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We are glad to have blogged a few of the many moments we’ve shared together during one of the most financially tight periods we have both faced; it helps put things in perspective and makes the memories live on. Looking back through the posts we’ve made here, it’s amazing how much we’ve done (and eaten!) on so little. Although we will no longer be updating this or other blogs, we will leave space wildschwein online for the sake of sharing our knowledge and experiences with others. Hopefully it will help out other folks living simply – be it by necessity or by choice.
Bon voyage! Next stop? The unblogged, unplugged life!
I’m an Aunty again! 
Welcome to the world, little cutie! And congrats to Fleur & Lee 
**Update** We recently found out that we actually became Aunty & Uncle TWICE on the 16th of October!! – one from each of our families! And born only 1 hour apart!
Welcome little Sophie! Congrats Hugo & Katrina
I just want to thank the universe for giving me a great life, and the opportunity to be happy. It’s ironic in a way – deaths occur every day, and although very sad, it does make you take a moment to reflect on what you have, and how nice life is.
R.I.P. Mr. B.
Well the cress is doing really well, but the alfalfa is taking a while to sprout. Might have to try that one again. With today’s heat, many of my seedlings were looking really worse for wear, so I went out in the middle of the day (bad timing i know) and mulched the garden. I didn’t really want to do it just yet because everything is still so small, but I didn’t have much of a choice today. Anyway, things look a bit more colourful with the mulch so it’s not all bad. I did the majority of the patch with only 1 bale of straw. I ordered 4 more bales and 4 bags of manure today, so I can mulch the beans and peas too, and this afternoon I’ll be spreading the manure to prepare the zucchini bed (currently tossing up whether to plant them out yet or not; it’s a full moon, but still think I might), and will mulch the space for the tomatoes so it’s nice and moist and wormy for when they are ready to be transplanted.
I have always known that yoghurt is good for us, and regardless of the health facts have always been able to consume giant quantities of it with no problems, but it never really occurred to me that there would be much of a difference between commercially manufactured yoghurt and the stuff you make at home.
The benefit of homemade yoghurt, however, is that there are many many more of the beneficial bacterias present. At the supermarket, yoghurt often contains additives like gelatin and pectin to ensure the yoghurt sets and remains firm, along with other preservatives so as to give it a longer shelf life. While this process ensures that you get a tasty, thick yoghurt, it doesn’t do much in terms of keeping the bacterias alive. I’m not saying supermarket yoghurts would be bad for you or anything, but I’m not sure they’d be quite as beneficial as fresh, homemade stuff. I guess it’s like most things, really – homemade is usually much healthier, if only because it’s guaranteed to be fresher.
Anyhow, the reason behind this rant is that I’m into experimenting with yoghurt cultures at the moment, and today I made cream cheese.
I’ve so far made one batch of fairly thick, natural yoghurt (pictured above). This entailed the use of one whole sachet of Easiyo natural yoghurt starter, mixed with cold water, and incubated in the Easiyo thermos (filled halfway with hot water) overnight. Although this was delicious, and very healthy, I am intrigued by suggestions by fellow yoghurt makers that you can make the same yoghurt product by only using a fraction of the suggested quantity of Easiyo starter, or by using a few tablespoons of the previous batch of yoghurt.
I have tried this in a few different ways. Firstly, I tried using around 1 litre of fullcream milk, and 2-3 tablespoons of my first batch of Easiyo yoghurt. It didn’t work – I pretty much just got drinking yoghurt. I turned this into a strawberry smoothie.
Yesterday we bought a sachet of the probiotic Easiyo yoghurt, which contains the l.bulgaricus, s.thermophilus, l.acidophilus, bifidobacteria, and l.casei bacterias. I read up about yoghurt and probiotics on Wikipedia lastnight, and the science and history is just amazing. It truly appears to be one of those super foods that, if eaten regularly, should fix a whole truckload of common ailments that I for one can tend to suffer from.
