Playing with electricity

It was a dark and difficult weekend.

ESKOM had no water, no diesel, no brains, no planning, no electricity, no NOTHING!!!! Not too sure how you all coped with the situation, but we decided that the clue is in the description: ROLLING BLACKOUTS.

Rolling is such a fun word, and I associate rolling with childhood. Do you remember rolling down the green hill with your arms folded tightly to your chest? Or rolling your little play-play pram with your plastic-smelling baby down the road? Or putting tennis balls in your bicycle wheels so you could make the rolling action so much more visible? Rolling had a certain kind of magic when we were children, so this weekend we celebrated rolling.

The game was all about waiting for ESKOM (for international readers – this is our electricity provider or non-provider, depending on the roll of the dice) Waiting for them to roll their black-out our way. We then had to devise a counter-attack and roll a toffee back to them.

Another part of the game was to anticipate and guess when the rolling would start. Since we could find no timetable, no reason and no rhyme, it made the game so much more exciting.

We had so much fun, nature decided to join in and duly wet our electricity board during a freak (or should I say rolling) thunderstorm, and we had to wait for the sun to warm and dry it out before we could have electricity again.

Even my candles were playing games - look how this one is bending!!

So here are some of the tactics we used to play the game, and since we want to be off the grid in a few years, we would like to thank ESKOM sincerely for helping us prepare for the day we will never have to use them again.

-        Make the silly little cupboard with all the candles more accessible by storing the stupid little steps for thin people in a safe and east-to-find spot

-        Hide boxes of matches all over the house, then when the lights go out pretend they are Easter eggs and all run around trying to find them (great fun, except you cannot eat them when you find them)

-        Have enough left-over food in the fridge to avoid mass-hysteria around meal times

-        Adapt meal times. Have some freshly-baked carrot cake with yummy icing for breakfast. Eat dinner at 5h00 instead of 8h00, foiling ESKOM big time. Lie around snacking on chippies, nuts, left-overs until the electricity comes back – then jump up and spark around the kitchen producing meals, cakes, potential left-overs, popcorn, coffee in flasks, etc.

-        Find things to do that does not need electricity. Reading, knitting, talking, sleeping, napping, thinking, writing, dreaming, planning, loving (this is for emergency situations only), gardening, cleaning, driving, walking….sjoe – looks like we can have a brilliant and full life even without full-time electricity.

-        Build a fire. We made lovely farm coffee on Sunday morning as part of the game, and then warmed up our chicken-liver sosaties left from the night before. Also fried mealie pap from the night before in the bacon fat – and let me tell you – ESKOM was the loser in this part of the game.

-        Become flexible. No, not like bending over or anything, but flexible in your planned activities. Settled nicely into bed last night, fully fed and content, we started watching the movie on MNet. And ESKOM rolls it! Power off at 8h30. So we rolled it as well. We rolled over, closed our eyes and had a wonderful long sleep, waking up all refreshed and ready for the week. The same movie will be on again on another channel, or available on video.

S

So while the power was on – I cooked. I cooked 2 chicken dishes, one was great, and the other was OK.

Chicken dish number 6 was from Evita Bezuidenhout's “Evita se kossie sikelela”. It cost us R40 for 4 people with some left-overs for breakfast braai the next morning.

 

Chicken liver sosaties:

Step 1: It starts off quite easy, but be warned – this is not for the squeamish! Take your slippery, bloody livers and trim off all the horrible stringy bits. Cut your bacon strips in half crosswise. Cut 1 onion into quarters and cut 4 mushrooms into quarters as well.

 

Step 2: This is where it becomes extremely difficult! Wrap bacon around chicken liver, and then skewer it, alternating with mushrooms and onions. (I wanted to use a good analogy, but my family forbade me to use it in a public forum, so the best I can do is that this exercise is like trying to catch frogs with your bare hands. It is slimy, it is slippery and if the bacon goes one way, the liver goes the other way)

Step 3: This is the homerun! Pack it in a dish, sprinkle olive oil, pepper. Do not let the escaped liver bits get the best of you. Put them together with all the small bits of orphan mushrooms and slivers of onions in the pan with the skewer.

