Easyfast dinner and what you didn't know about ingredients in Australia

Harvest time can be very busy and does not necessarily leave much time to think what to have for lunch or dinner. Usually it is ham and cheese sandwhich with a leaf of lettuce and slice of a cucumber or tomato. I had this also for a while until I got fed up with it and decided to have something else. These two dishes are invented in couple of minutes by just looking at current resources available but both of them turned  out very well. The way I prepared these is merely result of the idea of cooking faster.

                                                                       Pork stew
The amount of each ingredient depends on you. I used as much as I needed =)

You need:

• Potatoes 

•  Diced meat 

•  Onion 

•  Diced vegetables
•  Tomato sauce

The cheapest possible B&G frozy vegs and dolmio!

Add water in a pot/pan just above the potatoes (estimate) and leave it to warm up as you slice potatoes. Add the sliced potatoes into the boiling water. After the water has reduced to about half, add diced meat and keep boiling until almost all water have steamed out and start frying.

As the water level reduce and all the pieces of meat are not red anymore, add cut onion and later on the vegs. Finally pour in your sauce. Add salt to taste. 

For additional luxury you can add grated cheese

This is basically the same concept.  Just replace potatoes with spaghetti and leave sauce off. I added champignons also. Only imagination is the limit!

Water crackers, cheddar with sweet chili sauce, devon, cucumber and lettuce makes very tasty, fast and cheap snack.

I usually pkeep an eye on the ingredients ad what they are made of in terms of sweeteners and colours. If you are one of those who pay attention to these details too and travel to Australia, you might find it very surprising how many product contains ingredients which are prohibited in the EU. For example, Azo dye group which was prohibited many years ago in EU seems to be used in varous produtcts such as candies/lollies, drinks and cordials, chewing gums, dairy products such as yoghurt and so on. Unfortunately in many of my former favourite cordial producer Cottees ae azo dyes and it says clearly in the ingredients: "colours: TARTRAZINE (102) and some brilliant blue FCF". Propably does not kill me, but I have made a decision to avoid these if possible. 

In the sweeteners section I often encounter sucralose. To my knowledge it is prohibited in some contries in EU and classified as sme ind of poison. Again, does ot seemm to be as lethal as local brown snakes but if i have another option, I rather leave sucralose at the store.

With 13 hours behind, 8 : 30pm with roos jumping around somewhere in the dark.

Picture splash

I balance my too text-based blog with couple of pictures. They tell more than thousand words, don't they?

Pakollinen peilikuvaus | Compulsory mirror picturing

Handy postcard

7 pm, ~12 hours behind

Still smiling. No time to shave beard though :o

My future home for about 1,5 months. Nissan "Bullseye" Pulsar

Chaser bin conrol panel. Fortunately I need only 4 of those switches and levers =)

Gilgandra sport yard. Trucks bring the grain to the huge silos in the background.

Roommates. We have an agreement that they eat flies and I don't kill them. Quite useful guys after all.

Writing blog with B&G lunch. Hint: If you plan on buying B&G triple chocs as a substitute of timtams, I highly disagree although they're cheaper. Believe me, it's not worth that.

Harvest time

Nyt se sitten alkoi, sadonkorjuu! Maanantai ja tiistai alkoi  klo 7:30 ja päättyi joskus kello 9 illalla eli nopeella matikalla vajaa 14 tunnin työpäivä. Mun tehtävä on ajaa chaser biniksi kutsuttua traktoria jonka perässä on suurehko (valtava) peräkärry johon menee arviolta kahdeksan tonnia viljaa. Odotan traktorini kanssa varjossa (koska muuten ohjaamosta tulee sauna) puimurikuskin kutsua radiopuhelimen kautta jonka jälkeen huristelen puoliautomaattisella voimanpesällä aivan puimurin viereen, mikä ei ollutkaan niin helppoa kuin kuvittelin. En kuitenkaan ole (vielä) rikkonut mitään joten uskon pärjääväni melko hyvin. Kun puimuri on tyhjentänyt sisuksensa, minä puolestani tyhjennän säiliöni kuorma-autoon, jota paikalliset kutsuu nimellä "road train". Ja tätä siis about 12 tuntia. Tänään epäonneksi puimurista hajosi "knife head" eli leikkaavan osan pää josta voimansiirto tulee. Anyways päivä siis loppui "jo" klo 7 joten oli aikaa syödä päivallinen rauhassa.

