The Neglected Vegie Patch and a Monday Harvest!

This winter has been one of the worst for coughs and sniffles in our house. At the moment all three of us are having coughing fits that keep us up at night and make us cranky during the day. Thankfully the weather is getting warmer and we'll be able to get outdoors more often and get rid of the germs.

It means that I haven't been to get over to the shared vegetable patch for some time, so it's been left to its own devices for several weeks. It's been very interesting to see how everything has coped.

It's Alive!

As you can see, everything is alive and doing quite well.The root vegetables and the green leafy things have done the best. The onions are ticking over nicely, and the snow peas have started to crop.

12 leaves of Tuscan Kale

The kale is impressive! I took 12 leaves off it and barely made a dent. I'll be putting them into a bean soup.

8 leaves of Rainbow Silverbeet

I'll be putting these into the freezer for later.

1.172kg of Turnips

These are varying in size from golf ball to one that is about 400g on its own. There is still about half a dozen small ones in the ground, but I wanted to get most of them out so the beetroot has a chance to mature.

180g of green beans

The beans haven't grown too well over winter, so I might need to pull them out and start over with some fresh seeds. These ones I've picked are mostly pod and no seed, so I'm hoping that picking them will stimulate the plants into another round of production. I think this batch will be donated as chicken food.

 The snow peas are covered in flowers and there are two little pods already so I'm looking forward to fresh snow peas soon!

Winter Cooking

I had the opportunity today to raid my friend's garden and bring home some lovely winter vegies. Turnip, swede, daikon radish, rainbow silverbeet and tuscan kale.

Tonight's dinner is a casserole with cumberland pork sausages, potato, turnip, swede and carrot in a tomato sauce with thyme and pepper. Served with sauteed silverbeet and pine nuts, seasoned with nutmeg and garlic, and a squeeze of lemon.

Yummy!

Tarragon Pesto

In the box this week was a bunch of mixed herbs. Lettuce Deliver introduced these a couple of weeks ago, and they're an exciting addition to my weekly order. The grower decides what the pick of his crop is for the week, so the bunches are a surprise when they arrive. This week the bunch contained rosemary, thyme, oregano and tarragon.

Tarragon can be hard to find elsewhere, and being a soft herb, it doesn't keep for very long once picked. This week is proving to be a bit haphazard when it comes to cooking dinner, so I decided to make a tarragon pesto to preserve it until I get round to cooking with it. It will most likely become the seasoning for a pre-Christmas roast chicken dinner next week.

Tarragon Pesto

Equal parts fresh tarragon and parsley leaves
a handful of macadamias or almonds
a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp crushed garlic
lemon zest
lemon juice

Place everything into a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth but not obliterated. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, bananas, strawberries, mini watermelon, broccolini, cabbage, cauliflower, mushrooms, potatoes, pumpkin, dried apricots, rolled amaranth

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, oranges, pears, red cabbage, carrots, celery, mushrooms, mustard greens, potatoes, sweet potato, zucchini, pork mince

Organic Expo

This weekend was the Organic Expo and Green Show International. I went to the Good Food & Wine show a few weeks ago, and to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Partly because it's become much more commercial than about produce. There were hardly any samples to try, and I found that I just wasn't interested in a lot of the products. I hadn't realised how much my mindset had changed since switching to more organic and less processed foods.

So I was keen to go to the Organic Expo to see if it would satisfy my craving for novelty. Often organic and health foods are expensive, so it's good to be able to try them first. I think we've all been stung after buying something in a health food stall and coming home to find out that the snack bar tastes like candles, or the green drink really does taste like chopped up grass - ew!

On the whole, the day was a lot of fun. There were plenty of samples to try, some good value, and I came away with a couple of new and exciting ideas for kitchen adventures.

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, oranges, strawberries, broccolini, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, eggplant, mushrooms, potatoes, pumpkin

Pork mince, medium grain white rice

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, bananas, oranges, strawberries, beans, broccolini, cucumber, potatoes, pumpkin, silverbeet, zucchini


Also medium grain brown rice and miso soup

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, bananas, oranges, rhubarb, green beans, green capsicum, carrots, cucumber, eggplant, button squash, swede, sweet potato, zucchini

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, beans, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, kale, pumpkin, kumera, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, eggs, mixed quinoa

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, oranges, beans, broccoli, red cabbage, carrots, corn, cucumber, fennel, kale, potatoes, pumpkin, dried black turtle beans, fetta cheese, chocolate chips

This little piggy went to the organic market...