Step 4: Grill (or braai) until done, make some nice poetoe-pap and feast. We had some salad leaves left which we served with it and a lemon dressing really complimented the meal by adding another dimension to the richness of the meat.



Bad quality picture due to slow shutter speed in darkness!!

Yumminess: 10/10

Frugality: 7/10

Easiness: 6/10

 

Chicken dish number 7 was from Nigella’s cookbook “Forever Summer”, and the name of the dish sounds better than the taste of the dish. Cost was R47 for 4 people.

 

Slow roasted garlic and lemon chicken.

(The lemon made it very bitter! Maybe if you have juicier, sweeter lemons it would be better? I used puny, small, dry ones from the top of our back-yard lemon tree) Try it and let me know please?

Step 1: Put lemon quarters, whole garlic cloves and fresh thyme in a roasting pan.

Step 2: Put chicken pieces, olive oil, salt and pepper in the pan and mix with your hands before spreading it out with skin-side up.

Step 3: Pour over half a cup of white wine, wrap in foil and bake for 2 hours at 160

Step 4: Remove foil and bake at 200 for another 45 minutes.

Step 5: Eat it and let me know if the lemons make this too bitter for you as well.

Yumminess: 5/10

Frugality: 6/10

Easiness: 10/10

 

In between all the cooking, we have to do some cleaning. So I tried another natural way to clean grimy tiles. Please note, these tiles get washed and cleaned everyday with Dettol Kitchen Cleaner. After this exercise, my conclusion is that it might be cleaning the kitchen, but it is definitely not cleaning the tiles.  So here is my before picture. Not very dirty (I thought), but the touches of candlewax would be a good test for the experiment.

What you do is sprinkle Bicarbonate of Soda on the dirty bits.

 

Then you spray vinegar onto the bicarb. And viola – you get a reaction. It bubbles and foams a bit like a garden snail that has received a sprinkle of salt. You leave it for a while (no determined time, just when you feel ready to tackle it again). I then took an old wooden skewer and got to work on the grout areas between the tiles.

 A wipe with a wet cloth, leaving lots of bicarb on the floor but I think the tiles look great!

A finger to Dettol! This method can be used for cupboards, tiles and other surfaces as well. To avoid making your kitchen smell like a Fish-and-Chip shop, put some herbs in your vinegar spray bottle. I used lots of Rosemary, as it is a natural antiseptic and bactericide, used in French hospitals until early this century.

Please do not think that I have neglected my carrot obsession. I used grated carrots in a lunch dish for Saturday, and also baked 2 different cakes on Sunday.

The “Carrot and Courgette Roulade” comes from the series “Baked and Delicious” volume 68 – and it gets a 10 all around!!! It was sublime with its cream cheese-herby filling, served cold with a green salad. Let me know if you want the recipe, this would be brilliant for lunch boxes and take-to-work meals.

 

Both carrot cakes came from YOU Magazine 100 BEST reader’s recipes, and they are both delicious. We do not have a front-runner yet. I prefer the Microwave carrot cake with cream cheese topping; my hubbie prefers the Carrot and ginger cake from the previous blog, and my son loves the Carrot and apple chocolate cake.

 

Microwave carrot cake

Chocolate carrot and apple cake

So I took the cakes to work – and after an intensive tasting session – there is still no clear winner. The chocolate version might have finished slightly ahead of the microwave one, but only by a crumb or so.

 

Thanks again to Mirilene, she has brought another car-load full of happiness for less privilaged children , and my ambulance has collected all patients and I am now on my way to clean, fix and get ready any of the items that need intensive care.

 

Please join this drive if you can - I promise you will feel great and make someone else feel great at the same time. It is what we call in business world a WIN-WIN Situation.

 

Lovies

Lizette

The Big Carrot Conundrum

Why should I plant carrots when they are so cheap to buy? I mean for R4 at our famous and ever-popular Pick & Pay you can get 6-8 big, fat carrots all neatly wrapped in a plastic bag. They also offer you a second option of R6 for 6 sad-looking, dirty carrots with wilted tops still attached to their poor bodies. Or if you are in the big time, you can splurge about R10 on a Styrofoam tray, some plastic and 10-15 clean-scrubbed baby carrots.

