More Housing Thoughts!

I know I'm really not supposed to be online on a Thursday, but I've been doing some cooking and thinking (rolling dough and cutting biscuits gives lots of thinking time!), and have a few more thoughts to put out here that may or may not help bring clarity to the situation! My first post probably needs to be read to make sense of this one LOL.

Firstly, if the only issues with our current house were the indoor air quality and the need to extend the house, we would probably risk renovating as the reno's would hopefully help solve a few of the indoor air quality issues in the process. However, seeing as we are very much an outdoors family, the issues of proximity to neighbours and the busy street are of significant concern - and renovating can't solve these problems. This morning has shown me just how much my daughters need to be outside regularly - they are instantly soooo much happier as soon as we come outside to play! (Fortunately the neighbours are behaving themselves at the moment!).

I was also thinking about WHY we bought this house in the first place...

• It was the only affordable home that was able to be lived in straight away without major renovations required.
• It oozes potential and character - two things that were very important to us then.
• Its proximity to those things I've already discussed earlier, as well as the school we had originally planned to send the girls to. Its across the road from Kindy, so also only 3.5klms away, but we are highly unlikely to send the girls there now. And also at that stage I was still at the Dr's regularly (fortnightly) as we battled constant illness and ongoing testing to try and make sense of what was going on with the girls. However in the past 6 months (since starting our Biomed Program) I've only been there about 6 times all up and most of those times were simply for referrals/scripts or the girls regular weigh in's and dealing with Miss G having pneumonia!
  
• The landlord where we were renting was not one of the better ones, and her property manager was possibly the worst we have ever dealt with, so our renting experience at that time was not overly pleasant - especially seeing as between us we had rented a considerable number of times throughout our lives and were used to higher levels of service.
  

So of those initial reasons we bought the house, the only truly valid ones that would still apply are the fact that we had had a bad renting experience and that could be repeated (although I suspect that with the amount of questions I need to ask about any prospective home I would soon work out if the property manager was going to be helpful or not!), and that it was affordable financially - obviously we only have a finite amount funds to allocate to housing!

Unfortunately, we now can't really consider potential and character as critical components of future housing as *potential* means the need for renovations, and *character* is really quite a superficial element in comparison to providing a healthy environment for our family to live in. Also the need to be close to our Dr is not as high, and the close school is no longer our preferred option.

And from that I started to questions...

What are the most critical things we need in a home?

• Less toxic house (so no recent reno's or need to do reno's, no gas, minimal fragrant gardens, considerable distance to neighbours/other hazards plus other things as per my list)
• Bigger house (even just a 3rd bedroom would suffice) with lots of room outside for kids and vegies
• Located closer to our prefered school - which is in a semi rural area - so that covers the desire to be further out of town as well!
  
• Still be within our local Organic Fruit & Vegie companies delivery area!

I'm sure there's going to be more to add to this ongoing saga! These are just my scattered thoughts from this morning :D

NaBloPoMo Wrap Up!

Yes, today is the 31st of July - so the last day of my NaBloPoMo Pledge!

As I'm not one to make promises I can't keep, I knew I would stick with it, but I will admit that there were a few days when I simply did not want to even go near the computer...

I know that my blog is not one of the most exciting, interesting, intellectual or inspiring out there, and I'm certainly not a very eloquent author, but I do love to write - I always have and suspect I always will! So I have enjoyed this month overall. I was able to gain a few insights into my life simply by posting (ie why social interactions exhaust me so much!), and it was nice to just sit down and write every day.

In the future I will try and write a couple of times per week, but as I am trying to limit my internet usage, I wont be here everyday!

As for my initial excitement at being able to write about food, and work on my food photography... well, I didn't really get to do much photography at all did I?! Oh well, that's still something I'm sure I can work on in time!

But, I'm very thankful that Eilleen let me know about this and I have really enjoyed it - so Thank You E!!

And just for something completely unrelated, I thought that in response to Eilleen's question and my response to yesterday's post, I would actually put up the Pro's and Con's list relating to our house...

PRO's

• We LOVE the character of this house and would dearly love to see it restored to its former glory. We truly believe that our plans would have complemented the original theme but made it more liveable for our current era. Our vision would see it being a superb *inner city* (well as much as you can be up here!) townhouse with a lovely alfresco dining area outside taking in all the fragrances of the local restaurants!
  
• The location is so handy to everything! I am 1 block from our Doctor, 3.5klms from Kindy, and around the same to the local supermarket.
• As is, and with *regular* renovations, its an entirely affordable home for us - unlike the rest of our town/preferred areas to live.
• Moving does mean having to do a lot of research - we do at least know all the *devils* we are dealing with here.
• The additional costs of renting elsewhere and maintaining this house for tennants if we can't sell.
  

CON's

• The Indoor Air Quality issues - our Air Filter is run 24 hours per day 7 days per week and simply cannot filter our air so that it is relatively free of nasties.
• The need for Renovations - the house is run down, needs some maintenance and needs to be enlarged to happily house a family, but renovating is fraught with issues for a Chemically Sensitive Family.
• The proximity to neighbours - again, this is only a concern to a Chemically Sensitive Family - most would have no issues with the habits of our neighbours.
• The very busy street our house faces - again, not an issue for most people, but we are concerned about the vehicle emissions and their effect on our health.
• The cost of renovating using Low Volatile Organic Compound products and methods will add considerably to the project. There is also the concern that even using low VOC products and doing the project as slowly as possible and giving lots of off gassing time may not be enough and we may still react - this is an unknown.
  
• The school that we are now planning on sending our girls to, due to its Principal having dealt with Chemically Sensitive children before and being simply wonderful in helping me with my investigation, is out of town - its in a smaller location around 10 minutes out of town. So yes, it is still possible to drive them there daily, however I'd like not to increase our vehicle usage that much. (This is the area we would move to if we were to move).

So there you have it - the Pro's and Con's as to our current housing situation. Either way, we are up for additional costs than we had planned for - either by having to make up the shortfall here between rent received and repayments whilst renting elsewhere (unless we DO sell), or by doing the renovations as safely as we can...

More Decisions to Make

More housing decisions to make, or at the very least, we need to come up with some back up plans...

We have our house on the market as we believe it's adversely affecting our health and we can't really do the renovations we had planned whilst we are living here due to our chemical sensitivity. However, after almost 6 weeks there has been not a single enquiry and some contacts in the Real Estate business here tell us that an almost instanteous stop happened here around a month ago - not a thing is selling anywhere after still having quite a good turnover of properties despite other areas declining markets and rising interest rates.

So, we need to come up with some back up plans in case our house doesn't sell. We realistically can't sit around for too long waiting as we need to consider our health. We have decided we need to set a time limit and then have some back up plans in place to follow.

The two options that we seem to be considering the most at this stage are to rent our house out and rent somewhere else ourselves (as we can't afford to purchase another property if we still own this one), or to stay here and do the renovations - taking as many cautions as we possibly can to reduce their impact on our haelth.

Both plans will cost us money - we certainly wouldn't cover the repayments from any rent received here, so would need to make up the shortfall as well as covering our own rent elsewhere. And doing the renovations VERY slowly and with products designed to cause less reactions, will also add considerably to the project budget. These are short term costs of course... Once the renovations are done, they won't need to be repeated, and if we keep this property we would hope to have some capital growth in the long term. I'm just not very good at looking at these types of long term benefits though - I'm more focussed on what we need to do NOW.

