1 Million Women - 1000 kg reached on personal goals

I'm not usually one for joining campaigns but the 1 Million Women campaign sparked my interest.

I believe I was attracted the fact that the campaign recognises the importance and power of women's decisions in the home, especially when all working towards a common goal.

So I joined, I set up my activity register and then I waited a few weeks before marking my progress on some of the activities.

I will admit that I chose some activities that I had already implemented around the house (like buying 10% green power, installing water saving shower heads and power saving light bulbs) but I didn't feel I should lose out because I had taken the steps earlier than the project came in!

So I haven't REALLY made sudden changes to my life in the last 3 weeks to save 1000kg of carbon emissions as per the info below.... but I have over the last few months AND I've set some new goals that I'm working towards due to the campaign.

Tuna and Potato Pot Pie

I originally intended to make my mum's 'fish cakes' recipe but found I had no mayonnaise in the fridge. Instead I boiled and mashed up potato to help bring the tuna mixture together into patties. At the point of cooking them I decided that I wasn't keen on frying in oil and butter but would rather bake them for a healthier finish.

A new recipe was created!


Tuna & Potato Pot Pie

• 185g can of tuna in brine, drained
• 3 medium potatoes, peeled & chopped
• splash milk
• 1/2 tsp butter
• 1/2 onion chopped finely
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• splash lime juice (lemon juice could be substutited)
  
• 3/4 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 tomato, sliced
• 1/2 cup cheese

Preheat oven to 180 degrees (c).
Boil or steam potatoes until soft. Mash the potato with the milk and butter until of a smooth consistency.
Mix tuna, potato, onion, egg, breadcrumbs and lime juice togther in a bowl. Combine well.
Spoon mixture into ramkins (4 - 5 depending on size of your ramekins).
Place a tomato slice on top of each pie and top with a sprinkling of cheese.
Put ramekins on a flat cookie tray and bake in the oven until the cheese is browned.

Note:
If eaten fresh from the oven, keep in the ramekin. I refrigerated leftoever pies overnight. The next day I was able to pop them out of the ramekins to reheat.

Smoke me a kipper! I'll be back for breakfast!

Every so often while at the supermarket I get the urge to buy something completely out of the ordinary. Sometimes this leads to unpleasant results like the time I bought some odd, spongey fungus from a asian-mart which I used in a doomed stir-fry I dubbed "the bowel shaker" .... let's not go there.

But other times I stumble across something that finds a home in my diet.

This time that something was tinned kippers.

I was doing my usual shopping experience, extended by careful perusal of product labels, prices etc. I was intending to buy some tuna but was feeling dissatisfied by the options. Temptingly close to the tuna was canned salmon. I'm not one for salmon flavour but a book Rhys had shown me recently said that salmon was a superfood. I knew it to be packed with omega 3 fatty acids and very good for me but I just wasn't feeling the salmon love.

In frustration my eyes strayed above the salmon to some of the more unusual canned options.

Canned Sardines. I remember my grandma making us sardine sandwiches when I was a little girl but the idea of chomping on tiny bones doesn't appeal. Canned mussels. Ewwww. Canned Kippers. Whut?!!

Then of course my brain linked to the one thing that was connected to kippers in my life thus far, Ace Rimmer from the BBC comedy, Red Dwarf, boldly saying "Smoke me a kipper skipper! I'll be back for breakfast!"

From that moment I was without choice. I HAD to buy the kippers.

But once I got them home I felt at a loss on how to use them. John West, the producer of my tinned kipper, linked to another foodie site that had a recipe for some kind of kipper and pasta salad. Certain vital ingredients were missing so I played with what I had.

Pasta and Kipper Salad

• 1 can tinned kippers
• 1 capsicum, sliced
• 1 zucchini, sliced
• 1 handful cherry tomatoes
• 250g pasta (spirals)

Put the pasta on to boil. Drain and set aside once al dente.
Meanwhile heat some butter or olive oil in a frypan. Fry the capsicum, zucchini and tomatoes. Once the vegetables have softened set them aside.
Add the kipper and oil to the pan. Heat over low heat, being careful to not break up the flesh too much.
Gently mix pasta, vegetables and kipper in a serving bowl and eat while warm.


