Home made hand cream for a beautiful midwife

My sister is a beautiful soul and has been a role model for me throughout my life. She was with me when Quincey was born and was such a source of strength and comfort for me - then and at when ever I've needed her. I don't know what I would have done without her at times. Now though, its my turn to help her as she is returning to work after several years off with her own young kids. My sister is a midwife and to be sure, the best sort of midwife you could hope for - calm, non-judgmental, reassuring, honest and skilled.

She is also very good on general hygiene, ie washing her hands at work and has really dry skin now, so I made her some home made hand cream. My friend made some for me recently and I just love it! Its Creme Galen Cold Cream and according to the recipe was created by the Roman doctor Aurelius Galenus (AD 129 - 217).

5 oz rose water
1 oz unbleached beeswax
6 oz extra virgin olive oil
8 drops rose essential oil

Grate the bees wax. Gently heat the rose water in a glass bowl in a hot water bath. In a separate bowl combine the beeswax and oil and then gently heat until liquid. Remove both bowls from heat and slowly pour the rose water into the oil and wax blend. Mix with a stick blender until combined. Add the essential oil and stir. Before the liquid cools and sets, pour into clean small jars or tins.

It was particularly satisfying making this because I used bees wax from a friends backyard hive and olive oil from our last Great Hilton Harvest Olive Pressing. Okay, the rose water was from Syria and I'm not sure about the rose oil.

I use the cream at night as it is quite heavy and makes my skin shiny. In the morning I just slash my face with water and away I go. I use it on my hands, legs and face. I don't understand why people need a hand cream, a face cream and a body cream. Last time I checked my face and hands were a part of my body!

Mulberry season!

Perth is a tough place to grow food. However, there are a few exceptions - sweet potato, olives and most fun of all, mulberries. Here in our suburb, there are several cracker mulberry trees right on the verge. Great big trees, great for climbing and getting mulberry stains on your school uniform. 

Luckily we often ride to school and we have been watching the fruit on our favorite tree getting plumper and darker over the last week or so. And now they are ready to pick!

We picked enough to take some home and put in a pie. Funny thing was we collected them in an unused doggy poo bag. That freaked me out a bit because from the outside of the bag it looked like we were the very responsible owner of some kind of massive great dane. 

Anyway, once home we whipped up this yummy pie: 

• Short crust pastry: half a cup plain spelt flour/half a cup wholemeal flour or what every flour you prefer, a few tablespoonish scoops of butter. Rubbed in to the flour, add a tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of salt, add a little dash of water and a little dash of milk and combine with a butter knife. Not sure why we always use a butter knife to mix it, but my Granny said this was essential. Who am I to question her wisdom?
• Mulberry mix: chuck in a good few handfuls of mulberries (no need to destalk), a peeled and grated granny (fruit, not the Grandparent), and a tablespoon of brown sugar - no water as the berries are full of juice. Let it reduce a bit. 
• Roll out the pastry, put it in a greased pie dish and pour in the mulberry mix and bake, 180 degrees for 20 mins or so.

Vola! Great with whipped cream!

I just love making use of food that would otherwise go to waste. Mulberries are so sweet and fragile, they only last on the tree a day or two before they drop and are ruined. So while they are in season its great to take advantage of them. You can munch them straight from the tree or you can juice them. We also freeze them in containers to keep us going between seasons. People often ask how they can get berries plastic free - well this is the answer for Perth peeps! They are great on ice cream or in smoothies after they have been frozen. You can also make mulberry jam - but be warned they are very low in pectin so you will need to add heaps of lemon juice (which can effect the flavour) or add commercial jamsetta. 

Go forth with your doggy poo bag and enjoy the bonanza!

Homemade yoghurt

We've been making our own yoghurt for a few years now and we're pretty happy with our method now. It's quick and easy once you get the hang of it. Here's how.

You'll need some starter (a few tablespoons of quality plain yoghurt) and milk. Don't buy expensive powdered starters, all you need is some yoghurt. Just don't use flavoured ones, use plain. We do ours in one litre batches but you can do less if you want. You'll also need a container to put the yoghurt in and an insulated container to fit that inside of. We use a 1L glass jar and an Easiyo maker or similar which the jar sits inside.

A 'pot watcher' also comes in handy. This is a glass disc which rattles when the milk is coming to a boil and avoids overflowing milk.

