February - My Other Goals and Bits and Bobs

Well, if that was summer, it is now officially over, with only a handful of days with temperatures over 30 degrees C. Quite unbelievable.  What is also unbelievable is the flooding in south east Queensland and north east New South Wales.  I feel so much for those affected.

Now, back to my goals.......

I only had a few other goals for this month.

As usual, I wanted to have at least one book read.

I picked this up at an op shop at Bingara on our recent holiday.  It sounded like a bit of light hearted fun.  

It was published in 2012, the year of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, but is set a little earlier.  The story goes that the Queen is feeling a little down. She is still feeling sad about the "annus horribilis" and Diana's death, as well as struggling with technology and hates feeling dependent on people for help with it.  

To cheer herself up, she sings the song "My Favourite Things" from The Sound of Music and wonders what her favourite things are.  The royal yacht "Britannia" comes to mind and on a whim, she decides to catch the train to Edinburgh to visit it.  However, she neglects to tell anyone.

The story follows the endeavours of those close to her within the household to find her, keep her safe, bring her home and avoid any publicity.

Obviously, all ends well, but it was an amusing, light hearted read, as expected.

My next goal was to try a new recipe.  Well, for someone who would never say that cooking is one of her favourite things, I seem to have spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen this month, although not really making new recipes, as such.

Firstly, we filleted the little fish.

Then I made the plum clafoutis.

Then it was time to make tomato relish - a rather large batch.

This resulted in a little disaster, thanks to our little friend, Joey the cat.  It was latish in the afternoon that we finished, so the jars were left on the kitchen bench overnight.  Carefully moved to the centre, just in case Joey decided to jump up there during the night.  To our horror, in the morning, half the jars were knocked over and one smashed on the floor.  What a mess!  He must have jumped up and landed squarely on top of them all.

It didn't clean up as well as we'd have liked, so we hired the big floor cleaner from Bunnings, moved all the furniture out, and cleaned all the tiled floor in the kitchen, dining and sitting areas.  The machine is good for a general clean, but still doesn't do a great job on the grout, so in the kitchen, we were both down on our hands and knees scrubbing.  I know it was a job needing doing anyway, and looks so much better now.

Back to the cooking.......

We don't have a lot of tomato plants, but we are getting a lot of tomatoes.  After making the large batch of relish, I then filled the boiler again to prepare some for freezing.  I had three big bowls of tomatoes, added a kilo of onion, heaps of garlic, basil, thyme, parsley and pepper.  Once cooked I blitzed some and left some chunky.  There are ten tubs in the freezer to use for pasta, as a base for a casserole or for soup.  

On Sunday, there was another three bowls of tomatoes sitting there, so I got chopping and cooking again, but didn't add anything to the tomatoes - I was too lazy.  That ended up with another seven tubs in the freezer.

Our latest adventure in the kitchen involved these.  A mate told us he had heaps of blackberries this year, if we would like to come out and pick some.  Of course we would. We rather like our berries, and don't normally have access to blackberries.

It didn't take all that long to pick half a bucket full - two and half kilos worth.

The next day, they were popped in the boiler and turned into jam.  The reason we had hoped to find some wild apples on our Friday outing, was to add them to the jam, but it ended up just being straight out blackberry jam.

Of course we had to do a taste test on toast.

I had also bought some plums at the supermarket that were on special, so two batches of jam were made on the one day.

The pantry is now well and truly stocked with preserves for the year.  We may make another batch of relish, but that would be a bonus.

We are getting plenty of veges every day now.  There are several meals of zucchini slice in the freezer, as well as eggplant curry and eggplant mince to use in moussaka and the likes.  Fortunately, the beans are just about finished, as we don't need any more.  Our poor freezer is just about as full as it can get and I still want to freeze more.  

At least there are plenty of easy meals ahead.

We were fortunate to have a few fun days during the month.  Thankfully, events are starting to happen again and things open up.  As of this week, it is no longer mandatory to check in to most places with a QR code and from Friday, we were no longer required to wear masks to most places.  Having said that, most people seem to still be wearing a mask around the shops.

As expected, we didn't get away in the caravan during the month.

So, in the end, February was rather a busy month.  The next couple promise to be somewhat the same, so I'd better start thinking of my next goals.