This upadate is a mix of all the odds and ends I forget to put in sometimes...
First of all I'd like to congratulate our good friends Samantha & Jon on the birth of their second son, born just the other day... all are fit and healthy, well done both.... well Samantha did the hard bit of course...
The weather has been pretty damp again but still pretty mild, well compared to UK it is, Im feeling the chill though, hot water bottle for bed tonight...
Rik is working hard, as usual, he's dug out one of the back walls, just a drainage channel for now, but will improve and enlarge it as we go along, I think its made a big difference already, it rained all day yesterday and we had no water in the cubby at all. Just the back wall the other side now... he's a tad stressed at the moment, to continue his Softball coaching in Portugal he now has to take his qualifications in Portuguese....which although he speaks pretty good nowadays, to take such huge exams in another language is a vast undertaking, and he's worried... nothing I say will make a difference, this is a demon he has to deal with on his own. I just have to be as understanding as possible when he's a grumpy, difficult old sod.... heheheheh nothing new there then... His first one is a three day course on the weekend of 12th December... fingers crossed everyone please. !!!
The garden is still plodding along, the peppers finally stopped a week or so ago, but they are so tall, they sheild the broad beans a little so I left them in in case of frost, the beans are doing fine, hopefully beans to eat early new year. The cabbage is great, we've already started eating some, and have loads more on the way... the newly planted garlic is sprouting and looking good, as are my Xmas /new year spuds, we just have to try to sheild them if it turns frosty...
We've been planting soft fruit bushes, hoping that we can get some soon,
Frugal living in the Portuguese countryside,Eco-tourism, Agri tourism, recipes,family life, self sufficency, eco living, vegetable growing, tips and self help ideas for country living.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Curing some olives.
Well just a brief post today, Im trying for the first time to cure some olives. We used all ours for oil but was given some lovely ones by a friend (Hello Samantha) to have a try with.
The recipe Ive been given is as follows.
Pick over olives and only use perfect ones.
Soak in plain water for 4 days, changing water every day. place a plate or something in the container to make sure the olives are under water.
After 4 days, change water again, add whatever flavourings you want, garlic, lemon, herbs etc, and salt, mix the salt in slowly, stirring lots to make sure it desolves well, you only need just enough to make the olives sink... add the plate or something again to cover, (not airtight!) and leave for 40 days, changing water and flavouring every ten days. Then ready to eat. yum
The recipe Ive been given is as follows.
Pick over olives and only use perfect ones.
Soak in plain water for 4 days, changing water every day. place a plate or something in the container to make sure the olives are under water.
After 4 days, change water again, add whatever flavourings you want, garlic, lemon, herbs etc, and salt, mix the salt in slowly, stirring lots to make sure it desolves well, you only need just enough to make the olives sink... add the plate or something again to cover, (not airtight!) and leave for 40 days, changing water and flavouring every ten days. Then ready to eat. yum
Monday, 23 November 2009
my kitchen
I dont have a picture of the cooking range, but here is a couple of pics a friend of mine took while visiting recently.
Frugal -Simple living. Part two...
Ive had such a good response from my last post (tons of emails thank you!) that I have decided to try to expand on this and describe more of our way of life. Forgive me if I ramble...
Food, shopping ect.
Costs.... day to day living costs for us nowadays are pretty small. It has taken us three years to get this far though. As our survival (monetary wise) is based on the rental of our little cottage to guests during summer we obviously have to be as frugal with that money as possible, as its a very irregular thing. And dries up almost completely during winter. As I said in the previous post, I grow the vast majority of our food, we eat meat maybe once a week if that, sometimes during summer we go weeks without any at all, it seems pretty silly to buy meat when we have such a wonderful abundance growing fresh and lovely in the garden, I menu plan during winter but during the most productive garden times I just walk down to the 'Horta' and see what is ready today and plan a meal around what we have most of...
While we have guests( money) in the cottage I tend to squirrel away food, spending an extra 10 euros here and there on bulk pasta and rice, an extra bag of dried beans or oats and flour so that I dont miss the money, but by winter have a large store cupboard full of staples we need to live ..
Also now and again, buy a extra pkt of stock cubes,a jar of coffee, a bag of dried fruit here and there, it all mounts up but when its only the odd euro each week, you dont miss it, just make sure you dont go mad all at once. I did this during our time in the UK too, so that one week in 6 I had a grocery free week and saved that money for Portugal...
So, by this time of year, we are broke... but have enough food to live simply and healthily till spring if we have to. The freezer is choc a block with food, and ALL i'm buying at the moment is milk, the occasional block of butter (as a treat for rik) and maybe a few eggs or a chunk of cheese sometimes. Obviously sooner or later we'll have to buy loo rolls when my stocks run out, the same with dog food, we buy 20 kilos of dried complete mix for 10.15€ which combined with all our veggie leavings and fruit(yep our dogs eat healthy too) lasts a couple of months.
