Not blogging - studying (and, er, blogging)

Sorry for the prolonged absence. Work became more work and has now become "I have an assignment due in 8 days". Paradoxically the assignment includes making a blog - just not this one  - so I'm working on that one this week.

In the meantime here's some recent photos of the harvest:

Been roasting lots of tomatoes for passata

 This was a super-local dinner. Local rabbit, (traded 2 for a bottle of wine) with home grown carrots and turnips and local red wine. Lovely. Got 6 meals from one bunny so very economical.

Where I'd quite like to be now

Pressing my face into the window and wondering what cake to buy :-)

Instead I'm contemplating a very hectic 5 days, including working all weekend  :-(

Super brownies

I made Dixiebelle's chocolate and zucchini brownies a few weeks ago. They were so good I made them again on the weekend. I made a non-gluten free version. I made one lot without raspberries, and one lot with. The with version I think wins.

I highly recommend them

Saving over $2k without even realising it

Wow. Sometimes it really does pay to pause and reflect. Over the weekend I updated my harvest tally for the  2011-12 season, and came to the staggering conclusion that even this early into the season we have grown over $2000 worth for fruit and veg!! I have weighed recorded almost everything we grow (minus what I eat in the garden , and herbs and leafy greens). On Sunday I did some online research and put per kg prices for the equivalent organic item next to everything and added it up - $2047. And that's probably a bit higher as I didn't weigh or include all the lemons and limes.

Crikey!

Now, the bulk of that - a staggering $1450 - was for the berries and currants - which have an average organic retail price of $52 per kilo  (assuming you can even get them - and I suspect the redcurrants and blackcurrants would be more as they are harder to pick)

It really is quite sobering to see how much all that produce is worth - we tend to take it for granted a bit. In  some ways it is a paper only saving - we'd never actually spend that much on berries if we had to buy them - we'd just be going without. But either way, it has been an interesting exercise.