But, an even more important consideration (to me at least!) than money is our health... I don't think you can put a price on it and I want nothing more than to have happy, healthy children. Obviously we don't have a crystal ball to help us know if our sensitivities are going to reduce rapidly or if we are going to have them for the longer term, so we can't really put off making a decision until we know.

We also need to decide if we would ever move back here... If so, then perhaps we could renovate whilst others are living here helping to cover the costs, and then move back once complete and fully offgassed. If not, then I think we need to think about what we really want... Is there any point having this property as an investment if it means we can not buy our own home again in the near future? Do we actually want to buy our own home again? We have often discussed the financial benefits of not living in and owning our own home, as in our financial situation, cash flow is greatly improved if we don't own.. but then that has to be offset against the stability and ability to do whatever we want to our house that comes with owning.

I think a lot more soul searching and talking about this is needed, but I guess in my heart I know we need to move soon, I doubt our house is going to sell quickly, so I think I'm leaning towards moving out, renting the house out and renting something for ourselves. I just don't think I can put us through the renovations wondering if even low VOC products may still cause a reaction - we just don't know and I wouldn't want to get half way through the reno's and realise that we simply HAVE to go...

The Difference a Day Makes

Yesterday ended up being quite a horrible day in our house :( Emma did in fact launch into a full blown reaction to something, and whilst Georgie wasn't reacting to any food or chemical exposure, she was reacting to Emma's behvaiour... as was I :(

Once both girls were in bed, I was able to look at the day objectively and I now know exactly what was going on with Emma - as I do, she suffers from Fructose Malabsorbtion, and pears are quite high in fructose (the sugars found naturally in fruits). However, because we hadn't ever got a clear result from our fructose testing in the past with Emma, I didn't realise that she was indeed quite sensitive. So, she was reacting yesterday - to the pear she ate. The reaction continued from noise sensitivity to rage & oppositional behaviour, to bowel issues - almost an identical reaction to those that I experience - but hers continued for almost 7 hours! Even at Dance Lesson yesterday afternoon she was joining in the wild behaviour of a couple of the other students, where usually she would tell them to stop and leave her alone. We will confirm this theory with another exposure to pear, but not for a couple of weeks.

So whilst it was very disappointing as she thoroughly enjoyed her pear, it also does help as I can now refine our list of things to try - high fructose foods will now be a LOT further down the list!

And today, I have two delightful little creatures on my hands! Both have been playing beautifully and being kind to each other. We've had a lovely morning of watching The Night Garden and Playschool, followed by some drawing and learning about shapes and colours. In fact, I haven't had to help resolve any disputes or suggest better behaviour or anything today!

A day really can make all the difference :D

Just when I thought it was safe to wash again...

After raining for almost all of last week, my washing pile is enormous! So today, we had a beautiful clear sky this morning and I hit the laundry... but now its coming in really overcast again and I've been told showers are expected again this afternoon :(

Due to the age of our house and its electrical wiring, we really try not to use our clothes dryer very much at all, as simply having it on means that something as simple as turning on the jug or toaster can trip out the whole house! And under our house isn't really ideal for hanging out washing - mould grows under there quicker than a load of washing takes to wash!

So, I now have the washing line full, and another load in the machine ready to hang out, but the rain is predicted for the next couple of hours... Hopefully at least some of it is dry!

We've had a busy day actually... all the washing, and we've also made some butterfly biccies and some carob/choc chip muffins! The muffins are LOVELY! Miss E has also eaten an entire pear for the first time ever! Now just to repeat the exercise over the next couple of days to see if she reacts to it or not... fingers crossed there are no reactions and we can add pear to our list of allowed foods!

Unfortunately though, Miss E apepars to be extremely noise sensitive today :( This is the first sign she often shows of a chemical reaction... So if it continues (and isn't just because she's being a bit cranky), I need to have a think about what she may have been exposed to...

Oh and now Miss G is running around biting things, so something unusual is going on in our house today...

We have FISH!

We've been wanting to get the girls a pet of their own for a while now, but its taken us a while to work out what is the best option given that most pet foods contain ingredients we are all allergic to, and of course it had to be a rather simple pet for them to take responsibility for...

So, today, we bought Miss E & G a fish tank each and a Siamese Fighting Fish! These fish are excellent because they are carnivorous so we can feed them Freeze Dried Worms, or fresh mosquito wrigglers etc, so we can avoid all the commercial fish foods which are problematic, they also require very little to keep them alive - just a tank with regular water changes! No need for filtration or heating etc...

Miss E set her own tank up all by herself, whilst Miss G had a little help from Daddy. The end result though is two very happy little girls who have a little pet each. Miss E is naturally very keen to feed her fish and take care of him, so I can't wait to see how she goes looking after him. I have no doubt she will do a fantastic job because we are finding the more opportunites we are giving her, the more she is proving just how capable she is.

Here's just a few pics of the process of setting up the fish tanks today...

Adding the pebbles to the bottom of the tank

Adding Water

Releasing the Fish

One Happy Girl with her new Fish Tank and pet Fish!

A rather ordinary day :(

I'm afraid I'm feeling quite out of sorts today... I think I've had a few too many chemical exposures during the week, and its absolutely taken its toll on me... oh and I'm terribly stressed about selling our house!

We've had our 3rd Open House today, and to date we have had no one show up at any of them, no one has even enquired on our property from the newspaper advertisements, web advertising, being harassed by our agent or in store signage :( We have had one party through to look mid week before last, but they were only humouring their agent (our agents husband!) - I could see they were just there for the ride because they were doing and saying such similar things that I have done in the same situation!

Now we KNOW we can't live here as is - the house has really poor air quality and is full of problems, NEEDS to be renovated to give us the room we need (50m2 is just not enough when we need to spend so much time indoors escaping rain or stinky neighbours!), and we can't renovate safely without adding considerable time and cost to the project. BUT, what happens if we can't sell our house???

We could rent it out and rent somewhere else ourselves, but the problem with that is that we aren't really in a situation to be able to do that as we wouldn't come close to covering the loan repayments.

So, I think what we'll end up doing (if we can't sell) is renovating... VERY CAREFULLY... I'm not looking forward to that at all, but something is going to have to happen one way or another...

I think what we need to do is set ourselves a time limit on when to just bite the bullet and admit that the house may not sell and we need to consider renovating... more discussions to be had...

But, seeing as we've all been chemically exposed this week and have been reacting, I'm really really cautious about this and will need to do a LOT more research.

So just some pointless rambling tonight!

A NEW Butcher!

Obviously it doesn't take too much to get me excited these days, but after my little outing to a new butcher this morning I am very excited!!! I've been more than a little disillousioned with my other meat sources here, and have been trying a few different sources lately, but today I feel like I've found "the one"!!!

Today's butcher did NOT roll his eyes when I asked my usual questions, the how long is it from slaughter until you receive your stock and sell it, has it ever been cryovacced, can you order organic meat etc etc etc! Usually I get very vague responses and butchers looking at me like I have 4 heads and am not to be taken seriously at all. Their response to my organic questioning has always been "There's no demand for it here so no one will supply us"...

