hafla nerves

evangaline, my teacher, leading women from all three collectives
in a dance at the hafla!

I went to a hafla* on sunday and after only six lessons, my belly dancing class performed for four whole minutes. I was even brave enough to dance in the front row!

Now i don't do things in public. I freeze up and get super anxious infront of any sort of audience so it was terrifying, and if i'd know that i had to perform after only six lessons i don't think i would have started dancing... especially not tribal belly dancing where you learn dance moves but you don't learn any choreography. Instead the leader of the chorus of dancers improvises the choreography on the spot, it's like a game of follow the leader.

The whole thing only stopped being terrifying when halfway through our dance our leader/teacher improvised a move none of us knew and we all stuffed up, all of a sudden i didn't care if i made a mistake anymore and it started being lots of fun! I'm sure there's a lesson to be learnt there ... but i'm sure it won't make any difference to how anxious i feel when i next have to do something in public. :)

* i think a hafla translates to party. in this case it was three belly dancing collectives getting together for an afternoon of food, wine and performing for each other, no boys allowed ;)

i took a photo of a bird!

we visited ben's mum, who lives up in the adelaide hills, on friday night. neither of us wanted to drive home after she was extra lovely and fed us tasty champagne as well as taking us to chingari's, our favourite indian restaurant, so we made up a bed and stayed the night in her little valley.



in the morning his mum and i traipsed around the garden admiring the prettiness






while i dug up some of the self sown silverbeet and herbs from the lawn to pot up for my balcony



and very happily noted that she's letting the kale go to seed, so hopefully they'll pop up everywhere next year too...




when this little blue wren flitted past!



granted he did sit still for maybe 30 seconds...



but i'm still pretty happy i manage to snap two whole decent photos of him!

(do you think that's too many photos for that little writing?!)

yesterday

6:50am got out of bed, had shower.
7:20am shared a coffee with ben and walked through botanic gardens with him to work. it rained lots.
8:00am came home soaking wet becasue i didn't bring an umbrella. got changed, dried hair, did some work
9:30am dentist appointment. my teeth are all good.
10:15am made egg sandwhich for brunch
10:50am went to the homebirth rally. there where heaps more people than i expected. it was wonderful! i forgot to take my camera but there's some video of the rally here.
11:45am rally was rained out so went home
12:00 did more work.
3:00pm drove to waterfall gully with ben
3:30pm met mum and dad at waterfall gully, started climbing.
4:40pm ate muslei bar at summit, recovered, started walking back down the mountain.
5:20pm drove to yoga from waterfall gully
5:50pm got changed out of yucky walking clothes
6:00pm yoga (my brain wasn't racing nearly as much as usual becasue of being all tired out from the walk, it was a wonderful.)
7:40pm drove to iga to buy dinner for victoria and me
7:55pm tried to find car park near womens and childrens hospital that wasn't scary to walk from at night (Nakita was admitted on sunday because she's not breathing properly, poor little thing)
8:15pm found car park.
8:25pm found Victoria and Nakita's ward. watched the nurse do her thing with Nakita. had a play and a cuddle with Nakita.
9:00pm had dinner and cups of tea with Victoria while Nakita was asleep
10:00pm went home, debreifed with Ben
10:30pm time to sleep...

gnome recipes

i made falafels and chocolate brownies for the gnomes gathering on the weekend and said i would share the recipes, so here they are :)

Brownies

the chocolate brownie recipe that i made was maggie beer's and was on the cook and the chef a few weeks ago. You can find it here . maggie adds prunes to her brownies but i prefer adding lots of nuts, although next time i make them i think i might try one of pip's suggestion and add some berries.

soaked chickpeas and shelled broad beans

Falafel

now for the falafel! the falafels i make is an adaption of a greg malouf recipe. I think that in egypt falafels are usually made with dried broadband, and in israel, syria lebanon etc they are made with chickpeas but i like them with half half .

