SMOKEY

Smokey is the daughter of Pepper and Charcoal.  She is one very pretty grey bunny, with a very docile temperament.

I'm not sure if she is going to a new home soon, but she has been offered to a gentleman who would like another female bunny, and because of her gentle nature, and the fact that she isn't bonded, I thought she would be perfect.  I know she will be going to a good home as well, and be as loved there as she is here.  I will find out over the next few weeks whether she will be relocated.

She has these amazing blue eyes.  She is a bit of a mix.  Charcoal was a Seal Point French Lop, and Pepper is a Havanna (but looks like a Himalayan). I'm not sure - would this make her a Seal Point Blue?

I love these friendly bunnies of mine!  They love to come up and put their noses just under my hand and beg to be patted.  All except Midnight that is.  She is a bit broody at the moment and although isn't agressive (none of them are), she is certainly grunting at everything that moves and doesn't want to be cuddled.  Fair enough!

Week 34 of the 2011 Food Storage Challenge

$10 Plan
Store 2 large cans fruit

$20 Plan
Store 4 large cans fruit

You can store:-

• Peaches
• Nectarines
• Apricots
• Plums
• Pineapple
• Cherries
• Lychees
• Two Fruits
• Fruit Salad
• Apple pie filling
• Mixed Berries
• Pears

Etc.

I love having canned fruit on hand.  It is really yummy with egg custard made in the Thermomix, or with ice cream in Summer.  You can make fruit crumble with it, turn it into pies if that particular fruit is out of season.  I guess the whole point is that if for some bizarre reason our fruit supply went downhill, we could still get some of those nutrients out of our tinned fruit.

I dehydrate fruit as well.  I still have some fruit-leather bananas from before Cyclone Yasi hit.  Unfortunately we're not so big on bananas as my place, but my son will happily munch on these, or snip some up and put them in his porridge.

Week 33 of the 2011 Food Storage Challenge

$10 Challenge
Store 4 cans peas and 1 packet Instant Mashed Potato 

$20 Challenge
Store 4 cans peas, 1 packet Instant Mashed Potato and 4 cans fruit

I think the fruit and the peas are fairly self explanatory, but the Instant Mashed Potato could be an odd choice.

Use Instant Mashed Potato when you don't want to eat rice...or pasta.  I recently purchased and used a packet of  Aldi Instant Mashed Potato and was expecting to taste as gross as the stuff my parents use to buy.  I was pleasantly surprised though.  It was actually edible, and I would happily use it if I didn't have fresh potatoes in my cupboard.

Uses for Instant Mashed Potato:-

• Tuna Pie
• Shepherd's Pie
• Potato Pancakes
• Bubble and Squeak
• In a chocolate cake (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/potato-chocolate-cake/detail.aspx)
• Croquettes
• Gnocchi
• Potato Soup (http://www.grouprecipes.com/18126/near-instant-potato-soup.html)

Herb and Parmesan Cheese Toast

This is fresh out of my garden, and what I like to blitz into near oblivion to serve up in my Parmesan Cheese and Herb Toast (if you count spinach as a herb!  I grabbed whatever the bunnies hadn't gotten to.)

I had a craving for the stuff they serve you at Sizzler.  It is golden and crunchy on top, but super soft inside...you get the picture.

So this is what I decided to do:-

- Baked my own loaf of bread (LOVE my bread maker!)
- Picked some greens from the garden - see above.  You can also use sage, oregano or chives.
- Throw the above greenery into my Thermomix (use a food processor if you have one, or chop chop chop away!
- Once the greens are pulverised blitzed, add 125 grams of butter and grated Parmesan cheese - I threw in the entire contents of a snack sized sandwich bag of frozen grated Parmesan cheese.

Note: If your food processor can handle butter cold and hard, go ahead and throw it in.  Most like the butter at room temperature though.  My Thermomix crushes ice easily, so no dramas there.

- Blitz until it looks like greenish butter and smells cheesy.
- Layer on thickly on fresh bread and grill until golden and crunchy.

YUM!

The verdict?  It is WAY better than what they serve at Sizzler!!

And sorry, I couldn't take pictures of the finished product.  It got eaten way too fast.

Week 32 of the 2011 Food Storage Challenge

$10 Challenge
Store 3 tins corn and 2 tins peas

$20 Challenge
Store 4 tins corn and 2 tins peas

Or you can store other canned veggies of your choosing such as carrots, beetroot, beans, capsicum, champignons, asparagus etc.

August 2011 Challenge

This month's challenge is to do with survival:-

Do you know how to cook without gas and electricity?  What would you need to purchase to do so?

And then you can store oil - be it Vegetable Oil, Rice Bran Oil, Olive Oil, Canola Oil, Grapeseed Oil and even Pomace Oil (great for soap making).  It is entirely up to you the quantity of oil you store.

I find vegetable oil versatile and I use it for a variety of purposes ranging from being used instead of butter in cakes to providing a non-stick surface to the BBQ (it helps with cleaning the BBQ as well).

I also store other oils and mainly use olive oil or Rice Bran Oil if I have to pan fry something.  Rice Bran Oil has a high smoking point, and has very little smell.  Occasionally Aldi has it on special, and I stock up on it then.

So basically we're storing an oil you can use generally in cooking, either as an ingredient or to assist with the cooking process.

I am going to mosey on into Costo one of these days and see if they have giant cans - the ones the Golden Circle punch/pineapple juice comes in.  I found that if you have one side open, and you can cut a square out of the bottom (of the opened side), then you can use it as a mini oven - only for outdoor use of course!  Stick some BBQ firelighters underneath and you can certainly use it for re-heating.  A camp trick I learned many years ago.

They're good for pancakes! (Not my photo.  It is from instructables.com)

"Living Debt Free" from Luke V Erickson

I listened to this talk (podcast?) today, and I loved it.  It didn't bring up any new concepts for me, but it is great to be reminded every now and then just why we do the things we do, and why we try to stay out of debt as much as possible.

http://mormonchannel.org/programs/mormon-identities-episode-56?lang=eng&cid=MMemail8-3-11-L3#d

Luke likens debt to the lure used to catch octopus called a Maka Feke.  Basically the octopus will grip on to the Maka Feke but there is nothing to stop it from doing that, it is free to let go if it wants to, however it just grips on tight because it is lured by it.  Unfortunately then the octopus is pulled into the boat and is no longer free.

He mentions how to prioritise paying off debt.  That husbands and wives should sit down together each month and discuss their finances to see if they're on track so that nothing is hidden, or one spouse is trying to make everything smooth sailing if there is an issue. 

He also talks about appropriate debt (is a car or a house appropriate debt?  How about a student loan?).

Is debt an addiction?  Do we use it to make ourselves feel good (ie going on a shopping spree to feel happy?).

Yes, I'm thinking about finances now as we prepare to purchase the home we have been renting for the last nearly 12 years.  It is a huge step for us, but we are very excited!