Lunch with Lovely Ladies.

I had lunch out with 2 lovely ladies yesterday.  I enjoyed it and hope they did too.  We have done this once or twice before and next month we will do it again but somewhere different.  We are hoping to do something every month but haven't quite got the hang of it yet but it is something that I look forward to.

We went up to Logues Brook, OK, Lake Brockman! Cafe.   I have been here 3 times now and will go again.  If anyone wants to meet me there for a Devonshire Tea, let me know.

I will do a write up about Lake Brockman Cafe one day soon.  And I will add my thoughts on it to the Weekend Notes and Trip Advisor sites.   I will become famous for my writeups.  Or not.  

And I call it Logues Brook because that is the name that I have always known this dam by.  It was changed to Lake Brockman a while ago, for reasons that I don't know and not interested enough in finding out.  As a dam though it is very low, hardly any water at all.  We used to go swimming and marroning here but the places we went are now high and dry and it would be quite a trek to the waters edge.  The cafe is at the caravan park, I will take the van up there one day, camp the night and have a Devonshire Tea for breakfast.

Plastic Free July

 

I  have just registered for this, Plastic Free July, is anyone else taking on this challenge?  

I have gone for all single use plastic for the whole month.  How will I go?  Well, of course that remains to be seen but I'm thinking if I can stay focused then I should do OK.

It starts on Monday so I have the weekend to get organised.  To make plans. To read more of the website and decide if I will go with it or come back and delete this and pretend it was never mentioned.

What about you?  Have you done it before?  Interested in doing it this year?

It can be for a day or a week, it doesn't have to be the whole month.  It doesn't even have to be all plastic it could just be what they call the big 4.  Plastic bags, straws, bottles, coffee cup lids.

Plastic Free July.  I'm game.  Are you?

So Sorry and Thankyou.

This is an apology to all my followers.  Every now and then I do a post thanking people for following and leaving comment.  A generic thankyou.  I'm sorry.  I mean well but really I know that a personal welcome and thankyou each time I get a new follower would be much better.  It's not like I get dozens a week so it should be simple enough to do.   And a reply to the comments within a day or so should also be done but I don't.  I know I like it when I get a reply to comments I leave on blogs and the blogs that never reply to anyone sometimes get taken off my list. 

The sad thing is that though I know I should and would like to, the reality is that I might not say Welcome and reply all the time.   That's the way it is.  And I'm sorry for that too.

Thankyou Rat for bringing this to my attention.

Cold Weather Cooking.

We have had a few cold nights here and yesterday was raining so the woodfire has been going for a few days.  That means it's time to cook up big pots of soupy stuff to go in the fridge and freezer. 

I've just been out and picked some Chokos and Capsicums, I'm going to put them through the Vitamix and make up a big pot of...something.  I cooked up some split peas last night, I have 2 empty Vegemite jars on the stove, with water in them and will swish that around and add it to the pot.  It adds flavour and gets the last of the Vegemite out of the jar.  Husband gets cranky when he comes across the empty jars in the cupboard and calls me tight but hey, why waste all that free flavour.   The end result of todays mixture will become soup or have chicken added to it, frozen in portions to add to other stuff...a bit of all the that...not really sure yet.

So, I have done all that.  I went through the fridge and found some manky carrots, some older capsicums and sad looking tomatoes.  They have been through the Vitamix and are now added to the pot.

I have taken a pack of what I think is mince from the freezer.  It might be stewing steak  Whatever.   When that defrosts it will have some of this mixture added to it and that will bethe start of tonights tea and my lunch for the next 2 days.  Maybe tomorrows tea as well, if there is enough left over.  I will add the last of the big mushroom to tonights lot.

I like cooking up a big batch of something and having it in the fridge ready for eating  over a few days.   It means that there is something healthy in there regardless of how busy we have been or how lazy we are.  I should do it more often as cold weather makes it all so much easier to get plenty of vegies in.   We don't have a stove/oven and Summer means salads but you can get a lot of goodness into soups and stews. 

What is your favorite cold weather food?

Mushrooms.

When we were kids we used to wander the hills in the town we lived and go mushrooming.   Not many places have mushrooms growing now and you can't just go wandering over other peoples paddocks even if you do see mushies growing there.  That wouldn't be right.  Of course you can buy them but I don't.

