Vego Challenge

Due to an Eco Village meeting happening here tonight, I will be using last nights dinner for the Vego Challenge.

Yesterday was one of those days where we were both on the go all day long, and I found myself wondering what I was going to do for dinner. I've got to tell you that I was very tempted to duck up to the fish and chip shop.
 But good sense prevailed and I remembered some leftover pasta sauce I had made 2 nights ago, using onion, garlic, tomatoes and zucchini from the garden, tomato puree that I'd preserved previously and some tempeh. I just added a few more tomatoes and some more puree, heated it up and put some pasta swirls on to boil.
While they were cooking I made up a crumble mixture using ;

175 gms rolled oats
50 gms parmesan cheese
75gms butter

Combine these 3  ingredients  and rub in the butter.

Place sauce and pasta into oven proof dish and top with crumb mixture.Bake for about 30 mins in pre heated oven 180 C/ 350 F, until golden and heated through.

Very fast, very tasty, used up some leftovers and ready by the time Mark got in from the garden at 8pm.

What's On The Go

I sometimes think that I'm a glutton for punishment. Why do I think that it's OK to try and stuff as much as possible into one day/week/month/year.

I have been a little overwhelmed with what's going on for me lately, hence the lack of posts.

Not only is it summer, the busiest time for us gardeners, but also us preservers, sellers of garden produce etc., etc. But to add to that I'm consumed with challengers. Don't buy from supermarkets, don't but any new clothes, only give handmade gifts. Reduce waste, buy in bulk to reduce packaging, don't waste any food, reuse own and everyone elses waste, and the list goes on and on. Does anyone else feel like they have to do everything!

 Any way ,on top of that we are involved in saving our neighbours land from developers and starting an eco village. You can read more about it at littleecofootprints. Tricia has a couple of posts about it.

As well Tricia and I have a new little venture about to start. It involves  farms, small children and birthdays.

Everything is all so exciting but very, very exhausting. Not to mention that very shortly I will be a grand mother

Chilli Corn Pie

Tuesday night again, and it's time for the Tuesday Night Vego Challenge with Linda. Here's one of our summer favourites as our garden has most of the ingredients at this time of year.

These are the ingredients from the garden and our chooks. The chilli was some that we dried last year.

And here are the ingredients from the pantry.
Chop and fry the onions, and garlic and add chilli, add the diced zucchini and capsicum, Cut the kernals from the corn and add that to the pan and then dice the tomatoes and add those too. If mixture is a little dry I add some tomato puree previously made.Then add some beans- I use cannelini beans or red kidney beans. If I don't have time to soak dried beans I use tinned, but that's not ideal.Once that's cooked pour into an oven proof dish and prepare the polenta.

Mix together 2/3 cup polenta with 1Tblspn plain flour, 1/2 tspn salt and 2 tspn. baking powder.. Make a well in the centre and add 1 beaten egg, 6 tblspn milk 1 tblspn oil. Beat until a smooth batter is formed, and spoon over the mixture and sprinkle with a cup of cheese.Bake in oven at 220C for 25- 30 mins.

I forgot to take a photo. This is from one we had previously

I serve it with a fresh salad also from the garden.

Obtain a Yield and Catch and Store Energy

The tomatoes grew, caught and stored the energy from the sun, we harvested them.....

..Then preserved them as chopped tomatoes thereby storing energy for the winter.

This is 13 kilo of roma tomatoes, peeled and chopped. Preserved in a Fowlers Vacola water bath. Our customers get approx 20kilo of tomatoes a week, between them and we plan to preserve the rest. There's probably 20 kilo more in the fridge so far, and Mark's making tomato- sauce at the moment with less than perfect tomatoes.

This is the first year we have preserved in such earnestness. We are determined to make the most of all our produce, and set ourselves up for winter with summer produce. It is very new to us and a real learning experience. It has been very time consuming ( it took me most of yesterday to bottle the tomatoes) but I'm sure we'll get much more proficient at it, and I know it will be cheaper and healthier for us and will help to set us up for the'year without supermarkets' challenge that Tricia is running over at  little eco footprints. We are running a little behind Tricia, planning to start in February. But if it's anything like our year without buying anything new challenge that we set ourselves a few years back, it will become a habit and we'll just continue on indefinitely.

