Sunday, August 15, 2010

There is Nothing as Cunning as a Sheep

This weekend started strangely enough with me rescuing a sheep which was pinned under a Mazda Mx5 windscreen. Both were quite undamaged. by some happy twist of fate the lamb was in the convex part of the shield and must have also cushioned it's landing so both are doing well. Good. Right then. Lambs are starting to graze on anything they can find and sucking down many bottles of milk. Also Baaaaing an awful lot which lead to us calculating how long it would be until they could go back to the farm and what sort of useful decorative pet we would be trying next. We decided that enough was enough we would have to start on a Chicken coop device. I have no idea when we get some chickens but my dearly beloved seems to think that one just collects them from emergency stopping lanes about the place. There are many beautiful Chickens wandering about the lay-overs of small towns in Tasmania, always with a rooster. I guess this a side effect of being a fox free island (there are sightings of Foxes and people whipping themselves into a frenzy over scats but no-one has yet found alive fox despite millions of state funding being poured into locating foxes.. but that is another story.). Ah yes, chickens. we have started a chicken coop using reclaimed used pallets and will be using scrap colourbond roofing for the shelter. So far so much fun but we didn't make much headway today due to the rain and the kidlets.
So we went for a journey to Burnie where we were most astonished to end up in Crusty's bakery (by virtue of finding a loyalty card with a free coffee for the taking on the ground and searching for the place to redeem it) and we had a treat where we all had a wee cakie thing. So one apple turnover, a giant real cream puff, a marshmallow cone, a jelly slice and two mugs of coffee cost us $9.70!!!! unheard of! I wouldn't have expected much change from $20 even with the free coffee. 
And it was good too! (!) Burnie is lovely. Set right on the waters of the Bass Strait, Burnie has had a troubled past as one of the most polluted places but when the paper mill closed and the pigment factory stopped it's dangerous business the town was forced to diversify and has recovered to be a really picturesque place (albeit with a rather industrial feel.)Great Views!
I am experimenting with sourdough at the moment and I wouldn't say I have been successful yet but here is a photo of my first ever sourdough loaf.
My paragraphs seem a bit disjointed today and I don't know whether this is because I am very tired of because I have just discovered facebook and been spending too much time exchanging snippets of information with friends I haven't seen for over a decade. All of whom seem to be rabid Greens supporters for the upcoming election. I can't wait for the election to be over! Speaking of greens (I was, loosely) I must sing the praises of the small patch of chickweed growing next to the back door. I harvest some nearly every day , chop it finely and pop it in something I am cooking. I used chickweed and garlic tops on a pizza the other day and use it as a parsley substitute in my garlic and oil pasta dishes. The boys are quite content to eat it too so chickweed gets my dull roar stamp of approval, it is convenient, fresh, free, healthy and the children will eat things with it in. My next Dull Roar stamp of approval goes to making things into patties and frying them. It doesn' matter if they are fritters or latkes or pakora, my eldest boy will gobble down any kind of patty/fritter device no matter what the contents. He at so many red cabbage, pumpkin, onion and spinach pakora the other day his tummy was tight as a drum. He likes to dip in a sort of raita I make with yoghurt, mint garlic tops and sometimes chickweed (!). Actually dipping is very popular with the littlest man too but he only eats the thing in which he is dipping, not the dipper so I have to get a collection of healthy things in which to dip (rather than just tomato sauce). It makes me unreasonably happy that my children will eat what I cook them!

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