This is the question I pondered yesterday. To be frugal is not the same as being stupid, so I do not want to keep the frugal kingdom busy with useless activities. Now I got some very good advise from an art teacher while I was studying visual arts at Unisa: When you do not know what to do, or not sure how to proceed, or ponder over serious issues (which I am sure the carrot conundrum falls under) – just start DOING! While you are doing, everything will become clear. You are either going in the right direction, which allows you to intensify your doing, adapt your doing, enjoy your doing. Or you are going in the wrong direction, which allows you to stop your doing, change your doing, or give up art.

So taking these wise words into consideration, I started doing. I presented my carrot masterplan to the frugal elves, and we allocated a special area in the vegetable garden for my 3 types of carrots I want to plant. We opened the packets, we sowed, we watered, we labelled. We grated the store-bought carrots, we baked a cake. We ate the cake. We loved the cake. And true to the art guru’s words, it all became clear.

So for me, the following reasons are why I will continue to plant carrots instead of going to a shop for these orange powerhouses.

-        I do not have to drive anywhere, just walk 300 meters to my garden (saving fuel, tires, breakpads, oil)

-        It is quicker for me to cover 300 meters than to drive 3 kilometers (I know some of you find this hard to believe looking at my current physical condition – but obese frugal fairies can fly short distances)

-        Since I cannot send the frugal fellows without driver licences to the shop, I can however send these same frugal fellows to the vegetable garden

-        I help the planet by cutting down on all kinds of yukkie stuff (plastic, Styrofoam, car emissions, etc.)

-        I do not have to dress up or comb my hair when I go to my vegetable garden.

-        I can try different seeds and types of carrots (there are even white, purple, black, yellow ones!)

-        I can use all the green tops for my chickens

-        The excess carrots from the garden can go to feed other families and bring orange joy to people who do not have a vegetable garden or R4 for P&P carrots

-        If we want to be self-sufficient in 5 years time, I had better start planting, harvesting, storing, bottling, pickling carrots NOW

These are a lot of good reasons for me to plant carrots, so although on face-value not a very frugal thing to do, when you look at the overall picture it makes sense. I will forge ahead!

The carrot cake we made comes from the series “Baked and Delicious”, volume 81. It is a carrot and ginger cake, and contains bananas for extra moisture. 

Now every carrot cakes deserves some carrots (otherwise it would just be a cake). You can have carrots inside or on top – we chose both options. So I bought some little sugar carrots from the baking shop, (about R10 a packet of 6). David then decided to make his own sugar fondant so we can make our own little carrots.  For less than R20 we now have enough fondant to make and decorate enough cakes for a year! And it lasts for a long time as it contains nothing that can spoil.

 

No power again, but nothing is going to stop the frugal elves

See if you can spot the home-made carrots!!!!

 

I discovered that some blog-readers are confused. If I am celebrating chickens in December – how can I also celebrate carrots in December.  The answer is easy - one is an animal and the other one is a vegetable. I will also be celebrating my kitchen, generosity, hands (they are associated with gifting and providing), vegetable garden. I warned you that I have a lot to celebrate, so please try and keep up with me if you can.

Just talking about chicken gets me excited, so here is our chicken dish number 5. This one was a winner at R40 for 4 people. Little Jamie Oliver is now all grown up and responsible, so this recipe is from his TV series about saving/cheap cooking or something like that. It is called………..

Humble chicken stew with dumplings

Step 1: Rescue your chicken carcasses from the fridge (these are the ones you had left over after the roasting exercise) and like a hyena you need to pull off and get every last bit of meat from the bones. (put bits of meat back in the fridge)

Step 2: Now rescue from the fridge the veg-pot you have been building from all the scraps this week, and together with the now-naked bones, make a mean chicken stock.

Veggie scrap pot (onion skins-and-all)

Stock on the right and doggie-delights on the left

Step 3: Fry bacon bits until they look about right, then add chopped veggies of your choice (we used potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, celery) Fry together for 10 minutes.

 

Step 4: Add little bits of chicken (even if it looks little – I promise you it is enough for this dish) and 1 litre of your home-made chicken stock and put in oven for half an hour.

