No man is an island

Mostly I enjoy living alone.  There are however occasions when it, quite frankly sucks:

• No one to hold/lift/steady/straighten or brace the piece of timber I’m trying to  put up or pull  down.
• No one to hold the ladder or hand up the light globe.
• No one to go buy take away or just toast a sandwich when I’m too tired to even crawl into the kitchen.
• No one to bounce decorating ideas off. (Of course that also means no one to  disagree with my plan to put an island in the kitchen and shelve the hall…)
• No one to mow the lawn while I build 😉

Mostly though, there is no one to ask the really important questions of, like, ‘If you were my label machine, where would I have put you?’

 

 

This is not a food blog, but…

This is not a food blog, but…

I’ve just spent 4 hours with a friend in my kitchen making 2.5 kilos of garlic herb butter. I can say with utmost confidence that it is GOOD. We’ve packaged it up in tubs for the fridge and foiled pats for the freezer but of course we had to taste test it as we went along. Total cost about $26 for 21 small takeaway containers worth (think coleslaw or gravy tubs). The cheapest garlic bread I can see is $3.50 for 3 rolls, which would have maybe one tub worth of butter on them (but not nearly as much garlic nor the herbs for taste). I bought an entire breadstick tonight for 60c, so my herb bread will cost me $1.80 and taste WAY better. Today came about because of my resolution to actually use the herbs I’m growing this year! So I made herb toast for the dinner party last month and it was quickly decided we should make more while the herbs were fresh. My rosemary, oregano and thyme bushes have had a good pruning today and I have been instructed to plant more of them for next year. 🙂

I wasn’t planting vegetables this year – I have plans for a new raised vegetable bed sometime in the future, but scrapped the old veggie beds which were too hot for the tomatoes and corn when I last used them and too full of oxalis to be sown with anything useful. I filled in the paths with some old manure and soil from some past pots from the terrace and basically tossed grass clippings across it all and threw multiple old packets of seed in. Of course I watered these old seeds and got a lovely display of sweet peas, Love in the Mist, cosmos and marigolds as well as a few carrots, some beetroot and a sunflower. In among these I eventually planted some tomatoes (which never got staked and between the extreme weather, the  pelting rain, and the fruit lying on the ground where the birds could reach have produced pretty well), French butter beans (which decided to produce their entire crop over a span of 3 days) a few zucchini and small squash, it’s probably fortunate that over half of these died since instead of feeding the 4 people I was expecting to have by this time of year I’m only feeding one. I also put in some sweetcorn (which didn’t get enough water and then over aged during the 3 day heat wave – so I only got a couple of really nice cobs from it), some capsicum (the last surviving plant has a single flower on it now, no way it will have time to develop), and some cucumber seedlings (otherwise known as snail snacks).

So this (basil, parsley, dill, oregano, spring onion, french butter beans, and zucchini) became:

And these (I forgot to photograph the rest of the bucketful before I skinned them)

became:

(Bolognese with chorizo – yum)

Not bad for a non vegetable garden year 😉

And my kitchen smells divine! Also I WANT a curved double bladed herb cutter. M brought one with her today and it was so much easier than a knife.