Well, apparently that's not the case! My *new* butcher said that they most certainly can order organic meat - its very expensive and they have a minimum quantity to order, but it is possible! He is going to look into the exact minimum quantities for me, and also get some price information and call me back next week. Now, it may be that I simply cannot afford to purchase the meat, and it may be that the minimum quantity is far more than I can ever safely use given our restrictions, BUT, he is prepared to find out more for me and will call me back AND he was nice!

So that alone has made my day! And after yesterday's post saying I couldn't source organic meat, I am soooo happy to say that my statement was based on my previous encounters with Butchers and today's little shopping expedition has proved that statement wrong!

I'll have to remember to post when he calls me back... gosh I hope he DOES call me back... I'd hate to be this excited and happy with his service to be disappointed next week....

Curse You, Jamie Oliver!

I am tired and grumpy and not being a very nice person today and its all Jamie Oliver's fault! LOL Well, only because I find that anything he does I must watch because I just love the passion for food and cooking that seems to just ooze from everything he says and does...

So, last night I sat up watching "Jamie's Fowl Dinner", a show about a gala dinner he prepared to highlight the Chicken and Egg Industry in the UK. It was, as with everything he does, really interesting to watch and I thoroughly enjoyed it, however it didn't finish until 11pm and that is way to late for this little black duck to be going to bed!

I will have to admit that I don't know how much of our industry here in Australia is similar to that in Great Britain, however I do remember visiting my Great Uncle's who were both Egg Producers when I was a young child and seeing the cages and cages and cages of chooks, an image very similar to those battery hens portrayed in last nights show. I honestly can say it didn't impact on me at that time because, quite simply, we had our own chooks, as did everyone, so we ate our own produce and at that point I didn't realise most people didn't have their own chooks and eggs.

And I guess there is one very distinct advantage to both Miss E and myself having Egg Allergies - we no longer buy any eggs at all so the deicision as to which eggs to purchase isn't one I need to consider! Although, back when we did buy eggs, I used to always try for the free range or organic eggs as I do remember the stark contrast between our chooks/eggs and those chooks kept by my Great Uncles - it didn't impact on me as a child, but by the time I was able to go grocery shopping for myself I certainly remembered...

As for chicken, well, I always found it interesting that the breasts I bought were WAY bigger than the breasts on our own chickens as kids, but I will be honest and say that I never actually put any thought into the reasoning behind it... I know there is a mentality out there that the chickens must be fed steroids or growth enhancers or something, but I also remember seeing a Poultry Industry type report that said those types of things were not used in Chicken production. At that stage I kind of just believed everything the *officials* said... It's something I still haven't looked any further into though... But then, from my involvement in the Cattle Industry (both paid employment and having family members involved in Beef Cattle), I know that certain breeds are chosen for their meat quantity and quality, so breeding chickens specifically to grow really fast and to have large breasts makes sense to me.

But you know at the end of the day, irrespective of my research and my decisions as to which chicken to buy (organic meat is not available here, so that automatically eliminates my preferred choice :( so I do need to look into my options seeing as we do consume so much chicken) the best thing about watching Jamie's Fowl Dinners is quite simply that I am talking about this and hopefully so are many other people, and hopefully this will bring about...

Awareness in Consumption

And not just in relation to chickens and eggs - hopefully it will trigger something in people to start becoming more aware about everything they consume...

Teaching our Kids...

Lately I have been reading a lot about the Montessori way of educating our children and it REALLY appeals to me. I actually would love to visit a Montessori School to see how it looks in action, but unfortunately the closest one to me is still almost 1000klms away, so its not going to happen anytime soon.

But, after reading quite a few things I have decided to start implementing just a few things each week or so to see what impact it has on my girls. Until I manage to make or acquire some of the learning materials though, I thought we could start with just encouraging the girls to do more of the day to day things that I do for them, themselves. I have known for quite a while that Miss E get so much enjoyment from doing things that help me, or are generally considered my jobs.

Last night she really wanted to help me prepare dinner - she really wanted to peel a carrot - so I let her! She struggled a bit but slowly got the hang of it. Towards the end she did ask me if I could please help her finish it and I obliged as she had done a really great job and was just so excited - it was the first thing she told Daddy when he came home last night! After Dinner, and when Miss G was in bed, we sat down and talked to her about some other jobs that she might like to do around the house.

Starting today, Miss E has 3 jobs to do each day.

• Make her bed each morning - and she did an awesome job this morning after only being shown once last night how to do it!
• Help me prepare lunch - this was something she really wanted to do - obviously she wont be doing it on the days she is at kindy, but on the other days she can.
• Before bed pick up any toys that are still out and put them in their proper homes.

It isn't a huge list, but she really is excited and wants to do these things and judging by the excitment she showed again this morning after making her bed, I think she will love being able to do something useful that does require her to think a little bit.

But, whilst out this morning I witnessed a first hand example of how simple things like this can benefit our children in their futures.

I went out to purchase some porcelain cups and a jug for the girls, and was served by a younger girl (well, when I say younger, I mean younger than me! I'm 29 today so anyone under around 20-25 is younger!), who simply had no idea how to wrap the fragile cups. She really really struggled with the concept of how to put the cups into the paper and fold/roll the paper. I was torn between wanting to do it myself so it was done and I could go home, and letting her do it herself to learn the skill... I ended up letting her do it, but made a couple of suggestions to her along the way.

Now maybe I have expectations that are too high, but I'm quite certain that my brothers and I knew how to wrap fragile things when we were quite young, and I guess I would have thought working in such an environment this girl may have had a bit more of an idea what to do - it wasn't the first time I had seen her there, so she wasn't a brand new staff member.

It made me realise that a lot of children may not be given the opportunities to do things such as this, for themselves so therefore never gain those skills. Now I know Montessori is about so much more than just teaching children to do things like this, but it really did reinforce to me that giving our children opportunities to help us and to learn can be of such an enormous benefit throughout their entire life.

So, I'm now even more determined to introduce even a few simple Montessori themed ideas into our home and give my daugthers the opportunity to learn by doing the many day to day tasks that occur in everyday living. I know Miss E currently loves to say "Can I help?!", so from now on my answer is going to be...

YES!!

Starting to Reduce my Internet Hours!

That's right! I need to reduce my internet hours (I think!), so today is the dawn of my new net using era...

If all goes to plan, and we sell this house, the area we are looking at moving to, and a house that we have our eye on in particular, does not have the same level of internet availability that we do here in town. So, after a short discussion with our internet provider, I have an idea of the type of net access I will if we do move.

However, the different options are unfortunately less internet hours than our current plan, and at a greater cost :( So, we have decided that we should try to reduce our internet usage to see just what we can get down to and then make a deicsion on which new plan will be adequate - we really don't want to go spending a whole lot more on telecommunications after my massive effort to reduce this area in our budget. So therefore if we want to remain at our current expenditure (or less!) we need to reduce our usage.

The plan is to not turn our computer on of a Tuesday and Thursday, and probably not even during the day of the weekends. That way we can see how much difference just 2 days without accessing emails or the internet makes to our usage and we can always take out more days if needed. (Or perhaps add one back in!!)

