Gathering the Fragments 30 May 2021

Well here we are in lock down again.

I'm frustrated and upset, mainly because we are due to go on our trip to Tasmania in a few weeks and it's looking like this won't happen - again!

Anyway, there's no point in sooking or whining, or even feeling sorry for myself, apart from this, it has been a great week.

We had a little rain. Not enough to really break the drought, but enough to water the garden for a couple of days. I love saving water!

When it was announced that we might be going into lockdown again, I did a quick inventory to see what we needed - milk. So I quickly donned a mask and bought fresh milk. We're right for everything else, a benefit of keeping the pantry full.

I made focaccia for lunches. I used a half a red onion that was in the fridge, a couple of tomatoes that needed using, a couple of cloves of garlic from the garden and rosemary from the garden. It was delicious.

The weather cooled down towards the end of the week, so a big pot of soup was made. I used a soup pack from the freezer. These are so handy to have. I buy a bunch of celery, a bag of carrots, a couple of parsnips, pick a couple of turnips from the garden and two or three, depending on size, onions. Chop them all up and bag in 3 cup portions for soups. Sometimes I'll leave them in chunks, for meat soups; sometimes I chop them up smaller for chicken or vegetable soup. But being able to just pull one from the freezer on a whim, along with some stock, and make soup in a few minutes is such a blessing on a busy day. And homemade soup with homemade English muffins is quick, cheap and easy for unexpected visitors too.

I challenged everyone over on Cheapskates Chatter to keep busy during lockdown. My plan was to make cards, so that's what I did. The nursing home is asking for some and it's time to replenish the CWA stocks too. 

I also finished off some dishcloths.

We kept the fire going, even on the warm days, to keep the house warm. When we do this we don't need to use the ducted heating at all, and that's a huge cost saving on gas.

I noticed the price of petrol was coming down. Well of course it is, no one can go anywhere! My car was just under 3/4 full so I hunted down a discount voucher and went and filled it up. The price difference was 30c a litre, a saving of $4.50 that I moved to our holiday fund.

With everyone back working at home, they were looking for something more substantial for breakfasts. English muffins are easy to make (and they freeze), so are hot cakes (and they freeze). There was some sausage mince in the freezer so I used Gardenpat's recipe for breakfast sausage seasoning to make patties and made sausage and cheese muffins; then I fried some eggs (no oil - I love my new frypan) and made egg and cheese muffins; made a double batch of Mum's Secret Hot Cakes. I wrapped them in meal sizes and put them in the freezer. Then the kids just nuked whatever they wanted for breakfast. They feel like they're getting something special and it's so much cheaper than them ordering, which they had talked about doing! Bless their little cotton socks, that would cost them about $50 a week each - a ridiculous amount of money.

Lunches were toasted sandwiches. They made their own, they all have different lunchtimes. Easy.

I've been craving coffee and trying really hard to not drink too much so I made a decaf batch of Joy's Iced Coffee Syrup and I've been adding it to milk and heating it in the microwave - yum!

Drying the washing by the fire.

Saving the shower warm-up water.

Only doing full loads of laundry and dishes.

Writing any leftovers on the whiteboard so they are used up.

Fed egg shells and veggie peels to the worms.

Added some bones and meat scraps to the bokashi bucket.

Made sure to close the blinds and curtains by 4.45pm to keep the warm in and the cold out, and pushed the draught stoppers against the outside doors.

Made sure to just use a lamp in the loungeroom if the TV was on. That's plenty of light to knit by and my Kindle and Wayne's tablet give off enough light to read.

Gratefully accepted some brand new collapsible canisters from my Aunty. These will be great in the camper for flour, sugar, rice, cereal etc. and when they're empty they'll collapse down so they won't take up a lot of space.

Goodness, I need to jot things down as I do them. I'm sure there's more, but I can't think off the top of my head.

How did you gather the fragments this week?