150g dried chickpeas, soaked in water overnight
300g shelled fresh broad beans (or 150g dried skinless broad beans soaked in water overnight)
1 1/2 cups coriander leaves and stems
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 medium onion chopped finely
1 teaspoon schug - see recipe below (or any other middle eastern spice past would also be fine or even just a chili and a clove of garlic would work too).
LOTS of olive oil for frying.

drain and rinse the chickpeas. whiz all the ingredients in a food processor or with a bar mix. form small balls or patties. either deep fry the falafels for 6 minutes or heat enough olive oil in a frying pan so that it will come halfway up the sides of the falafels and fry the falafels for 3 minutes either side or until they're golden brown.
serve with yoghurt or tahini thinned with water and a little lemon juice.

broad bean skins and falafel mix

Schug

i always have a jar of schug or harissis in the fridge to add to my cooking and use as a condiment. i think i've posted the schug recipe in a comment on kel's blogs before ... but it's a good one so i'll post it here too! in the words of my friend Yaara (owner of the gorgeous took tooks) schug is "very simple to make, just a large handful of dried chillies, bunch of coriander, 1 garlic bulb (peeled), 3-4 pods of cardamon and some salt. chuck it all in the food processor and let it run! or you can go for mortar and pestle if you're keen... it keeps for about a year in the fridge but it does go brown after a few weeks".

gnome flowers

daffodils the gnomes potted for me. thank you gnomes!

bunches of flowers from the gnomes garden. thank you again gnomes! :)

on sunday afternoon the gnomes had a bunch of bloggers over to wander through the garden, have a bit of a chat and consume lots of tasty treats. It made for a lovely afternoon indeed!

i've only been writing this blog for a very short while, but i've been reading (lurking around!) these adelaide based blogs for a while now, so it was both bizarre and delightful to match people to the words and pictures i've been admiring on my computer screen. it was also lovely to meet lots of seed savers and learn about their group!

the drive to the gnomes was a long and windy adventure into the back of the hills, so i got to see a beautiful part of south australia that i never seem to venture into. it was all so very lush and green and there'd been a bit of rain so all the foliage was glistening in the sun... and then there was the sunset illuminating the hill faces as i drove home ... the gnomes really do live in a lovely part of the world!

thank you both for having us over and for all the present gnomes!

I'll post the recipes for falafels and brownies i said i would soon. i promise.

dinosaur/zombie/vampire/robot

heaps of my extended family from melbourne where visiting adelaide last week including my cousin's 8 year old son lochie... he looks sweet and innocent...

but he designs dinosaur/zombie/vampire/robots who live in a post apocalyptic environment caused by flesh eating bacteria! complete with a snot bubble bommy knocker, tasers, gauging horn, whips, wings, rocket powered skateboard, hydrolic feet and gosh knows what else! aren't they awesome!?! Ben and Lochie spent hours discussing the finer points of dinosaur/zombie/vampire/robots design, most of which i'm sure i'll never understand :)

11 days

it's been 11 days since i last posted ... so much for the photo a day thing huh? i haven't been all that much busier than usual, but i really haven't felt like being around the internet.

these days my internet browsing seems to revolve around reading new posts from blogs i subscribe to, and reading a couple of news website including crikey. when last friday crikey posted this article lamblasting homebirth advocates as wingnuts, well, i just didn't want to be anywhere near the internet anymore. i did manage to stomach a look at crikey on monday to see this response from homebirth australia but it wasn't enough to make the internet a happy place again... so i stayed away a while longer to try and get back some of my optimism and general ability to pretend that the world is a nice place.

it might seem silly to care so much about the birth of a yet to be conceived child but i firmly believe that the safest and least stressful birth i could have is a birth at home with an independent midwife and to have that choice taken away from me is really distressing.

as far as i can see the only reason homebirth with an independent midwife will be illegal as of July 2010 is because the government is legislating against midwives practicing without indemnity insurance... but if independent midwives don't mind continuing on as they have been and practicing without insurance, and their clients accept the risk involved with them not having any insurance, then why should the government care? why not just leave independent midwives out of the legislation and move on?

i believe it's every woman's right to choose the way they want to birth their children. i just want the right to birth my future child the way i want to. i don't understand why the australian government would think it's a good idea to take this right away.
i don't understand why it's come to the point where if i'm not pregnant in the next two months (and i don't want to be pregnant in the next two months) then i'm probably not ever going to be able to have the legal homebirth with an independent midwife that i want.