Firstly, bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan with pot watcher in. Turn it down and let in simmer boil for 5-10 minutes. This step is to reduce the milk a bit so you'll get nice thick greek style yoghurt without the need to add powdered milk. Turn off the heat and leave to cool. When the milk is cool enough to put your finger in and leave it in without burning (5-10 minutes) the milk is ready. Some people use thermometers for this but we've found the finger test works well and is simpler.

Boil the kettle while you're adding the milk to the yoghurt. To mix the two I use a licky spoon (a soft spatula). With the yoghurt in the bottom of the jar I add a little bit of milk at first (say 100ml) and stir it in well, then add another 400ml and stir again. Try to scrape around the jar to get all of the last brew mixed in. Then top up with the rest of the milk and stir well again. As soon as this is done put the lid on the jar and fill your container with the right amount of boiling water (enough to put the jar in without overflowing) and place your jar inside and put the lid on. There should be water up to the level of the yoghurt.

The photo above shows the 'false floor' of the container. This is what the jar sits on.

We usually leave this overnight, 8 hours plus is needed. If you open it up and it's still runny don't worry, just leave it another 4-8 hours and it should come good.

That's it, it's not too hard. Sure, you'll have failures but keep at it and you should be able to get it right every time. It's cheap and it's yum. If you want thicker yoghurt still (or a sour cream replacement) strain it through muslin for a few hours. And if you want sweeter yoghurt just add jam, honey, maple syrup, fruit, etc. This yoghurt costs the same as your milk, so for us it's about $1.30 a litre.

And it's thick!

Blooming again

The garden is looking blooming marvellous again, so here are some pics.

The self pollinating almond is in full flower, we're hoping for a bumper crop to make up for disappointing yields in the past.

The broad beans are flowering with some beans set already. Yum!



The apricot has just started to flower. Amy didn't want me to prune it this year so I told her it's up to her to take care of the fruit fly!

The grape vine is just starting to shoot, hopefully we'll get fruit and shade from this.

One of our banana plants has a big bunch (250+) on, hoping to harvest by Christmas.

The apple tree is in blossom, these should fruit in November-December.

The macadamia tree has shot away this year, we're crossing our fingers for our first nuts this year...

The natives are looking good. This is a flower of Kunzea baxteri.

The newly planted dwarf Wurtz avocado tree is shooting, a sure sign it has settled in well.

Most exciting of all is that two of our three olive trees are flowering (Manzanillo and Corratina varieties). This is the first time for these trees three and four years after planting. We can't wait to harvest our own olives in April after years scrounging local verges for them.

The weeds are doing well too. Our arch nemesis soursop is everywhere in the front garden, which is a shame because it makes the garden look so samey. Next year we'll get on top of this so we can have an open garden hopefully.

The favourite with local honeyeaters, Calothamnus quadrifidus.

The mango is looking good despite not having any protection from the cold this winter.

Close up, Calothamnus quadrifidus.

After a few dry weeks we just got 20mm of rain, so we're happy campers...

Okey's Loo; How to make a dog poo worm farm

Okey is settling in really well. He is such a snuggle pot! The reality of having a new pet is sinking in though. Its so crucial to make time to walk him or he gets all upset at night. We also have to purchase meat for him which may become challenging during Plastic Free July. And then there is the poo factor. But this is something I know how to deal with. I'm a professional! The solution is a dog poo worm farm! Easy.

All you need is:
an old builders bucket with lid - often you can find them discarded around building sites
a saw
an icecream container full of worms and castings.

First step is to saw off the bottom of the bucket like this

Find a shady spot away from food crops then dig a hole in the ground and slot the bucket in it so there is only an inch or so of the top exposed, like this

then chuck in a couple of litres of worms and castings, yum!

and that's it.

