What Will We Cook This Week?

One of the things I love about growing our own food is the ever changing weekly menu. Sure there are old favourites that reappear each week but they invariably have a twist due to the ever changing produce that comes our of the garden. Another thing I love is that the produce is produced Biodynamically and so very full of vitality.

It makes so much sense to me to write a up a weekly plan to make sure I use this produce to make the most of this vitality and also ensure nothing goes to waste.

This week the plan uses the produce that goes in to our CSA boxes plus what I have in the pantry

Wednesday ~ Pizza with pesto.

Thursday ~  Pesto pasta

  Pesto
1/4 cup pine nuts (replace pine nuts with macadamia nuts from the box)
1 1/2 cups fresh basil leaves
2 small garlic cloves
3/4 cup parmesan
5 Tblspns olive oil
Mix altogether in food processor

Friday ~ Couscous and zucchini salad

Saturday ~ Stir Fry

Sunday ~ LETS picnic Pizza and pasta

Monday ~ Chili corn pie

Tuesday ~  Vegetable curry


Last night we celebrated the completion of our Pizza Oven by cooking a quiche ....

 Mark has worked hard to get the oven completed so that we can host the LETS (Local Energy  Trading System) Christmas party on Sunday night. We will be having pizza and pasta. So quite a few meals this week will be cooked in the pizza oven to make sure that it's up to scratch .

Quiche and weed salad shared with family and friends last night to celebrate 

Our lovely WWOOFer Julia has been making weed salads from the garden. Weeds included are fat hen, farmer's friends, purslane, plantain and dandelion, all very abundant at this time of year. Wonderful to think that there is always something to eat from the garden.

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.