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Archive for September, 2010

We’ve been eating a lot of lovely ripe cherry tomatoes from the garden.  They’re really one of my favourite harvests – so extremely tasty, especially compared to the flavourless hothouse tomatoes from the supermarket, and much cheaper than store-bought organic ones!

Apart from little slices of sunshine on our sandwiches at lunchtime, we’ve also made one of my favourite things ever … roasted tomato pasta sauce.

Cut your tomatoes in half and put them cut-side down in a roasting dish, along with some olive oil, sliced garlic, and fresh herbs (we used oregano, also from the garden).  Once they’re soft and gooey, add some cream (or in this case, lactose free cream substitute “Oatly”) and mash up the tomatoes a bit.

Add to some cooked pasta and enjoy!  Yes there was a tiny green one in there too – it vanished in the mashing process.  If we have a huge amount of green tomatoes left at the end of the season, I think I’ll try this with green tomatoes, because I’m fairly sure it will still be good.

I harvested our one and only broccolli on Monday night.

It had grown to a very decent size, and a few flower buds were starting to show, so I figured we’d better eat it.

And it was delicious – Anneli decided to have a nibble right away to check it out.

I wish we had managed to grow more than one – I planted many more, but most of the seedlings got to about 5cm tall and then started to die.  There are a couple more survivors in the vege patch, but I don’ tknow if they will come to anything.  I’m encouraged by this small success though, and will be trying again next year!

We got Linus’s grandmother’s old meat grinder/sausage maker a while ago, and have been looking for a supplier of sausage skins.  Last weekend, we discovered one of the local supermarkets stocks them – they’re just hidden out the back.  A friendly man in the meat department helped us out and sold us some beef, pork and pork fat, and we got to work!

The first batch was in two flavours – one seriously herby (with a selection of fresh herbs from the garden) and one chili and coriander.  Both were delicious as a bangers & mash dinner!  Since then we’ve made some pork & leek, and there is a lamb chorizo drying down in the cellar.

We were pretty alarmed when we heard about the earthquake in Christchurch. Our first thoughts were of our friends in Clarkville, who thankfully escaped unharmed.

Then I calmed down and started to read the news.  It’s quite distressing to see photos like these, of a city that used to be my home, and is still one of my favourite places in the world.

We hope you get well soon, Christchurch.