So every year now I look forward to the sunshine after the first rains.  It means that there will be some mushrooms coming up in our paddocks.  If we get to them before the cows then we get a few feeds of fresh field mushies.  We have them come up in 3 areas that I know of but one paddock I wont pick from as I am not 100% sure on if they are the right type.  The ones in the triangle paddock look and smell just like real mushies.  When left sitting on a piece of paper the spores are dark.  BUT, when young the underside of these is white.  They go brown as they age and get bigger but to me the underside should be pink when small then darker/brown.  So I wont eat the ones from the triangle paddock.   I will eat them from the other 2 patches, no worries, have done for the last 5 years or so and am not dead yet so I figure I am right and they are the right ones.    We picked a batch a month or so ago and thought they were finished but with the latest batch of rain and sunshine Husband found a couple more and I had them a couple of nights ago.

A few weeks ago I mowed out the front of our place, we have been away for a week and getting home saw that it all needs mowing out there again.  I was walking out there a couple of days after we were home and noticed a big white ball growing, thought it was a big puffball and as I had read that you can eat those when picked at the right time I squatted down next to this one to wonder why you would.  Ha, not a puffball.  Big toadstool?  Didn't think so.  I was pretty sure it was a mushroom so left it there and we went back for another look a couple of days later.  I got down and smelt it and it smelt like a mushroom.   Husband got down  on the ground and the first time he looked it wasn't open yet but the next day he saw that it was pink underneath.  Looks like we have our first BIG mushroom. 

Manymanymany years ago we used to sometimes find big mushrooms, what we called horse mushrooms.  I'm not sure though if this is right as the underside is pink and some stuff that I have read says that Horse Mushrooms start off white...maybe the triangle paddock mushrooms are real Horse Mushrooms even though they are not big like I think of a HM? 

Anyway, we kept an eye on the mushroom, watched it open as it grew and I put a bit of white paper underneath to see that the spores were brown and not yellow.   And I covered it over with some grass and small branches from the trees out there, to hide it from any mushroom stealing people that might pass by though technically, as it is/was on public land it wouldn't have been stealing...

The mushroom has been picked and is in the fridge...I now need to decide how to use it but it is big enough to try a few different ways.

Do you pick real mushrooms from your paddocks?  Get big ones like this?  Know what they are called?  All comments appreciated, thankyou.

Home but no time...

We have been home from our week in Shark Bay for a few days now but I am using the fact that I haven't had a full day home yet as my excuse for not blogging.  And daughter has my camera so I can't post photos...OK, that one is not real as I do have another camera I could use if I really wanted to.  And older photos too...OK, the real reason, as you might have guest is I am a slacka.

But here is a big pat on the back for husband.   Our leaving day was 3am, Saturday, June 1st.   Yep 3am, that's early even for me.  So I was up at 2.30, you know coffee, waking up time, last minute packing...I hear water running, think maybe I left a hose on the night before, maybe into the washing machine so go out the back...there is steamy water pouring out of the hot water system.  Oh dear, that's not right.  A loud yell gets husband up, he comes out and looks, swears, turns the gas off, turns the water to the system off...We leave for the 10 hour drive to Shark Bay.  We get home Sunday afternoon a week later, no shower that night and Monday morning I look up plumbers, we talk about getting it fixed or replacing...husband takes the cover off of this so we can give the plumber guy some sort of information of where the water came from...half an hour later husband has it fixed and we can shower.  It is an old system and when he took the cover off he saw that the water pipes had pulled away, a clamp had come off the wall and the weight of the pipe had pulled it from the rusty connections.  A bit of fiddling, make another clampy thing, prop up another pipe, connect it back up, light the pilot light and we are good to go.  Thanks Dear.

It was good to get home, I missed it.  The grass was green and needs mowing...as it does...the backyard and clothesline has been taken over by the Choko vine  Tomatoes and Capsicum ripening up nicely.  June and we still have a few tomato bushes with red tomatoes, unusual but good to see.  The Luffa vine is smothered and I need to get out there and find and pick them as a few are going brown.  Passionfruit are starting to fall so I will get a lovely smell when I next mow.  It all needs work but that will come when next I have a full day at home...not this week, maybe next.  Still no eggs from any chooks.  I need to oil their legs again, I did them the week before we left and they get done a few times to combat the Scaley Leg Mite but I wonder if they deserve it.  Or if they will be culled soon anyway...but we chook people have to do right by the animal so it will get done regardless.  This weekend, I think.   But I'm busy Saturday as it Free Market day.  HoHum,  Sunday then.

Have work today and need to leave soon, busybusybusy....