Pepper and The Marauders

Oh hello! What u bin doin'?

We love it when that bloke brings the trailer in. It's usually got food in it...and it's fun to climb on.

Ah yes, I knew there'd be food.

Hey, what's those letters mean?

Huwwo.....

More Soap - with Fragrance

We decided to make a batch of soap; we're using the very last cake from the November 4 batch and I wanted to try a batch with fragrance. I had been thinking sandalwood but was STRONGLY overruled at the health food shop when Meg spied a bottle of lemongrass drops. So lemongrass it was. We also stuck a lavender flower head into one of the rectangle ones. That should be interesting!

Here you can see the caustic soda and water cooling in the pyrex jug. It gets very hot.

The olive oil and copha warming up.

Combining the two mixtures (caustic soda/water and olive oil/copha) - mixing - trying to arrive at trace. This is when we added the fragrance. It took another couple of minutes compared to last time and I stopped when it was still a little runny, not too thick.

We made a loofah soap!

Pouring the soap into the moulds; much easier than last time - it flowed smoothly.

In the moulds and ready to wrap in towels. This mixture is a totally different colour to last time - this is yellow; last batch was white. The only difference was the brand of oil I used.

There's not much to show for it but we also made 10 litres of washing liquid (for clothes). This pic shows bringing the mixture to the boil and the bottles of water waiting to be added.

It was a very productive weekend.

The Great Woodlawn Bakeoff

Well it wasn't really a bake-off; there was just lots of baking/cooking. Meg is an enthusiastic cook - much more enthusiastic than her mother. Gibbo thought it was all pretty fantastic to have all this delicious food in the house.

In no particular order, here's some pics of what we made - quiche, pork and prawn wontons, butter chicken, choc chip cookies, pancakes and chicken, leek and mushroom pie.

We first made these at the Thai Cooking School. G loved them!

Butter Chicken. We had this for tea on Saturday night and Meg took the leftovers back to T with her to freeze into lunch sized packs. Gibbo was disappointed.

Pancakes for Sunday morning breakfast with butter and raw honey and cappucinos.

Choc chip cookies.

Chicken Leek Mushroom and Bacon pie.

What a Sunday lunch! A big chunk of pie with a garden salad. Delicious.

I'm feeling a little inspired by Meg's enthusiasm. I hope it lasts more than a week. Gibbo does too!

We've Been Busy

The weekend started like this....

and ended like this.....

Everyone was happy and smilin'........

I need to do another 4 or so posts to fit everything in - otherwise this one will be waaay too long.

Meg arrived home Friday night - finally - after getting lost AGAIN on the back roads. She brought her camera - all these shots are from it.

We went to town on Saturday morning to do a few jobs. It's always fun when Meg and I go to town; we always take much longer than planned. I get bored quickly when shopping whereas Meg could shop forever! I showed her the house my Dad has bought; we went to the health food shop to buy essential oil (more on that later); we bought wine and food.

There was plenty of outside activity.

They're IN!! The Scratchers have begun their very important job of turning 7 blue circles into productive vegetable gardens.You Go Kids.

 The broccoli plants are coming into head; this is the biggest one.

Oh there I am, looking glamorous in my cool morning attire.

These two little boys hang out with The Teenagers. Their sisters went to live at Peter's; their parents are The Scratchers.

First drink of the morning at the communal bowl.

Sooky La-la gets an egg most days but she never eats them unless you break them open for her (too precious). She snatches it out of your hand, puts her nose in the air and runs away and buries it. I don't think she's ever gone back to dig one up and eat it. Poofy, on the other hand, can't even walk two steps away before he lays his egg on the ground and very gently cracks it open and licks all the goodness out. He ends up with yolk all over his beard.

I've got a couple of corker black silkies. A couple came yesterday to buy some Wyandottes off G and desperately wanted to buy one of my silkies.

Meg has missed this view...

and this one.

Here she is heading back to the house to get some treats for Pepper and The Marauders.

Gobbler George/Billy doing his thing again; Megan is very unnerved by him.

Car washing weather.

There was also a lot of cooking, some simple living activities and some more planning of animal pens. Gibbo brought the cows down to the front paddock to have them close by for preg testing on Tuesday. It was one of those weekends where we fitted so much in and went to bed tired but happy.

This Little Piggy.....

Friday night we enjoyed a 4 course dinner at a spectacular home in a nearby town; the kitchen itself was reported to have cost close to 6 figures! The executive chef cooked meat that we had sourced for our hosts (a little under-done for my liking but they were his instructions). The night was enjoyable (it was something quite different to our usual lifestyle and we met some new people) and it was for a good cause. The 2 female hosts had been out one night at a charity function and "bought" the chef, hence the dinner.

Yesterday morning we were back within our more regular comfort zone and visited a small scale "boutique" piggery. Meg came with us. Our friends supply young pork to a restaurant and we went to have a look at their operation. It's not something we plan on doing - we were just on a fact finding mission, gathering information for our own pork project, getting some ideas on breeds, setting up pens and shelters, feeding etc. We just want to have a couple of sows and breed enough offspring to feed ourselves and family.

We came home and did some wire ties on the sheep paddock fence then went out for a quiet dinner to a friend's house. We had a Turkish meal, cooked by the local roving restaurant; they provide a set menu, you order the number of servings you want and then collect it from a designated pick up point.

Today G has gone to play cricket; I've had a slow start to the day and enjoyed breakfast sitting on the day bed in the warm winter sunshine on the front verandah. It's a brilliant day. I'm now off to spray a large patch of toxic weeds in one of our paddocks.