So – I got back on the bike… bottom less sore today than yesterday so that’s a bonus!!! 😛
Once recovered I got into a few of the vegetables that have been hanging about multiplying.
Have made the first step of the BBQ sauce by making a simple tomato sauce recipe. (See below) Six pounds of tomatoes. That took care of quite a few!!
Even though compared to the amount of plants I have in, not as many zucchinis as I would have thought… but enough!! So got to work and chopped them all up
Five bags for the freezer… these can be used at a later date
Then it was the chillies turn –
Anyone want to come and stay and garden? Will feed you.
The long skinny chillies make such a good font…
Anyway, enough of that – I clearly have too much time on my hands!
I did get outside for a good long time this afternoon and enjoyed some hand watering and picking more stuff!
The corn is now eaten!! I picked the capsicum as I noticed a couple had rotted!! But I was expecting them to change colour. So I tried this one in my salad tonight and it was lovely! Must be time to make up some spaghetti sauce and freeze batches of that!
Cheers!
Tomato Sauce Recipe (Ketchup)
6 lb tomatoes chopped
2lb sugar
1/2 pint white vinegar (300ml)
2 & 1/2 tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon allspice
Boil all for about 2 & 1/2 hours, then ‘mooley’ (Or blend or whatever you like to do to remove seeds/skin
Re heat and thicken with cornflour if nec.
Bottle up!
Hello!!
I have finally stopped procrastinating and making excuses and getting on Jeff’s stationary bike trainer.
Lets not go into into too much detail about the pain in my nether regions shall we??
Seriously – thought I had enough padding… I mean that is the REASON I am on the bike!
I dragged my one and only fancy dress out of the cupboard as I am guessing I will need to put on something nice for the wedding in Texas.
I was actually dreading trying it on, but happy to find out it fit comfortably!!!! Not saying I couldn’t benefit from shedding about 10Kgs, since I am not going to be able to hide the extra bulges under bulky Tasmanian – suitable clothes as I suspect Texas will be slightly warmer!
Back to the garden – I finally wandered over to next doors paddock with a pair of scissors and brought my escapee pumpkin back to our side of the fence
I think there are about 4 pumpkins on the vines which is a slight improvement on the one single one I thought I had!
We also thought it time to take down the raspberry netting. The weeds were going sky high and there is no fruit left anyway
The chooks are loving having a new area to scratch and hide in. Every time I go down the back they are buried in between the rows!
Hello! Hope Sunday was all you expected it to be!
We spent some time today putting our packs together to see what we need to take on our upcoming hike.
I am lucky to have been able to borrow my cousins good hiking pack and a few other useful things.
When you don’t do this kind of adventure very often its hard to know exactly what you need. Both over or under packing would have their own annoyances.
(Upstairs where we are packing our stuff is where I have my garlic hanging and drying which is the reason the floor is looking a bit scruffy in the above photo… time to drag the vacuum upstairs!!)
Some home comforts…
Fly veils – reckon will come in handy. Gaiters – very useful. One of the cooking tins and of course some knitted gear for when the weather gets a bit chilly!
My cousin, Fiona, has also loaned me her pack liner – extra waterproofing in Tasmania never goes astray!
I have various layers of clothes. Unless it starts to snow, I probably won’t need the big jacket during hiking day. You keep warm with the exercise.
I have really skimped on the clothes I am packing, however I have been generous with the socks and undies. I just think with fresh ‘foundation garments’ the start of a new day seems more positive! 😀
The majority of my extra clothes are in this compression bag. Handy item which has compacted them really well. Naturally I have left things like my rain jacket, scarf, beanie, gloves & main jacket more accessible in case the weather turns pear shaped on us.
I can’t tell you how much I hated going through the supermarket checkout buying two packs of 2 minute noodles. Me!! Who grows fresh food and cooks from scratch! Blah! How embarrassing!!!
The noodles do have a big advantage in that we can crush them down to pack a little better, and they certainly do cook extremely quickly. We will discard the ‘flavour satchels’ (shudder) in favour of adding my rehydrated meals. Along with a cup of soup to start – I think we will be eating well. (or coming home really skinny)(so its a win-win whatever)
I still have to test rehydrating my curry dish and make a couple more things.
Jeff wants to make fresh beef jerky and also some more muesli bars.
The chocolates will be a treat and an energy boost!
Wraps will be the go for lunches. We bought a pack today and I tested it out on Jeff. Thumbs up, so will go buy more, as right now they are half price! Can’t sneeze at that! I am hoping to be able to manage to pack several tomatoes (most not quite ripe)(they can ripen as we go) so we can put them on our wraps. I reckon I can fit in some relish and a block of cheese.
