Roast Lamb Anyone?

Roast Lamb, anyone? While I’ve been sitting on the computer this afternoon, my husband has cooked such a delicious roast lamb with roast vegetables – roast carrot, zucchini (that we were given by a lovely friend from church), sweet potato, onion, and this was accompanied by broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower – he is such a good cook. Have you noticed what is missing from this plate? Did you guess – yes, it’s the humble potato. I can’t eat potato in any form, which makes for rather interesting meal planning. Dinner was absolutely delicious, and the roast lamb was so tender.

I praise God that my husband’s knee is well enough for him to continue to cook, as I really don’t like cooking a main meal, although I will cook something that doesn’t require me to stand at the stove while it’s cooking, such as Quiche, Buffet Macaroni, Tuna Mournay or Spaghetti. Guess what the children and I are living on when my husband is in hospital having his knee replacement?

What about you? Does your husband have any culinary expertise? If so, what does he cook?

Of Snakes and Strawberries

Jeanne wrote a post the other day about how “Fresh is Best“, and this started me thinking about how we actually live on the farm. With three asthmatics, we have to be very conscious of what we eat, and pre-packaged foods contain some real nasties, such as MSG, sulphur as a preservative and loads of other additives that we really don’t need. Consequently we don’t eat  much that is prepackaged, the exceptions being yoghurt, cheese, fritz, pitta bread, tinned pineapple and mettwurst.

Kalleskes of Tanunda make a really delicious mettwurst, and we use this for home-made pizzas, using pitta bread, tomato sauce, grated cheese, pineapple, fritz and mettwurst which is our Sunday night meal. The majority of the foods that we eat are fresh, as we live on salads, fresh fruit and vegetables and our own farm-fresh produce.

In our home, we :

• Make our own bread.
• Make our own ice-cream.
• Milk our goats.
• Grow our own sheep, chicken and turkeys for meat.
• Keep chickens for eggs.

Last night we picked up our meat from the butcher’s, maybe in a slightly different form to when we dropped her off, but this sheep was VERY fat, and dressed almost thirty kilograms, which means that as live weight, she would have been about 60 kilograms. Our butcher kills and cuts up our meat, rolling the front legs into roasts, and all for $30.00. We don’t have a meat saw, nor do we have a cold room in which to hang the meat, so this seems very good value to us.

This afternoon I went out to water the strawberries, as they don’t like bore water, and one step from the strawberry trough, I nearly stepped on a baby brown snake. Now, I don’t know how much you know about snakes, but a baby brown snake is as deadly as an adult!

I let out a HUGE scream for my husband, and in one bound I was on top of the outdoor table, with my feet on top of the bench seat. Did I want to be anywhere near that snake? No way! No siree! Nope! I hate snakes with a passion, and my vocal chords certainly had their workout for this week. My husband came out and re-located the horrid thing, and I dissolved into a flood of tears. Now, why, oh why, do they have to pick our back yard to have their babies?

The strawberries are growing wonderfully well, and we actually get to harvest our fruit, now that a good friend gave us a helpful hint:~

When you plant strawberries,

make sure that you have tinsel

scattered around the strawberries,

so that the birds don’t beat you to the fruit.

AND this helpful hint actually works. We only planted our strawberries this year, and they are fruiting so well. We planted blackberries (the thornless type) last year, and this year they were badly frosted, so we didn’t expect to harvest any, but they are actually fruiting again, now. This morning my daughter and I actually had our first taste of thornless blackberries, and they are every bit as good as the variety with thorns – YUM!

This morning my daughter picked the ripe tomatoes, and they are absolutely divine – I love home-grown cherry tomatoes, as the taste of a home-grown cherry tomato is so full of flavour! There are also a few Apollo tomatoes that are good for sandwiches, as it is so fiddly trying to place cherry tomatoes onto a sandwich.

I praise God for His constant provision over us, and I am truly thankful that He constantly provides us with all that we need. Notice that I said, “All that we Need”, for He provides for all of our needs, but never our greeds. I also praise Him for keeping me safe from the fangs of the brown snake that intruded into our back yard today!

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Colossians 1:16, 17

Wordless Wednesday

Tall Trees

In our front yard, not more than twenty metres from our front door, we have some wonderful eucalyptus trees, and it is at this time of year that the bark is slowly being stripped away, as the tree begins to ready itself for another growing season.

This eucalypt has put on such a spurt of growth since we arrived here seven years ago, and I would go as far as to say that the canopy has more than quadrupled in size. The tall trees make such a difference to the temperature of our home, and ’tis much more pleasant outside with the shade of the tall trees. My husband took these photos for me this afternoon – aren’t the trees spectacular?

We went to the doctor this afternoon, and my husband’s prescription was changed to that of a Duragesic 50 patches (Fentanyl transdermal) , which is a narcotic painkiller – not ideal, I know, but when you have as much pain as he has, anything is worth a try. He also has an appointment with the orthopaedic specialist in March, so we will know what the specialist intends to do after that.

Hopefully the patches will work, and he will have his quality of life restored – praying and believing!

Who’s Observant?

I wonder who’s observant and has noticed that I have added a new page to my blog called Our Hobby Farm. I have added a couple of photo collages to this page so that you can see our goats and our cats. The chickens and turkeys are coming soon. Thank you to Sarah for telling me about Picasa. It’s so easy and fun to use!

In Picasa you can make beautiful and interesting photo collages, mosaics, scattered photos and even imbed a central photo. Picasa is free to download, and this photo editing software even organises your photos to make it easier to create your own wonderful slideshows.