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Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

This is my first year growing zucchini, and I have to ask myself why I waited so long. We have 4 plants, one of which lives in a pot and one of which was the runt of the litter. These two are only mildly productive, but it doesn’t matter much since the other two are keeping us well fed.

So far we’ve harvested over 4kg of zukes and they don’t look like they’re slowing down. This monster alone weighed 1.2kg. I had left it to get big so I could have big slices for a moussaka. As it turned out, I only used a third of it for the moussaka! Which was delicious, if I may say so myself.

So, how did we manage to pick 23 kilos of cherries in one day?  Well, here’s the trick.

First, you need a lumberjack.

Lumberjack lurks beneath the cherry tree

Then it’s just a matter of …

Down ...

... she ...

... goes!

Then you send in the pickers.

Lumberjack of all trades

Little picker

It’s a bit of a shame to lose the largest of our cherry trees. But the lowest branches were so high, it was impossible to get any fruit from it, so only the birds were getting any benefit.

To answer Kathleen’s comment:

“and then did you pit them all?!”

we pitted a lot of them, by a variety of methods.  Some were cooked and then mushed through a grid (for jam), some were cooked for wine making, some were pitted by hand and made into pies.   We have thirtysomething jars of jam downstairs, some dried cherries going into our muesli, some fruit leather, some cordial, and some cherry wine that is getting very promising.

How did we pick 23 kilos of cherries? I’ll show you in another post …

Yummy!

We’ve been out picking raspberries by the beach. One kilo is in the freezer and one kilo has become jam. Scones are imminent!

This is what I harvested from the vege patch tonight: lettuce, kohlrabi, new zealand spinach, and rocket. It all became a big lovely salad for our dinner.

Later, when the harvesting basket was empty, we went out and filled it with cherries, raspberries, blueberries, black currants, and white currants.

My dear husband got me one of these for my birthday:

It’s for squirting icing onto cakes in pretty patterns, and also for making cookies in lots of different little shapes.  And it is loads of fun.  Here are some of my first cookies:

These are a really basic sweet cookie – I’m looking forward to trying out some variations, but I can see that you can’t just use any old cookie recipe in this thing.  The dough needs to be the right consistency for pressing, plus it needs to be really buttery so that the cookies don’t stick to the cookie tray (you can’t grease the cookie tray, otherwise the little buggers just WILL NOT STICK when you’re pressing them out).

I also made some cheesy ones:

Which are delicious, but they went quite soft after I stored them in an airtight container.  Right after baking they were wonderfully crisp on the outside and a little soft and chewy in the middle, but now they’re kindof soft all over, which is disappointing.  So, I need to figure out how best to store these ones.

The lavender is flowering …

And so is the rocket.  We’ve been eating a lot of rocket for about the last month, but it is rapidly going to seed at the moment.

There are lots of little pods on the broad beans.  I clipped off the tops of the plants last week, and we ate them.

It’s our first year growing zucchini … the suspense is killing me.

This ruby chard is still quite small, but so beautiful!  Hope it tastes as good as it looks.

This kohlrabi went into our dinner on Saturday night, and it was delicious!

We’re also getting some good harvests of frilly lettuce, and have a heap of parsley plants looking nice & healthy.

And up in the greenhouse the tomatoes are flowering.  We have two types in the greenhouse  (inca and brandywine), and one outdoors (gardener’s delight).

Also down in the vege garden is a huge oregano that’s about to flower, and lots of flourishing beetroots, leeks, celeriac, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cos lettuce, coriander, potatoes, and a nasturtium that wants to take over the world!

Crock pots are generally associated with heavy, stodgy winter stews, and it’s true they do excel in the field of stodge. so it’s a bit extra satisfying to use the crock pot to make a summery meal. This beetroot and bean salad is delicious warm or cold, with whatever leafy bits you have on hand (this one includes beetroot leaves, lettuce & nasturtium leaves). For a dinner salad you can add some feta or fried halloumi, and if you’re scared of vegetarian food I’m sure some bacon bits wouldn’t hurt.

And to make this even more of a raging success, it gets the toddler seal of approval from Anneli, who will scoff a plate full and ask for seconds, thirds, and fourths!

We realised recently that a crock pot would be a great addition to our kitchen. On days when Anneli is at daycare in the morning, i can prepare dinner while she’s there and be free to play when she comes home. Plus, we love finding bargain cuts of meat, which are often the sort that lend themselves to slow cooking.

So, off to amazon we went and here she is! Filled up with tonight’s dinner. So exciting!