Kippers differ from tuna and salmon by the smokey smell and flavour of the fish flesh. I really enjoyed it as a tinned fish (and my kittens went absolutely nuts over the few leftover tidbits) but the smell is powerful and now I can smell nothing BUT kippers as I walk into my kitchen. :/

My positively favourite choc-chip recipe

• 180 g butter or margarine
• 1/3 cup castor sugar
• 4 tab condensed milk
• 1 1/2 cups SR flour
• pinch salt
• 200 - 250g choc chips (or chopped chocolate block)
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to moderate (180 degrees celcius) and grease baking trays.
Cream the butter, sugar and condensed milk.
Fold in flour, salt, chocolate and nuts.
Roll into balls and place on trays about 10cm apart. They will spread while baking!
Flatten balls slightly.
Bake in the moderate oven for 15 min, turning the tray at half time to ensure even baking.

Bunnies are the New Chickens

A really interesting read about the benefits of the homesteader keeping rabbits for sustainable food/resource.

"Backyard Bunnies are the New Urban Chickens" by Good.is

WARNING - article contains images of bunny carcasses (no blood) in the context of a rabbit butchery class. If you have a weak stomach for such images please refrain from reading.

What a shame QLD law strictly prohibits rabbits as pets.

Nature's Alarm Clocks

All my life I have been a mid to late sleeper. When living at my last share house I would wake up around 7:30am - 8:00am even on workdays. But no longer!

All my life I have relied on an electric alarm clock to go off to wake me or at least show me the time in bright red lights so I can ensure I don't oversleep. It has been turned off for the last week.

Below is a picture of the reason I now wake up anytime from 4:40am - 5:30am.



Partly this is responsibility driven. I know kittehs need their breakfast. I know they will continue to mew insistently outside the bedroom door until they wake Rhys who needs more sleep than I. I know I have lunch to make and pack, breakfast to have, bins to put out etc. In the future I'll also need to feed chickens and maybe do some morning garden watering.

In another way the choice is out of my hands. I will be woken by the door meows. If the door is already open (or I wake long enough to open the door and crawl back into bed) I will have a kitten snuffle at my ear/nose/eyeball/forehead and I'll open my eyes to see a pair of big hopeful kitten eyes plainly saying "wake time nao plz."

And over time the early waking has become a pleasure. Time to relax, have breakfast, enjoy the quiet world, play with kittens, type up blog entries...

Product Review - Lush Solid Deoderant #2

Mid last year I was looking to replace my toiletries and what cosmetics I actually use with ones that were free of unecessary and possibly harmful chemicals.

I was happy when I found that the soaps and cosmetics company Lush made solid deoderants without any of the unwanted ingredients on my strike list. I bought a dried powder block deoderant to try out. I really wanted it to work out for me as I'm keen on Lush as a company with an environmental conscience, limited plastic packaging and low energy/handmade production of their goods.

Unfortunately, as I wrote in my review on this blog, the powder cube didn't agree with me. After a few weeks of using it I still received a burning sensation and redness in my armpits when using it.

So in desperation I tried again with another Lush product - the Aromaco solid deoderant. Like the powder cube, the Aromaco had none of the unwanted chemicals in it, it was a deoderant only and not an anti-perspirant and it came with the usual recycled paper packaging Lush uses. The solid deoderant bar feels like a firm soap and is applied like soap by rubbing it onto your skin. I usually add a touch of water to the bar before rubbing to help application.

It has now lasted me 6 months and I've still half a bar left. I'm impressed with how it has warded off body stink during the Winter and Spring months. Scented with a soft witch-hazel-meets-patchouli it is non-offensive to even fussy-pants Rhys. (Though he does turn his nose up at the block when I use it and calls it my "feral hippy deoderant").

Now we've reached Summer I'm starting to see a decline in the effectiveness of the deoderant block over a full day, especially when I have to walk through the humid Queensland heat at my typically fast pace. I'm planning to get a second bar to keep in a tin at work so hopefully I won't have to supplement it's use with something less ideal.

In short I'm incredibly happy with it as a product and am pleasantly surprised with how long the small block I bought has lasted me thus far. If you're interested in giving it a try but don't have a Lush store near you, you can always buy it and any other Lush product from their website.