phonakins

A Lack of Best Laid Plans

Fortunately my plans for this year were to focus on family and home, because mum had a stroke Wednesday morning last week and fortunately I don’t have to renege on any commitments because I haven’t made any.

My weekly food posts were already out the window – the Friday before that I had a big day when pest controller who was visiting the work site next door slipped and injured himself on a star picket and there was no one else there to help him so I stopped the bleeding and applied pressure for ages until the ambulance finally came.

His boss brought flowers the next day and he and his wife dropped in chocolates and card last week. Which I unfortunately missed cos I was in seeing Mum.

The voucher came in handy for petrol yesterday, and the chocolate have been a comfort. As has Bruce getting takeaway when I couldn’t face even making my EveryPlate meals. They have been perfect this week though, knowing I can come home and whip something up in 30 minutes after a day in human form.

Mum’s doing okay – her right arm and leg are paralyzed but she’s getting a little movement and feeling back. Speech and swallowing okay, and while she’s got some difficulty finding specific words she’s good at working around it. She’ll probably have a stint in the private rehab hospital closer to home once the acute staff are happy to send her there. Dad’s beside himself with worry and very lost.

So, while I’ve been catching up where I can with the online and political goings on, I’m relieved I haven’t committed to anything this year and had already stepped back. Oh, I was thrown a UTI in there for good fun which hasn’t helped with my physical ability to take this on – it’s not that I have to really DO anything extra at this stage – but mentally it’s like feeling like I have to be across things, and knowing that Mum’s my sister’s main support but can’t be there just as the kids go back to school (come on NDIS don’t scrooge them out of some extra support), I’m just hovering hoping there’s not too many pieces to pick up. Knowing I can, but knowing I have to pace myself.

So I have a dentist appointment today, three back fillings, got the front ones and a clean last week, free through public dental after a year on the waitlist. That should sort that for another 5 to ten years right?

If you wanna help me out with petrol or parking costs, coffee at the hospital, or cover a week of dinners or send brekkies, my paylinks and wishlists are here. Love yas!

Two More Years (for Eraring Power Station)

Eraring power station has always been a part of my life. Construction started in 1977 and it and I were unleashed on the world in 1982. It was announced this week they were going to again extend its life another two years, this time until 2029. Transitions are well under way and it’s surely becoming more and more expensive to keep it alive. There’s a battery project well underway locally by Origin, and will the huge amount of private households getting their own solar systems and batteries the load on the station is being shifted. Workers are getting support for training in related industries and people should be pretty damn confident that the old girl won’t be needed by its new closure date of 2029.

All those people who are buying land for the McMansions in the shadows must be a little disappointed but the further push back. They, like us, get to experience the localised particulates for another couple of years. At least housing prices will hold for that time I hope, don’t wanna know how much more the local area will go up once we’re free of it. The small Myuna colliery was opened to directly supply coal to the station, and its workers are still waiting to hear if Origin will continue to buy coal from them til 2029 or finally stop as they keep threatening to do. Every time there’s a looming closure people talk about how everything will change and businesses will suffer, but we’ll see.

As a kid, I remember having this cold-war fear that my area of the world would only be a target for nuclear annihilation because we hosting the biggest Power Station in the land. That little concern bubble up whenever the world leaders tick us a little closer to doomsday, but all in all it’s pretty chill here in Lake Macquarie.

We used to travel to ovals near the station for interschool softball days. I think the netball girls also headed there. The local primary school closed in 2014 after having no enrolments for 2015. They rocked a brown and yellow uniform. It’s unlikely that Eraring itself would need a primary school again but the smaller public schools like Dora Creek and Cooranbong are going to see huge numbers once the estates are filled with families moving up from Sydney for affordable detached housing. There’s a twin service station being built on the M1 that’s only 2km from me, but fortunately no exits from the highway to the towns are planned. There’s two water trucks that run on a loop from the estate here to the build site for the servos ferrying water for dust dampening.

There’s SO much that needs to be done up here in terms of services to support the growing population. Like we still only have a two hourly train service on weekends, hourly through the week, there’s only steep steps to the platform, and there’s no bus connection between Dora Creek and Cooranbong, the two towns shall not meet. Cooranbong with its new sea of grey roofs (it’s always a little hotter over there) in Watagan Park Estate got a Woolworths last month (which is great and quiet – but my partner did day it all feels litlle Sydney out there).