There's an organic market every Sunday at Frenchs Forest. It's very good - lots of stalls with both farm fresh and certified organic foods. It can be difficult to get up in the morning (especially after being up feeding the baby at 4am!), but the day feels so much more productive, especially with organic coffee and a bacon and egg roll or a fresh bagel for breakfast! I don't get much because my delivery arrives on Mondays, but it's nice to pick up a few extra specials. Not everything is organic, but it's still better to buy from markets than the supermarket - you're supporting the growers directly, less food miles and handling, and everything is super fresh!

Bought today: Smoked free range duck, radishes, lemons, strawberries, mini blueberry bagels

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, oranges, cabbage, green capsicum, carrots, mushrooms, parsnips, potatoes, baby spinach, sweet potato, cherry tomatoes, pork mince, eggs, goats cheese (Jannei buche blanc)

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, kiwi fruit, pineapple, rhubarb, green beans, bok choy, broccoli, carrots, celeriac, celery, pickling onions, potatoes, pumpkin, zucchini, dried yellow split peas, rolled lamb shoulder

Vanilla Rice Milk Custard (Gluten, Dairy and Egg Free)

Thankfully I don't have any food intolerances or allergies, but I have a few friends who do. This one's for you guys.

I've become a fan of organic rice milk. It has a lovely sweet, slightly nutty taste. I love it on my muesli. I've also rediscovered the joys of custard powder and making up a bowl of custard whenever I feel like it.

It occurred to me that using rice milk to make a custard would produce something that has a thick and creamy consistency, with the flavour of rice pudding. It would go very well with some stewed fruit. 

2 cups organic rice milk (or soy or oat milk) 

3 tablespoons cornflour (or use rice, potato or tapoica flour)

2 tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract or paste

Mix the cornflour with a little of the rice milk to make a paste. Mix the sugar, paste and vanilla into the rice milk. Heat the mix in a saucepan over a medium heat until it starts to boil and thickens, stirring well. Otherwise microwave on High for a minute at a time, stirring in between until hot and thickened. Note that it keeps thickening as it cools.

In The Box This Week

Here's what's in the box this week:

apples, avocado, mandarins, pears, persimmon, rhubarb, beans, cabbage, carrots, celery, eggplant, leek, mushrooms, potatoes, sweet potatoes

One litre of milk: three tasty results

I've had an Easiyo yoghurt maker for a few years now. It's really very easy to make your own yoghurt from scratch, especially if you buy a starter culture from somewhere like Cheeselinks. This week though, I'm not just going to make a litre of yoghurt, I'm going to use that yoghurt to make some labne and, strange as it sounds, mustard!

Great for breakfast with honey

So the first step is to make the yoghurt. L has great instructions on how to do this on her blog. Get organic UHT milk if you can! I generally leave my yoghurt for 24 hours in the yoghurt canister, followed by at least 12 hours in the fridge before I use it - you get a nice thick yoghurt as a result.



The next step is to make some labne. This is a very simple style of fresh curd cheese, made by straining the whey out of some plain yoghurt. This is about 500g of plain yoghurt, with ½ tsp of salt mixed in for flavour, and to help the draining process. Place the yoghurt in a cloth-lined strainer over a jug or bowl, and leave overnight.

The result is a thick, smooth curd cheese. It has a texture similar to cream cheese but with a very light, tangy flavour. You can roll it into balls, coat with herbs and spices and store in oil, but I'm going to leave mine plain for now. It goes brilliantly with middle eastern flavours such as dried mint and sumac.


Up until now, I probably would have eaten the cheese and poured the whey down the sink, but I recently found this recipe* at Edible Aria for homemade mustard, which is handy, because I've run out! But whey? In mustard?
The whey from yoghurt is of course teeming with probiotic cultures - you can add it to preserved foods to help with the fermenting process, and to give them a healthy boost! Thank you internets yet again! This particular batch of mustard isn't fully organic, because I'm still in the process of converting my spice cupboard to organic. It already tastes and smells delicious - can't wait to eat it once it's had a chance to really develop the flavours (takes about a week). If I knew wholegrain mustard was this easy to make, I'd have stopped buying it years ago!

*I made a half-batch of the recipe, and it made about 1 cup of mustard.

In the Box This Week

Each week I buy a box of organic fruit and vegetables from the lovely people at Lettuce Deliver. This gets supplemented with the odd trip to the organic markets and my friend's garden. I've been doing this for about three months (since my baby was born and I statrted shopping for groceries online in order to avoid the supermarkets!). I've found it to be an interesting challenge to eat seasonally - the question is no longer, what do I feel like cooking for dinner, but rather, what can I cook with the ingredients available this week? It's like doing a MasterChef invention test every night!


Here's what's in the box this week:


apples, fresh chestnuts, oranges, pears, kiwifruit, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, eggplant, mushrooms, potatoes, pumpkin, yellow squash, tomatoes, zucchini