here's what i'm up too

just because it looked fun over at meet me at mikes

Making : another knitted headband, this time for me!
Cooking : puff pastry to turn the custard i made yesterday into vanilla slice
Drinking : a small glass of sav blanc
Reading: parenting for a peaceful world
Wanting: to spend way too much money on a kitchen :(
Looking: at the internet a little bit too much, i've still got work to do!
Playing: pip's game!
Wasting: hopefully not too much time!
Sewing: nothing right now ... but i'm thinking about starting a little practice quilt
Wishing: that designing my perfect kitchen wasn't such tricky business!
Enjoying: watching ponyo!
Waiting: for my new summer sandals to arrive in my letterbox
Liking: how clever i feel for almost figuring out how to make my vanilla slice as wonderful as the ones from the french pastry stall at the farmers market
Wondering: how to make my egg custard for the vanilla slice less lumpy, do i really need to strain it like stephanie alexander says?
Loving: how the sun stays up a little bit longer every day at this time of year!
Hoping: that there isn't too much more house stuff to do before it starts being built
Marvelling:at the funny radish sounds snoring next to me on the couch.
Needing: not much that i don't already have...
Smelling: more jonquils... oops! they where super cheap and smelled sooo lovely!
Wearing: a red babushka dolls brooch and bright red shoes
Following: inhabit, so many clever eco ideas
Noticing: my aloe vera's flower stem is about to burst into bloom
Knowing: that i haven't been walking up hills enough recently
Thinking: that eating 2 1/2 white chocolate mud cup cakes over the last two days was probably 2 1/2 too many ... but they where very tasty! thank you kerry!
Bookmarking:belly dancing tutorials on you tube, it's pretty tricky to remember the moves between classes you know!

Opening: up the patterns pocket in my new meet me at mikes book... so much prettiness!

Giggling: at ben saying silly things
Feeling: toasty warm at home

some of the offending white chocolate mud cupcakes

kale for sale

Kale for Sale (i couldn't resist!) from the Food Forest

my favourite spot in the markets, Patlin's Garden's table of leafy greens. the piles of greens are a lot higher at 9am but i went walking through the gardens with ben this morning and didn't get there until 11am.

Mr Patlin was a bit disappointed that i wasn't portraying his produce at it's bountiful best and wanted to re-arrange it all for me!

leafy greens are my favourite veges, but until maybe three months ago i had no idea that the most delicious leafy green by far is kale/cavolo nero.

i'd skimmed through the cavolo nero section in maggie's harvest but not given it much thought... it wasn't until i read about kel sauteing it in olive oil and garlic, and noticed it looking all crinkly and lovely at the patlin's gardens stall, that I bought a bunch. after all, kel always seems to be right about these things!

i was expecting it to be a bit like silverbeet but, after sauteing it like kel does, i was amazed at just how different cavolo nero was to any other green i'd tried... and was immediatley converted!

So far i haven't done anything else with my bunches of kale... but i've saved the rind from my last chunk of parmigiano and have a bowl of beans soaking on the bench and tomorrow it's all going to be turned into a big pot of maggie beer's minestrone with cavolo nero. i wish i'd thought of soaking the beans yesterday and could make it for dinner tonight!

there are lots more people taking photos in august at The Byron Life.

jewelery boxes

i spent yesterday afternoon combing through my mums jewelry boxes and drawers with her. admiring all of the beautiful beads, and listening to the stories behind how she acquired them, while she looked through her books reminding herself of the older beads histories.
she doesn't really wear many of them. she always has a strand of beads around her neck, but it's usually one of the same three or four quiet favourites. but she loves scouring her favourite markets stalls and op shops chatting to the ladies about their latest accisitions and looking for another strand to add to her boxes.

there are lots more people taking photos in august at The Byron Life.

radish

because sometimes it's good to be reminded that she's cute and lovable ... even if her favourite thing (asides from watching rosellas in the plane tree out the window) is to stalk us around the house and then POUNCE... even when she knows we're looking straight at her... silly, painful, lovable cat.

i should probably try and take her for a walk again soon. she's doesn't seem to mind the leash and she has loves smelling the park after she gets over the initial shock of being somewhere different, it's just getting there that's tricky. there's only one road to cross, it's less then 50m away, but she terrified of cars and digs her claws into my arms trying to escape. silly, painful, lovable cat.

