Living The Good Life

Just taking it easy at TGOG’s urban farm. 

We have been harvesting sweetcorn, cucumbers, a multitude of tomatoes, herbs, capsicums, snow peas, blood plums, a variety of lettuce, Swiss rainbow chard, and Jalapeno chilies.

Tonight I made tomato jam, and added a bit of mixed spice to the recipe.  It tastes great.  It was so simple in the bread maker.  I added 500gm of peeled and cored tomatoes, a quarter of a teaspoon of mixed spice, one and a quarter cups of sugar, and two tablespoons of Jamsetta.  About an hour later and this is what I got.

Kim was quite impressed and it tasted great to boot.  Apparently you can use it on toast, and with roast meat as a relish.  Later on tonight I am making a spicy plum sauce, which (I hope) will taste something like hoisin sauce which we both love on most Chinese dishes that I cook.

Last night we had omelettes, to which I added shredded ham, red onion, cheese, and tomatoes.  They were very yummy, and a cheap meal.  The chooks are doing well, and send their love!

Tomorrow night I am going to whip up a batch of my Chili Chutney.  We are presently down to our last jar from last years stock.  We use it sparingly on sandwiches which have cold meat in them.  It is so hot, but very, very tasty.  I find it far better than hot English mustard which used to be one of my favourites.

Other than those very exciting events, not much is going down around here.  The weather has cooled down to low 30’s, and we are not having to water the veggie patch so much.  Everyone is fine, and doing well.  I have started putting the carbon inventory together for the ATA, and thanks to Sophie at the ATA for sending through a constant stream of data to analyse.  With the third class room day on Monday for the Carbon Accounting course, I should have the assignment ready for presentation by the due date.  I am so glad that I plan ahead.

We wavered from one of our 2009 goals last week during the extreme heat.  On the third day of over 43C, I decided that enough was enough, and ordered pizza from the local pizza shop.  To my surprise the place was packed.  I think that like us, no-one wanted to cook that night.  It was so bloody hot.  But back on the bandwagon now.  We have started afresh, and are twice as determined to continue on the no takeaway challenge.  We have saved so much money so far, and the $50 play money that we allocate ourselves each fortnight rarely gets spent.  We figured out that most of the time, we used to spend it on fast food, and went through it in a flash.  No more, thank goodness and we now always have cash in our wallets a day before payday!

For the rest of the week, I wait with baited breath for Lynda to tell me that the Today Tonight story will go to air.  She has told me that it will be a national report, so the entire country will get to see my mug! 

Just think.  I will be able to add the moniker of "As seen on TV" to the side bar (just joking).  That is of course, if it goes to air.  I thought that with all this crazy weather of late, it would have been screened sooner than later, because the drama would have been fresh in the general populations minds.  Not to worry.  It will happen when it happens.