So…about two weeks away from the start date!!
Now, just to decide what camera gear to drag along too! (The MOST important bit!)
Cheers!
PS Some Overland Trail reminder photos! I can’t wait to get to the point of the first photo below as that’s where we turned back last visit! Looking forward to seeing what is beyond!
Hello! Hope your weekends have started in fine style!
We got to the potatoes today – really its the best part of the season. The thrill of discovery!
All looking quite woebegone!
The soil wasn’t dry but seemed more compacted than normal. Took a bit of effort to dig into it – we mostly used the hand trowels so we didn’t massacre too many spuds
Done for the day! I won’t say all dug up because you NEVER get them all!
Time to sort…
Its a little uncharacteristically OCD of me to sort the potatoes into sizes… but I hate scruffing through little potatoes trying to find bigger ones when I am cooking. I’ll just wash and steam the smaller ones, but if I am doing mashed potatoes I have zero interest in standing about all night trying to peel 30 tiny potatoes. Nope!
I line boxes with newspaper and also layer with newspaper
Not too many weird ones this season
Overall not a bad haul… like everything else, not as good as last season. But plenty to keep us going for a while.
One box will live in the pantry and the other three wait their turn out in the shed!
Time for me to go wash the red dirt off! We are planning to go out to the movies – best have a scrub up!
Hello! Amazing how quick Friday seems to appear and disappear!! What are the grand weekend plans for everyone?
If the weather is reasonable tomorrow, Jeff and I want to dig up our potatoes. That will be a fun, grotty job!
Yesterday was lovely. I did nothing. I didn’t even get out of my nightie (A huge time saver when going back to bed… not having to turn the place upside down looking for it! 😀 )
I crocheted a few granny squares and generally relaxed!
Today – back into a bit of gardening. I popped around to Ruby’s and did a couple of hours in the garden
Sadly no parsnip germinated and only 10 carrots – will have to put some more in.
This plot was getting weedy and scruffy
I have left all the self seeded potatoes in – Ruby loves going and finding bonus chat potatoes.
I also used most of what was left of her seaweed and covered the entire plot to tidy it up and slow the weed regrowth.
After a cuppa, I went back home and did a bit in our garden. Mostly taking out the dried snow pea vines and collecting the pods… more than enough seeds for next season
And look!!
OK – they are really not fat enough yet, but they were sweet and it was so nice to FINALLY have some corn on the plate!
Monster Black Russian tomato!
I really enjoy picking food! It does mean a lot more kitchen time coming up, but its all so satisfying!
Hello! Midweek already…
Most of my day was taken up with finishing some things in the kitchen.
The three beetroots that I pulled up the other day got chopped and pickled. I have really been enjoying it in my salads. Plus I have a buyer for a jar 🙂
I also de-pipped and pulped the last of the plums. Then, because I was on a roll I decided to make that lot straight up into a batch of plum sauce. It turned out really well and I didn’t even have to thicken it!
I got a bit over-zealous and also made up our favourite Japanese dish, koroke (mashed potato & mince made into a patty and fried) and teriyaki chicken. (You know, because I hadn’t stood up in the kitchen long enough already today)
Still… it was a good dinner and lots of leftovers so I might do a day of nothing tomorrow 🙂
Also managed to tuck the tails in on my latest lot of granny squares – a more somber arrangement of colours but I like them too !
Its only 9.30pm and I am DONE for the day! (Even the last of the dishes have been sorted!) Wow… I may get an early nights sleep tonight!
Hello! I would like to let those of you who were worrying know, that I completely survived my shopping trip. Even more amazing I came home with FOUR items of clothing and only one book.
I have impressed my husband.
I bought a couple of bra’s – which was agony in itself… I cannot wear underwire and I don’t need anything padded. (Happy with my natural padding) BUT – seems everything was wired and padded!
Finally found a place that sold some normal bra’s. I hadn’t bought them for about 10 years. Kid you not. I have been wearing crop tops but they get a bit saggy and the old bra’s I have been wearing to death are, to be honest, a bit manky.
Well… foundation garments sorted, I moved on to the hiking pants and rain jacket issue.
Sigh. Womens sections of shops are useless to me. In the end I bought some hiking pants from the mens section of Rivers, along with a water/wind proof lightweight jacket. Doesn’t anyone think women hike or work in outdoor situations?
I bought a book because it was easy, fun and stress less 🙂
Home again I enjoyed an enormous slice of tomato on a piece of toast for lunch then amused myself in the garden for a while!
Two nice days in a row – gives me hope that some of these very very very late tomatoes have a slight chance of ripening
I have a mad amount of tomato plants out there!