But today is Tuesday - why are you online, you say! Well, I made my NaBloPoMo pledge to make a blog entry every day this month and I intend to keep that promise. So, until the end of July, I will still be logging in and doing my blog entry even if it is a Tuesday or Thursday. I'm quite sure a few minutes online on these two days for this week and next wont make a dramatic difference ;)

I'm soooo used to having the computer always on and regularly checking my emails, so this will no doubt take a bit of getting used to and will be quite a habit to break. But I'm quite sure that I can do it (my sanity may suffer a little though!).

My internet usage has slowly crept up over the past couple of years as I now have quite a lot of blogs and websites I like to check out and I do have a tendency to get side tracked and time gets away from me VERY easily... I'm sure that two days without the internet will give me back a considerable amount of time which can only benefit my family (as per yesterday's entries). I have used the net as my little *time out* so now I am going to have to find some other way to refresh myself and get that little mental break on those days. I have had a feeling for some time now that the internet was using up a lot of time, but I hadn't wanted to acknowledge just how much as it was MY time...

What am I going to do?? Well I'm still not sure, but we did have a little outing to the library this morning and I have borrowed some books to read, and also a book aimed at teaching children to knit... I figure if its aimed at children, I'm sure to be able to understand it! I can knit quite baiscally, however having RSI in both wrists has meant that I don't knit very often as it hurts. I'm hoping though that if I learn properly (as opposed to me teaching myself from what I remembered as a child), my technique may improve and therefore reduce the impact on my wrists... but only time will tell - I may just have to accept that I cannot knit!

So there you have it... our plan to reduce our internet usage for a few months to see what happens. Nothing really to post about food today though... although my organic vegetable order should be here in a couple of hours!

More musings...

You know, I've been thinking more and more today (seeing as its still a relatively good day!) and I've pinpointed some very specific things that do in fact improve our days...

1. Not to engage in the emotional *discussions* at meal times - the rules are simple, we must eat our meals before we leave the table. Until now, there had always been some degree of *discussion* taking place at meal times - bargaining over each and every meal. I was very caught up in the emotions of needing my children to eat for their health, growth, development etc, and I do believe that they saw this *need* in me and it was something they weren't sure how to deal with... I don't really have anything else that invokes these same emotions in me, so this would have been very different to the Mum they were used to. So, over the weekend we decided (as we had some months ago, but the situation improved and we kind of forgot about it) that from now on there will be no discussing or arguing or pleading. The rule is simple - we sit down and eat our meals before we leave the table. End of story. Yes, if the children aren't well or there is something else going on (ie a chemical reaction), I may alter the amount that I require them to eat, but for normal run of the mill type days, the rule applies. I may still be as emotional over meal times, but by not engaging in any discussions on the topic, I can keep those emotions to myself.

2. No more preparing 2 or 3 meals until the child is happy - yes, in my desperation to have the girls eat, they would sometimes demand something else and something else and something else... and I would go and prepare it. Well, if its a meal that I know they do like and have eaten recently, they will be expected to eat. I am absolutely prepared to make something else if we are introducing them to something they haven't had before or something I have made a little differently - I know they (Miss E in particular) have very distinct preferences for foods and textures, so if I am dishing up something different I am most happy to also have something that they will eat on standby. But a vast amount of time has been spent preparing several meals at each meal time and my time is far better spent interacting in a more positive way with the girls than preparing multiple meals.

3. Spending some time together doing something *fun* every day - Emma is always asking to do something *exciting* and when I make the time to ensure that even half an hour a day is spent on the floor with the girls doing something they want to do, the mood of the house is always much better. I may be a little behind in some of my jobs, but the girls do then tend to play a little better (for a short period of time at least) so I cam be more efficient as I'm not trying to play with them, help with conflict resolution and do my own things...

4. Spend some time outside every day - this is probably the trickiest one for us at the moment... The neighbours that would sit outside and smoke for hours on end have gone, but in their place we have a neighbour who is renovating and so we are now often being trapped inside to escape the paint and glue fumes that waft into our yard. We also haven't really been able to go out anywhere since May due to the girls being quite unwell. But, both girls are now reasonbley healthy, so on the days that we don't have anything planned, and are unable to go outside due to whatever our neighbours may be doing, I will try to arrange for a trip to a park or similar. Again, this will take time away from my chores, but hopefully will invoke the same degree of self-directed play and a sense of serenity over us all that my efficiency will improve.

Yesterday really was a horrible day and unfortunately I'm a little slow on the uptake and it takes a really bad day for me to sit down and re-assess what is happening, where we are at and look at solutions. But, doing so really is quite uplifting and today I do feel so much more energised and able to cope.

Now I just need to work on getting to this point BEFORE a really horrible day occurs...

phew.... A Better Day Already!

Well, today is shaping up to be a MUCH better day than yesterday!

Miss E woke up in a fabulous mood, happily ate her breakfast and even had all of her medication without baulking. It really does make an enormous difference to our days when they start off in such a positive way. It may only be 11am and there is still loads of potential for the day to deteriorate, but its still so nice to have such a calm and relaxed start to the day.

I made a concerted effort to sit with the girls and do some activities with them this morning for around an hour or so, and they are now happily playing together without me. I really do need to remind myself that a small investment of time in them does make a dramatic difference to their moods for the day. I guess the luxury of today though is that our play date was cancelled and I decided that the other jobs I really must do today can wait until this afternoon.

Doing some cooking last night also helped as it meant the pressure was off me to do some more this morning. We can now survive until tomorrow before I do anymore baking.

I also started to re-read Buddhism for Mothers last night and I know I am feeling calmer already for doing so. This week may still be quite chaotic with our other commitments, but hopefully by making a point of doing just a few minutes of reading each night will also help.

In addition to the reading though, I have also reduced one of my supplements... it has a tendency to increase insomnia in me, and it really didn't occur to me until last night that I was suffering insomnia again. So hopefully in a few days the reduced dose will have kicked in and I'll be back to sleeping well again!

Much happier all round here today :D

Is there a PAUSE button anywhere?

Because tonight I really feel like I just want to pause life for a couple of days so I can catch up and then hit play again!

I have had an extremely emotional day - every single meal has been an enormous issue for Miss E and each one has resulted in her staying at the table long after we have all finished and left the table - this morning we even had to forgo the lovely family morning out that we had planned as she simply would not eat her breakfast or take her medication afterwards. I know that a lot of parents would say that she obviously didn't feel like breakfast, but unfortunately we have to ensure she eats 6 times per day, and Miss E is also learning about power... This is one aspect of our lives where I don't feel like a very Gentle Parent :(

There are also lots of little things I need to catch up on - paperwork, book work, cooking to fill the freezer, some little sewing jobs and just a few other things, as well as just having the chance to breath! I am definitely feeling a little snowed under right now and not doing so well :(

So, tonight, we have had dinner, I am in the middle of cooking some more chippees and icing some biscuits for a play date tomorrow, trying to reply to some emails and catch up on some reading... and will attempt to be in bed at a reasonable hour.

I am in desperate need of some time for myself, but at the moment it just has to wait... I know I'm becoming grumpy and tired and stressed, but I think once this week (and a few engagements) are out of the way, I will have a chance to breath...

