950L water 'tank' for $50+ fittings (updated with full costing)

Here's our 'water tanks'. The olive barrels were sourced through J (*thankyou J for organising the barrel co-op!*). They're food grade, come with great seals and lids. They're 190 litres each and being stacked down the side of an otherwise fairly unused area of the house, they won't get a lot of traffic (except when the mandarine trees fruit!). The shade cloth you can see is to keep the summer sun out of the windows but when the mandarines are taller they will take care of that too. Anyway, to the barrels...

In progress... almost done... Just under 1000 litres capacity. Just need to tidy up around them now!

Now completely DONE (see next pic)
with taps on the ends and lids on the barrels. Debate is on whether to put a breather hole in the top of the lids but I think if they're not screwed on super tight, should be ok.



My thoughts initially were to use one barrel for SR flour, one for plain etc but I've decded to go with using them as rainwater tanks and find an option that's a little more 'easy access' for the bulk foodstuffs. Here's the almost finished project. It has just the finishing bits to do but we're already catching what falls from the sky. yay!

What a belly-filling read!

We’re getting all thing-ey for this year’s Spring Fair & Open Day . . .

SUNDAY 24th Oct!

10am - 3pm

West Coast Steiner School

Mayfair Street

NOLLAMARA

There will be Things of Wood and Stone

Rock aficionados and crystal lovers will be delighted to know that Spring Fair veteran stallholder Frank Phillips and wife Rene will once again be offering their wares at this year’s Spring Fair & Open Day. Frank has been scouring the Earth’s surface (and sub-surface) for specimens for his stall, and Rene will be at his side as usual with a tantalizing array of bric a brac for the up-cyclers. (We know you’re out there.)

Nearby, under the trees, Greg Miller will be offering his ‘Joy of Wood’ woodworking activities, for lovers of wood and lovers of wood to-be. A professional woodworker with a passion for traditional wood working tools and hand skills, Greg is also an experienced youth and community worker and loves working with people. Let your ears lead you there, via the clatter and hum of busy kids of all ages creating masterpieces out of their imagination and recycled bits of timber.

Honey Oat bars and others

I'm sure there's plenty of variations and versions of these but this is the one I made today. Looking forward to trying the chewy leftover cereal ones, and the muesli ones. pics to come.

What came home the other day...

Brooke has been very excited about what she's up to in craft at school. The other day she finished it and it came home... Can't wait to post a pic! eta here 'tis!





A crotchet drink carrier for her water bottle. As a size indicator, this is the largest size (1.2litres) Eco Tanka. A very practical creation, and just one of the many things they learn at school that I would really have liked to know how to do already ... I'm rather impressed with it and have put my order in ;)
eta I think that's the 'back' that I took a pic of, where the colour joins are... hmmm I'm sacked eh... will do another pic of the 'right' side maybe tomorrow.
I am also drooling over these things at Mama4earth (found the link on Down to Earth) and wishing I could knit like that! Brooke can LOL The items all look so well made, the knitting nice and even and heck, who could resist one of these eggs!

on Cakes

Birthday Cakes. I've kept most of the pics of cakes I've made here (sometimes the link is down, so I am slowly backing the pics up elsewhere and will replace the broken pic links here asap). I'll post a few pics below to share. Mostly I work from the Debbie Brown cake books because I like the challenge, other times the Women's Weekly cake books and other times just whatever.



I have been asked a few times what I use underneath. I used to bake the cakes from scratch, and did once make the DB suggested cake recipe but didn't find it to my liking. I found that the Betty Crocker Devils/Choc cake and Vanilla Cake mixes, are very reliable and strong enough to support a 3D Cake icing. Instead of buttercream underneath the ready-roll icing I use Betty Crocker Vanilla frosting - one because it's easy to access and two because everyone actually likes to eat it - no point making a cake that looks great but doesn't match it in taste. It also leaves more time for me to do the actual decorating.

However if the Betty Crocker cake mix isn't avail or I don't feel like using it, I just use the choc cake recipe from the old CWA women's cook book lol. I keep a few tubs of the frosting in the cupboard - great for just home made cupcakes as a treat (thanks Joanne for putting me onto it!) - it's really yummy! The bought mixes I use are gelatine-free so no prob for

vegetarian, although eggs are added so would be prob for vegan.
The colours are gel colours (again check ingredients for dietary requirements) from a cake dec shop - great choice in colours, reliable and you can do BLACK - which as those of you who have done any cake will know, is very hard to achieve with icing mix+food colour.

