Looking into June

Where did May go?  Only three days left and June sails in with its cold wet wintry days.  I think it has been practicing this last week as it has been wet and cold. 

taken this afternoon from the dining room,
yes I know the grass needs cutting!

 But it is not all misery, I love winter as we are able to snug up in our nests and look out at the grey wet landscape and dream plans, crochet, read or knit without feeling we should be gardening.  We can make great steaming bowls of soups and stew, or sit on the sofa flipping through our cookbooks, dreaming of wonderful recipes, if only we had the ingredients.  Yes I admit I am bit of a foodie, I have spats of experimenting with different foods and then fall back into my tried and true recipes.  I love the produce of winter, great bowls filled with apples, pears, oranges, mandarins, persimmons, feijoas, kiwifruit, and of course lemons.

Vegetables also are different from summer, leeks, onions, carrots, parsnips, swede, silver beet, cauliflower, cabbage and kale and all the different types of pumpkin.

Vegetables gathered yesterday from my garden

Talking of vegetables, I need to eat more of them!  I buy or pick them and then have to throw half of them in the compost.  So my goal for June is to eat more vegetables, no more cleaning my vegetable bin out and finding rather limp bits of cauliflower, mushy somethings and sprouted onions and potatoes!  Well that is what I found this morning when I cleaned both my fridge bin and the bin I have in the kitchen for root vegetables.  I took the worst out to the compost bin and made a nourishing soup for my lunch.

I have decided to change my budget period which was fortnightly as that matches paydays to monthly.  I have been finding that there were a lot of food items I need to only buy monthly, such as butter, cheese, cereals, sauces, flours and so on.  I have also reduced the amount as I was having quite a lot of money left over.  So now it is $160 a month instead of $200.  We will see how that goes.  I have friends that can’t believe I lived on $200, so I think I will keep quiet about the $160, lol!  Well one friend has already forbidden me to mention how much I spend in front of her husband!  They know that I eat well from our conversations about meals.

Satay chicken pieces with salad,
the greens from my garden

What I think the difference is that I cook from scratch and have healthy stores; also I grow some of my vegetables, mainly greens this year.  They don’t.  When I suggest that they make from scratch they say that they haven’t the time or roll their eyes.  I do have convenience food in my stores, and homemade ready meals in my freezer for those times when I am not well or too tired to cook, but it is the exception rather than the rule.  I am afraid there is not a lot of commonsense in the world today. 

Also in June I want to do more of my journal pages, I only did one in May; I have taken to painting on old dried teabags using the tea stains to suggest the topic.

I then will use them in my Art Journal like this one below I did last week.  I think the teabag for that one was peach and strawberry herb tea!

I am not sure if this one is finished, we will see.  I am going to give myself a goal of doing one a week!

My crochet lately has been a bit boring, I am making beanies for the Vanuatu men that come over to work in the vineyards and orchards over the winter, there is a group that comes to our church, they don’t speak much English and send all their money back to their families, it is such a poor group of islands that has been hit by some disastrous cyclones in recent years.  They will be arriving next week and will be so cold coming here from a tropical climate.  We look forward to having them in our church as they have such wonderful singing voices and sing with such gusto that it sends chills down your spine.

Haven’t I been rambling on!  It is getting dark and I am starting to wonder about supper, more soup or crumbed fish with coconut rice……

Well, anyways what have you planned for June?

Bye for now

Sharon 

and the Kitties who have the right idea!