Oh and a house with some doors would help so I have the ability to shut a door and give myself 5 minutes of space at times of high tension!

Finally some RHUBARB!!

I have been waiting for some rhubarb to appear in either my organics ordering system, or the local supermarket and finally, yesterday, I found some!

So, I'm making Rhubarb slice today :D Yummo!!! I had never tried Rhubarb until we started on our program and I have to say I really really enjoy it now! If I remember I'll take some photo's - but its in the oven as I type...

Obviously the little things like finding fresh rhubarb are exciting to me these days LOL

I'm also making some more biscuits with our other biscuit cutters - the cupcake and butterfly cutters this time... the fairy wands were a huge hit, but I wanted to try the others. The birthday cake is almost all gone (thank goodness - the icing makes for a very messy meal time!).

In other news, we had another Open House this morning, and again, no one came to look at our house. So on we soldier, just waiting for that perfect person to appear and buy our house.

This is a typical short and sweet weekend post I'm afraid... I had a bit of a slide down the bottom half of our stairs yesterday morning, so in addition to just being in a weekend frame of mind and trying to do my usual weekend cooking catch up, I'm rather sore and feeling a bit tender so sitting still in one place for too long is just uncomfortable :( I have some bruising coming out now though so hopefully it wont be long and I'll be back to being able to sit without being too sore! The last time I slid down our stairs though (yes, this is my second trip down them), I actually managed to get one of my legs caught under me and severely damaged all the nerves along my shin in my left leg and they still aren't 100% yet - 6 months on, so I'm quite pleased that this is just my bottom and lower back that are hurt and nothing more serious.

oh and just to make my day... my almost brand new stick blender stopped mid-way through some bleinding today :( So now I have to take it back to the shop and get a replacement... Luckily it has a 12 month replacement warranty!

A Totally Boring Post

I'm afraid this post is going to be totally boring, completely practical and absolutely unoriginal!

I need to get groceries this afternoon, so rather than doing a meal plan (which I do every week anyway) AND a blog post, I'm going to follow Eilleen's lead and just do an online meal plan!

Now due to our Biomedical Program, we have a cooked lunch and dinner everyday, so my meal plan tends to be a bit longer than most peoples are as I have to actually make a proper plan for lunches!

Saturday
Lunch - Lamb Cutlets & Pesto Quinoa
Dinner - Chicken Tenders (maybe battered??) & Vegies

Sunday
Lunch - Diced Chicken and Quinoa
Dinner - Lamb Steak & Vegies

Monday
Lunch - Chicken Sausages & Quinoa
Dinner - Chicken & Vegie Soup (cooked in the slow cooker)

Tuesday
Lunch - Lamb Steaks & Quinoa
Dinner - Roast Lamb

Wednesday
Lunch - leftover Roast Lamb & Quinoa
Dinner - remaining leftover RoastLamb & Vegies

Thursday
Lunch - Lamb Steaks & Quinoa
Dinner - Shperherds Pie

Friday
Lunch - Chicken Sausages & Quinoa
Dinner - Lamb Steaks & Vegies

Extra Things:
I always make 1kg of chicken sausages per week, as well as all our other snacks and meals.

So, what do I need to buy?

Meat as always! We have to eat extremely fresh meat and cannot store it for any longer than 3 weeks in the freezer, so I do just buy my meat fresh each week - it does mean that I can't really buy in bulk, and I don't utilise my large chest freezer as well as I'd like, but these are just things I have had to accept. And of course we can only eat lamb or chicken...

Vegies - I am due to get my fortnightly organic vegies delivered next week, so my order needs to be in by Saturday night.

Just a few grocery items - most we buy direct from our Biochemists' store, but the local supermarket does have some things we need.

So here's my grocery list:
MEAT
Lamb Cutlets
Chicken Tenders x 1.5kg
Chicken Breasts x 1kg
Lamb Steaks x 2kgs
Roast Lamb x 1 large (around 2.5kgs if possible)
Lamb to mince x 750g
OTHER SUPERMARKET
Tissues
Zip Lock Bags (I hate these, but this is what Kindy are asking lunches be provided in so I use 2/week)
Garlic Salt

ORGANICS DELIVERY
Macadamia Nuts
Sweet Potato
Swede or Turnip
Choko
Shallots
Carrots
Green Beans
Chinese Cabbage
Brussels Sprouts
Pumpkin

And I think that's about it. This weeks shop will be my more expensive of the fortnight as I am getting my vegies this week.

What a DAY!

Yes, today is Miss E's 4th birthday and its been a HUGE day! We've had a lovely morning playing with our brand new train set - came complete with buildings, people and cars! And this afternoon we've spent almost 2 hours exploring our local Botanic Gardens - they are just lovely and Em adores being there :D She literally gets out of the car and starts walking and exploring and doesn't stop until I tell her its time to go home!

So, we've been home from the park around an hour and in that time I've iced the cake... its not my best work for sure (that would be Em's first birthday cake - before we knew how extensive her allergies were!), but she just told me it looks very pretty and is just lovely! So at least the one person who really counts likes it.

Here's a pic...



I must admit to being extremely tired after so long running through the park trying to keep track of Em! She just seems to get a load of extra energy as soon as we hit the place and off she goes :D But I'd much rather she was like this than hating being there at all - I'm all for her spending as much time outside as possible...

And here's just a little pic of the girls at the Japanese Gardens - they have lovely tables there so we stopped and did a little drawing before continuing on our way around the rest of the park.



So now we just need a light dinner, followed by some cake and I think we will all sleep well tonight :D

The Birthday Biscuits!

And here they are! Well, just a few - the rest were in other containers... There was 1 crown (for the birthday girl!), and 25 fairy wands. Just before sending them to Kindy I dusted them with pink caster sugar to give a bit of sparkle! The low humidity here at the moment affected my biscuit dough, so these were quite tricky to get out of the cutters without breaking and I also didn't think to straighten the wand handles up before cooking! Miss E still loved them though so I don't think those things really matter too much ;) I'm sure the Kindy kids were quite happy to eat them as well.

You will notice that they are pink though... red cabbage does indeed produce a purple colour according to my sources, however our supermarket didn't have a single red cabbage there so we went with our safe pink instead. Eilleen asked what I use for red - Beetroot! We can use either beetroot liquid or beetroot powder, and seeing as I use quite a bit of it, I bought some powder a while ago as its far more economical than using a can of beetroot just for the juice. And of course, the more colouring you use the stronger the colour - I'm just not too keen on adding too much powder to something sweet like icing in case the flavour gets a little tainted. Its ok to have a beetroot flavour in the savoury dishes we add it to, but not something sweet!

Here is a pic of our other cutters as well...



On Monday some little friends are coming over for another birthday bash and we'll try the cupcake ones for that occasion!

Tomorrow we will be making a birthday cake to have as dessert tomorrow night, and apparently a butterfly is the order... so tomorrow's post will no doubt be the story of our birthday cake!

My New Biscuit Cutters Arrived!!

Last week I ordered some biscuit cutters to make some very special biscuits for Miss E to take to kindy for her birthday, and they arrived today!!!