Our little semi-rural town’s need to get some support to handle our new residents and commenters in the coming decades.

What we ate last week – Week 3 2026

a doze cupackes with dark blue icing

Started last week with some jeans / cookie monster blue cupcakes. I don’t know what I was aiming for, but obviously used way too much blue. Last week was about running down the meat in the freezer and I think we did well.

Two plates of rissoles, mash and peas. And a plate of leftover rissoles on paper towel

Rissoles is ALWAYS a good fallback. And I did booked enough for two nights, but they got eaten up for lunches so I had to do something else for Tuesday night. As I was getting out the sausages, Bruce informed me that he found them really gristly and would rather not have them, so Tuesday was chicken balls. Well they were called “Kiev” balls with pesto that I got free from the community centre. And i did them in the air frier, and served with the usual Mash and Peas. Or beans for the stepson since he doesn’t eat peas. I personally find frozen beans gross and cannot have them lol.

Three plates of chicken balls and mash and either peas or beans

Three plates of beef Bolognese, penne and garlic bread

Wednesday I defrosted the last of the beef mince and made a jar sauce Bolognese. Added some onion and garlic, and served it with Aldi garlic bread and $1 food pantry pasta – Harris Farm penne this time.

Three plates of marinated chicken, beans, carrot and rice

Thursday I defrosted a tray of “butter chicken” marinated chicken thigh (another freebie) and cooked that up and served with rice and with beans and carrots I got from Coles that morning when I wasn’t intending to leave the house at all but ended up doing the recycling and a few other things. It went down pretty well actually.

One half of my pantry Other half of the pantry

We’ve been getting a lot of ants lately. I think there might be a nest in the ceiling in the lounge room, but who knows. They got into a container of fruit and nut mix so I cracked it and cleaned out the pantries over two days, did a chuck out, wiped them down and Bruce poisoned everything. Good time for a stock take and all too. Updated my Amazon list of some pantry items that’d be treats or really helpful if you’re keen. Probably pushed myself a bit far Friday and ended up tripping over the down and have pulled up sore – knee, foot, elbow, hand still giving my a bit of ow-ness when I use them wrong.

3 plates of post steaks, beans and mashed potato

Had another freebie tray to defrost Friday night – 500g of pork steaks. They were small bois so we had two each with the rest of the beans and some mash.

3 plates of been, mashed potatoes and peas or beans

Saturday was the rest of the beef that I’d served up a couple weeks before after the ozharvest drop. Still not great at cooking it but whatever, was definitely over cooking by then.

Yesterday we got some BBQ chickens from Woolies and Bruce made Caesar salad rolls for us 🙂

two plates with open Caesar Salad rolls.

It was nice to have an easy one.

We got 99.5 mm of rain Saturday night

Spent Saturday and Sunday watching the weather keenly with all that rain we got.

Maxi dog with a cup of ice cream in his bowl

And Maxi tried some Doggo ice cream from Aldi and to say he loved it was an understatement! He even scoffed the pea one and he’s rather picky about greens usually.

box of Doggy Ice cream, carrot and apple and pea flavour

This week I’ve gotten EveryPlate which was a relief when it arrived! Also was able to get some free breads since the local community food pantry reopened today.

What’s on your plate this week?

What we ate last week – Week 2 2026

3 bowls of prawn spaghetti

So last week I got a Marley Spoon box after they gave me a good discount – think it was under $80 total for the 6 meals. So Monday we started with a prawn pasta – I switched out the tinned cherry tomatoes for two punnets of cherry tomatoes I’d gotten free the Friday before and can use the tin down the track. It’s topped with panko crumbs toasted up with garlic and olive oil – part of the recipe.

3 bowls of chicken caesar salad

Tuesday was a chicken caesar salad – fried up a couple of died pieces of bacon to add to it. Shoulda made the croutons crunchier, but we learn. I also swapped out the zucchini they sent that was meant to be char grilled for some fresh cucumbers again from the Friday Ozharvest haul. Lighter for the hot week we were about to have.

3 bowls of rice, crumbled chicken and picked carrot, cucumber and radish

Wednesday was a chicken katsu. Sadly I’m still not great at judging when the chicken is cooked through in the frypan so it had to go back in once I’d started slicing into it. The fast pickled vege (popped into vinegar with sugar and salt while I cook the rest of the meal) was a nice part.