Step 5: Use about a cup of self-raising flour, salt, pepper and mix with beer until you have a sticky dough. Spoon on top of stew, cover and back into oven for another 20 minutes or so.

 

Ps. To make it more expensive (if there are readers out there with extra cash to spare) – add mushrooms to step 4 and grated cheese to step 5. If you do not have money, you can leave out the bacon without causing a major disruption to the dish, except make it about R25 cheaper.

 

We have been making this recipe a lot over the last month or so, and it is one of our favourites, so please try it. We do not serve anything else with it – just a smile on the side.(and the beer left over from the dumpling dough)

Yumminess: 8/10

Frugality: 8/10

Easyness: 8/10

 

Thank you to everyone who is willing to donate old clothes and toys and shoes – I have cleaned out a room in the flat to serve as the “Donation hospital” – and will be keeping you up to date on the progress.

Miri – thanks my friend for the BIG bag of girl clothes and shoes – this will make many, many girls look good and happy and girlie and precious! Already started some emergency treatment on the school clothes, will post some before and after pics. The rest is perfect and does not need anything to get them ready for gifting.

 

Lovies

Lizette

Lights out = ?

When the lights go out – a few things can happen. And when I say the lights go out it is not by choice, it is by ESKOM! So when all electricity made a hasty exit in the rural community of Rietkol last night at about 5h00 – we were prepared. Or so I thought!

I have a stupid little cupboard in the kitchen, above the stupid little hole where the microwave nested. This stupid little cupboard is so high you can only access it with the help of those stupid little plastic ladders that fat people should be careful of.

In preparation for doomsday, I have filled this stupid little cupboard with every hollow vessel I could find and put a candle in it. So we could have one place to access the emergency lighting when power goes off, instead of all stumbling over dogs and with hands outstretch in front of us looking for candles in the dark. I am so bloody clever!!! OR NOT!

I could not find the stupid little ladder steppies to access the stupid high cupboard. At least the sun was still shining, so I could conduct my ladder search in the dim light of dusk. Lesson learned.

Coming back to the things that can happen when the lights go out – maybe you can associate with a few of them?

-          Stress about TV programs/sporting events/cooking shows being missed

-          Stress about computers/cellphones/ipads running flat

-          Stress about what to eat (stress about the ice-cream melting!)

-          Stress about is it only us with no power (did I somehow forgot to pay or paid short R40 on previous ESKOM account – true story)

-          Stress about fridges defrosting and enough chicken to keep a blog running for a month defrosting

-          Stress about how you are going to keep your husband busy without the TV – what if he want to use this opportunity to rekindle some passion and you just want to make sure the fridge does not defrost and eat all the ice-cream before it melts.

-          Stress about all 50 little chicks that now do not have a globe to huddle under and stay warm

-          Stress that you did not fill the gas bottle so the gas stove is also out of action

-          Stress that when the power comes on again – all the lights will be blown, the TV blaring, electrical equipment destroyed by the power surge.

Usually it is just a lot of stress. But after the initial stress of finding the stupid little steppies, and with all my emergency candles glowing (definitely NOT in a romantic way – more in a survival mode way) – I set to cook the chicken dish for day 4.

It is something totally different and we have been salivating for the last 3 days in anticipation of this dish. It comes from a cookbook by Conrad Gallagher, and I bought it a long time ago because the title impressed me so much; “Take 6 ingredients”. It sounded like my kind of cooking, creating delicious dishes using only 6 ingredients. Fact is – these ingredients are so foreign, exotic, non-South African that I have never made a meal from this book. Until last night!

Chicken Tortillas with Avocado, chilli and soured cream

It should have said in bold letters – NOT FOR FRUGAL FAIRIES, ONLY FOR THE RICH! The meal, with only 6 ingredients cost me R120 for 4 people. I grudgingly accept that not all blog readers are poor, so here goes for you bastards with lots of money!!!!

