Feather your Nest Friday, 28th July, 2023.

I am so glad to sit down and look over my week.   We are almost at the end of July!  The month went so fast.  Actually the week went so fast!  

I continued to work through produce I have.   A dozen lemons and a dozen eggs went into Lemon Butter.  I still have some lemons left but they look fresh enough to last a little longer.  The chickens still are laying, I collected seven most days.     

Someone was asking for fertile chicken eggs and I put my hand up and said I have some and I am happy to do a trade for produce.  We will see what happens!

There were twelve apples to use up so I made Outback Tania's Apple slice.  It was just beautiful.  Each slice takes six apples... I made one of them gluten free.  Completely delicious as a slice/cake or as a warm desert with cream or ice cream.    I will see if Tania will post a link in the comments.

I had two cook ups. The first was a batch of Enchilada sauce.   One tray of Enchiladas went to Chloe for her family.

The second use it up baking was pumpkin soup and then a batch of pumpkin scones,  I really love these.

Using what we have to the absolute fullest... I can't even express how this week made me even more aware of how important this is.    We were just inundated with dire and extreme financial news.  Each day it was builders collapsing,  farmers protesting and fighting for their lives,  headlines like "Disastrous, Panic as repayments double," figures from the first quarter of the year showing electricity went up by 30% again and meant to repeat this ...   food prices through the roof and food is shrinking!   Normally I shop and pick out the produce carefully however this week I did an online order which Andy picked up.   First I went through the catalogue and then ordered absolute necessities and some specials.   Amongst those I ordered a twin pack of lettuce and a cucumber.  They were not cheap.  I think the cucumber was $2.50 and that is about as good as I could hope for lately.   When I unpacked them I was dumfounded.  Actually I was mortified.   All I could think is what if I had kids and these were meant to fill sandwiches for the week?  I just felt sad and worried for families. They were the tiniest lettuces and cucumber I have ever seen in my life.  It was like some kind of joke.   It just really, really hit me how this would be for a family.   I showed Andy and he said the same.  He had not ever seen lettuces so small!   Since the cucumber was 1/3 the minimum normal size... for it to equal "normal" it would have cost $7.50.   No one in their right mind would pay that.  But I just had!     Because of this I am further upping my refrigerator game.  Food is worth gold now.   I am going to do a post on making food last,  keeping a close eye on what needs to be used and preserving what you can't use right now.

Apart from food.... it made the news tonight that people are paying $40 a bottle of laundry liquid and $60 a box of dish washer tablets.   I saw that small spray bottles of concentrated surface spray (used for baked on messes, the top of the stove etc) was $11.50.   I decided to adapt and test Miracle Spray.   It worked!  It works a dream so much so that I made some up as gifts.

I was so happy with this and gave some to a friend who was also distressed over the price of cleaning products.   These actually produced a lot of joy, even from the perspective of "we can beat these prices" and we can help each other. 

In the sewing room the last of the Kookaburra fabric was used and then some Banksia fabric was made into kitchen towels.

For a little while I have thought about all the velvet remnants I have and that I might attempt a simple soft toy... and if it worked I might make a goal to make one a week.  This was my first attempt.  He looks a little like he needs rehabilitation in a wildlife hospital.   I have another one cut out, a bit bigger this time as his arms were ridiculously hard to stuff.  We will see how it goes.  His name is Gumnut. 

A couple more wash cloths were finished. 

My third big cook up was a big pot of spaghetti sauce, a giant pasta bake and leftovers to freeze.   We had this for dinner tonight,  it will re appear Sunday night as well.    I still have two pumpkins and a bag of oranges.... I think tomorrow I will make slabs of orange cake and juice some.  You can bet I will be using everything single thing to the max! 

I have felt very prompted to go through my cupboard and stock,  organise,  know what I have,  how much and where...   It is six years now since I began stocking up and working on our preparedness.   What a journey!   Last week I did some Spring Cleaning and this week I totally emptied out some cupboards, wiped them out and put it all back in categories  (with labels)  and counted each item.    I got our utility cupboard done,  our under the sink cupboards and under the bathroom sinks.   It was a giant mess doing it but now they all look so nice!  Now and then I just go open the doors to admire.  😊

Next week I am going to tackle the medical cupboard and the bathroom cupboard which is quite big and has all the toiletry type supplies.   Both of these will be huge jobs.   I know having the medical cupboard better organised is long over due.   To do it I measured it up and ordered shelves that will fit inside.   Now that I've decided what to do I can't wait to do it! 

It is late and I have run out of energy so I will add 1/ Outback Tania's apple recipe,  2/ How I adapted the Miracle cleaner recipe to be a concentrated cleaner for baked on messes,  3/ where you can find the Koala pattern which is free,  4/ the Lemon Curd recipe if anyone wants it and 5/ a link to Vickys enchilada sauce recipe if anyone needs that. 

How was your week?  How did you build up your home, pantry or garden?  We LOVE to hear! xxx

Miracle Cleaner.    For the concentrate I doubled the dish detergent and did not dilute this as you normally would.

Vickys Enchilada Sauce.   I do not use the stock... I use tinned or other tomatoes and a chicken stock cube.

Lemon Butter.

Tania's slice:  6 Apples, peeled, cored and chopped.  2 Cups Self Raising flour,  1 cup of sugar, 2 eggs, 125 grams of butter....   mix wet ing then flour and apples all together.   Bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour.

Gumnut. This is posted on The Tuesday Afternoon Club and I will repost it so it is easy to find.  Hopefully next week I will have Gumnut 2.0 and will see if a bigger size makes him easier!