3 bowls of rice topped with chicken satay

This funny little satay dish on Thursday was quite nice and wish I’d had more of it!

three bowls of salad and park rice

A light pork rice and salad for a hot Friday night.

Saturday was the hottest day so we tried the new Char Char Chickens down at the shops ($20 for the chook). Aside from the bag leaking everywhere it was brilliant! Just ate in in sandwiches. Since it was still 34 degrees when I went to bed it’s good I didn’t wait for the kitchen to cool down to cook.

Last night we had the last meal of the meal box – a beef stir-fry. It was mean to be a low carb no rice one, but I added rice and also the zucchini from the other day to make it actually feed the three of us.

Used my multichopper for the first time too, gonna give it a go for the diced onion tonight for rissoles. I didn’t end up getting Ozharvest last Friday since it was stinking hot and I couldn’t drag myself down there, so we got more taters yesterday and will have a lot of mash and greens with the contents of the freezer this week. I have Everyplate coming next week, which I think will be $50 for the box.

What we ate last week – Week 1 2026

Welcome to what we ate last week, a series of blog posts I’m intending to write every Monday in 2026 to document our meals, how I cobble together a healthish menu for three adults from meal kits for two, Aldi runs, food bank discount purchases and food rescue freebies and my lil brain. It’s to rekindle my food blogger ways, reassure myself I can do this, and give me a goal that’s focused on looking after my lil family that still lets me write about the systems.

bags if groceries in my trolley — Ozharvest haul from Friday

Like everything I do, it may peter out quickly, we’ll see.

two bowls of spaghetti Bolognese and a garlic bread

On Monday we had a jar sauce Bolognese. I got a bulk pack of 3 star mince from Aldi and froze 5 portions and because there was only two of us cooked 1 of the garlic breads from Aldi. Sneaky grate of parmesan cos it was in the fridge.

three places of mashed potatoes, beans or peas, silverside and white sauce
in the background ts the rest of the meat and pot of sauce

On Tuesday I slow cooked a silverside. And made white sauce based on this recipe. I didn’t even make it lumpy because I was slow and patient. We had the leftovers the next day.

Cooked portion of silverside and a pot of white sauce on a wooden cutting board

Rissoles for a New Years meal. No, we didn’t see midnight, but that’s okay. The rissoles stretched to the next day. I kept forgetting to get onions but that’s okay because I never chop them small enough for rissoles and my meat cakes fall apart! Perhaps a skill to work on this year.

2 plates of rissoles, mashed potato and peas 3 plates if rissoles and mashed potato and greens

I went to Aldi on Friday morning and bought poatoes, onions and a tray of sausages. But just after I got home, the local charity posted that they were getting an Ozharvest soon, so I went down and they pushed so much food on me, including a tray of porterhouse steaks, so I cooked three of them for dinner (overcooked :/ again out of practice) and froze the other two. We had beans and corn I also got from that delivery, along with mashed potatoes. I could have gotten free potatoes but since I got a bag that morning I didn’t grab any. Should have a chance again this Friday so I’ll hold off on any grocery shopping til after that. Also got some yummy sodas in that haul.

three plates of steak, beans, corn and mash

The sausages I cooked Saturday night and froze the other six. There were two bags of free beans I brought home so extra greens since they were each 4 serves.

three plates of sausages, mash and beans

Punnetts of cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, salt, pepper, oil, herbs, tomato paste, mince, penne, passata, butter, onion, garlic bread and garlic.

Last night I cooked up a Bolognese with mince from the bulk pack, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes from the Ozharvest haul, the other garlic bread from Monday and Harris Farms penne I’d gotten for $1 a pack from the food pantry before Xmas. The tomato pasta and passata were from Everyplate meals I didn’t make or they sent too much for. How cute’s the oil bottle? Someone got it off my wishlist for Xmas and it’s so handy for my oil, and I have olive in that one and a black lidded one for canola.

3 plates of penne Bolognese

So this coming week I have a Marley Spoon box coming, so less planning from my part, and then next week I’ll try to use some things from the freezer and whatever I get from the community centre Friday and supplement with Aldi or Woolies shops as needed. We got a new Woolies in the next suburb just before Xmas which is super convenient, but they don’t have a great bakery so don’t have nice breadrolls *sadface* but there IS a Baker’s Delight opening soon, so will check out their end of day $10 bundles they sell through the Too Good To Go app, plus when everything reopens at the end of the month I’ll be getting plenty of free bread again. Yay!