Thursday, August 26, 2021

Around here

Around here we are in Week 7 of Term 3 and the teenagers are wearing masks to school in Queensland.  I think we will be wearing masks here for a bit longer and I guess with the protest march on the Qld/NSW border last weekend we may see some cases in Queensland in the next few weeks.

New South Wales and Victoria are still in a world of trouble with New South Wales recording their highest daily figure yesterday of 919 cases with a 30 year old Mum of 3 passing away overnight.  Her husband is now in hospital with Covid and I can only pray that he makes it so those kids have one parent.  It's so heart breaking and I don't know how the NSW cases are going to end to be honest.  Victoria was given the virus by NSW people [I believe] heading there when they were supposed to be in lockdown.  Only a couple of weeks ago [7 weeks into NSW lockdown] two girls flew to Melbourne who had Covid.   I don't understand how "stay at home orders" means getting on a plane and flying interstate whether you have Covid or not.  Today, the 26th August, 2021 there are 1,029 cases.

Grade 12 mock exams start with the count down to the end of the year with the Senior exams starting on the 25th October, 2021.  I still can't believe I will have my oldest graduating High School in 12 weeks time as I can still remember walking him into school for his first day of Prep back in 2009.  That means next year I'll have one at University and one in Grade 11.  Both have great part time jobs and have a great social life as well so my Mothering days look a lot different these days to 10 years ago when we moved into this house in June 2011.

I am still loving making my sourdough bread and I can't believe how easy this recipe and process is compared to many others and in particular starting with a cold oven as well.  I also made some tomato sauce using the recipe from Additive Free Lifestyle.  The girls [sisters] have just created a Gluten Free 4 week online course which is the pilot course which I subscribed too.   I'm not gluten intolerant however having extra recipes up my sleeve which are healthy is always good and the girls recipes are amazing.

I have also experimented with making home made ginger beer using Rhonda's recipe from Down to Earth blog which I'll write about in another post.

This lovely Kookaburra has been hanging around our backyard this week.

Home made Tomato Sauce using this recipe.

Home made non-alcoholic ginger beer in the making.

Home made pizza for dinner.

Healthy Brain Balls using Dr Libby's recipe.  This batch is half the recipe.

I dried some of my home grown oregano which ended up being a huge effort for a tiny bit of dried oregano however I have been wanting to do this for some time.

8 comments:

  1. Kathy your photos are beautiful as always. Happy to hear your kids are doing well. How did they grow up so quickly??? I'm sorry to hear about the Covid complications in your country. It's a mess everywhere I'm afraid. That's horrible about the mum and her husband. I too pray he gets better for the children.

    Your sourdough photos and posts have encouraged me! I will be baking bread once the weather cools. Wishing you a wonderful rest of the week!

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    1. Fantastic on encouraging you to do the sourdough. It's all in the starter if it doesn't turn out how you want it. My neighbour made his own starter however his bed was not what he wanted so I gave him some of mine [which was gifted to me and it was strong] and he has made a beautiful loaf today and sent me a pic - it worked. So getting the starter right or if you have a local baker that makes sourdough you can usually buy a bit of them if all else fails.

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  2. Kathy, NSW is in a bad way with COVID. We have been fortunate here but now the Premier has decided to have a quarantine hub here and announced that yesterday without letting our mayor know or our local and state representatives...all Liberal/National 😏 The locals aren't happy 😡

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    1. Yes I found that a bit unusual that the Mayor etc wasn't given the heads up to be honest. I do agree that Hotel Quarantine is not a forever solution and we have just wasted one year without setting something up that is equipped to handle a contagious virus in this country. If I lived in Sydney I wouldn't be stepping foot outside my front door, very scary.

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  3. Your photos are, as ever, so lovely to look at :). I can't believe your son is old enough for University : oh my goodness, where did that time go! I agree that Covid is anxious-making. Here in the UK, we had over 26000 (yep, 26K) people registered with Covid yesterday and nearly 7000 in hospital. Despite a high vaccination rate in our area (over 82% of people have had both doses), there are 371 cases per 100K and the number continues to rise. Schools go back next week and there's no talk of masks being necessary. Lots of people are out in shops without one, and most things have opened up 'normally' now. (I'm wearing a double mask). Scary indeed. Thinking of you and yours ...

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    1. I saw on TV this morning the people visiting the Diana Statue and didn't see any masks. It is all so scary that's for sure.

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  4. PS I meant to ask if you had come across the website Minimalist Baker? Lots of great healthy recipes both savoury and sweet, many gluten-free and dairy free too.

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