Simple Living Day

Here are some of the simple living things that I did today :

washed my laundry with homemade laundry detergent

walked 5km  in my neighbourhood for my daily exercise

hung my laundry on the line to air dry

made lunches for  my husband and daughter of homemade bread, banana muffins, and fruit to take to work and school. I wrapped the sandwiches in paper instead of plastic.

harvested my huge crop of rocket (aragula) from my herb garden

enjoyed  a bowl of homemade leek and potato soup with freshly torn rocket in the sunshine for my lunch

ground by hand some rocket into a pesto with improvised mortar and pestle. aka mixing bowl and blunt end of rolling pin!

read my favourite simple living blogs

experimented to create  a homemade rocket, toasted almond and parmesan pesto. Bottled jars of rocket pesto!

listened to my daughter read

cooked a roast dinner from scratch

listed some items of Freecyle to give away

monitored our finances/budget with my husband

talked to my husband about our simple and sustainable plans (in the sunshine)

gave some rocket to my neighbours

cast off  my scarf that I have been learning how to knit

read a chapter of my book from the library “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.

What was your simple living day like today?

Homemade Bread

Cookie baking

Barbie Girl and I love to bake together.

We baked cookies together this week.

Check out the cross eyed grumpy one , top left corner. He was the favourite and Barbie Girl chose to have that one first for afternoon tea.

These cookies were huge. I was anticipating making small delicate bite sized ones, to make around 50 small cookies.

Barbie Girl had other ideas. We put the ball of cookie dough in the fridge for 30 mins to chill. I went off to have a shower, and when I came back down, Barbie Girl had already rolled out the dough and made 13 huge kid sized cookies.

So into the oven they went. We mixed up blue and red icing and tried out the piping set for the first time.

These are a favourite now.

I’m a big Donna Hay fan. Love your work Donna! Below is a recipe we have tweaked from Donna Hay, Modern Classics 2.  However our version bears no physical resemblance to her delicate vanilla snap cookies. Here is the recipe.

Smiley Face Cookies

185 g butter

1 cup caster sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 1/2 cups plain flour

1 egg

1 egg yolk extra

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius

2. Mix butter, sugar and vanilla in mixmaster  or food processor until smooth.

3. Add the flour, egg and egg yolk and mix again to from a smooth dough.

4. Knead the dough lightly, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 mins.

5. Make balls of dough in size you would like and flatten.

6. Place on baking tray on top of silicone baking sheet or baking paper.

7. Bake for 10-12 mins, or a little longer until golden.

8. Cool on wire racks.

9. Pipe on icing or dust with icing sugar.

Enjoy for morning or afternoon tea!

My simple living day

This morning when I got up I made some porridge made with milk and dried cranberries. This is my favourite breakfast during the cooler spring mornings, and I have been having it almost every morning over the past month or so.

It is school holidays, and I love being able to spend time with my daughter, instead of sending her off to vacation care will I go to work for the corporate world.

We ran a few errands that I had bundled up to do in one run.

Morning tea was homemade gingerbread men which my daughter had made when she had stayed with her Grandparents a couple of nights ago. I loved sitting with her in the morning light, talking about bits and bobs, and just spending time together.

A few home chores, I optimistically hung the laundry on the line, then we braved the changeable weather and went for a walk together. It started to rain lightly, which was fun and just added to the experience, hair frizzies and all.

‘Cept the laundry got wet.

I still needed to do some exercise when we came back, as I usually run for about 50 mins when it is not holidays, so I hopped on the exercise bike at home for half an hour of pedalling, and Barbie Girl put on her favourite pop CD and choreagraphed and danced her own dance routines to her favourite songs.

After showers, we had a fresh lunch of mountain bread wrap with grilled chicken breast, carrots, cucumbers and snow peas.

In the afternoon, some more home chores, composting, and some home sewing. I am making a green cotton dress for casual summer days. I put the zip in and then took it out as it wasn’t right. I will try again tomorrow. One of the things with my home sewing is that if its not quite right the deal is that I unpick and unpick and redo until it is right. Otherwise, I know that I won’t feel comfortable wearing it, which means it ends up not being worn.

I had a whole bunch of celery that had been sitting in my fridge for a week. So I made some homemade celery and potato soup for freezing in small portions.

We were called out in the bad weather to collect Mr Techno from work.

Dinner was “leftovers night”- spinach pie, sausages and steamed fresh corn on the cob, carrots and fresh beans.

I made a lemon slice that is just finishing baking in the oven as I write this post. This is a recipe posted by Inner Pickle blog that I have just discovered and I am delighting in reading.

Then I will sit down with my little family with cups of tea and enjoy our evening together with a movie perhaps?

