftover chicken rice chicken with noodle soup
23. Empty the fridge sushi
24. caldo verde
25. roast pumpkin, chickpea and quinoa salad
26. Sweet potato blackbean red pepper stew with cous cous
27. Sweet and sour prawns, rice, chinese vegies
28. Butternut pumpkin and chickpea patties http://foodblogandthedog.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/butternut-squash-and-chickpea-cakes-with-salsa-raita-and-red-onion-maramalade/
29. Spag bol for a treat for Giaan?

*Still in freezer

Ok, So I have to buy the following for this menu:

6 chorizos

2 chickens

1kg mince

2kg's chicken wings

Smoked fish

Dried chickpeas

quinoa

Eggs

Milk

Fruit and veg

Coconut milk

Flours etc.

January's total food expenditure worked out to $180 per week for our family of seven. Not too bad I guess. Will see how it goes for February and if I need to tweak it more to bring it down further.

One of the many things I miss about Canberra

A couple of days ago I was gifted about 4kg's of grapes from a friend.  The Chirpies ate and ate and ate until the bowl just sat there looking at me, still full but ignored.  Mangoes called, plums called, even apples seemed more appealing that the thought of more grapes.

At times like this I really miss my old mate, Nature witch. I'd pick up the phone and she'd immediately inspire me to do something/anything with those grapes. We never did get together so that I could learn her skills in winemaking :(  Anyway, I grabbed my copy of Preserving the harvest and decided to make some Grape Jelly (I'm guessing it's a clear grape jam by the method used). I had no idea that the boiled up liquid from grapes was a delicious shade of pink! 

Rummaging in the fridge I also came across a kg bag of plums that I picked up from the sad table on Wednesday for 99 cents.  They were sad on Wednesday so are definitely sauce today!  Chinese style plum dipping sauce from here the only changes I've made are subbing five spice for the dried mustard and upping the sugar a bit.

The other thing I miss about Canberra? That if you knew where to look you could eat for free!  Plum trees, apricots, lemons, berries all on verges, hanging over fences of walkways mostly all fallen fruits just there for picking up, making into jams, sauces and juices, After six years in Perth I've not managed to find such a range of free abundance :(

That is unless my readers (is there anyone left?) are willing to enlighten me?

Menu planning again

I really must stop using face book and get back into blogging. Having everything in one spot and not having to search through heaps of posts and updates makes so much more sense.

Anyway, I did up this menu plan up on FB and am now transferring it over to here. Originally I was going to make it for a fortnight but after some thought realised that adding in a heap of vegetarian meals that I could stretch it to a month (still adding in the meals as I get inspired)

Breakfast choices

Yoghourt and home bottle peaches

Toast with toppings

Boiled eggs, rice, pickled vegies

Oatmeal with honey

Lunches

1. Sandwiches -toasted, cheese, 
2. Portuguese mussels with bread and rice
3. lentils with lemon and mint
4. Crab cakes and salad
5. Beans and tomato soup (HFW 97)
6. Rosti with poached eggs
7. Homemade baked beans and rice
8. Mackeral, celery, orange salad (HFW 208
9. Lamb, spinach and chickpeas (HFW 256) trying lamb for the first time ever on the kids
10. Fried polenta chips and salad
11. leftover chicken rice chicken with noodle soup
12. Empty the fridge sushi
13. caldo verde
14. Poached eggs on homemade bread toasted
15. fried noodles with leftover char siew and choy sum

Dinners

1. Char siew with rice noodles, choy sum and sauces
2. Vegetarian curries - potato lemon and coriander, dhal, dhosa, 
3. Steamed fish packets Chinese style with steamed rice
4. Butter chicken and rice
5. Chinese style beef pot roast
6. Portuguese style fresh sardines
7. Hugh's vegetarian chilli
8. Fritatta Empty the fridge
9. Smoked fish, leek and potato soup (HFW pg 82)
10. Nigella's roast chicken (on red peppers with lemon in cavity etc), rice, roast spuds and vegies
11. Chinese Chicken Rice
12. Falafels, hoummous, pita breads, tabbhouli made with quinoa
13. Roast chicken wings with roast spuds, fennel and onions (HFW pg 131
14. Thai fish curry and rice 
15. Ham, black eye beans, potato and carrot soup (boil ham bone, add 1 tb worcestershire sauce, 1 tbl apple cider vinegar, 2 teas black pepper)
16. Quiches

Total expenditure for the month: 

 12th Jan 2013 $80 meat/fish

13th Jan 2013 $30 for a 5kg leg ham

15th Jan 2013 $56 fruit and vegies

Decluttering AGAIN!