Step 1:  Cut skinless chicken breast into cubes, rub with a bit of olive oil and grill on skewers. (I used my cheap chicken breast from yesterday’s blog experience, so if you buy special breasts, just like good silicone, it will cost you much more to make this meal. Also think the skewers are unnecessary, you are just spending an additional 10 minutes stringing raw chicken onto a wooden stick which you then remove from the stick and throw the stick away. Just grill the chicken pieces in a roasting tin)

Step 2: Boil for 1 minute, peel and cut tomatoes, slice some Avo’s, seed and chop 1 chilli

Step 3: Warm your super-expensive tortillas (R60 from P&P) either in the oven or in a pan

Step 4: Spread sour cream (also expensive!) on the tortillas, scatter chicken, tomato, avo and chilli down the middle and season

Step 5: Roll up and eat it like a Boerie Roll.

It really was very nice and tasty, and maybe I should try to make a frugal version. Like making my own tortillas, using mayo instead of sour cream? Will let you know if I have the energy to do it later in the month.

Back to my vegetable garden – because my theme for the blog is celebrations, I decided to celebrate carrots this month. No, it is not a rational, logical choice, I just think they are not celebrated enough. And I am all for the underdog!

What do we do when we celebrate? We eat CAKE!!! I will be baking various carrot cakes and publishing the results on the blog. Whoever is lucky enough or unlucky enough to fall within me and the carrot cake experiment radar, will have to taste, swallow and score so we can discover the BEST carrot cake.

I also did some old-woman stuff and here are the results. They are not perfect but do have a faint resemblance to the original picture.

 
 

 It took me one night, a few swearwords and lots of confusion to turn these little babies out, but our lovely Sibosiso has cold feet and there seems to be a booty-shortage in Delmas area. Even if the booties are not perfect - the little feet definitely are.

Last exercise from yesterday was to save money on cleaning stuff. I have found a very cost effective outlet/manufacturer in Sundra for cleaning stuff, but since I have a lemon tree in my back garden I tried to clean some breadboards with just lemon juice, a nailbrush and elbow grease.

Here are the before and after pics – I left the white board in the sun with the lemon juice so it could bleach it a bit. All I did was squeeze a lemon half’s juice on each, left it a bit to bleach and then scrubbed with nail brush/pot scourer.

BEFORE LEMON

AFTER LEMON AND SUN AND SCRUBBING

Lovies

Lizette

Scarecrow magic

It might be magic, it might only be folklore, it might just be total nonsense. I am talking about the mystic power of a scarecrow to protect crops from bird attacks. Since I have never made a scarecrow, I took the opportunity to make 2 lovely creatures.

Step 1: Ask Edwin to help - using left over bits of pallets

Step 2: Put clothes on your naked scarecrow, providing him with some attitude.

 

 

Step 3: Do not stop now- make him a girlfriend, make him a boyfriend, make him little kids.

 

Step 4: Plant them in your garden and gaze upon their beauty

Step 5: If you have no Edwin or no pallets or no time - let me know if you want one (R100-R300 depending on your scare-crow's chosen image, clothes, weave, race, size, etc)

Keeping to the theme of celebrations and the role food plays all over the world in joining people together during celebratory meals - my focus in my garden during December is the veggie garden.

 I have always wanted a vegetable garden. Full of weird and wonderful vegetables that I will never eat, but want to grow and admire anyway. Most of the vegetable gardens I see on TV and in cookbooks are from England, North America, other far-away places with weather conditions as foreign to me as the Kohlrabi, Turnip, Swede  and other ugly root vegetables. The gardens are lush, overgrown, green, straining under all the perfect vegetables they bear. These gardens have people with big baskets, gumboots and smug smiles on their faces wandering between raised beds on perfect gravel pathways, picking vegetables that all fall within the insect-virgin classification.

OK - so our garden is not like that. Our veggie garden is made from sand - lots and lots of sand. With here and there a brave vegetable facing the full glare of the southern hemisphere sunshine. There are also weeds, lots and lots of weeds. Anyway, I think they are weeds. I KNOW they are not WEED-weeds, so are no good for smoking. They have no purpose in life other than to make my vegetable garden NOT look like a TV/cookbook garden. They might be Kale camouflaging themselves as weed, they might be young lettuce plants pretending to be weeds? At this stage, everything that is above ground in the garden looks like weeds.