there are lots more people taking photos in august at The Byron Life.

my scientist was in the newspaper

ben was in the newspaper yesterday! he says they cut out all the good bits ... but i was impressed! (i might be a biased though)

ben with his new headband on our morning coffee walk through the botanic gardens

this is one of the headband/hat thingamajigs i wanted to finish for him, so that's number 68 from the list of 101 things to do in 1001 days done.
I started it when his hair was getting in his face but wasn't long enough to tie back, but that was probably six months ago now and his curls have multiplied so it's not quite so useful as was intended but he says it keeps his ears warm!
i went to start knitting a headband for myself yesterday and realised that i'd forgotten how to cast on and had to look it up on you tube. i probably have a long way to go until i'll be ready to start, number 70, knitting something that involve more than one rectangle...

there are lots more people taking a photo a day in august at The Byron Life.

coffee

i love the keep cup... it's so pretty, so practical and not at all embarrassing like the thought of giving my clunky thermal cup to a barista is. good design is wonderful like that.

yesterday morning i bought a take away coffee. we had run out of milk and i wanted to walk ben to work through the botanic gardens, and everyone knows that a walk through the botanic gardens is much nicer with a cup of coffee to sip, so my thermal cup stayed at home and waste was produced...

i used to buy take away coffees all the time, especially when i was at uni or worked in more traditional offices. i don't think it ever accrued to me that i shouldn't buy take-away coffees because of the waste ... it accrued to me that i was probably spending too much money on milky caffeinated goodness, but that's a different kettle of fish. now that i don't have sit in lectures, work in a suburban house, and have a mortgage to pay i hardly ever buy take-away coffee. i wonder how many take away coffees cup i would need to not use to make up for buying a keep cup, probably far too many....

Anyhow, this is yesterday afternoons coffee (i promise i don't usually buy coffee twice a day). you don't ever get that much prettiness in a take away cup!

there are lots more people taking photos in august at The Byron Life. they're probably even taking one a day like i said i'd try to :)

the took tooks

this afternoon i visited my friend and her chicken's. to call then she coos took took, took took and so they've become know as the took tooks, a beautifully evocative name i think...

some of the little took tooks

one of the big took tooks

and some of took tooks googly eggs

she originally only planned on having two took tooks but when her first pair flew away she was given a few more, then over a couple of months a few more took tooks flew away so she kept getting more ... but now they've all found their way back home (and have had their wings clipped a little bit) so she's ended up with LOTS of took tooks and too many eggs for just two people.
she generously gave me three little eggs, three big eggs and a jar of her delicious schug (a very hot yeminite condiment) to take home so i'm looking froward to a very tasty breakfast in the morning!

there are lots more people taking a photo a day in august at The Byron Life.

rocky road

i'm trying to simplify my life, trying not to buy myself 'things' and trying to to buy othe people 'things'. this is all very well and good but what do i make for my little brother when he turns 22? rocky road of course!

take lots of chocolate (but not quite this much... half is for me)
i made the mistake of assuming all Green&Black's chocolate was fair trade but isn't, i should have read the packaging instead of assuming...

mix together mashmallows, red rasberries, cashews and almonds

melt the chocolate and combine with the nuts and lollies, while trying not to think about the sugar...

then spread out the mixture, put it in the fridge and wait for it to set



cut it up into peices the next day and you end up with a huge bowl of rocky road, too easy! hopefully my brother takes his time eating it all...

there are lots more people taking a photo a day in august at The Byron Life.
these are my photos from thursday and friday ... i'm all caught up again!

an indian birthday feast

spices for the royal chicken korma

my favourite part of Indian cooking is the very first step of heating the oil up so that it glistens and dropping the cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and cardamon pods in, so they crackle, spit and pop around the pan. my nose twitches and my stomach does a little dance and suddenly my body, not just my brain, knows that soon it's going to get a tasty curry to enjoy!

royal chicken korma, saag chicken, spicy chickpeas

on wednesday ben's brother got a year older and to celebrate his mum and i made indian curries. she made a really spicy melt-in-your mouth chicken curry and i made a royal chicken korma with lots of cream and saffron, a saag chicken (i think saag can refer to any leafy green, mine was an untraditional silverbeet), and spicy chickpeas and potatoes. we didn't talk about what we where going to make in advance so we ended up with lots and lots of chicken ... but it was all delicious so it didn't matter.

