Gardens are for Sharing

One of the great things about having a veggie garden and chickens is being able to share. We always take excess next door, or share with friends and relatives.
A couple of days ago my cousin & her son came over to visit. I hadn't spent much time with them since they moved back from Queensland so it was great catching up. Before they left we went out in the garden and picked veggies. Her son L said that he'd never picked veggies before & I think he really enjoyed it. He also liked feeding greens to the chickens, "If I was Stella I'd be doing this all the time"..,.hmmmm Stella little bit over it now.
Then I showed L how the chickens love worms. Digging up worms for the kids to feed to the chickens is great fun.

Veggie gardens are great for sharing & connecting to people.
Speaking of gardens this afternoon I went out to pick parsley & dill to make potatos salad...yummy

I am Cultured

Most people eat yoghurt, or what the shops like to call yoghurt. It comes in little tubs, it has the bacterias, it claims to be beneficial. Reality is most of the yoghurts you buy are either: fat free, loaded with chemicals for flavouring, full of sugar or all of the above. There are some great yoghurts that are completely without the crap. I like to add honey, berries, chuck them it in smoothies or use to make cream cheese & whey. The added plus is they are convenient. BUT (& there's always a but) you need to read labels to make sure you are getting proper yoghurt. So you have your yoghurt on your shopping list...where's the fun?

I recently brought a jar of bacterias. Then I got a yoghurt thermometer. Then by chance I was in aldi & they had yoghurt makers on clearance. Making yoghurt is surprisingly easy, doesn't take long & is helping Stella learn about tempretures & science. It's also good if you have plain, "normal" milk as you are putting good stuff back in. So making yoghurt is easy. I found something even easier. Finnish viila (spelling??) & Scandinavian piima. These cultures are great, you add them to milk or milk/cream in a jar & pretty much leave it on the cupboard. They culture at room tempreture. Nice & easy.

The only thing is you can't have them next to each other or near other cultures you are doing as they will cross & eventually weaken. So now in our kitchen/dining area I have a water kefir spot, a viila spot & a piima spot. The "normal" yoghurt when it's made has it's own spot as well. Lots of culture in this house! Hehehehehe

So if you live nearby & want to have a go at how easy it is, let me know & I'll hook you up with some starters.

At the Risk of Sounding Repetitive....

My diet is not perfect, but I am trying. I am better with what the girls eat, but it's still far from ideal. I am not an ogre, when there is the occasional birthday cake at school or the occasional sausage sizzle at a gala day I let the girls join in. It is a TREAT. This means they do not get dessert every night, or something in their lunch box everyday. A TREAT may be only once a month or every 2 weeks. When it is all the time/constantly it is no longer a TREAT!! I try to make some "fun' foods e.g pikelets, muffins etc but I mostly keep the fruit bowls filled and the girls have free run with these.
I think most people now have the mindset of "kids eat junk", or if you don't give your child these "treats" you are depriving them of something.

At the moment I feel like I'm being continually undermined by the girls dad. He'll turn up on saturday mornings to take us dancing and he'll hand them a hash brown. Or he'll wait until I'm somewhere else and hand them crap. Or my personal favourite he'll ask if they can have x. When I say no he hands it to them anyway!! This is driving me nuts. I have no idea what to do about this as he knows if they are already eating it I can't really take it off them...Can I?

I've tried explaining why I'm doing what I'm doing, but he seems to have the opinion that if they don't have "treats" they are missing out. At least that's where I think he's coming from. Any ideas for what to do?

Feeling Blah

Yesterday I did an all day anaphylaxis/asthma/first aid course which is a requirement for my work. Good day and the instructor touched lightly on the food issue and what we are doing to our kids. It would of been interesting to talk to him further about that but unfortunately there wasn't time. Mum had the girls & I know they didn't have the best choices for lunch but it wasn't totally gross (ie starts with M or K). This is leading into me getting home late & being tired. We had already done the omelette thing the night before.

We ordered Malaysian. It tasted great. Really, really great. We used to order from there all the time and the food has always been yummy. You can just see a BUT there can't you?
BUT I woke up at 3.30am feeling not sick, but heavy, and really thirsty. I couldn't get back to sleep. Finally at 4am I got up and had water with ACV and warm milk/honey. Close to 5 am I went back to sleep. It's just before 7am and I'm up again and still thirsty. My mouth feels sand papery.