Our cooking costs are nil, as we use a wood fired cooking stove, which is the best thing we ever invested in, as it really is the heart of our home, cooking, heating, drying our washing... fantastic. As long as you have a access to firewood, its the best thing in the world. I do all our own baking, bread making, everything, Rik loves this time of the year as the range is always alight, it means the oven is always hot, I cant stand wasting that heat so tend to pop something nice in to cook ... and he ends up with lots of treats...
I spend a nice quiet part of my day sat by the range, either reading, or sewing (darning his damn socks usually) I just love that cooking range, it makes the kitchen the best place to be during winter...
Well thats all for now...
More later.
Food, shopping ect.
Costs.... day to day living costs for us nowadays are pretty small. It has taken us three years to get this far though. As our survival (monetary wise) is based on the rental of our little cottage to guests during summer we obviously have to be as frugal with that money as possible, as its a very irregular thing. And dries up almost completely during winter. As I said in the previous post, I grow the vast majority of our food, we eat meat maybe once a week if that, sometimes during summer we go weeks without any at all, it seems pretty silly to buy meat when we have such a wonderful abundance growing fresh and lovely in the garden, I menu plan during winter but during the most productive garden times I just walk down to the 'Horta' and see what is ready today and plan a meal around what we have most of...
While we have guests( money) in the cottage I tend to squirrel away food, spending an extra 10 euros here and there on bulk pasta and rice, an extra bag of dried beans or oats and flour so that I dont miss the money, but by winter have a large store cupboard full of staples we need to live ..
Also now and again, buy a extra pkt of stock cubes,a jar of coffee, a bag of dried fruit here and there, it all mounts up but when its only the odd euro each week, you dont miss it, just make sure you dont go mad all at once. I did this during our time in the UK too, so that one week in 6 I had a grocery free week and saved that money for Portugal...
So, by this time of year, we are broke... but have enough food to live simply and healthily till spring if we have to. The freezer is choc a block with food, and ALL i'm buying at the moment is milk, the occasional block of butter (as a treat for rik) and maybe a few eggs or a chunk of cheese sometimes. Obviously sooner or later we'll have to buy loo rolls when my stocks run out, the same with dog food, we buy 20 kilos of dried complete mix for 10.15€ which combined with all our veggie leavings and fruit(yep our dogs eat healthy too) lasts a couple of months.
Our cooking costs are nil, as we use a wood fired cooking stove, which is the best thing we ever invested in, as it really is the heart of our home, cooking, heating, drying our washing... fantastic. As long as you have a access to firewood, its the best thing in the world. I do all our own baking, bread making, everything, Rik loves this time of the year as the range is always alight, it means the oven is always hot, I cant stand wasting that heat so tend to pop something nice in to cook ... and he ends up with lots of treats...
I spend a nice quiet part of my day sat by the range, either reading, or sewing (darning his damn socks usually) I just love that cooking range, it makes the kitchen the best place to be during winter...
Well thats all for now...
More later.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
HEHEHEH
Note to myself.... I must learn to spellcheck these posts before I publish ... my spelling and typos are getting much worse lately...
Simple, frugal living, a different way of life...
Well an update on our attempts to live as well as possible for as little cost as possible. Living this way does mean more effort and work though, but who ever decided that work and effort for something you want is a bad thing... The whole of the 'consumer industry' keeps churning out labour saving devices and brainwashing everyone into believing that work is bad... we think a little differently, there is good work and bad work... bad work is the one most people are trapped into, that daily slog in wind rain cold (whichever fits you) to a place you dont want to be, doing jobs you either dislike or feel unworthy of your efforts... that hamster on a wheel type of living, just to pay the bills and continue on to the next daily round of stress...
Good work is different, we work harder physically now than ever before, (we do still live in a semi ruin) but the work is good, enjoyable and for ourselves. We spend days cutting and splitting and stacking logs, hard dirty sweaty work... but the sheer joy of looking at the log barn and knowing how cosy we'll be all winter (and at no cost) makes it really satisfying. Rik is at the moment digging out the whole of the courtyard at the back of the house, our place is built into a hillside, so the lower floor which is my kitchen is half in the ground, and during wet weather water runs in.... so he has started digging out and will do a couple of hours of backbreaking labour every day possible till its done, but its for a reason, there is a good end result... again, worthwhile work...