I'm very excited because they are gorgeous cutters and very unlike anything I can find in any local store. I bought them from THIS seller on eBay and I have to say I'm not an eBay fan, but the service has been fantastic from this person, and the cutters are very well made - hand made here in Australia too no less :D

We bought a Crown, Fairy Wand, Cupcake & Butterfly cutter.

Now I'm going to make you wait till tomorrow though to see the finished project! We have made Fairy Wands and a Crown this morning for tomorrow at kindy, but I wont be icing them until later...

I'm just undertaking a bit of a quest at the moment to find an alternative food colourant... Em has decided she wants them to be PURPLE! I have an alternate red colouring, and I have a feeling that the liquid from cooked red cabbage is blue or purple and can be suitable for my girls... So I'm just trying to locate that info and if its correct we will duck out for a red cabbage!

Just some Ramblings today!

I really don't know what to write about today... I'm tired, have had a big morning out and am about to get ready to go back out this afternoon, and my head is hurting!

I am a real introvert so for me to spend a morning with friends for the girls to have a play date (as we did this morning) takes an enormous amount of, well, everything, out of me... I enjoy getting out of the house and seeing my friends and our kids all play really well together, but these mornings exhaust me.

This afternoon is Miss E's dance lesson though so we can't miss that! (Although one of my friends daughters from this morning also dances, so I still have to interact with people!). But, at least its broken up with watching the girls dance and talking to the other parents as well. I often start to wonder if perhaps I'm just not cut out to do anything socially...

But, I suspect its more than just that... my own stress levels according to other stuff happening in our lives impacts, as does the choice of company, the environment, the timing...

Last weeks visit to my uncles farm was TOTALLY different to this morning. That was a totally relaxing environment, people I feel absolutely comfortable with and take me as I am and still love me (ie my uncle and my brother!), the girls had an absolute ball and I really didn't need to supervise them or monitor everything they touched to see if they were picking up other kids food etc... Peaceful, quiet and calm...

Today, was at a friends house in town, 3 adults & 7 kids under 4, my friends that are very different to me and are on very different journeys in their life to me - although we do still get on quite well!, and of course there were lots of contraband food items around that I had ensure didn't go anywhere near Miss E and Miss G. Lots of noise and boisterousness... And I'm stressed about our housing situation!

So for me who is not totally comfortable with social outings anyway, I've realised just how much these factors make such a difference to my ability to cope with them without being overwhelmed.

I don't really know what to do about it though... I really can't stop going to these things completely as our fortnightly morning teas are the ONLY social interactions I have with people that aren't family or online and the girls really love catching up with their friends. Miss G is even starting to get more comfortable around the other kids (She is a lot like her mother and isn't a huge fan of crowds and noise!), and seeing as she isn't able to go to kindy until next year, I think its important for her to have these interactions.

And unfortunately, I can't only go when I'm not stressed about other things or feeling well rested etc! So I guess now that I've written this all down and have it a bit sorted in my head, I can approach these mornings in a different way - I can go into them knowing that they will have an impact on me, and be prepared for some quiet time leading up to and after the outings.

hmmm so my not knowing what to write has turned into a little psych analysis of why i'm so darned exhausted after this morning! But at least I have delved into why, and now that its written down, it makes so much more sense to me and hopefully it will help me cope that much better in the future! Its something that has always been just below the surface of my concious - I knew anything social exhausted me but hadn't really thought too much about it...

What does this have to do with food... ummmm... it was morning tea? LOL And I guess the hypervigilance of keeping an eye on the food around my girls... Well, its a stretch but you can connect to food if you really need to :D

So there you have it... a post that was totally unplanned and one I thought would be small has evolved into something very different!

Something Creative

Just a little something tonight...





A pencil roll I have made for Miss E for her birthday this week.

Have had a huge day and really don't feel like writing...

Does this still count as a post though? LOL

Just a Quick Post Today...

I think my weekend posts are going to be short and sweet compared to my weekday posts!

We've had a really big day today and I'm just about to get my darling girlies ready for bed and I think I will be heading the same direction very soon!

Nothing really exciting happened.... just the usual chaos in our house! I made sausages this morning, so there went the best part of a couple of hours, Pete made bread (thank goodness!), and of course I cooked lunch and dinner too...

Oh, and we also went house hunting! The agent selling our house was telling us about a new listing of hers that she thought would be ideal for us... so we decided to go have a little look - we figured she would have some added incentive to sell our house if her sale of the other place was dependant upon our sale! The house is lovely and suits us perfectly - it even comes on 2.5 acres. So, we'll see what happens...

Tomorrow I am doing a lovely roast lamb for lunch, so I'm really looking forward to that!

I'm a little annoyed! I just typed my entire post, but my silly laptops inbuilt mousey screen thingy (yes, very technical I know!) is on and I bumped something and the whole thing disappeared :(

Anyway...

We had a lovely time at the farm yesterday - the girls were absolutely in their element!

We always thoroughly enjoy going to visit my Uncle though - his place is just so tranquil and relaxing and the fresh air is marvellous! His property is next door to the property that I grew up on, and I just love being able to share that with my daughters. Visiting him does, however, make me not enjoy living in town at all! It really is true that you might be able to take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl! (Well, in my case anyway!)

As soon as we arrived Em took off to see the goats and I think she would quite happily have spent the entire day in the goat paddock! The only time anyone was grumpy was when Em was told for about the millionth time to stay away from the electric fence... She had a bit of a sulk, but managed to get over it eventually! Both girls were nice to each other, ran around the whole time, played with all the animals and just generally had a great time. It was so nice to see them enjoying something that I grew up doing... we were always outside and I barely remember watching TV or being inside at all. We spent a lot of time in the chook pen, out with the calves, in the lucerne paddock, up trees, down at the creek... anywhere but inside!

Here is the best pic I could get of the girls with one of the kids... they do say never work with animals or children!



Emma was quite happy to go to kindy today to tell them all about her trip to the farm! I think we'll be hearing about this trip for a long time... probably until we next go out in fact LOL

As for a link to food, well, the kid the girls are cuddling is NOT going to be food - that one is a little girl, so will be kept for breeding purposes!

Its still freezing here today so I'm going to go and actually do some housework today to try and warm up! Yep, you know its cold if I want to do something like that to warm up!

We're off to visit the Goats!

It is absolutely freezing here today so I decided we needed to get out and do something exciting! So, seeing as its been raining and my uncle (who is a concretor) isn't able to work, we are planning a trip out to his farm to see his goats and the little kids that he has :D

The girls just LOVE going out to visit my uncle and adore animals of ANY nature, so will have a fabulous time I'm sure...

We probably wont go out till after lunch to give me time to get the washing done and organise a few other things, but at least it will be a bit warmer by then too.

So this is going to be a very short post, and hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post some gorgeous pics of the girls and the kids!

Oh and there is a connection to food.... these goats are being bred to be eaten... My uncle has a cattle farm and is very much into providing for himself so has a great little garden happening, as well as his chook pen, worm farm, cattle (obviously), solar powered water pump and now his goats! Its always a refreshing trip out to his place and I'm really looking forward to it.

Thank Goodness for Hot Tea!

Now I have to start by saying I am one of those people who start to shiver as soon as the temp drops below 25 degrees celsius LOL!

Its rained here for the past two days and nights and today the sun is shining, but oh boy, is it cold!