Zucchini and Corn Patties

Joining in once again with  Linda for a Tuesday night vego challenge. Linda has some beaut looking bean burgers tonight and we're having zucchini and corn patties served up with a crisp garden salad. At this time of year just about everything has zucchini in it and these patties are favourite way of using them up. Just to vary it a bit and because we have the corn fresh from the garden we are adding corn to the batter.

Ingredients.

1 cup grated zucchini
1 tspn salt
1 egg lightly beaten
pinch of chilli to taste
1 cup plain flour ( we use wholemeal)
1 tblspn oil
 2/3 cup tepid water
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
other vegies on hand ( corn for us tonight)

Method

Add salt to grated zucchini and mix it through, set aside to draw out moisture in zucchini. Add chilli to lightly beaten egg. In a separate bowl mix flour with oil, working oil into flour with the back of a wooden spoon. Add enough water to make a firm dough. Add undrained zucchini.Add more water if required to make a soft dough ( like fritter batter). Add any other vegies now eg.corn, chopped red capsicum or peas and the cheese.

Place spoonfuls of batter in to shallow oil in frypan.

And serve with a fresh garden salad...

We find this a very quick and easy meal, nourishing and satisfying!

Happy Birthday

28 years  ago today I gave birth to this beautiful person...

And very soon she will give birth to her first child...

She is going to be a beautiful mum! Happy Birthday Rhonnie. I love you!

New Skill Achieved

I learnt to crotchet quite a few years ago when I was teaching at a Steiner School. It is part of the 3rd class curriculum. I was one step ahead of the children. We made beanies. The stitching was very basic and we never named the stitches, so even though I completed quite a few beanies and helped the children with theirs, I didn't learn to follow a pattern and even though I've tried in the interim, I've given up out of frustration. Then I knit this little dress which needed to be edged with crotchet. So I took a deep breath and threw myself at it. And was I pretty pleased with myself when it was finished.
And then inspired by Jaquie's success with her ripple rug over at The Barefoot Crofter and the purchase of this book...

..and my success with the edging, I'm going to give the ripple rug (pictured on the front of the book) a go.

Here's my sample ( sorry about the quality of the photo. Maybe after I master crocheting I'll take some photography lessons!!!) . The book gave very good detailed instructions for each stitch and explained how to follow the pattern.  I learnt single, double, half double, treble and how to decrease each stitch. The pattern reminds me of waves and if I choose the right colours I think it will fit in nicely with the theme my daughter has chosen for her baby's room. Her husband is a surfer and he has requested  colours inspired by the beach in the nursery, so I'll look for yarn with those colours in mind.

I am now really keen to get started having taught myself a skill that I'd thought was beyond me,( mainly due to my lack of patience rather than an inability to learn.) Wish me luck!

Waste not want not

I have always been fairly conscious of not wasting food, but after seeing a movie trailer over on frogdancers blog, I am more determined than ever not to waste food. Not that we really waste food because anything not consumed by us goes to either the dogs, chooks, ducks, guinea pigs, geese, worm farm or compost.In our household it is excess from the garden that has the most potential to be wasted especially if it is in some way unsaleable.But there's also the last of the bread that's a little too stale to even toast......

 So off come the crusts.....

and into the processor they go. Often I freeze them until I need them. I used to be quite lazy about this until I read what goes into an average pack of breadcrumbs.

And of course there are also leftovers for lunch. Once a week I'll be sharing the ways in which we are trying to be more mindful of not wasting anything. What special tricks have you got for reducing wastage?

Tuesday Night Vego Challenge

I'm joining in with Linda for her Tuesday night vego challenge . Being vegetarian every night for us is vego night but the challenge for Tuesdays is fast, easy, healthy, in season, real food, which is us usually every night as well but sometimes they are not so fast. The emphasis on my entry into the challenge is to provide as many of the ingredients from the garden as possible.


One problem I had was when do I post this, but Linda answered that for me today as she had thought of the problem as well. So here's the one from last night....The best Fried Rice in the world (I am a little biased) cooked by Mark.

These are the ingredients from the garden.....

and these are from the shop...

The secret to Mark's great fried rice is that he fries the uncooked rice until it's nutty brown. The onion, garlic, and grated ginger are fried first and then whatever vegies are available.(The eggs are fried separately) These are removed from the wok and then the uncooked rice is fried in some oil.. Once it has reached that nutty brown look, stock is added and  boiled until rice is cooked, at which time all vegetables are added to the rice. The fried egg is added and stirred gently into the rice just before serving. Soy sauce may be added to taste.