Then there are the simpler cakes... like the carrot cake below, and you can do frosting with rose petals (which are edible if you feel like it) - quite pretty and very simple.

Anyway, some more pics. One day I'll get around to photoshopping the background out, and it's usually late at night/early morning when I finish them so the light isn't that great... thanks to Tina (huntersmum) for photoshopping the top two for me. The rest of the pics are avail in the link in the first para. So for those embarking into the world of kid's cake decorating, I hope that info helps! Cheers, Kristy.

On Chopping & Freezing Veges/Meals

Where to start? Right. Well in this thread and this thread, (to name just two) there were discussions about freezing veges and what you can freeze and how etc. I thought I'd put my bits all in one spot coz I keep losing where they are when someone asks for a link

Frozen chopped etc veg get frozen in one lot and are easy to just take out what you need. Meals I usually freeze an entire meal because there's not often I only want it for one of us iykwim
however, I have smaller Rock N Serves that I freeze leftovers in, which are usually single/two person portions ie for DH for work the next day for lunch, for me late night when I get the munchies lol, or if it's DS2 and I home for lunch together in the day time.

If I use a divided large Rock N Serve (rectangle container with three divisions in it) for a meal, say spag bog or stir fry, it's easy enough to remove a portion. Another way is to 'divide' your dish with Glad Back or similar if you have it.

Most of my containers are Tupperware (because that's what I have but use what you like) and inside them from the top is sliced onion. carrot, capsi, cabbage and... can't remember what the last one is. If you have say, a container with capsi, onion next to it, sliced tomato next to that etc, and a container with your perf sliced pizza meat, then...

Dinner can be as quick as pull out some frozen pita bread, spread on your tomato sauce/paste, chuck on your frozen veg and meat, chuck on some grated cheese (that you've got frozen in the freezer coz you grated the block last week) and put in the oven... Dinner done!

When I slice/chop and freeze my veg, I add them to dishes as I'm cooking, the same way you'd add any other frozen veg you might buy - add it frozen, don't defrost. With the exception of cheese (which isn't a veg I know), I don't thaw the veges to use thawed ie in salad etc, they all go from freezer straight into a dish I'm cooking and you can't tell the difference.
The vegies I do like that in a bulk lot because I've bought 10kg of onions, 5kg carrots, massive bag of capsi etc so it saves money and then chopping and freezing in one go, saves time each night (only chop once a week or less) and makes dinner prep quicker, plus you can 'keep' more vegies coz they're frozen whereas that quantity fresh in the fridge would go off iykwim.

I've had luck with most vegies totally raw - capsi, broc, cauli, carrot, celery, onion, spring onion, corn kernels, cabbage, silverbeet, sprinach, bok choy, pak choy etc and prob a heap more.

For meals in glass/pyrex/oven dishes for example lasagne, I let it defrost in the fridge, put it in the oven without preheating, then turn the temp on that way dish comes to temp slowly, and because it's defrosted the meal doesn't take so long to warm/cook through. HTH A couple of extra dishes when they're on sale or such and you're set!

Vanilla Bean Collective Order

Well with vanilla essence/extract being what it is in the shop, and the price of one bean alone being upwards of $5, a bunch of us decided to go in a collective order and order 1kg of Vanilla Beans from Vanilla Plantations Australia. Service was very fast, with post to where we are 2 days which is pretty good. It ended up being approx $11 for 85g of beans (19-22 pods depending on thickness/weight) which will more than make our vanilla essence, and we will have enough leftover to make heaps of vanilla sugar! The recipe came from this thread on EB and goes like this

Vanilla Essence

Put 1 to 6 vanilla pods into a tall narrow jar. Fill with vodka or half vodka, half commercial extract. Let steep at room temperature for at least one

month and shake before using. Replenish any extract you use with vodka or commercial extract. Will keep indefinitely..

You may want to cut down the amount used in recipes by half, as it tends to be stronger.

Will put up pics shortly of what arrived and of it divvied up - smelled DIVINE when it arrived here! I was really not wanting to use ziplock bags as I don't like them but when put against cost of fuel to meet up, not to mention that we couldn't all be in the same place at the same time (which is fair enough!) and would have had to package some anyway, well it worked out better to bag them and post them. I ran out of recycled envelopes of course, so used up the excess non-recycled ones we already had here.