Long time no post... lots of things happened in the meantime;
I was overseas, twice, attending to family affairs,
chickens passed away, new ones arrived,
my front and backyard had a major overhaul,
and now we are getting towards the end of refurbishing the inside.


And, today is my first day on the Bodytrim diet!

Oh, I have so much hope that this time...

The first three days are called the 'carb detox phase'.  Nothing but about 100 gramms of protein every 3 hours and lots of water.

I'm through my first 3 meals and my second coffee.

Last night I prepared myself: grilled a packet of organic tempeh slices (fermented tofu, it has a nice taste), so that I will have something to eat straight away in the morning.
In the fridge I also have
sliced smoked dry ham (it's like the lean part of prosciutto),
eggs to cook,
quark (like cottage cheese),
haloumi cheese for grilling,
and in the cupboard cans of salmon and sardines.

The instructions say 'black coffee or tea', but I had to put a little milk in my coffee, can't drink it otherwise.  I do want to follow the diet 'to the letter', so hoping this little sin won't affect my weightloss.

By the way I have 19 kilos to loose.  That's a lot.

Here it is, looking into the future...

All the best for me!!!

Very hot day

Another horribly hot day, even worse, than a week ago.  The poor chickens all that suffering in the heat again!

Just now the temperature was 44C.

And just now, as a last resort I dipped two of my chickens, the older ones, in a bucket of cool water.  I was afraid they wouldn't make it, they were panting so heavily, wings held up, and just looked so miserable as if they were ready to give up.

As I was holding them down in the bucket with the water coming up to about chest level, it was so interesting to feel the reaction of their bodies.

I expected them to be fighting with me, but no, just the opposite.  I could feel their muscles relax immediately.  Then the panting stopped and they were just enjoying it!  As if " ahhh, this feels sooo good...".  I let them have the bath for about half a minute, maybe it's enough to cool the blood a bit I thought.

Important update: I talked to our vet this morning and he advises to only do the dipping when the weather is dry.  In humid weather the chickens could get sick from this!



Apart from ice blocks in their water throughout the day, the girls also got some cottage cheese, straight from the fridge to cool them in the inside as well.  I often give them some, they just love it!

Chooks loving the cool cottage cheese

Yuuuum!

It's generally not advised to give dairy to chickens, but this is all raw, with all the enzymes intact.  I made it from raw soured milk.  I don't think they would have any allergies from this, plus it's great probiotics for them!

Fish net to catch chickens

This morning I ran over to the camping store to buy this:

If it really comes to having to have to bring my chooks inside because of the heat or something, I need to catch them quickly.

The two older ones are very tame; they'd come to me, but the new young ones are pretty flighty.  I don't want to run around chasing chickens in the heat, wouldn't be good for either of us.  Appearently this instrument is the thing to use in such situation.

Now I'm off to cover all my veggie beds.


Update:

I covered all my beds with double net cover.  The whole garden looks kind of silly.   Not very attractive.

everything is covered and shaded

all but the grapes are covered

Really, how much heat and sun can grapes take?
I am thinking maybe a lot, but it might not be so.  I suppose we'll find out at the end of this day.


Thankfully the temperature is still quite okay, about 32 celsius at 11 am, maybe it will not reach the predicted height of 43 ...

Shade for chickens

  

I really hope we are ready for tomorrow's extreme heat ...  We have prepared as much as we could to keep the chickens safe; they are the only ones vulnerable, everyone else (dogs, cat, people) can stay in the nice cool air-conditioned rooms inside.

Problem is we have a couple of hours around the middle of the day when there is really hardly any shade anywhere in the backyard.

It's going to be around 43ºC (109ºF)! tomorrow ...

On the weekend, after searching through numerous forums and chook sites to find good solutions, we have decided on a few things.

First, we decided to install some heat reflecting cover over the chooks 'day house' which is inside the north side boundary fence.  We were planning to use something like the windscreen shades with that silvery coating, except we needed a whole big sheet; about 2m by 3m.

Couldn't find any in the camping shops or hardware.

But, at Bunnings, at the building insulation isle we found a kind of silver coated sheeting called SilverWrap, 1.30m wide and almost 30m long.  For about $50.

