Egg Shells
I love my chickens, love my eggs. I like them fried, scrambled, poached and boiled. I like using them in egg sandwiches, for deviled eggs, in salads, in cakes, pancakes…. You get the idea.
What do I do with all of my eggshells? I definitely don’t put them in the bin. My girls worked hard to produce them so I want to make the most of them. I crush some of them and scatter on the ground with food scraps so the girls are getting some calcium back in and it also provides material for their crops to help grind their food as they consume it.
I also like to put them in my compost or worm farm. I have crushed the shells by hand in the past before getting my Thermomix. I always find pieces left months down the track when I’ve gone to use the compost in my garden. I popped some into the Thermomix and blitzed them at speed 8 for 5 seconds and ended up with fine ground particles. Wow, so much quicker and less harsh on the hands!
I now use them like this to sprinkle into the worm farm or compost. My next project is to turn some of the ground egg shell into home made “chalk”. I’ll post my results later.
RU@HOME?
I thought I would do a play on RUOK? And ask instead Are You At Home? With a lot of people being at home, either due to schools being closed or needing to work from home, you might think we have a lot of relaxation time…..
For me, it’s been a bit of a challenge. As Hubby is at home for work, I can’t turn on my “happy” music and power through chores because he needs to have phone and online conferences. With a child still at home As well, he wants to game or have me do stuff with him, but generally at times that are not convenient for my work plan for the day. There is also the endless news reports about not being able to purchase basic items from the supermarket and hourly counts of rising infection numbers. Whew, how to deal with this?
First, try to make a schedule or routine that your family can follow. It will need to be a bit flexible when there are kids involved because they need our attention too. As this is our first week at home, we’re still in the design process, as it were. On week days, we get up by 8am with breakfast finished by 9am (Hubby tends to get started a bit sooner). We also don’t stay up late as we don’t want to get into that habit and have to try to break it when normality comes back in – and it will.
Make sure to schedule in exercise time. This could be taking the dog out for a walk, doing some weeding or having a game of Lets Dance on the Xbox with the kids. Try to keep meal times to a regular time and eat healthy. It’s really easy to grab a bag of chips and sit on the couch and watch tv for a few hours. If you eat healthier your body will be able to cope with the stresses this situation is bringing about.
Add some fun! There is so much negativity in the world right now that its easy to forget how much there is to be thankful for and to celebrate. We can’t see elderly relatives in aged care. Rather than feeling miserable, we can write emails, call them and have even managed Face Time. It’s good for them too. Have an unused Badminton set in the garage? Dig it out and see if you can still remember how to hit the shuttlecock that has a mind of its own! Grab a deck of cards and play a game with your family. On your own? Learn how to play Solitaire old school – with actual cards rather than the computer or tablet.
If you have extra time on your hands, now might be a great time to look at some online learning or brush up on some skills. There are a lot of free learning sites you can access. Even though local libraries have shut down for now, they have a massive amount of electronic resources for you to access, including learning portals, all for free.
All things end in time and this too shall pass. Remember to keep in touch with others and ask for help if you need it. I’ll be posting ideas and recipes for things we can do at home to continue our sustainability journey and also to help us make do when we may not have access to some grocery items.
Stay safe and enjoy life.
Tomato Ketchup (sauce for us Aussies)
I really dislike tomato sauce that has that sort of slimy mouth feel and you know it’s got thickeners and additives in it. Because I have finally had my tomatoes start to ripen here in Melbourne, I decided to make some in my Thermomix.
The thing I absolutely love about it, is that it uses the whole tomatoes – skin and pips, so I don’t need to blanch, peel or sieve and there’s no waster except the small core from the bigger tomatoes (I chucked small tomatoes in whole) which was given to the chooks. It also tastes amazing! You can find the recipe here:
https://cookidoo.com.au/recipes/recipe/en-AU/r68842
And my video tutorial here:
Enjoy.
Canning Fail of the Day
I love preserving food for when times get hectic and I can grab “convenience” food off my pantry shelf, knowing exactly what’s in it and more importantly, what’s NOT in it. I have a dehydrator, vacuum sealer, pressure canner and now my Thermomix to help with preparing food and pantry basics in advance to have on hand when I want them. It also give you a sense of pride and security when you look at your pantry shelves full of wholesome food that YOU prepared.
Sometimes things don’t always go to plan. I chose to laugh about this one but there have been some I’ve cried about. I was canning ground beef and when I opened the lid after the appropriate time and the pressure had gone back down was confronted with this.2 lids had completely blown off. I had followed the same procedure I always use so I’m not sure what happened. I double check all of my lids and how loose or tight they are now, just in case that was the cause. Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason. I decided to make spaghetti with the 2 open jars and the other 3 went on the pantry shelf. I had a giggle and said a silent thanks to the powers that be that it wasn’t worse and I was able to salvage the food I had spend money and time on.
Where to start
Hmmmm, so and so told me this, I read that in xyz book, I heard about such and such at a garden supply store, I learned this in an online course…. What to believe and where to start?
Firstly, work out what exactly (or as near as you can) you want to achieve in terms of sustainable living. Is your goal to have a veggie garden and eat healthier, reduce you water and power bills, reduce chemical use in your house? You need to start being as specific as you can and form a picture of what you want in your mind. Use a photo board or journal to help you visualise. Keep a small notebook or open a note on your phone or electronic tablet to jot things down when you think of them. Write down the things that you are not happy with currently but make sure to write down the things you are doing well and have made a start on. It’s very easy to get bogged down in all the things we do wrong or don’t do right and forget about what we have achieved so far.
Once you have an idea of what you want to achieve, you need to factor in the things in your life that will have an impact on your goals and how you go about working towards them. Things like house or apartment, are you on a large block or a small unit space, family, work and weekend commitments, time availability. It’s not much good me saying I want to make my own dairy products and spin my own wool from my own cattle and sheep when I live on a small unit size block and have heavy family commitments that only allow me an hour a week of available free time. We don’t want to be so caught up in struggling to do all the things to maintain our sustainable lifestyle that it becomes a chore with no time to relax and enjoy. Make sure you factor in self care time, family time, social time, whatever it is that you do to switch off and recharge.
Start one step at a time and work on that so it becomes habit and you are happy with the way it’s working. You may need to tweak things sometimes or you may find ways of improving on what you are doing. I started with veggie gardens because they were the first priority for me. I wanted to start growing my own food to enable my family to eat healthier, reduce my food miles and impact on the planet and save some money. I started with straw bale gardening because I had read it worked really well and I was curious.
Setting up a worm farm and composting system might be more important to you so you can reduce your waste going to landfill. Whatever it is, Just Do It! Make a start. If we all changed just one thing, thing of how different our world could be. 🙂