The corn is also agonisingly slow. The cobs are showing signs of fattening up at last.
I did peek into one but it is not ready yet. I have to stop going down every day to see… Maybe if I ignore them for a week…??
Happily the seaweed mulch is really doing its job where I put it down… the weeds have really been cut back
Weeds flourishing on the right side where I didn’t get to weed and mulch
I had almost given up on the runner beans – but they are making a significant appearance now
Half the bean arch is falling over!
I finally got around to putting in a few small rows of carrots. First time I have tried using my own seed
Then I took a pretty bad and boring photo of the patch… haha
My potato patch is looking fairly scraggly and done in. I think its about time to dig the lot up and use the space to get more winter vegies on the go.
I’ll wait until Jeff has his next lot of days off so we can do this together. He loves digging potatoes as much as I do.
(But I did sort of accidentally dig another plant – I’ll view that as a reconnaissance job)
They weren’t huge, but decent sized and a good amount under a single plant
This one was under a self sown potato that I found when planting the carrot seeds
Rogue potatoes under the macrocarpas doing well with no assistance from me!Apple cucumber (got two more of those)More self seeded parsley appearing and doing well!
And out of all the pumpkin plants I have one measly little pumpkin growing!!
Hello!
Today was fluffy clouds & blue skies! Chalk and cheese from yesterday!
I did finish my relish, (eventually this evening) but we took advantage of the weather today and went for our loop hike around Anniversary Bay.
We took about two and a half hours, saw a snake and nearly got run over by a speeding wallaby! (Naturally had put my camera in my backpack for both fauna incidents!!)
We didn’t pack and carry big packs. Really thinking we should as we are less than a month out from our start date
Had a good chat with our friend Rachel tonight who is coming along with us on the Cradle Adventure. I highly recommended she get hold of a fly veil! The flies were so sticky today… much nicer if they can’t sit on your face!
Rachel is booked to arrive in Tassie a few days before we head off. Time enough to get all the gear packed and make sure we haven’t forgotten any little essentials.
Jeff has been avidly watching hiking videos, collecting gear, sorting clothes and generally being rather switched on about the whole thing. Apart from cooking and dehydrating a couple of meals, I have actually thought about making a list! 😀
Love the sand patterns
I am thinking I might duck into town tomorrow to see if I can find some suitable pants/shorts and a decent rain jacket. (Yes yes, I live in Tasmania, so I should own several proper rain jackets… but I don’t)
I hate clothes shopping. I think its been a couple of years since I bought any new clothes. I will be brave and try. (Often I give up after two shops and dive into a book shop and treat myself to a new book to get over the clothes-shopping-trauma)(I’ll let you know how I go)
The last little bit of ‘up’ for the dayLooking back into the sun
I love the last part of this little hike. Mostly flat across the top with great views all around.
Well… I think the Weather God’s are having their meetings above Flowerdale and are in a cranky mood!
What a (non) summer!
As well as the rain it was cold.
SO – back to the kitchen for me!
I got the vegie mix I made yesterday and popped it in the dehydrator. One more hiking meal taken care of!
I have been running out of room in the freezers. (Probably something to do with all the ice cream I have been making) So wanted to get most of the plum pulp cooked into jam rather than freezing for later.
I did it in two batches (one 5lb’s and the other 4lbs) That’s about the limit for a batch of jam for me. I find if I do bigger lots it NEVER cooks or sets.
I know my Dad is reading this! Hi Dad!! Yep – there are a few jars there for you so you don’t have to be on such strict rations anymore 🙂
Enough chillies to easily make another batch of sweet chilli sauce. But I just topped them & de-seeded ready for another day and squashed them into the freezer. (Handy having a nurse – usually has spare latex gloves to do this job! If I do it without gloves its about three days before I can put my hands into warm water without them stinging like Billy-Oh!)
Last job before dinner (which I was multitasking-cooking) was to cut 6lb’s of tomatos and 2lbs of onion to mix. It needs to sit overnight before doing my tomato relish.
But that’s tomorrow
I have done enough dishes to sink a battleship (ok – slight exaggeration) but I will ignore what is out there until the morning.
Hope your weekend has been fabulous and domestic chores-free!
Cheers!
Last night – before the clouds came in and made Sunday soggy
Short and sweet tonight!
Had a lovely afternoon picking and digging!
I have already cooked the celery, carrot, zucchini and quite a few tomatoes into a vegie mix that will get dehydrated for one of our hiking meals.
I also stuffed some tomatoes and steamed potatoes for dinner tonight (Jeff BBQed up some steaks and it was all perfect!)
Looking forward to pickling that beetroot. I miss it in my salads – I ate the last lot pretty fast!