It looked just the thing we needed.  We bought some double sided tape for fixing it to the fence.

At home we laid it out and cut two pieces each 3.5m in length.

Laying out the SilverWrap

Two pieces are cut off

Long edges are overlapped and fixed together with double sided tape (it actually came from my sewing box and was used to fix clothing)

Cut edge tidied up

Fixed it to top of fence with industrial double sided tape

The bottom is simply secured on the ground with bricks

The sheet covers the day house with plenty of overhang at each end. There is enough room for the 4 chooks we think if they are stuck there for the day.

The chickens seem to like their new improved day house.  It must be much cooler than before.

some other things we can do:

• putting large blocks of ice in their water
• watering frequently around them to wet the ground
• put water in trays as wading pools although my chooks don't seem to like this
• cold watermelon or cottage cheese (they love this!)
• putting frozen water bottles around their house so they can sit near them
• if humidity is low, dip them in a bucket of cool (not icy!) water for about half a minute max.  Don't do it when it's humid!! They can get sick!

As a last resort if nothing will seem to work I will bring them inside in the laundry.

But the best would be - and I've made a mental note of this in case we ever move - to have the chook run and house under the shade of decidious trees (they breath a lot and cool the air more) and other plants, maybe even in two layers if possible.

Blue-tongue lizard in the garden

Look who visited our garden today.

Blue-tongue lizard

The tongue comes out for a second as the lizard is trying to scare me away.

I only noticed it as one of my dogs, Tina was barking at something and she took up a stance as if wanting to scare something away.

Well, I thought there must be something there.  Indeed a blue-tongue lizard was hiding between a tomato and a borage plant.   It was very frightened, kept on hissing at me.  Tina must've scared it with her loud barking.

We do have a resident lizard; it's usually out at the front in good weather, and overwinters inside the fence underneath some large boulders.  But I've never seen it around the veggie beds during day time.  And I'm not sure if it was 'our' lizard or a guest.  It looked a bit younger than ours, though it's hard to tell.

We put water out in a shallow plate, but the lizard just wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

Here is a little video (sorry about the quality!), it shows how frightened the poor thing was:

So I left the lizard alone, but couldn't resist this last little recording as it was hurrying away to hide under the weedmat:

It's not good though, we can step on it while it is there.  I will have to secure the edges of the sheet later.


Have a great new year lizard, safe from dogs and cats!

Green smoothie

On my first day of 'I really want to lose weight' program I had my green smoothie prepared.  I enjoyed it in three instalments.  It is very filling.

I didn't want to drink too much in one take as it would've expanded my stomach too much.  And I want just the opposite, don't I?

I think it contains most, if not all the nutrients I need.  One other thing I thought I might put in next time is a spoonful of lecithin, because of the egg and the fat in the smoothie.

I used the best ingredients available for me; my own greens (a mixture, and I will try to use different ones each time); organic or biodynamic apple; cold pressed, extra virgin coconut oil; my own sour milk from raw organic fresh milk; raw egg from my chickens; organic molasses; unpasteurized raw honey.

I would not use raw egg or milk from an unreliable source.  I would also not use fat which is not good quality as it would have the opposite effect to what I want.  Pasteurized honey would be more like sugar, missing the enzymes.  Apple, because I eat the peel as well, must be organic, but juicing apple (have some blemishes) is perfectly fine, and they are less expensive.

Other greens I can use at other times: parsley, celery, other types of lettuce (except iceberg), gotu kola (the arthritis herb), brahmi (very bitter, but good for you), rocket, cress, watercress, dandelion leaves in spring, chicory leaves, silverbeet, spinach, turnip leaves... and I am sure there many more still.

Instead of the sour milk I could've used some kefir, but not pasteurized normal milk.  Maybe some good quality cultured yoghurt.

Here are the ingredients I used today:

Today's Green Smoothie

200 ml sour milk
1 raw egg
small tbsp honey
1 tsp molasses
1 heaped tbsp coconut oil
4 kale leaves
half a mignonette lettuce
couple of red lettuce leaves
2 large radicchio leaves
3 comfrey leaves
1 apple


I washed all the greens and the egg.
I put in the blender the sour milk, the honey, molasses and the egg.