Then some lemon slice when it has cooled.

Food shopping and meal plan this week

Each week, my aim is to cook healthy, fresh meals from scratch wherever possible for my family of 3 for under $150. This is $50 per person per week.  The food bill includes packed lunches for everyone, snacks, breakfasts and dinners, and a dessert, biscuits or cakes as a treat sometimes.

(My food bill prior to my simpler approach  was in the vicinity of $250 per week. 10 years ago when my husband and I first married, our food bill was $220 per week).

Above is a photo of this week’s food shopping.

Fruit and vegetable market $81.76

Butcher $23.56

Grocery Store $40.22 ( I had to purchase 2 extra 3 litre milk containers and coffee after this photo this week).

Total Food shopping $145.54

This weeks meal plan:

Breakfasts

coffee, milk drink, juice

homemade bircher muesli

porridge

Bran cereal

scrambled eggs with toast

fresh fruit

Lunch

salad with tuna

soup

Dinner

Wednesday – stir fry- chicken, noodles, mushrooms and zucchini and broccoli

Thursday- fish patties with steamedvegetables including pumpkin

Friday – Family Celebration- dinner out

Saturday- Chilli con carne with potato and broccoli on the side

Sunday- selection of leftovers

Monday- Beef curry with side of spinach and onion

Tuesday- Penne pasta with aubergine and chilli

Homemade treat

Banana and oatmeal muffins

Snacks

• cut up carrots
• cut up celery
• slices of cheese
• homemade yoghurt
• pears
• apples
• mandarins
• oranges
• kiwi fruit
• walnuts
• almonds
• tea
• coffee

Simply prepared fish fillets

This is a really simple way to prepare fresh fish for dinner.

Put a handful of flour into a bowl.

Whisk 1 egg in a second bowl.

Dip fresh fish fillets into flour and then egg.

Lightly pan fry in a little olive oil.

Serve with a lemon wedge and salad or vegetables.

I made this for dinner tonight using bream fillets, but any white fish works well.

Perfecting Clafouti

What is clafouti?

It is a baked custard pudding with lots of fruit.

The great thing about it is that you can use lots of different fruit, depending on what is in season. I have been trialling raspberries.

Another great thing about it is that it is so quick to make.
Over the last few weeks I have been trying to learn how to make a good clafouti.

I have made it 3 times now, tweaking it each time. Mr Techno was forced to eat my earlier attempts, not that he minded!

 Last night I made the version that I will now add to my favourite recipe folder.

Let me share it with you..

Raspberry Clafouti

1 1/4 cups of milk
1/3 cup castor sugar
3 large fresh eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla essence
pinch salt
1/2 cup flour
2 cups fresh berries ( or 2 cups frozen berries, defrosted and strained)

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Cover medium sized Pyrex baking dish with berries.
3. Place all remaining ingredients in blender.
4. Blend for 1 minute.
5. Pour mixture over berries.
6. Bake for 35 minutes.
7. Sprinkle a little icing sugar on top.

This pudding can be served warm or cold.

Getting your needs met – healthy food

In my journey of discovering a simpler life, I am focussing on getting my needs met, instead of my wants.

One of my needs is to eat healthy food. So I have been cooking almost all of our meals from scratch. It is interesting to reflect that when my life was more complicated when I was working such long hours, that a basic need to eat healthy food was one of the first casualties. We would eat out more often, or pick up takeaway, just because it was too late to start cooking by the time I had commuted home from work on the train and then picked up my daughter from care and arrived home. It was about 7pm.

It is also interesting to reflect that this way of living also had a huge cost in the money required to eat dinner by eating out or having takeaway food. So a lot of the money that I was making in my job in the city was going towards a simple need to feed a family of 3 conveniently before 7pm at night.

And I didn’t know how the food was prepared.

Now that I have changed to a simpler lifestyle by leaving that soul destroying job which took up so much of my life, I now make almost all meals from scratch. I know exactly how the food is prepared, and I use the freshest ingredients.

So focussing on my need to eat healthy food, this is being met so much more these days. And a secondary benefit is that I have lost 8kg since the change in lifestyle.

It is interesting to reflect that a basic need to eat healthy food was being neglected in the days before when life was much more complicated.

Spinach Pie Recipe

I made this delicious spinach pie last night.

Spinach Pie Photo credit Rhonda at Down to Earth

It is one of the most delicious spinach pies I have ever made. It is now going to replace the spinach pie recipe I usually use.

The recipe is from one of the simple living blogs I love to read. Rhonda over at down to earth makes this one and posted it on her blog.

You can find the Spinach pie recipe and Rhonda’s step by step photos here.

I highly recommend it!