So all you do now is scoop up the poo and drop it in the worm farm. The worms will yum it up! There are a few precautionary points to this system:

• You should never use the worm castings. The idea is if it ever gets full, pop some gardening gloves on and just shimmy up the bucket, cover over the remaining poo and worms and leave it there. Dig a new hole and start again elsewhere. 
• Don't put it near food that is grown close to the ground just in case of contamination. I put ours under fruit trees though. Once the worms and the bacteria have had a good go at breaking down the poo it may as well leach through your soil near a productive tree.
• Once your dog has been wormed, the residue chemicals in the poo will also kill your composting worms. So after you worm your dog, you need to stockpile the poo somewhere else (or bin it) for a couple of weeks. I have killed all my worms this way once. But just for interest I'm going to keep using my dog poo worm farm after worming Okey because I've just read so much about the amazing power of bacteria - so maybe the bacteria present in the castings will still breakdown the poo. I think it will - but I may have to keep adding worms and castings. I have a wonderful big fridge worm farm and so have a good supply of worms. I'll let you know how we go.
• Don't feed your worms anything other than poo or they will eat that first!
• If it looks soggy, add dry stuff like straw or shredded paper. If it looks too dry add some water.
• Of course, wash your hands after scooping the poo.

I used this system before with our old dog Porridge. I only had to move it once every year or so and it worked really well I can testify! Most people wouldn't do this, but I had a dig around our dog poo worm farm to see what was going on in there and the worms were really thriving, there were eggs and everything! The system is so much nicer than chucking poo in your wheelie bin because there is no smell, you get to turn something disgusting into something useful and its just all together cleaner. 

Okey rides!

Meet Okey. He's the newest member of our family and we already love him to bits!

He is a whippet, but not a pure breed which is fine for us as we will be having his ballies chopped off as soon as we can. And unfortunately he's not a rescue dog. We waited a while for a whippet-ish puppy, but alas, we were just too impatient. We wanted a whippet because they always come highly recommended as lovely chilled out pets. We are just too precious about our garden and our retic to risk a chewy breed. So far Okey has lived up to the chilled out pet description. He doesn't chew much, he has only wee'd inside once, he doesn't pull on the lead, he is gentle and doesn't nip. But he does cry at night a bit. In fact he howls. Ads and I are frantically reading the puppy books from the library!

We have been gently getting him used to the idea of the cargo bike. We've had him sniff around it while constantly feeding him treats, then he got a sit in the box. I assumed he'd freak out and go all shivery but quite the opposite. He just lay down and had a snooze!

So the next day we all went for a ride to the park - Ads riding, me and Okey in the box. It went well, he just lay back and enjoyed the ride! What a good boy! Our next step is to get a bolt in the box where we can clip a short lead so he can ride by himself and not jump out or strangle himself... I can't wait to get fully mobile in the cargo with Okey!

Power year 6 and PV payback times

Our 1.1kW PV system is in its sixth year and still going strong. Power generation dipped slightly and unfortunately our consumption went up a bit. We still use about a third of the WA average though so not too bad.

On the money front we saved nearly $600 off our bill, partly thanks to our low usage and also the fact that we feed in over thirds of our generated power to the grid (the generous feed in tariff helps here).

It's been 6 years now since we installed our solar panels. In that time our PV system has saved us $3,104 off our power bills. That means we're half way to paying off the cost of the system (our 1.1 kW Kaneka/SMA system cost $6,460 after rebates back in 2008). Solar panels are way cheaper nowadays but the rebates and feed in tariffs are less favourable as well. We paid a lot for our system but are lucky enough to be paid 49c per kWh fed to the grid and this is guaranteed to 2020 (if the government keep their promise!). In fact I've just worked out that I'll need to buy more solar panels in 2020 otherwise my bills will go from small to fairly big. The last yearly bill would have been $493 feeding power in at 8.5 cents a kWh instead of $58! Adding more panels will be hard for us since our unshaded roof space is almost full of thin film panels, we may even need to try to sell the panels and get a whole new set of less space hungry panels...

Despite less favourable rebates and feed in tariffs these days PV is still a great investment. The table below shows estimated payback times for people in Western Australia. As you'll see huge savings can be made over 25 years and most PV systems will last up to 40 years. The payback time may be shorter for smaller systems but this is not the whole of the matter. Bills will be less with bigger systems meaning that overall savings are far greater in the long run.

Power prices have almost doubled in the last six years in WA, so now is a great time to buy PV. If you orient some panels to the east, north and west you'll maximise your use of generated power, which is a big plus under current feed in rates (8.5 cents a kWh in WA compared to 27 cents for power bought from the grid).

I'd love to hear from people about their experiences with PV and if anyone has questions on this topic please fire away.