Things I have been doing

Yesterday we spent the day in the garden. We have started to get our winter beds ready for planting. We planted, Snow peas (this is our second attempt, the last lot did no good at all), parsnips, turnips, beetroot and onions, we are still harvesting beans, zucchinis, chillis, raspberries (it is so nice to walk down the backyard and pick a fresh raspberry), I'm still waiting for my lemons to ripen, how long do they take?? We have radishes coming out of our ears, they are so yummy. Thats about it for the garden at the moment.

I'm cooking up some home made stocks at the moment and the house smells delish. Chicken stock and Lamb stock. Once the lamb stock is cooked I'm going to make up a hearty lamb stew, that should keep us going for a few days. The chicken stock is going in the freezer so I don't have to use bought stock. I have about 20 litres of stock bubbling away on the stove with lots of good wholesome bones in it. The cost of all this stock would have been no more than about $15.00 if I bought this much store bought stock it would cost me about $53.00 I think this is a great savings and a lot less salt in it.

The stock is now all finished. I made some JOOK (rice porridge with chicken, rice dried turnip and other things) for dinner. Jook (have no idea of the spelling, I spell it how I say it) is a chinese soup made with rice and it is thick like porridge. We love it here and my MIL usually makes it, I have made it once, it's a really filling cheap meal, you can have it for breakfast too but we like it for lunch or dinner.

Better go now,

Tracie

Hello all who read.

I know I have been slack, I haven't posted for quite a while. Life around here is extremely hectic. To loose weight and to exercise Steve and I have taken up delivering junk mail. You wouldn't do it for the money but I tell you what, the exercise is well worth it. I have been walking for 1 hour a day up hill and down dale. All the areas around here are a bit on the hilly side, so even though I can't walk too fast due to posting things in letter boxes the hills get my heart rate up.

Steve sprained both of his ankles on Good Friday, so he hasn't been out walking with me at all. We generally have both of our areas completed by now but with only one of us able to walk we still have one area to go.

Now back to Steve's sprained ankles. We were out at Cronulla with our good friends who had come down to visit us from the Newcastle area for Easter, we had only just started the walk along the esplanade to South Cronulla when Steve had his fall. Silly thing was looking out towards the horizion and didn't see two small steps and went crashing down in a heap. We got him up and he told us he was okay, so we continued on our walk. When we got to South Cronulla, we got some nice and very expensive fish and chips for lunch, $70.00 for the five of us, am I the only one to thing this is ridiculously expensive for fish and chips. The shop was packed with a queue out the door and they still had the hide to put a 10% surcharge on top of the price.

After we had sat down to eat our lunch/dinner Steve went to get up again and was in agony. His ankles had seized up on him and he was in a great deal of pain. I offered to walk back and get the car and bring it closer but he said he would be right and hobbled on. He spent the next two days with his feet elevated being waited on hand and foot.

He went to work on Tuesday and is starting to walk alot better.

Bye for now.

Tracie