it's one of our 'things' to get together with ben's siblings and eat an absurd amount of take-away indian ... usually until our bellys feel like they'll explode with tastiness! i don't want to be a take-away buying person anymore. i love cooking and can make indian almost as tasty as our favourite take away, it's just getting around to doing it that's the problem ... and learning how to make good garlic naan at home ... i've got no idea how to make good garlic naan at home!

there are lots more people taking a photo a day in august at The Byron Life.
these are my photos from wednesday, but they're a bit late again... taking photos everyday is pretty easy to remember, but posting about them is much more difficult!

jonquils

i bought myself some jonquils on sunday as a preemptory reward for all the house cleaning i was going to do on sunday afternoon (we had an inspection today).
whenever i walk past a patch of jonquils flowering i always stop to enjoy their scent, but i try not to buy cut flower so i have to concentrate on not giving into temtation and buying a bunch when i see them for sale.
while i've got my bunch of indulgent jonquils i'm making the most of them by taking them with me all around the house so i can enjoy their perfume where ever i am (and occasionally i lend them to ben so where ever he is can smell nice too).
i don't like growing food on my balcony becausue of all the car and bus fumes but maybe next autumn i could plant my empty pots full of jonquils and have my own little flower farm come winter.



there are lots more people taking a photo a day in august at The Byron Life

fennel

i tried to post this yesterday but was having trouble learning how to use flickr so i'm two days late again ... there's a lot to learn with this blog business!

not having a garden means no cut flowers, but a bunch of fennel stems works just as well. I've got lots of recipes for fennel bulbs, but what else can i don't know what to do with the stems/leaves...



this is what happened to the fennel bulbs:

Chicken and Fennel Pie
enough pastry for a lid
egg wash
1 onion
2 leeks finely sliced
2 fennel bulb sliced
350g chicken cubed
300ml chicken stock
dill
2 star anise
1 tbsp arrowroot
5 tiny zucchinis sliced thickly

saute onion, leek, fennel for 3 mins. add chicken and sear all sides, add stock, dill, star anise and bring to boil. reduce to simmer.
thicken with arrowroot and simmer for 10mins
add zucchini and cook for 3 mins
put filling in a bowl, put pastry lid on top, brush with egg wash and cook for 30mins in a hot oven.

it's a very tasty pie if i do say so myself and is super quick and easy if you're lazy like me and buy the pastry! i tried careme's puff pastry for the first time last night and went to buttery heaven and back again!

there are lots more people taking a photo a day in august at The Byron Life

a photo a day in august - day 1

last night i was comment clicking around taurus rising and found katy's new blog i see you and noticed that she's doing a the byron life's photo a day in august and following the aformentioned convoluted trail of clicks i thought i might join in too, albeit a bit late.

now it just so happens that i had my camera out on saturday to record my first attempt at quince preserve so here are day one's photo two days late.


over the last three weekends i've been taking boxes and bags of fruit to my parents house and together we've been learning how to preserve. the quince preserve we made this weekend comes from turquoise : a chef's travels in turkey and involved making a quince jelly with the peels, cores and slices of quince, but removing slices before they disintegrate, straining the juices so the jelly is clear and adding all the slices of quince back into pot for the last 20 mins of cooking. so in the end you get a lovely clear rosy jelly AND lots of tasty slices of quince to squash on your toast!
the quinces we used where very ripe so we added a couple of lemons to the pot while it was boiling away to try and increase the pectin. i'm not sure how the lemons halves would have changed the flavour of the preserve, but my dad thought they where delicious and ate all the candied pink lemon flesh as we fished the quaters, piping hot, out of the pot!

walk score

my walk score is 95, a walkers paradise! too bad when i move 14mins drive from the city going to drop to a car-dependant 34... the adelaide suburbs are that bad!

but that's about right... we didn't own a car (and i didn't even know how to drive!) for the first four years of living in our apartment. even when i got a job that took 80mins to get to by public transport and only 25mins by car i still didn't bother learning how to drive.