So, on days like this, I am so grateful for hot cups of tea! With Carrot Muffins no less for morning tea.... and slowly I'm starting to thaw out :D

Wednesday is a Kindy Day for Miss E, so unfortunately that means we have to get up and out the door by a certain time, rather than wait for the weather to warm up like most other days...

But, yes, I'm a bit of a sook with the cold weather! I love it because you can always put on more clothes and get to indulge in cups of tea, but I just take forever to warm up LOL..

In other food news, I have a bit of cooking to do later today... I'm going to try some Macadamia Wafers and have to make yet another batch of chippees! Plus we are having a Sheperds Pie for dinner tonight... so I'll get as much of that done as possible so all I have to do is pop it in the oven just in time for dinner...

I found a recipe for Butterscotch Wafers last night so I might try those too if I get time... or else do them next week!

Today's Experiment!

Today I decided to not make a brand new recipe, but rather, merge two of our *new* recipes.

Its cold and raining so I decided it was perfect weather for Sausage Rolls - we have a pie pastry recipe, and a sausage recipe, so today I made some sausages, rolled them in little strips of the pastry and viola! LUNCH!!



Unfortunately, the end result wasn't quite what we were hoping for :( Yes, they tasted fine, but the pie dough was just a bit crumbly... But that's ok because I do have some gums that I can use to add to recipes to increase the elasticity of the end product. So next time I try this I will add some gum and see what happens!

The only downside to today's lunch is that I made a regular sized batch of sausage mince, but the sausage rolls didn't use all of it... so now I have to actually make the rest of the mince into sausages this afternoon. That's not really a problem because I do need more sausages for the freezer, but its a long slow process to make and cook the sausages before I can freeze them! It just means that this afternoon whilst I do that, the girls will no doubt end up watching a DVD, or fighting...

I'm not a fan of TV / DVD's because too much really does cause Miss E (almost 4) to become very depressed and quite a nasty little girl to live with - and too much for her is really not very much at all compared to the amount most kids watch. I love our days when we don't put it on at all, we have lovely times with our crafty box, and dress ups box, and drawing and all other sorts of wonderful things... But, unless I am doing these things with the girls or able to interrupt what I am doing easily, it doesn't take long for them to start fighting :( And once they start fighting, the mood does deteriorate so darned quickly.

So, in order to be able to actually cook the sausages without needing to constantly be separating the girls, I will most likley put a DVD on for them. At least if I put a DVD on, I can control exactly what they are watching, and they will be told that once the movie is over, the TV goes off...

I'm hoping that once Winter is over and they are both feeling much better (they've both had a constant stream of illness for the past 2 months now), and it stops raining and we can get back outside a lot more, the crabbiness will subside... They certainly weren't as bad over Summer! And I tend to get Cabin Fever quite easily myself if we are stuck inside too long, so I can hardly blame them!

Well, I guess it was a compliment!

Yesterday's afternoon tea went wonderfully - not everyone showed up, but those that did had a great time :D

This was the first time I have actually fed other adults our food and I was naturally a little nervous - this was family after all and my brothers aren't ones to hold back their opinions LOL But I think the biggest compliment was for them to devour an ENTIRE carob slice in around 15 minutes! They also liked the biscuits and carrot muffins which was nice to hear, although my youngest brother was very outspoken in his dislike for my Carob Cake! But that's ok because it is definitely a stronger taste than the slice, and when you look at it, you think its going to be a beautiful rich chocolate so I think it was possibly a case of a bit of a psychological issue as well ;)

But, that means that my darling little girls who want to have more carob slice today will have to wait until I make some more! And by the time I cleaned up after yesterday's baking frenzy and cooked dinner I was so tired (and sick of the kitchen!) that I didn't end up making more butter, so I'd best do that today too.

I'm going to try and find my old favourite recipe book later today and see which recipe I am going to perfect next - I think I'm fairly happy that my Chocolate to Carob slice conversion has been a success now, so its time to try something else this week! Feel free to send me any of your favourite slicey/biscuity type recipes for some inspiration if you like LOL

Actually its a cold, rainy day today, so a perfect day to have the oven on!

A Baking Frenzy!

After two days spent cleaning the house and then keeping it that way for the Open House yesterday, we have pretty much depleted ALL our food stores and seeing as my Dad and Step-Mum are in town I am having a family afternoon tea this afternoon, so I'm having a bit of a baking frenzy this morning!

So far I have made shortbreads, crackers (although this was the first time I have made them and I'm not sure they are quite right...), chocolate (carob!) slice is in the oven and I need to do something else - still to decide though!

But, I've realised that I have completely run out of the butter I make for the girls, and more milk will be needed by tonight, so I dare say I'll be spending an awful lot of today in the kitchen! It's actually been quite an eye-opener to realise that only two days without cooking and I am virtually food-less... Until now I had been doing at least *something* every single day.

Dad sampled some of my *new* cooking yesterday afternoon and said it was really good, but he was worried it was all going to be horrible! So that was nice to hear - its obviously not just me with my adjusted taste buds that likes our food :D In fact, he polished off the last of my batch of Carob Slice!

Although, I do have to say that, as with most families I'm sure, there are some members of our family who don't all get along well, and I still have yet to hear back from everyone as to whether or not they are coming this afternoon, so it may be a tense afternoon. I hope not though.

But, for now I need to decide if I'm making another type of biscuit or if I should make another slice.... or perhaps a cake? Oh dear! I do have some Carrot Muffins defrosting and also some Carob Cake, so perhaps that really is enough... I do have a tendency to overcater for everything, but seeing as I have to cook anyway I don't really mind and anything not eaten can go into the freezer...

Another short post today...

As per yesterday's, we had our open house this morning... and not one person came to look :(

So I'm feeling a little dejected (even though all week I had this really strong feeling this would happen), and not sure what to do...

We have been very lucky in each of the past 2 houses we have sold in that the first sold within hours and the second within 2 days of signing the Authority to Sell paperwork... So having a house on the market for 10 days is new to us... yes a whole 10 days!

I think we need to just be a little more patient and see what happens!

But, as a result of all the cleaning, meeting a friend for lunch and then a surprise visit from my Dad who lives 1300kms away, I'm rather worn out!

So, hopefully tomorrow I'll be up to writing more :D

Just a quick one today!

A very unexciting, non food related post from me today I'm afraid!

In just over half an hour I have an appointment with the paediatrician for my youngest to be sure her pneumonia has resolved, and then seeing as tomorrow is our Open House to try and sell our home, I need to get to work!

So far we've done lots of decluttering, and I have the washing machine going and an enormous list of jobs to do...

Once we get home from the paediatrician, I will be cleaning as much as possible so that tomorrow all I should have to do is vacuum all the floors and mop the few mopable ones!

I did buy something quite frivilous yesterday with no regard for its ethics or sustainability though... a florist in town is closing down and had 50% off all artificial flower arrangements... so I bought a little arangement of gerbra's in a little ceramic pot that tones in wonderfully with our house! We can't have real flowers due to all our hayfever and other sensitivities, and rather than having nothing, I decided that spending $30 on an arrangement like this was justified as we are trying to do everything possible to enhance our home for sale at the moment.