How to spend your day off

After working six days almost 12 hours a day harvesting, greasing header, losing my wallet in the middle of a huge fied and having VERY stressful time looking for it (eventually found it), driving bloody old trucks and eating/breathing dust, I definitely wanted to do something completely different on my day off. But this time Its slightly easier as I have my veeery own Nissan "Bullseye" Pulsar. After getting myself up and dragging out of bed, I enjoyed eating my breakfast sloowly instead of devouring it asap as usually. Just kidding. Anyways, around 11 AM I headed to the local (30kms) town Gilgandra and explored it, which didn't takee long as the main street is 100m long. Still it provides people everything they need. What I've found very pleasant in Australia is that in almost every town, village or city, there is a Visitors Information Centre (VIC later on) which offers you decent information, toilets, souvenirs and the best, air conditioned temperature.
I always buy postcards from every place I visit and this time didn't make any exception: I left with 4 postcards. They also had a very smartass postcard which was a picture of a gilgandra during the night and guess what it looked like? Comple black =D

After gilgandra I aimed my wheels to Dubbo which is far larger town than gilgandra and I like that. In Dubbo's VIC I came up with very interesting 3D postcards and I had to buy one, especially one with kangaroos and koalas. The piture actually "moves" as you turn the card! They were four dollars each but it's worth it.

Dubbo's city centre is very comprehensive as aussie towns usually. I could spend my day easily just walkng through shops and see around. But I had a necessities I had to look for: Esky, portable gas cooker, 20L water container and some camping equipments for my upcoming travels. I'm planning on sleeeping in a car and need adequate amount of water and cooking stuff. Oh and yes, I did my weekly groceries!

I had a succesful day today and am ready to face next week's challenges. But his week has taught me a very important lesson. I lost my wallet on monday or tuesday and my driving licence, finnish bank card, Australian bank card, travel insurance card, 230 dollars and security guard card with it. Ultimately I found it but it took me about six hours of desperate walking across huge paddock with flies flying around. Usually I don't carry wallet around but this time I had to drive in the public and took it with. That day I learned two very important lessons which are 1) take VERY good care of important things such as wallet or phone or passport (I guess this is obvious for most of you) and the second I consider also extremely important 2) Never EVER give up when there is still hope, even as little as a seed of a mustard and maybe after that, try once more. Don't be naive though; you waste your time loooking for a phone you dropped in the pacific.

Stay laid-back!

Ps. Aussie farmers are not very laid back :D

It's harvest

Barley waiting to be harvested

It's been a good while since last post and I apologize for that. Sometimes I'm tired and sometimes just lazy. Good excuse, huh?

Past 2 weeks has gone by fixing harvesting equipments such as greasing header and the nightmare: replacing knives in the comb (that big rolling collector in front of header). Some vehicles I've driven are a tractor with bloody loose steering, quad- and motorbike, two trucks one of which has pretty loose gearbox, very old toyota jeep and nice ute.
For the harvest time My duty is to drive two trucks to bring harvested crops to silo. Picture below of the other end of the process.

My duty: driving 10t old school truck straright from somewhere 60's. Notice good aircon!

What else has happpened is last Suunday I ended up buying a car!! As a backpacker I had to pay attention to what I buy as the car has to be in a good condition and be fuel economic. I had to travel 700 km's to pick it up and drive sasme way back, but it was definitely worth it! I drove through blue mountains and I can tell you that if you come Australia, Blue Mountains are a must. There were houses with breathtaking views down the mountains and the people living there are very fortunate.

Another day starts in 15 mins which means I'll continue posting more later. 

Time to move on

I can't imagine how fast time goes by! Six weeks of farmwork has come to its end and now it is time for me to move on. More or less difficult it was to say goodbye to three life-like young kids I became very good friends, I continue my travelling plan and move up north to Dubbo. With 41 days signed off towards my second year visa, I leave legendary Kaloola behind with lifelong memories. Last day consisted of building a spit "ROASTMATE" for upcoming BBQ which is, unfortunately, the same evening I leave =)

Heading up!

As the summer is closing in, I'm even more certain that I need more than just a cap to avoid sunburn. And what could be better than the genuine outback wide brimmed Akubra? It's quite expensive - average hat is 140AU$ - but it's worth it!

As you might know the internet is not the best in the outback and I look forward to have some signal at my destination to update new experiences  :)

ROASTMATE by Jacob and Marco

Vaccinating 500 sheeps