Work doesnt rule our lives, but its something we have to do every day to live as we do.... but I dont call cooking fresh wholesome tasty food, work, nor is the quiet peaceful time I get to work on our land, watching the food we eat sprout from the ground, green and fertile.... bottling, storing, picking... its all work of a kind... but what joy.... Its all down to the way you see things...
The same goes for most of the jobs I do , in our efforts to live simply, healthily and cheaply, I bake our own bread, grow our own food, (and cook from fresh) we try to buy as few things such as clothes as possible, people have far too many... I mend ours... darn socks, patch and darn riks shirts etc, when we aworking out and about in the forest or at home, why do we need to look smart... our clothes are clean and well mended, but sometimes look a tad strange...
All we do seems to be labour intensive, old fashioned (to some) ways of living and doing things. But who decided modern, progressive living was the best way....
Electricity update.
We are still working at cutting down our consumption, but at the moment cannot afford any alternative production methods, so its using less as a way to go for now.
I've managed during the last 6-9 months to cut our bills from between 85-120 eurs per two months, to now on average, 34-45 euros per two months... and feel pretty good about that! The fridge stayed off for all but july August and half od sept. Its off again now and will stay off untill next summer. I use a 30 dg wash cycle on the machine (yes we still have some luxury) which onlt takes 30 mins, for all things that dont need a hot wash (riks work jeans and sweatshirts) the rest all goes on 30dgs and is very good.
We are still resisting the lure of TV, we do have a dvd player and borrow films, but still try to spend more evenings, reading, playing scrabble word gamnes and crosswords, complete at the moment with hot rasted chestnuts to munch on...
Good work is different, we work harder physically now than ever before, (we do still live in a semi ruin) but the work is good, enjoyable and for ourselves. We spend days cutting and splitting and stacking logs, hard dirty sweaty work... but the sheer joy of looking at the log barn and knowing how cosy we'll be all winter (and at no cost) makes it really satisfying. Rik is at the moment digging out the whole of the courtyard at the back of the house, our place is built into a hillside, so the lower floor which is my kitchen is half in the ground, and during wet weather water runs in.... so he has started digging out and will do a couple of hours of backbreaking labour every day possible till its done, but its for a reason, there is a good end result... again, worthwhile work...
Work doesnt rule our lives, but its something we have to do every day to live as we do.... but I dont call cooking fresh wholesome tasty food, work, nor is the quiet peaceful time I get to work on our land, watching the food we eat sprout from the ground, green and fertile.... bottling, storing, picking... its all work of a kind... but what joy.... Its all down to the way you see things...
The same goes for most of the jobs I do , in our efforts to live simply, healthily and cheaply, I bake our own bread, grow our own food, (and cook from fresh) we try to buy as few things such as clothes as possible, people have far too many... I mend ours... darn socks, patch and darn riks shirts etc, when we aworking out and about in the forest or at home, why do we need to look smart... our clothes are clean and well mended, but sometimes look a tad strange...
All we do seems to be labour intensive, old fashioned (to some) ways of living and doing things. But who decided modern, progressive living was the best way....
Electricity update.
We are still working at cutting down our consumption, but at the moment cannot afford any alternative production methods, so its using less as a way to go for now.
I've managed during the last 6-9 months to cut our bills from between 85-120 eurs per two months, to now on average, 34-45 euros per two months... and feel pretty good about that! The fridge stayed off for all but july August and half od sept. Its off again now and will stay off untill next summer. I use a 30 dg wash cycle on the machine (yes we still have some luxury) which onlt takes 30 mins, for all things that dont need a hot wash (riks work jeans and sweatshirts) the rest all goes on 30dgs and is very good.
We are still resisting the lure of TV, we do have a dvd player and borrow films, but still try to spend more evenings, reading, playing scrabble word gamnes and crosswords, complete at the moment with hot rasted chestnuts to munch on...
Monday, 16 November 2009
Wet..
Well it seems autumn is wet this year, compared to last year anyway... but hey, the land needs it, the wet keeps the frost away, and the garden growing.... we have plenty of wood to keep warm, although its not actually that cold, just very damp... the winter stream through my kitchen has appeared last night... and will stay while it keeps raining... oh joy...
So we look for things to do inside... on the list is to paint our bedroom, make a step in the house by the front door... and to put a new door on the bedroom, plus try to finish insulating the lounge roof...
busy busy..
Ooh oil is done... a poor yeild this time, we only had a few trees and the olives looked luscious... plump and black... but sadly full of jiuce and not much oil... we had 15 litres, enough to last me the year if Im frugal with it.... but it tastes fantastic!!
So we look for things to do inside... on the list is to paint our bedroom, make a step in the house by the front door... and to put a new door on the bedroom, plus try to finish insulating the lounge roof...
busy busy..