My second attempt (lastnight) was to put 2 heaped tablespoons of probiotic Easiyo starter powder, and 4 heaped tablespoons of skim milk powder, into the 1L Easiyo container, and top with water. Shake, and incubate in the same way for the same time as before. Although this very nearly set, it was too watery and a little bit lumpy. Today I strained this through some paper towel – made into a sort of paper sieve or ‘cup’ suspended over the top of a glass, and secured on using some clothes pegs – so that the excess water (sometimes called whey or buttermilk) would trickle through, and the milky thick yoghurt part (kind of like curds) would remain suspended atop the paper. I didn’t have any cheesecloth to do this on a larger scale, so the paper-towel-over-a-glass system worked well. To ensure the paper towel didn’t break and all my hard work fall back into the whey, I spooned out the thus-far drained yoghurt and replaced the paper ‘cup’ with new paper towel about 4 times during the process. When the process was nearly finished, I guess I had about 1/4 of a litre of ‘curds’ left. At this point I put a piece of folded up paper towel on the top of the ‘curds’, and placed a small jar ontop of this to weigh it down a little, before carefully placing everything in the fridge.
After about an hour or so, the yoghurt curds had drained and thickened to a consistency similar to a thick sour cream or spreadable cream cheese. I spooned the curds out and off of the paper towel into a bowl. I added about 1 teaspoon or so of ground seasalt, a dash of pepper, and some finely chopped spring onions & garlic chives. The result was absolutely delicious – it tasted quite a lot like Philly cream cheese, but fresher. I served it with some slices of homemade bread, sundried tomatoes, olives, pickled cucumbers, and some botton mushrooms (sliced in 1/4s, and sauteed in a generous amount of olive oil and a dash of hot chilli sauce). This made for a fresh and easy late lunch. The bread was great to mop up the mushroomy olive oil and sundried tomato juices.
We will use the leftover ‘whey’ or ‘buttermilk’ to make pancakes for dinner tonight.
This afternoon, while everything was draining, I made up another batch of yoghurt. As my last attempt very nearly set, I thought I would increase the amount of milk powder and culture and see what happens. This time I put in 4 heaped tablespoons of the culture, and 2 cups of skim milk powder. The latter idea came from someone on the Earth Garden forums who lastnight suggested I use more skim milk powder, as it makes the yoghurt very creamy.
Fingers crossed this method works out. If it does, I should be able to make 1L of probiotic yoghurt for under $2.50. If I buy some yoghurt culture wholesale, I should be able to get this price down even further.
Only a few days ago I was going on about how fantastic my new Ubuntu is..
I’m still such a newbie. Now who would have thought that by adding just one little word to a bootup file that I would I manage to break my system completely?
Well, the thought did cross my mind. But I did it anyway in the hope it would work.
You see, my sound wasn’t working so I went on an ubuntu forum thread which promised to fix my sound, but it didn’t. Stupid me read the post wrong. It was a post for no sound at all, not bad sound. And obviously that detail was important, because when I went to reboot my computer it went through the GRUB thingo but then gave me a black screen with a simple text-based login, and after I put in my login details, it came up with a heap of text that pretty much said to me ‘your system isn’t going to boot up again unless you’re a total tech-head and know how to type in the right stuff’, and a polite little ‘Ubuntu is free software.. this means it is not covered by a warranty’ reminder.
Anyhow, after staying up all night/early morning I got it going again. I initially tried to repair it using the ‘repair’ option on the CD but I wasn’t entirely sure how to use it/what options to choose/and so on. The household computer-whizz was asleep and snoring, so I just opted to do a complete re-install. Which took me 4 attempts, because I made a mistake halfway through, 4 times, and had to start the process over.
The slightly more annoying part was that I had to fix the screen resolution yet again, tweak the desktop and panels again, re-load all my data, tweak all of my programs again (firefox and pidgin mostly), etc. Which wasn’t difficult, just time consuming.
