Doing The Best I Can

Kim pulled out the remainder of the Bok Choy because it wasn’t very popular with the masses, and was going to seed due to lack of water. I purposely left the largest plant in the ground so that I could collect the seed, but just as Kim had brought over the last of the plants for composting, Adam yells out “Kim, you missed one” and ran over to the bin with it! All we could do was laugh, replant it and give it a big drink and hope it goes to seed as planned. After I finished with the compost bins, I hobbled over to admire Kim’s good work and the began to wonder where half my Chinese cabbage plants had gone. I mentioned this to her and she showed me the great weeding effort she had begun. Once I told her what they were she said “I wondered why all the weeds were growing in a straight line”. I didn’t mind as they needed thinning anyway! I was amazed how much both of them learnt just by me not being able to physically do anything. It just goes to show that teaching is sometimes more rewarding than actually doing. I was very pleased with their efforts and gave them both a big hug.

During the composting, I noticed that I have mushrooms growing in the compost bin that is ready to use. You see, I had a failed mushroom kit that after three months had not produced any of the normal signs of little white buttons after the first 21 days as the instructions stated. So instead of throwing it in the large Aerobin that would have destroyed the fungi spores, I cleverly spread the contents of the kit lightly over the ready compost in one of the colder bins. The great thing is, that nature took over, and in a few weeks time I will have lots of button mushrooms that I was originally after all. I don’t need the compost until spring so everyone is a winner.

I had to take a nap this afternoon, and during that time Kim whipped up a delicious roast chicken dinner. We has prepared most of the veg before my nap, with me peeling the spuds and picking the sage, thyme, parsley, and oregano from the garden to use in the stuffing for the bird.

After dinner was finished, which everyone complemented her on, Kim picked as much of the meat off of the carcass for the dogs dinners for the next four nights (mixed with the left over veg). I then threw the carcass into the water that Kim has steamed the vegetables with (about 3 liters of veg flavoured water), added another litre of water, a celery stick, a quartered onion, four garlic cloves, a chopped carrot all with skins on, and then covered the pot and simmered it all for an hour. Then I strained the soup, picked all the remaining meat off of the bones and put that back in the liquid. I also put back the carrots, some celery and squished the garlic pulp back into it. Lastly, I added a half teaspoon of salt, two teaspoons of curry powder and pepper to taste. We ended up with a very tasty soup that we will have for dinner tomorrow night. What a great way to utilize the carcass that I would have normally thrown away. Never again will chicken bones go into the bin! Now that is frugal living. It only took about 15 minutes to make and the hardest bit was sorting out the bones from the meat after the one hour cooking time which was pretty easy because it just fell off the bone. I gave Kim a small ramekin full and she gave it a big thumbs up.

Even though I didn’t spend much time out of bed or off the couch, I feel like the time I was able to be active was well spent indeed. A great weekend under the circumstances. Life is what you make it!