but when we bought a block of land in the suburbs, despite it being in an 'eco village', one of the first thing i knew i needed to do was learn to drive and buy a car.

moving to the suburbs definatley has it's downfalls.

raw milk

i've found raw organic jersey milk! my heart skipped a beat and I did a little dance when I first saw it sitting in the refrigerator cabinet! so that puts me one step closer to number 65 on my list "eat nourishing traditions style for a month and see how i feel ..." without having to give up milk.

but, now that I finally have raw milk I come across a few problems that I hadn't thought about before though.

i drink lots of milk, but mostly its in hot drinks and I don't know how much I can heat the raw milk before i may as well have gotten pasteurized milk. Is it ok to put raw milk in my hot tea or coffee? what about heating it on the stove for chai? I don't know…

the milk comes ALL the way from Gympie in Queensland (that's 2200km away!) so I want to make sure that I'm getting the most out of it… especially because you can get B.d. Farm Paris Creek bio-dynamic in conversion organic milk everywhere in Adelaide now.

maybe i should have thought about all this before i paid $6 for 2L of milk!

It is very very tasty in my smoothies though!

101 things in 1001 days

I've done lots of thinking and lots of pestering friends to tell me what they think i should do and have come up with my list
of things i want to do in the next 1001 days.
It was difficult to decide what things should go on the list, and what things i wanted to just let be, but this is what i came up with...

start date: Friday 24 July 2009

end date: Friday, 20 April 2012

1. Walk the Overland Track in Tasmania. (I'm really excited about this one so it goes first!)
   
2. Climb Waterfall Gully to Mt Lofty (or similar) 30 times before walking the overland track.
   
3. Walk the Yurrebilla Trail through the Adelaide Hills
   
4. Walk the Deep Creek National Park section of the Heyson Trail (camp halfway)
   
5. Find another trail that excites me and walk it. Maybe in Victoria, Northern NSW or SE QLD?
   
6. Walk the Marino cliff tops from Brighton to Hallet Cove Conservation park with Belinda
   
7. Do the Victor Harbour walk Ben's dad recommended
   
8. Walk through Mt George Conservation Park with my boss
   
9. Walk from home/the city to Victoria and Nakita's house along the Torrens River before we move.
   
10. Try taking Radish (our apartment cat) for another walk on her leash
    
11. Do a term of Belly dancing lessons.
    
12. Go on a picnic
    
13. Visit 15 exhibitions
    
14. Hire out the Mt Lofty youth hostel with friends
    
15. Go to Deep Creek National Park
    
16. Go to Kangaroo Island
    
17. Go to the Flinders Ranges
    
18. Climb St Mary's Peak in the Flinders Ranges
    
19. Go on a holiday with just Ben, no one else.
    
20. Go to a Rainbow Gathering
    
21. Go to a Confest
    
22. Go to a Folk Festival … not Woodford again … preferably the national one in Canberra with Belinda.
    
23. Make sure I see my globetrotting friend Emma.
    
24. Grown my hair and plait it like it was when I was 17
    
25. Get a henna tattoo … but not at a festival … little A would be really good at this
    
26. Visit my nana in Melbourne
    
27. See my family 4 times a month for 6 months
    
28. Do something fun with just my siblings
    
29. Practice yoga five times a week for a month so I get into the habit again. (This one doesn't count until I've inevitably gotten distracted from my yoga, then had to drag myself back to it)
    