Ooh oil is done... a poor yeild this time, we only had a few trees and the olives looked luscious... plump and black... but sadly full of jiuce and not much oil... we had 15 litres, enough to last me the year if Im frugal with it.... but it tastes fantastic!!
Monday, 9 November 2009
Mushroom Overload....
The saying about no having too much of a good thing is very apt at the moment...
We have Parasol Mushroom overload... for the last few weeks we've been finding them everywhere, I've made soup, quiche, fritters, omelettes, mixed them in pasta dishes, and frozen about two dozen, and when you think they come almost the size of a dinner plate.... thats a lot of mushroom... hehehehe I always complained that although we grew almost everything for our veg needs my one regret was that I'd tried mushrooms and never managed to get any... now I'm not trying and they are popping up all over the place for free....
We've also been lucky enough to be given a few bags of field mushrooms from a friends garden...
Ive promised Rik, no more... I'll pick any more that come and share them around....
Well the weather is very autumnal, quite chilly and blowy, we were out picking olives the other day and the wind was howling across the olive grove and we were freezing.... last year it was so warm and sunny, we picniked outside every day for our lunch, this year we are rushing inside to huddle by the range, well, I am.... Rik being made of sterner stuff doesnt feel it...
We have to continue picking again today, everyone is late this year, the olives on some trees are still very green, some of ours are as well , but we are going to pick anyway and get it over and done with, its not a pleasant job if the weather isnt good. We'll manage enough black ones to get good oil enough to last the year with luck so thats what matters... and a euro a litre cost.....
We finshed all the planting for winter that we are planning to do , just a couple of rows of Jerusalem fartychokes, a couple of rows of spuds (with hopes of Christmas new potatoes) and a row of garlic. The broad beans are now all up and showing, Ive never managed a good crop yet, but we'll try again ...
We have Parasol Mushroom overload... for the last few weeks we've been finding them everywhere, I've made soup, quiche, fritters, omelettes, mixed them in pasta dishes, and frozen about two dozen, and when you think they come almost the size of a dinner plate.... thats a lot of mushroom... hehehehe I always complained that although we grew almost everything for our veg needs my one regret was that I'd tried mushrooms and never managed to get any... now I'm not trying and they are popping up all over the place for free....
We've also been lucky enough to be given a few bags of field mushrooms from a friends garden...
Ive promised Rik, no more... I'll pick any more that come and share them around....
Well the weather is very autumnal, quite chilly and blowy, we were out picking olives the other day and the wind was howling across the olive grove and we were freezing.... last year it was so warm and sunny, we picniked outside every day for our lunch, this year we are rushing inside to huddle by the range, well, I am.... Rik being made of sterner stuff doesnt feel it...
We have to continue picking again today, everyone is late this year, the olives on some trees are still very green, some of ours are as well , but we are going to pick anyway and get it over and done with, its not a pleasant job if the weather isnt good. We'll manage enough black ones to get good oil enough to last the year with luck so thats what matters... and a euro a litre cost.....
We finshed all the planting for winter that we are planning to do , just a couple of rows of Jerusalem fartychokes, a couple of rows of spuds (with hopes of Christmas new potatoes) and a row of garlic. The broad beans are now all up and showing, Ive never managed a good crop yet, but we'll try again ...
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Frugal Living Recipe
Just a quickie today.
As chestnuts are everywhere here at the moment...
Chestnut & Sprouts Bake.
Equal quantities of chestnuts and sprouts.
Boil the sprouts for 5 mins then cool and slice, put in a ovenproof dish.
Bol chestnuts in their shells for 5 mins then peel, a little fiddly but peel easier if you leave them in the water as you do them and just pick out one at a time. Break into bits.
Mix into the sprouts.
Make a nice herby white sauce and pour over the lot, sprinkle top with oats and seseme seeds . Bake in a med, hot over till top is brown and bubbling.
Serve either as a side dish with meat n veg, or if veggie, add mushrooms, onions, and some grated cheese on toppping and serve with rice or pasta...
yum...
As chestnuts are everywhere here at the moment...
Chestnut & Sprouts Bake.
Equal quantities of chestnuts and sprouts.
Boil the sprouts for 5 mins then cool and slice, put in a ovenproof dish.
Bol chestnuts in their shells for 5 mins then peel, a little fiddly but peel easier if you leave them in the water as you do them and just pick out one at a time. Break into bits.
Mix into the sprouts.
Make a nice herby white sauce and pour over the lot, sprinkle top with oats and seseme seeds . Bake in a med, hot over till top is brown and bubbling.
Serve either as a side dish with meat n veg, or if veggie, add mushrooms, onions, and some grated cheese on toppping and serve with rice or pasta...
yum...
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