More and more our meals are dependant on what is growing in the garden, and popular recipes are adapted to what we have available in the form of produce and what's in the pantry. The challenge I have set myself this year is to be much more conscious of this, with every meal. How many ways are there to have eggs for breakfast, without getting sick of them!

One Man's Trash

....is another man's treasure.

This is some of the 'trash' that arrived in a trailer the other day. It all started because we needed to get our house cow, Bella, to the bull. We needed a trailer to get her there, and so decided to hire one, and thought maybe we could get a deal as we only needed it for a short while. As it happened the trailer was full of rubbish at the owners house and if Mark would take it to the dump and pay for the cost of dumping it he could have it for the day. Yea, sure Mark says.

Now, as it happens we use guinea pigs to keep the grass down in and around the garden....

and just before Christmas we decided we needed to increase production on the guinea pig front so we put a male in with our 3 females and ta da.........

There are 11 babies altogether

So we have been on the look out for materials for more cages. We've been checking out the second hand building centres and the dump shops but haven't found anything suitable. But in one afternoon we get a trailer for nothing and keep some good resources from going into land fill, the cow to the bull, and in the pile of trash, this guinea pig cage....

Here it is after a few repairs. It needed a little house and wire underneath.

....and here it is with guinea pigs at work keeping the grass down between the rows!

But not only that, in the pile of trash is a bird aviary, some chicken wire, some tin, another cage, a dog kennel and some really great shelving. When Mark took the trailer back he mentioned the shelving and the guy says there's more and he can have it for a carton of beer!.
Do you ever have those sort of days when everything just clicks into place!

Fruit Fly Nets

On New Years Day we had an email from a friend with a small mixed orchard to say that she had some ripe peaches ready to harvest and would we like some to preserve. Yes please! She said that she had netted them this year with nets purchased from Green Harvest, and they seemed to have been successful.  So we jumped in the ute for a lovely country drive to her farm.

Jane had netted her peach trees, and although only small trees, they were covered with fruit. We took most of the peaches from three of the trees and got 15Kilos.

The nets proved to be very successful. Not only was there no fruit fly but Jane says that the net protected the fruit from birds as well. Jane also has nashi pears which she didn't bother to net because they aren't particularly fond of nashis. She asked if we like to take some and we thought we'd have a go at preserving some. But when we got them home the whole box had been stung by fruit fly, so it appears that the nets on the peaches worked a treat. ( the nashi I had to feed to the ducks and chooks)

 At home this year we lost a lot of fruit to fruit fly and birds, so I will be getting some of these nets for the next fruit season.

Hit the Ground Running

This is what happens when you take your eye off the ball....

Our mandala garden has turned into a jungle.

Mark and Chris, our WWOOFer have been working hard to clean it up.
We've had a lovely rest over the Christmas / New Year break. We both got books for Christmas and I didn't feel one bit guilty reading in the middle of the day, and I got some sewing done as well. But now it's time to get back in to work mode once again. We have been blessed with cool wet weather over the past few weeks and the garden has become quite overgrown. Thankfully a WWOOFer has turned up and he and Mark have been very busy taming the jungle, using all the weeds to make a compost heap.

There has also been a lot of activity in the kitchen preserving the summer bounty. Zucchini and duck eggs are very abundant at the moment so Mark has been making chocolate zucchini cakes to freeze...

....an abundance of Purple King beans....

..to freeze. Placed in boiling water for 1 minute (Blanched)...

..then immersed in iced water...

notice how they have changed colour from the hot water

...and placed in bags in meal sized portions for freezing...

I use a straw to suck the air out of the bag

And we got a couple of trays of organic mangoes for a good price and we spent a good part of a day preserving them using our Fowlers vacola bottling gear....

Peel the mango, slice and place in jar

Add syrup. we use a light syrup of 1 cup sugar to 3 cups water

Using a bamboo skewer  to remove air bubbles

Add the lid

and the clip

And place in the water bath. We were 3 jars short so preserved some berries at the same time.

The jars are covered with water and heated for 1 3/4 hrs.. We just had to taste some when they had cooled and they were delicious!

I am grateful that we are able to take WWOOFers( Willing Workers On Organic Farms) who can help Mark on the farm, as at this time of year I seem to spend more and more time in the kitchen preserving our produce and less and less time helping Mark in the garden.