Huge almost untouched stash of wool just sitting in plastic storage boxes.  Just sitting there, mocking me.  I can hear the needles in the other box whispering, sending secret coded messages to the patterns in yet another box.  They are all conspiring to escape from their imprisonment.  They have all somehow sent a coded message to Coffeee from the DTE forum, who has posted a link to a link to a link to a .....

Well, the upshot of it is that I'm going to challenge myself to the Granny a Day Challenge from Meet me at Mike's.  A Granny square a day is doable, yes?

You all know that I'll be posting in a years time "What the hell do I do with 365 Granny Squares?"

Sauce time!

Last week a box of tomatoes at the markets cost $45.  Yesterday they were reduced to $7.  There was no way that I was going to buy them last week but this week Im-a-making sauce.  Not sure if I'm going to bottle  them as I can only find plastic lined lids (only got three Vaccola bottles), so I will probably just portion this up and freeze it.

Musings, lemons and chaos

Did you miss it?  Miss what?  "Another" important event on the calendar? Something that may not be of importance to you but is of deadly importance to the  "One in seven people Worldwide" who go hungry every day.  Yes, in 2012, one in seven people are going hungry every single day.

October the 16th was World Food Day.

This has really touched a cord with me (again it seems like I am waking up from a three year fog).  The numbers are just staggering;  870 million people are going hungry right now!  When I blogged about this issue five years ago (as did a lot of you) I naively thought that it might get better but it's not :(

What is really mind blowing to me is that this comes at a time when local growers and farmers in Australia are being forced to cut prices by the two large Stupidmarkets (or shut up shop and go out of business!).  They are advertising how low their prices are, and yet there are people in our suburbs who are going hungry right now!  I'm guessing that there's absolutely no money or profit in ending poverty or hunger.

Around the World there's drought, floods, the rumblings of a Global food security crisis, and yet I bet you've got an eggplant or lettuce in your fridge slowly turning into compost. Or a blackening limp carrot stuck to the lump of ice at the back (knows from personal experience....) We're still all throwing out way too much of the food that we're buying!  This is one of the reasons (apart from the health benefits) that I'm starting to get into fermenting and preserving in such a big way,

"No Honey, I've not folded the washing/vacuumed the floors/picked up the toys today, I've been busy making jams, pickles and other things that go 'Hiss, pop, bubble'"

So what am I doing to try to walk the talk?

• Getting my garden back up and producing again
• Bartering for what I'm not growing myself
• Buying Local.  Living Local.
• Preserving as much as I can by bottling, fermenting or freezing (I'm seeing the limitations of freezing - power outages  lack of space, cost of buying and running another freezer)
• Starting up a group of local likeminded people to come over and share our lifeskills knowledge (this idea has been heavily inspired by Eat at Dixiebelle's blog and her Urban Homesteading Club

As I've said before, my floors are always crunchy, my table is always sticky but I am getting my passion back for what's important in my life;  making good lifestyle choices for my family, networking with my community and giving back something to the Universe.

Now speaking of giving something back....Teacher gifts for yep, Christmas.  This year they're going to get Preserved Lemons.  I bartered lemons for greens yesterday, I have jars and lovely salt, so that's what's on the agenda for today.  Hopefully by the end of term they will be deliciousness in a jar.

Hold on you say, you've written about 'Musings' and the 'lemons' where's the 'chaos' bit?  Ummm yeah, I need to sort out this mess today as well.  My system isn't working and it's making me stabby.  Very stabby!

Any suggestions?