February 2012

Here we go again, a new month, Time just seems to be flying at the moment and I feel that I am being left behind. I look at my kids and see how fast they are growing and how little time we have to be with and teach them it is quite scary. What is more scary is looking in the mirror and realizing I have lots of wrinkles and that I am not as young as I used to be. lol. I am turning 37 this month and WOW the things that I have achieved in  the last 37 years is wonderful. Six beautiful kids, been married for 18 years, learnt how to make cheese, butter, preserve food, build a house, give birth at home, grow vegetables, and find a peace with in me that I am so thankful for. Yahweh has blessed me in abundance and I am thankful for that.

The last 2yrs have been a hug challenge for me and it has shown me that the only one that is ever there is Abba Father, and even though I had turned my back on him the last 2 years as I have gone through my tests and trials I am starting to see that he has been there no matter what even though a lot of the time I have not wanted to hear or more to the point listen . I have also realized that my husband and my kids and Abba Father are my life and that nothing else matters, everyone else comes and goes in your life. I feel New and wonderful things coming to myself and my family in the coming months and I am ready to embrace them and make many more memories.

 

Ok Now that I have had my moment it is time to get the month going. Whoooooooooo

  As I said they are growing sooooo fast.

 

This is our little cutie. Love the curls.

Still loving my flowers. We have had a heat wave that has been awful. I cant wait for Autumn to arrive.

     Ok, so my Birthday. I was very spoilt. I started the day with being taken out to the Belfry Kitchen fro a Red Espresso Dream (rooibos with white chocolate melted in it, yummy) Got home to a house full of people to have a cup of tea and chocolate cream pie, Chelsea Buns, chocolate cake, apple crumble and heart chocolates, when we where all finished laughing and stuffing our faces the next lots of people arrived so all the others left, more tea and cake, :-). They left when round three arrived. Yes more tea and cakes. John then arrived with another chocolate cake, I ended the day with Linda arriving and whisking me outside to a table set for two and we sat and had sundowners with cheese and biscuits.So I was very bless to have a day filled with friendship and lots of laughter. THANK YOU ALL FOR A WONDERFUL DAY.

So after all that wonderful food I have had to work very hard around the house and in the garden to work off all the calories, I have not taken photos yet but will post them next month as we have nearly finished building, I have moved my veggie boxes around and put up shade clothe to protected the plants, I have been weeding as we have a corner in the garden that had never been weeded so I have been on the weed attack and it did feels so good getting rid of all the unwanted stuff that was around, I have been clearing out the house as well, the load just seems to be getting lighter,  It is good to rid ourselves of all the baggage and start afresh. So here is to a good year with a fresh start. Have a good March Everyone.

January 2012

Ok where to start. What a long year it has been already.

 

We have been so busy with drying peaches, bottling fruit and now the tomatoes have just started as well so I am making a big pot of tomato jam.

   Ok we start off with cuteness. For fun and with the heat wave that we have just had Jodie and the other smaller kids all decided to climb in the cows water and have a swim, luckily we had just clean it and filled it with new water, would have been a bit gross other wise.

Here is picture of the making of the cheese. It is on a double boiler melting. Once melted I pour it into a tub and let it set for 24 hours and next day we have cheese for lunch else I grate it and plop it in the deep freeze till needed. it melts very well on pizza’s.

 

I am making around 1.5kg of cheese every 3-4 days. I have also been putting in chilli and garlic that is very nice.

Like I said it has been a long year, Aimee twisted her ankle very badly, Sharna pulled her arm out, Sarah scrapped her chin, Daniel stood on something sharp, David cut his knee open, and Jodie fell on the broom on the nails and cut her little bum open  that was all in one day.

 

Our gorgeous sunsets.Abba Father spoils us with these lovely days and to end it with such a view is something special that we are blessed to see most days.

 

  One more blessing, Here we have homemade rye bread with homemade cream cheese, pesto that we have made with basil from the garden, tomatoes that I have grown and yes I bought the chips on the top of the bread, lol.

 

The kids making pop corn, as you can see the kids put to much corn in the pot, they needless to say had a lot of fun when the lid started to lift off and they waited for the pop corn to pop out but luckily it stopped popping before that happened..

So the Girls and Nathan started the year off by climbing to the top of the mountain behind us in the heat of the day and had a ball. Aimee ended up with sun stroke, Nathan was red as a tomatoes and Sharna pretended to not have been burnt till she got in the shower and her body stun,

So I planted loads of tomatoes as we can never have enough tomatoes~in our house.

We have been blessed with the tomatoes as they are growing so well. I have made Tomato Jam and am busy making Tomato Chutney. We have picked 15 – 20kg of tomatoes already.Yay Abba Father has been good to us.

Tomato Jam

Tomato Jam

4.5kg Tomatoes

1.8kg Sugar

4 Lemons

8 Cinnamon Sticks,

 

Cook tomatoes with out skins, Add sugar + Lemons+ Cinnamon till thick and ready to bottle.

Enjoy

Cooking up Tomato Chutney.

 

Red Tomato Chutney

1.5kg ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped

450g dessert apples, peeled, corded and chopped

450kg onions, peeled and very finely chopped

350g sultanas

350h raisins

1tsp dry mustard

2tsp ground allspice

1Tbsp salt

1Tbsp cayenne pepper

675g soft brown sugar

900ml vinegar

 

Place all the ingredients into a preserving pan and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring frequently until chutney is thick. Bottle and enjoy.

Aimee made yummy muffins today as we having guests.

Basic Muffins

375ml Flour

10ml Baking Powder

2.5ml Salt

125ml Sugar

125ml Milk

1 Egg, beating

60ml melted butter

 

Preheat oven to 180*C

Stir together the dry ingredients, Add the milk to the melted butter and egg. Add to the dry ingredients till just combined. Spoon into greased muffin tins and bake at 180* for 15 _ 20 minutes.

We added in 3 Tbsp of berry jam for flavour.

 

We are getting a 15l bucket of tomatoes ever 2 days. Aimee found a twin tomato. The first picture is my tomatoes that are in my box in front of my house. The other three pictures are my tomatoes that are in the garden.  

Well that is it for this month. Hope you all have a good February.