I still have no idea why the sound is so crackly, and no clue how to fix it. I’ve searched the forums, Googled it, IRC’d it, and asked everyone I know who runs linux about it, with no results so far.
I think I need to step away from it for a week or so before I try again. I don’t really feel like anymore late-night dramas atm.
Yellow flowers are the best kind. Boyfriends who surprise you by remembering are pretty great too
Unlike most people, we don’t have a car. We never have, so we never got licenses either. Partly we haven’t prioritized it, partly it’s not an expense we could really afford, partly it’s for eco friendly reasons, partly we’re just shit scared of other drivers. Lately we’ve been thinking of taking the plunge.
There are so many decisions to be made though. And so much money to be spent.
Do we get automatic licenses, or manual ones. The latter gives you more choice in cars, but realistically we’re both too lazy to drive a manual. Plus, I think I’d rather spend more time focusing on not hitting someone/getting hit, than on simply getting the car moving.
Also, do we get an old car, or a newer model. I like the look of old cars better, but it’s probably too expensive to get them repaired.
None of the newer cars look ‘me’ though. They’re all too bimbo looking, or too family looking, or just ugly.
Can anyone recommend a cheap ($0 – $2,500), automatic, reliable, safe, and aesthetically pleasing car?
I like this one, but it’s a manual. They want $2,500 for it. It’s in good nick, but it isn’t licensed and those mirrors look like they’d need to be changed. And that’s just first impressions. I wouldn’t have a clue about the inner bits. I have a mechanic sister, brother in law, and father in law, and my dad is pretty car-cluey. But asking them for help is another matter.
I can see their eyes rolling. I can see myself getting lost in car yard jargon. I can see my dreams of a bitchin’, rock’n'rollin’ car ending in the purchase of something horribly sensible.
I like the sloping back window on these cars:
My long dreamed for (and also fairly impractical) car is an old VW. I’ll probably never ever be able to get one, but I still love them.
I like the mini ute idea too:
It’s all just fantasy though. I’ll end up with something like this, I’m sure (this was the type of car my sister first got. I hate them!)
I couldn’t manage to get a shot of the sky outside, through the window,
without capturing the reflection of the light shades inside!
Kind of looks like there’s lanterns in the trees
It is forecast rain for the rest of the week. Which I usually don’t mind. However, today, I had to run some errands and get some groceries. I was wearing shoes like this. The rain was so heavy that it was flooding the sides of the road, and gushing down the carpark (the shopping centre is on a hill). Walking to the shops, my shoes got full of water. So I squish squishy squeek squished all through the shops. On the way back home I got even more wet, struggling to hold a huge umbrella and bags of shopping at the same time.
So I don’t mind rain, but I have to say, it sure can make you feel a bit cold, squishy, and miserable at times. It does make getting home a lot nicer though. Everything seems warmer, dryer and happier.
Both of these brands of instant drinking chocolate are on special at Coles at the moment, though the ‘La Bella’ brand (~$4) is about $1 or so more expensive than the Cadbury brand (~$3). Earlier this week I bought the La Bella one, but today I saw the Cadbury was on special too so I thought I’d try that as well and compare them.
After trying both brands, the only conclusion I’ve come to is that both are in need of improvement. La Bella is better for its chocolatey-ness, but you have to use a fair bit and it doesn’t have much sweetness, so I ended up adding some sugar (which I find annoying because I don’t want to have to do any work – I just want to put it in the cup and have it taste good – not have to adjust the sweetness myself).
Cadbury’s is Ok – you use less, but it has a sweetness that, if not used wisely, could be sickly. And it’s not very chocolatey compared to La Bella.
My solution so far is to put a spoonful of each brand in a cup. Top with hotwater, stir, and add milk.
My longer term goal is to try the other brands of drinking chocolate and see which is better. I think Vittoria might be better, but at ~$8 a pop it’s pretty pricey. Granted, the container is about twice the size of the brands I’ve bought so far, but I’d hope it was good for that kind of price. Anyone tried it?