I still feel obliged to protect the few vegetables hiding in this weed wilderness, so got together some talent on the plot, raided the cupboards and made a man-scarecrow. I liked him so much we made him a girl-scarecrow as well. They were named JZ and Bayonce, and now stand proudly between the weeds and the future vegetables to scare away whatever bird is stupid enough to want to eat the 3 little tomatoes we managed to grow.(It would be such fun to wake up one morning and find some little scarecrow children running between the rows of chilies, tomatoes, lettuce. Playing hide-and-seek between the mealies and broadbeans.) Anyway, little chance of that happening, we put them far apart from each other, and solidly planted them in the ground as immovable objects of beauty.

We are on the third day of our chicken-eating adventure, and this is how it played out.

Roast chicken is one of our favourites, so I took 2 of the frozen birds I got from the cheap chicken place. I bought a box of 10 for R341 (X-Large chickens) - so tonight's dinner only cost us R42 for 4 people. (If you had maths in school, you would have worked out that this price is only for 1 chicken and I took 2 chickens and you would be correct. The other chicken is for tomorrow and Friday's dinners - I just wanted to cook them at the same time)

It was R34 for the chicken, R1 for spices, salt, pepper, and R7 for a bit of root veggies (NOT from my garden - not yet anyway)

Step 1) Take your chicken of choice, cut off all loose skin and fatty bits - dry chicken nicely and lovingly (A patting action works better than a rubbing action - which might cause you to skin the poor bird and leave it naked and without its skin if you are too rough).

Step 2)  Put it in roasting pan, some olive oil, chicken spice and other lekker stuff such as salt, pepper, oregano.

Step 3)  Cut some potatoes in pieces and throw around the chicken. You do not have to be loving to the potatoes - they did not die for you!

Step 4)  Put into another roasting pan all the skin bits, fatty blobs, and general shreds of unidentifiable pieces of chicken you cut off in step 1. Then add root veggies such as carrots, onions, leeks and garlic.

Step 5)  Roast them in one oven, scoop some of the fat over them halfway through - and prepare to swoon! (and gain a kilogram or two)

IMPORTANT TIP: Save all bits of veggies you cut off in a separate dish for Friday's meal (tips of carrots, onion skins, leek bottoms, etc.)

ANOTHER IMPORTANT TIP: Put all the left over cooked meat and roast carcasses in the fridge for Friday's meal.

So after tonight I made from 2 chickens and a few veg the following:
- the bestest chicken roast
- the cheapest chicken breast (cut from the second chicken for tomorrow's dinner it is only R23/kg vs prices ranging from R50 to R65 - P&P to R98 - Woolies )
- the tastiest chicken carcasses ready for Friday's dinner
- oh, and some of the inner workings of both chickens which I do not know what to do with yet.

I feel so frugal that I even friggin freaking out myself!

I also put another challenge to David today. He was handed 2 tupperwares full of left-over rice and told to make something nice. Except for being a word-genius, he has now also been promoted to rice-genius. Two different rice puddings delighted us after dinner,  it was Indian rice pudding vs a traditional English rice pudding. We have a rat in the house - a big hungry rat. As you can see it got into the puddings to have a little taste before dinner. Which one was the best? The verdict is still out on that one - they were both njam-njam.

 

Traditional rice pudding with evidence of mouse activity

Indian Rice pudding with evidence of mouse activity (no, the creature in the picture is NOT the guilty party, neither is she a mouse - she is my Peruvian hairless and would have gladly assisted the mouse if she had any choice in the matter)

For all you tortured souls out there - here is one of David's writings - enjoy (maybe not the correct word?).

You cast me in your play,
And before I knew it
It was opening night.

The audience filed in.
The curtains rose.
The spotlight shone.
Show-time.

I said all my lines
Just like you wanted.
I played my part well.
The critics loved me.

Blood and tears during intermission.
Standing ovations and melodrama.
Bruises under our costumes and make-up.
Everyone knows it’s an act.

I take a bow.

The curtain falls.

D. S. Lindhout

Almost forgot to tell you - I got something for free today (after asking of-course). I forced David to ask for an empty can when we went to refill our 2L dishwashing liquid for less than R5.00. Then I saw some old Tyres, and I have a plan for them - so asked and yes - got a whole bakkie load for free. On a roll, I then forced David again to call another tyre shop next to the road and YES - tomorrow I can go and collect more tyres for free. I will show you my recycled/up cycled tyres when they are done!