Then a heaped tablespoon of coconut oil.

Then I added the greens, removing only the thickest part of the stalk on the kale leaves.

The blender had plenty of room still (1.8 litre capacity), so I though let's add some more greens.

I picked some comfrey leaves in the garden. Washed them and in they went.

There was still plenty of room for more, but that's enough now I thought.

I briefly pressed the pulse button 3-4 times, and the blender sucked the greens down very easily.  (I was worried the liquid wouldn't be enough for that.)

Then I pressed the 'On' button, and let the machine run for half a minute to liquidize the greens.  The result was okay, but tiny green particles were still visible.    I decided that was just fine with me.

So added the last ingredient; the apple, seeds and all, only I cut it into eight pieces.

And that's when I realised that I hadn't paid attention to the speed dial at all.  It was on just above 2 the whole time.  So I turned it to 3.5 and did a half a minute last blending.

This was the result:

Well, it is not a Vitamix, but I am pretty happy with the result of this machine, for the fraction of the price (and a glass jug!) of the other.

My juice was really smooth (although I am not that fussy, it's only that the nutrients would get absorbed better this way), it was tasty and filling and surely very healthy.  What more would I want especially when on a diet?!

Ravioli or “Derelye” with soft cheese and smoked bacon

 

This again is a traditional pasta dish, made with a special soft cheese, similar to cottage cheese or quark.  In Australia this type of cheese is called farm cheese.  The name of the dish in Hungarian is ‘Turos derelye’.  Usually follows a rich meaty soup as the second course.  Yesterday we had Gulyas Soup and we followed it with this ravioli.

Easy to make, especially when using machines like I do.

Ravioli with soft cheese and smoked bacon

Ingredients:

320 g soft cheese

1 egg

salt to taste

pasta dough from 500g flour (recipe here)

5-6 slices of smoked fat bacon

fresh sour cream

This amount makes about 45 raviolis.

Directions:

Make the filling by combining 1 egg, salt and the cheese.

  

After resting the pasta dough in the fridge, roll it out using a Marcato-type machine.

I went to size 6 thickness with mine, and the width at the end was about 10cm (4inches).

  

 

 

Lay out a sheet of pasta.  Take the cheese and using a teaspoon, place little mounds, the size of a small walnut evenly (about 10cm distance) on the pasta sheet.
Now take another sheet - try to match one with similar length and width.  Starting at one end slowly lower the cover sheet while pressing it down after each mound of cheese.

 

Then press around the fillings to seal the pasta around them.  Don't worry much about the outside edge.  Cut that nicely with a pasta cutter leaving about 2-3 cm (half inch) edge around the filling

 

Then cut between the fillings to make separate squares.

 

Place the ravioli pieces on a cloth while you prepare the next step.

At this point you can decide if you want to freeze some of your ravioli.  In that case I suggest you dry them on the cloth for about an hour on each side (turn them over) then pack them with paper in between and without touching each other.) They are almost as good as the fresh ones.  When cooking, no need to thaw them, just drop them straight into boiling water.  Cooking time is about 5-6 minutes. 

 

For the pasta, in a large pot, put water with a bit of salt onto the stove.

 

Chop up the bacon into small cubes.

 

Fry in a pan on moderate heat until crisp and browned.

 

 

Scoop out the crispy bacon and put aside.  Reserve 2 tbsp of the bacon fat and put in the bowl which you want to drain your pasta into.

Now it's time to cook your pasta, if the water is boiling.
For this many pasta you you need to cook them in batches.  I did 17 pieces in one batch and luckily only broke one ravioli.  So considering the size of your pot; let's say don't put more than 15 pieces in a 5 litre pot of water.

 

 Cook the pasta for about 4-5 minutes.  You can check by taking out one pasta square with a wooden spoon, cutting off a piece around the edge and see what colour it is.  If it's whitish in the middle, it needs more cooking.  If even colour all through the cut surface, then it's done.

Drain and put the ravioli onto the bacon fat, carefully turning them in.  Then pour over some sour cream and top with the crisp bacon.

At the table serve with extra sour cream and bacon crisp (if you have any more).