30. Do sun salutations every morning for a few weeks and see how I feel (I'm usually a night time yogi)
    
31. Do 108 sun salutations to celebrate something
    
32. Organise my pantry (which is really a pile of boxes full of food in the bedroom because my kitchen is that small)
    
33. Empty my cupboards of nasty things and start cleaning using green, frugal methods
    
34. Learn to make soap
    
35. Clean up the plants on my balcony.
    
36. Clean out my closet and donate at least 2 big ikea bags worth of clothing
    
37. Sort out my superannuation.
    
38. Make and bottle lots of tomato sauce
    
39. Make and bottle lots of jam
    
40. Make sourdough bread
    
41. Make ginger Beer
    
42. Make a fruit or vegetable wine
    
43. Cook Christmas Pudding with Belinda (before September)
    
44. Cook Sri Lankan wedding cake with mum
    
45. Cook with duck
    
46. Cook with rabbit
    
47. Cook with goat
    
48. Cook a cassoulet with Ben
    
49. Cook using another ingredient I haven't used before
    
50. Cook 10 things from 101 cookbooks
    
51. Cook slow roasted pork with Jel and steal her secrets
    
52. Learn a delicious Japanese dish from Jel.
    
53. Find the perfect Japanese cookbook
    
54. Cook an Indian feast to share with Ben's siblings.
    
55. Cook up a tajine feast with Belinda
    
56. Eat at Bridgewater Mill
    
57. High Tea at the Apothecary on Hindley St with Belinda
    
58. Eat/drink coffee at 10 new places with Belinda
    
59. Go to the Willunga farmers market
    
60. Go mushrooming
    
61. Only do food shopping at the farmers markets and the central markets for a month. No quick trips to the Woolworths near works or the IGA down the street because I haven't been organised enough to buy what I need or I don't already have what I really want to eat.
    
62. Only buy organic or 'in conversion' food for a month. See if I feel any healthier…
    
63. Acquire bags for fruit/veg/loose grains etc from Kel … and use them
    
64. Don't use a microwave for a month, re-examine whether or not I need to have a microwave afterwards
    
65. Eat nourishing traditions style for a month and see how i feel ...
    
66. Learn to sew something wonderful from Anakin
    
67. Learn to sew a quilt (and finish it)
    
68. Finish knitting Ben a headband/hat thingamajig
    
69. Knit dishcloths
    
70. Learn how to knit something more complicated than a single rectangle/square
    
71. Learn to crochet
    
72. Crochet a granny square rug
    
73. Learn to embroider something pretty
    
74. Make 10 presents for friends/family instead of buying things
    
75. Sew myself some cloth pads to complete my stash, or get a moon cup
    
76. Give blood. last time i gave blood was also the first time i ever fainted so i'm scared of this one
    
77. Learn to recognise 20 new plant species
    
78. Learn and draw 20 construction details for work
    
79. Find a way to use Adobe Illustrator usefully for work
    
80. Learn something about photography/my camera from Victoria, my boss, J
    and the internet
    
81. Learn something about using Photoshop better from J and the internet
    
82. Make and Send 10 Postcards
    
83. Write a letter to Cagri, my highschool penpal from turkey who recontacted me through facebook
    
84. Write my nana a letter
    
85. Take photos … one a day for a month
    
86. Write posts … one a day for a month
    
87. Read 20 novels recommended/borrowed from Belinda
    
88. Read 20 non-fiction books recommended/borrowed from Belinda
    
89. Read/watch 20 Ben recommended things
    
90. Read 'How to be a better foodie. A bulging little book for the truly epicurious' by Sugi Pigott as recommended by kel
    
91. Move out of our apartment and into our house (when its finally built)
    
92. Be 3 years ahead on our mortgage
    
93. Learn about companion planting
    
94. Start a Vegetable Garden
    
95. Start Composting
    
96. Plant 20 different vegetables/herbs/fruit
    
97. Harvest 20 different vegetables/herbs/fruit
    
98. Get chickens
    
99. Hold a working Bee at the community garden
    
100. Start planting in the community garden
     
101. Harvest something from the community garden
     

so that's the list done, now i just have to get started…

the first step

I wasn't sure how to take the first step into blog land. It's a great big scary world out there and i like having a plan.... so i thought about it for a while, decided on a blog name and remembered 101 things in 1001 days over at My house smells like vanilla .

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why 1001 Days?
Many people have created lists in the past - frequently simple goals such as New Year's resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organising and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

Some common goal setting tips:
1. Be decisive. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how you plan to achieve it.

2. Stay Focussed. Any goal requires sustained focus from beginning to end. Constantly evaluate your progress.

3. Welcome Failure. Frequently, very little is learned from a venture that did not experience failure in some form. Failure presents the opportunity to learn and makes the success more worthy.

4. Write down your goals. It clarifies your thinking and reinforces your commitment.

5. Keep your goals in sight. Review them frequently, and ensure that they are always at the forefront of your thinking.


So now i've got a plan i just have to put it into action. My mum always told me i should write more lists and be more organised ...