I'm assuming it's dinner that made me feel blah. I'm not sick, I just feel blah. The food tasted great and I had really big servings. I've never questioned what's in their sauces and I think that's the place to start...I also need to find a fantastic satay recipe so I can make my own.  Very clean eating for the next couple of days!

Updates & Giveaways

This has been a week of firsts...The most important first: Stella's dance troupe got first place the first time they performed their new song & dance number (they got highly commended for Jazz - which they absolutley nailed). All the kids work really hard (so does their teacher), so it was great to see.
I made my first lot of whey & cream cheese from Nourishing Traditions and it turned out well. I've used some whey in my first lot of lacto-fermented mayonnaise, which is sitting on the cupboard now. I've got my first lot of water kefir brewing. Stella & I made our first lot of yoghurt which is really yummy. I got my paws on our first lot of raw milk and raw cream. Today we tried our first lot of raw milk in a smoothie. You would think since I live not far from dairys I could find a source of raw milk...but no I have to buy "Bath" milk. That's the loophole. Health food shops are allowed to sell raw milk for beauty purposes....But hey you can buy whatever flavoured milk you want in the supermarket! another first - Bre has her first (and hopefully last) case of hand, foot & mouth. She picked it up from daycare, luckily only a mild dose because some of the other kids are absolutley covered. I like to think that maybe our diets have played a part in her getting such a mild dose.

The veggie garden is pretty much planted out now. Lots of beetroot - I love beetroot, cabbage, cucumber, zucchinni, pumpkin, beans, carrots, radish, capsicum, eggplant. As well as everything else we've got in. More will get planted as the season progresses, but we have a great start. I'm going to be buying some mason jars so that I can preserve some by lacto-fermentation, as well as using them for my water kefir, freezing stocks & whatever else I can think of.

The no coffee thing is not doing well. I'm now back on instant & I'm trying to limit myself to 3 cups a day. From there I plan on cutting down further. I'ts such a hard habit to break...I love coffee & the only time I actually hated the taste was when I was pregnant with Bre.

I'm also starting to think about Christmas. It's really not that far away. Usually I bake presents for people (the last 2 years i didn't - heavily pregnant & then small baby/sick child). I've been thinking how I can make the presents more "real" food. The shortbread is a challenge. If anyone else has a suggestion on how I can tweak the recipe (the butter is fine, it's just the caster sugar). I've also found where to get ethical, free range happy ham. This is major because I love Christmas ham & wasplanning on not getting it. I'll have to order soon & i'll be paying more but at least I know the pigs have been treated well and have had a happy life (with one bad day).

GIVEAWAY: Come up with a smoothie recipe. I'll make it and Stella will score out of 10 (I'll add 2 points for unusual ingredients). The winner will recieve 4 stainless steel straws - 2 smoothie width 2 normal. Competition finishes 9th September. So get creative!

Sabotage!!

I've been going pretty well with the whole/real foods thing. There's been a couple of slip ups & a couple of occasions where the girls have eaten crap (e.g been at a fete so they had some lollies, ice cream & sausage sandwich). The good food has outnumbered the bad, but we could have done better. There has been a few sabotages though....The girl's dad keeps buying crap (granted not as much as he once did). He'll turn up with stuff like hash browns from the golden arches and give them to the girls before I can say or do anything. I caught the Asian rice cakes that were full of colours, refined products and god knows what else. That led to the comment about how they can have treats and I might as well just have them eat carrot sticks for the rest of their lives. Then there was the microwavepopcorn. I confess I actually nuked a bag & ate it myself. It tasted like a chemical sh**storm and I felt horrid. I binned the other 4 packets.

Now my mum is back home. For almost 6 months she has been staying with my grandma and I've been getting rid of all the processed junk. Mum comes home and junk is getting brought. In her defense it is "healthy" junk...Example last night to save me cooking she brought a ready made quiche, pasta salad, tabbouleh and coleslaw with shop mayo. I added tomato, cucumber, beet root & onion, I put small serves of the other stuff out. I'm going to have to pre-make some easy dinner meals. Also this weekend I'm going to make some muffins, bars etc for mum to take to work. Then hopefully start weaning her off chemical lunches (noodles, tin soups etc)

Don't know what to do about the girls dad though..and mum really as she doesn't see much wrong with the "healthy" junk. I think slowly change things & try & get her to read some of the books etc that I've got.....

How do other people manage partners/parents/family/friends who don't see anything wrong in feeding your kids (& you) crap??