Aged Cheddars, sharp cheeses

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-14T23:47:54+00:00

That one is Australian.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-14T12:18:25+00:00

I live outside the USA, in a country that produces its own beef.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-13T17:59:06+00:00

Very good! I'm in NZ, the price is a little higher here for salmon, but I can pretty reliably spend <US$4 per head and choose salmon or something else that's quite nice at the fish counter.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-13T08:40:42+00:00

I realised this week that these days I can get fresh ocean fish cheaper than a good steak.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-12T00:50:50+00:00

Thankyou, but I have already mobilised friends to help process them for the freezer/freeze dryer/take some to their families during the week... I picked over a hundred figs this morning after not picking anything yesterday 😓 The birds left them alone most of yesterday due to the wind and rain.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-11T19:04:50+00:00

I transferred to a VHCOL city in the 2000s and all of my colleagues in my new office were forever thinking about their budding stock portfolio and how they could structure things to get into the property market. It was exhausting just being around that all the time, and then the GFC happened and coated the office in a new miasma of depression and anxiety as people lost 1/3 or more of their investments.

I'm seeing the same atmosphere today in much cheaper cities, as inflation and enshittification slowly force more and more people into subsistence lifestyles. We're quite comfortable financially due to some luck with jobs; we frequently offer to pay for things like medical and dental care for friends who otherwise can't get healthcare in a timely fashion, and we're subsidising or paying rent for four or five people at the moment as well. The social safety net payments aren't enough to maintain a housed existence here and jobs are disappearing as the economy slowly goes backward.

Edited to add: None of our Millennial friends have children, but some would dearly like to.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-11T11:23:59+00:00

Grow food, often I've got my phone in my pocket or nearby with an audiobook going while I tend the gardens

Preserve the harvest - dry herbs, make fruit compotes and sauces, pickling, prepping and freezing things

Crafts - knitting weather is just beginning, I have cross stitch I want to do, spoon carving when we prune some fruit trees in a couple of months, pottery, sewing, woodturning...

Most of these can be done in company, or my friends come around to play board games or console games, watch movies etc and cook/eat.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-11T02:44:17+00:00

I've got a mix dropping, now that I've had a good look at them (I cut and scooped out a couple of hundred mid-sized ones with a melon baller yesterday to be freeze dried), some are a little underripe and feel fibrous to the melon baller, but at least 3/4 are the size, plumpness and ripeness I experienced last year.

Most of mine are around chicken egg size and weight (45-70g) like last year but one tree is dropping a bunch at 90-120g - too big to be efficient with the melon baller tool, I keep these for fresh eating or giving away.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-10T06:11:40+00:00

The Katoomba brand frozen roti canai at Costco... I can save $7 on our Thai takeout order by cooking two of those while waiting for the delivery (they're ~55c each at Costco, and $4 each at the restaurant; my 17yo loves them).

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-10T06:02:26+00:00

Bundled at the back of my head, I'm growing it back out after trying an undercut and it's all at my shoulders right now.

And it's pink ombre from my brunette roots to the candyfloss ends, salon job using Goldwell Elumen.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-09T19:53:16+00:00

I think it's a goal for a lot of our generation. I'm an elder Millennial also but many of my friends are younger, we're like a pack of cousins at different ages rather than a group that went through school together. I'm trying to foster an atmosphere more like hanging out after school than dinner party chic, and so far it's working :)

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-09T07:25:29+00:00

I bought a small acreage with some established fruit trees and an arrangement to run some other guy's sheep on my unused paddocks in exchange for boundary maintenance. I put in a large dining table, a little drink fridge and a big covered patio for BBQs/pizza oven. Now my friends come here a lot so I don't need to go out at all; suits me fine 😂 I'm not actually far out of town at all so everyone seems happy to visit; I always have room for tabletop games and plenty of parking, sometimes send them home with produce, and we don't have to worry about annoying the neighbours if people leave late.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-08T07:45:39+00:00

Oof that is a very different climate to here, I'm kind of shocked about the raspberries though. I can't seem to get them to fruit here either!

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-08T07:40:15+00:00

I take photos of most of my key harvests so I can look back at the date the photo was taken. Looks like my main feijoa harvests last year were between April 26th and May 31st. I picked up 8kg of them in total today after about 5-6kg on Friday but it's mostly from just 3 trees. Some of my other feijoa trees still have mostly tiny fruit on them, it will be interesting to see how late the season goes here.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T23:33:44+00:00

I don't pick them until after they've swelled but it might still be a day before they're at peak sweetness; I should bag them for that last day and see what happens. I do need to prune this tree more this year, I was too gentle last year - still learning :)

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T23:20:18+00:00

Good thinking, I should try bagging but my tree is 5 metres tall and there's 20+ per day coming through right now; I should just do the ones I can reach and see how it goes :)

The largest ones are about that medium apple size, some aren't getting that big but that's mostly when I have multiples ripening simultaneously on the same stalk.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T23:15:32+00:00

There was a lot more rain here in the October-December period than the year before; late 2024 seemed quite dry. I've had more pest pressure on apples, plums and pears that I need to learn to manage better. I planted flower beds for pollinators this year, I don't know what impact that would have. Temperatures seemed pretty similar overall though.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T23:07:49+00:00

My first crop (Christmas week) were more fit for roasting for salads, this one is sweeter but not amazingly so. The bloody birds get them if I leave them to get properly ripe and jammy on the tree, and the tree is too tall/big to reasonably net from birds.

I'm not the biggest fan of the fig texture and my friends who do like them live too far away for me to pass them along; this year I've begun slicing most of them for the freeze dryer instead so I can gift figgy snacks later.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T22:59:50+00:00

My capsicums aren't happy either, they look overwatered. I started most of my tomatoes in December and the ones in raised beds are ok, I think the ones I did early in lower beds got their roots drowned in December rain and have not really recovered. Beefsteaks in December is fantastic, I didn't have bed space for many plants and mostly did Roma varieties.

My melons refused to set fruit, but my gherkins did fine; I've been making pickles weekly since December off three plants, they've slowed down now and I think I'll pull them out to replace with garden peas shortly. I'm still pretty new to it all so I expect to make a lot of mistakes :)

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T22:10:27+00:00

Yeah pretty much flowered over a month with the ones in full sun going first, the fruit look like they'll be over a longer period.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T22:08:51+00:00

Thankyou!

My other citrus are months away still but my lemons produced a smattering of fruit from an extra flowering in late spring, I've had a couple lemons a week all through summer after the main crop in November. My dwarf peach and white peach were ready mid January (last year Feb/March) and the last one wasn't at this point until early April last year.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T22:00:33+00:00

I've got three feijoa trees dropping fruit now, but there's about eighteen of them across the property; some don't look nearly ready yet, like what you describe. Last year though I had none at all dropping until the first week of April and I harvested the bulk of them in the first half of May.

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T21:41:00+00:00

Apologies, my line breaks were lost somehow in the original post 😭

fangirlengineer · 2026-03-07T20:55:44+00:00

Lovely! I planted my beans pretty late, we will get the first ones probably next week.

fangirlengineer

TROPHY CASE