And I'm not about to just throw them out after the house is sold! They are really quite a cute little bunch of flowers and I have a feeling that if they don't go on display somewhere nice and high my lovely Miss Almost-4 will claim them to play with - she wants to water them and take care of them apparently!

Ok so I'm outta here until tomorrow! I'll probably post after the Open House!

Well, I really haven't given a whole lot of thought to today's post! I have a window of around 15mins before I need to start organising our next meal so I figured I may as well write!

Today's pic is actually just a little funny.... I was doing something the other day and came out to the lounge room to discover that my youngest daughter had been playing with the sweet potato's again... and this is where one ended up!

Yep... on my bookshelf!

Actually, I guess something that has been on my mind a bit lately is a conversation I had with my step-mum recently. Erin is a lovey NZ'er with 6 of her own kids (plus us 4 step-kids!) and has worked as a cook on and off for most of her life - so food has always been a huge part of her life too. When Erin and Dad lived here for around 12 months it was so nice to talk to her about things like cooking etc because she knows how to make pretty much anything from scratch with minimal ingredients!

We were recently discussing the amount of cooking I do each day/week and she commented that I was basically doing exactly what the womenfolk of years gone by used to do, but in a very different era. And that got me thinking... it is so true - for those of you that aren't aware, the only commercial foods we can actually eat are:

• Schweppes Lemonade ( only occasionally and for us adults only of course!)
• Black Tea Bags/cup of tea if out
• Buderim Ginger Marmalade (again - adults only!)
  
• Nuttelex butter substitute - weadults can use this and its ok in cooking for the girls, but for general butter I make their's from scratch as this can be problematic in large doses for them

So, anything else we consume must be hand made by me. And there is absolutely no ducking to the local take away store or fish & chip shop if a creation doesn't turn out or I'm feeling a bit tired or lazy, or running up to the shop if we run out of bread or milk... I just have to keep on cooking! Even mince cannot be bought so if we want to make a mince dish I need to actually do the mincing myself as well.

We live in a much different society too in that these days we don't have much, if any, community surrounding us to help out, we are busier with things like Dancing Lessons and Kindy and just being social, we aren't surrounded by others that actually cook from scratch so much and its almost become quite the norm to eat out or have take away quite regularly from what I see in our friends and associates.

A couple of my friends have said that since they've seen what we are doing they have been inspired to start to cook some things from scratch for their families - things like cakes and biscuits for snacks...

I'm not really sure what my point is here LOL I do know that I am very fortunate in that I have appliances to help make my life a lot easier - my food processor gets used daily, as does my stick blender and my digital scales! I don't have to do a lot of mixing by hand fortunately (especially now both wrists are suffering from RSI). And I have an electric oven!

But in some strange way I actually feel really comfortable with the way our life has turned... living simply has always appealed to us, so this really has forced the issue... I have learned to simplify my life in other areas so I have time to do the cooking, I'm now quite selective about the activities we choose and the invitiations we accept and we are spending much more time at home as a family than we used to. Yes there is no denying I do a whole lot more now than I ever used to and some things have had to go by the wayside, but the sacrifices have brought about so many changes...

I just wonder if I would have made this realisation though, if I hadn't been used to living the lifestyle of buying food ready made and having take away or dining out...

The Downside to Food

There's a downside you ask?!

For those of you new to my life, my eldest daughter, Miss E who will be 4 later this month, has many feeding aversions due to her undiagnosed allergies causing some fairly significant issues until earlier this year when we embarked upon our Biomedical Intervention Program. From June of last year until February this year, she was fed via a Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (PEG) tube - a feeding tube surgically inserted directly into the stomach. She was fed a very specific prescription only formula based entirely on amino acids.

As a result, the past 5 months have been quite a battle for us to get E to actually eat. She loves the food we can now offer her - especially seeing as it doesn't make her sick! She also can eat - although it did take quite a few weeks initially to encourage her to eat, and she is finally starting to overcome her aversions to certain textures - she is now eating soups and cakey type textures for the first time in her life....

HOWEVER, she needs to eat 6 times per day, and for the past few weeks, every single meal has been an enormous struggle.... She has been quite stressed over the fact that her younger sister spent some time in hospital with pneumonia, and she missed out on her mummy time, we are also selling our house, and I will be honest and say that my mood has not been so flash - between being hormonal and still trying to catch up on sleep from our stint in hospital a fortnight ago, I have been quite the grouch :(

So by the end of last night I was just in tears as a result of the daily stress I suffer from due to trying to get E to eat... Unfortunately she is at an age where she knows how important this is to me that she eats, and I suspect that she sees this as a way to get some extra mummy time :(

Over the weekend we are going to try and encourage E to spend some time with me doing fun things.... things that wont make either one of us cranky! Preferably out of the house too! We have been trying to spend more one on one time together but its quite difficult with Miss G still not having fully recovered from her hospital trip either...

So, for me, food has one massive downside and that is that I have lost an enormous amount of the pleasure I used to get from it due to constantly fighting over it.... I used to be an emotional eater and couldn't just eat to feed myself - I had to ENJOY what I ate... nowadays when I'm stressed I simply don't eat... Fortunately though 5 months of daily contact with our Biochemist and I now eat 6 times a day regardless!

I don't usually blog about my emotions or the personal stuff here, but I suspec that's going to change! Whilst we do have a great online support network for dealing with these issues, I do feel a little guilty about constantly boring the same people every single time with my dramas.... so at least an anonymous (or reasonably anonymous!) audience can stop reading my blog if they want!

On a lighter note, here is a pic of the chippees we made yesterday! And yes, that teatowel was completely coincidental... but I had to include it in the pic :D

Yes, It was Chocolate! (Well, Carob!)

Yes, Eilleen - it was chocolate!

Yesterday the girls and I created a carob slice from an old chocolate slice recipe! The end results was a slightly overcooked, but very yummy slice :D

The original recipe was:
BASE
1 cup Self Raising Flour
1 cup Coconut
1/2 cup Sugar
1tbsp Cocoa
125g melted butter

Mix together, press into a slice tin and bake at 180 degrees for around 10 minutes.

ICING
1/2 - 3/4 cup Icing Sugar
1 tbsp Cocoa
50g Margarine
1-2 tbsp hot water

Mix desired quantities of ingredients to form an icing of your preferred consistency.

So with a few modifications we turned it into the yummy slice you saw in yesterday's post! As I said though, it was slightly overcooked because it did take longer than the 10 minutes of the original, but I got sidetracked with a phone call and a couple of little girls and completely forgot it was in the oven..... I think it ended up having almost 45 minutes in there... but that wasn't too bad - it was definitely overcooked but not burnt!

Today on our cooking list is:

• Milk
• Electrolyte (I have chronically low blood pressure and have a couple of glasses of this concotion every day to help keep it at a manageable level)
• Pikelets
• Chippees (kind of just a flat biscuit/cracker thing that the girls love with our butter on top - also yummy with Salt & Vinegar Salt from Woolworths!)
• Something for lunch - usually meat and quinoa in some form or another
• Chicken and Asparagus for Dinner tonight - probably with pasta
  
• Pasta - to go with above!

I think that's all for now... Well, its certainly going to create a big enough mess in the kitchen anyway LOL