Lovies
Lizette

Celebrations where you do not expect it

As I was driving down our little dirt road yesterday, I came upon a lovely surprise (no man - it was not a treasure chest full of money!) It was 3 girls celebrating the abundance of field flowers and expressing the joy of free play (note - no computers, no TV games, no expensive toys)

I think from now on I will be looking for more little celebrations happening all around me. Maybe it is not just the big celebrations worthy of our attention, but also the small ones that string our lives together like little pearls on the frayed rope of day-to-day monotony.

To inspire you on your search for patients for the "gift hospital" I asked one of the families if she would mind us assisting them over this festive period, and she thankfully accepted. I have learned from years of misplaced good intentions, that not everyone appreciates or welcomes - even if they are in need. So just like Reiki - I never push either healing energy or donations onto people without their permission.

And just another insight (I know this is DEEEEP!!!) Helping others actually make me feel better. So although it seems like such a nice thing to do for other people/animals; deep down in the murky waters of my ego it is all about making myself feel good for making someone else happy. I do not think this should stop anyone from these type of activities, but self-awareness might be the biggest donation you make to your own happiness.


Yesterday was also super-exciting, as we collected our first bunch of day-old broiler chicks.  What would be the correct collective word to describe 50 little chicks? A fluff of chicks, a chirp of chicks? I guess the people selling them just call them a box of chicks.

They are Grade 1 chicks, which does not mean they are more clever than their counterparts. It just means they are stronger, fluffier, chirpier than the others. We chose to pay a bit more so we have less mortalities and faster growing chickens. Thank you to Lida for giving us the pecking directions to procure these bundles of protein.

So welcome little potential Sunday Roasts, we look forward to sharing 6 weeks of your life with you. And it will be a better life than the majority of broilers get before ending up in Spar or Pick & Pay all wrapped up nicely and clean and with no sign of trauma. It would be a privilege to share their journey (6 weeks average for broilers) with all of you reading the blog.

We are on a 5 year mission to be self-sufficient, off the grid, debt-free and making a living from the land. Since December is basically a celebration month, with lots of turkeys offering up their bodies and souls to assist people around the world with celebrating, I dedicate this month and all our efforts to our chicken farming. CHICKENS RULE!!! On Maplotter place anyway.

Talking about chickens - we tackled our second economic chicken dish - and this was an extreme success with the whole family, and dare I say it, the chicken as well. I really think this dish celebrates chicken in a wonderful and tasty way. (Between R40 - R45, depending on honey price)

The recipe comes from one of those You magazine best recipe magazines. It is a peanutbutter chicken dish, and was submitted by a lady from Westville in Durban - Sandhaya Maharaj. .

Step 1:   Using the same cheap-cheap chicken from the Day Break farm, slice them a few times (this is a good exercise if you feel a bit angry or on the edge and do not have some wine to help you relax). Pack them in an oven dish. (I am not stating the obvious here - you need to season food!)

Step 2: Mix half a cup peanut butter (smooth/chunky/oily - anything you have handy or was on a special at your local shop); as well as 1 cup of plain yogurt; third cup of honey (look for some local bee farmers in the local newspapers/Farmer's Weekly - shop honey is hellish expensive); some coriander (fresh if you can grow it/dried from a bottle) and enough chili flakes to suit your family's taste buds.

Step 3: Pour and rub it on/over/into the chicken and put in fridge for marinating (from half-an-hour to a few hours)

Step 4:  Cook covered for 1-2 hours (I added a bit more yogurt towards the end as the sauce looked so yummie I wanted to stretch it)

Step 5:  Cook rice (I prefer Jasmin/Basmati) and eat!!!! (Sorry, no picture as we ate it so quickly there was no time to take photo's)

Yumminess:  10/10
Cheap:  7/10
Easy:   10/10

We are trying to decorate a tree for the festive season with only recycled plastic bottles - should be done soon so will show you the results, be they good or bad.

Lovies
Lizette