Frugal, miserly or just plain canny?

The Husband and I have always been very careful with our pennies. It was born out of necessity when we were first married and on Austudy with two children to support. I had the huge sum of $50 per week to feed our family of (then) four. We also ate meat at that time so it was interesting making the dollars stretch.

Now with me being a SAHM and our family of four kids sprouting like weeds (The Son doesn't live at home anymore) it has become even more important for me to be creative with the budget than ever. I want The Husband to be able to choose what he wants to do in the future. I don't want him to be yoked to his job. If he wants time off to study the mating habits of gnats then I want him to have that financial freedom.

So I have spent the last few weeks going through our finances with a fine tooth comb (God, I use a few cliches don't I!)

In any given week we spend between $70-100 Aus. That is to buy everything for our family of six. I make our own bread, yoghourt, yoghourt cheese and baked goods including tortillas. Most of our foods are cooked from scratch and are always based on real and whole foods.

I also try to buy local as much as possible; the exceptions to this are The Husband's asian groceries. Please if anyone knows where to source Australian soy sauce, pickled turnips, fermented jars of smelly stuff (can you tell I won't eat these?) let me know!

So what sort of things do we eat? Vegetarian foods obviously. Fruit and vegetables which are in season and locally grown.

We bought this house last year and the first thing I did was start planting my fruit trees and organising my vegie garden. My trees are;

2 lemons, 1 orange, 1 mandarin, 1 lime, 2 apples,1 pinkybelle apple, 1 chocolate sapote, 2 macadamias, 1 avocado, 1 fig, 1 mango, 1 white mulberry, 1 guava, 1 dragon fruit,2 bananas,2 cape gooseberries,1 passionfruit,raspberries

My vegetables include the usual onions, garlic, spinach, silverbeet, beetroot, carrots, strawberries, cabbages (asian and regular), tomatoes, lettuces, kale and herbs. I lost all of my pumpkins, rockmelons and watermelons last week to the intense sun. My herbs are all doing very well at the moment and I have been seed saving and scattering.

The purpose of all this garden activity is to be able to shop at home in the future and further reduce our dependance on outside factors. It is also so much healthier for us to eat alive foods. I hope that one day I will only have to buy rice and wheat.

The peanuts are still alive and well and in a few months I will be experimenting growing my own chickpeas.

What's Cooking:

Large pot of pasta sauce ($4 for a huge box of tomatoes at the greengrocers today)
Banana Bread (I have a fridge full of bananas from stocking up last week when they were $0.99 a kilo!)

Tonight's dinner: Pesto Genovese with green beans and potatoes; fusilli pasta, green beans, potatoes and stirred through with fresh basil pesto.

She's done it, by George, she's done it!

11am and according to the BOM the temp in our area is 24.9. The thermometer in our garden is reading 29.1 and the temp in my solar oven rocketed to 55 and couldn't get any higher as that was it's limit!

I need to acquire a cooking thermometer but the pot (appropriated the slow cooker innards) is too hot to handle and there is condensation and fall back droplets into the lentils I threw in this morning.

Once the bubbling action happens I will add my homegrown chillies, coriander and garlic and it will become Dhal!

Other stuff I am crowing about atm;

My peanuts are growing!

I was musing out aloud about the possibility of growing peanuts and wondering where to buy the seed. Well peanuts must need seed right?

The Husband nearly fell off of his chair laughing at this, walked to his Chinese food cupboard and pulled out a jar of raw peanuts and waved them under my nose saying

"What the hell do you think these are?"

Dumb blank look from me.

"Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, go plant these woman!"

Well what do you know, the ecognomist was actually right; They grew!

Off to make some more yoghourt now, move the grey water hose to my other fruit trees, make a loaf of bread and then have some buckwheat bread with homemade lahbne cheese and roast peppers.

Planting Challenge: Found some spuds with eyes in the cupboard. They are now safely tucked up in the soil and watered in.

Be careful what you wish for as the Goddess is listening!

Grrrrrrr! Gnashing of teeth and lots of rude words.

I planned to buy my very own solar oven today. I saw K's homemade one last night on her blog and muttered to myself


"Gee it would be fun to try and make one for myself"

Now who says that the Goddess doesn't listen and that she doesn't have a sense of humour! Went to the website to place my order this morning and wouldn't you know it, they have sold out of all stock!

!#$$%%^%^&^*(^!

Guess that means that I have to live up to my goal of a frugal lifestyle and bloody well attempt to make one by myself.

Off to forage for the necessary fixings; hmmmm I believe there are two types of screwdriver? You laughing your butt off yet?

UPDATE, UPDATE!

I'm testing my homemade solar oven at this very moment!

What a day in the garden!

I spent a mega day in the garden today. I am sitting here at the computer and every part of me aches.

I bought a 3 metre high bamboo (don't ask the price as it cost more than our food budget for a week!) and dug a huge hole in which to plant it. The husband came out to observe and offer advice on the correct way to dig, plant and position said bamboo.

Bamboo is now guarding our front door from native bogan energy (another don't ask!) ...I can feeeeeeeeeeeeeeel the positive chi already.

Strawberry planting came next, followed by transplanting the hibiscus that I rescued from the sad shelf in the nursery. I discovered that my habit of chucking seeds around the garden has paid off as tiddly coriander is sprouting everywhere.

Photos will happen tomorrow, the eldest daughter is chatting to her friends on MSN and muttering that she can't take photos in the dark.

Hunter Gathering!

I spent today gathering coriander, parsley and celery seed from my gone to seed plants. Some have been scattered around the garden and the rest bagged and labelled for later on.

I also went on a tadpole hunting spree, well I was invited to take a few tadpoles from a friend's pond. Four cute little future froggies are now swimming in my converted clamshell pond. I hope that they survive!

The husband has agreed to purchase a Solar Oven. I am sure that he has his doubts but he is being very supportive of "The little woman's hobby" SNORT!

Investigating underutalised plants right now; Never knew that you could eat Canna lilies!


Also going to check out clumping bamboo this morning. Shade, Wind breaks, building materials and bamboo shoots! Yum!

Where are we going and what do we need to do to get there?

The big question!

I sat the husband down at the end of last year and asked him where he wanted to be in five years time and what plans had he made to get there. I am still waiting for an answer from him but hey, he is a scorpio ;)

For myself it was easy to answer. I wanted to be able to feed my family healthily from our garden, have minimal dependence on the consumption treadmill (I want us to buy less, use less, throw away less), bring my children up with an awe and respect for nature and our enviroment, and finally to have a minimum impact on my surroundings (small eco footprint) but a large impact on the lives of those I love in a positive way.

The husband snorted at this and asked if I am going through a mid life crisis! Maybe I am but surely any questioning of who I am and where I am going is one of the major questions that any human being should ask?

In the beginning there was .....

Chaos!

Welcome to my World, a place inhabited by numerous toddlers, a cranky teen, a husband with perpetually raised eyebrows and a variety of invading insects.

There is also an absent twenty something son who should visit his parents more often than he does!

This is going to be a journey of exploration and musings on my part with hopefully a lot of activity in my house and garden.

I am just going to write all the words which pinpoint my interests (some of these I have only jsut discovered and will be exploring further....now you know the reason for the husband's permanently raised eyebrows!) and where this blog will hopefully lead;

The environment, my family, vegetarianism, sustainability, ethics of living, cloth nappying, gentle parenting, baby wearing, anti consumption, seed saving, gardening, real and whole foods, no lables, aquaponics, self sufficiency.

Wow, huge list hey! Wish me luck.