Ginger

I grew it myself :)

Caprese bites/appetisers

Very simple: a thin sliver of Teese Mozzarella (I buy mine at the Green Edge, when I buy it. It costs about $11 for 10 ounces, which is very expensive. But sometimes I want it.) , a slice of fresh tomato (mine are tiny), a sprinkle of black pepper and a fresh basil leaf. Eat!

So simple and so yummy. It needs a rice craker or piece of toaste underneath it, but I was lazy and just wanted a little snack.

Todays harvest: teeny yellow capsicum, even teenier tomato (supposed to be a regular sized one not cherry!) and a tiny strawberry.

The capsicum had gotten eaten a little bit. The tomato was divine (and the last one off all my tomato plants - I only ended up with about 6 tomatoes from 5 plants haha), and the strawberry was so sweet and delicious. I wish my plant would grow more than 1 every so often!

Tom Yum Soup

Not from a jar!

I have a massive lemongrass that I really need to use before it dies back, so I finally learnt how to harvest the stems without killing it. It's very easy, reach in and twist!

Of course I had to find something to cook with it, and the first thing I thought of was a classic Tom Yum Soup. I almost always order this at a Thai restaurant if they have a vege option, and most seem to nowadays.

I went to a different fruit shop than I usually do on the way home from work one day and found a packet of Kaffir Lime Leaves for only $1.50! (You can freeze these to use later). Lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves - two main ingredients of a tom yum.

Tom Yum Soup

Serves 4 as a large starter (or add some noodles for a main)

Ingredients

6 cups chicken style stock

2 stalks lemongrass, minced, and reserve the hard inedible part (here is a handy how to)*

3 kaffir lime leaves

2 hot red chillies (such as birdseye) minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1x1 inch ginger, sliced into match sticks

1 cup brocolli, chopped

1 carrot, sliced into half moons

1 zucchini, sliced into half moons

2 tomatoes

1 block of tofu, cubed (I used some seitan I had in the freezer)

4 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp fresh lime juice

1/2 cup fresh basil

Method

In a large pot, bring stock, minced lemongrass, lemongrass stalks, kaffir lime leaves, chillies, garlic and ginger to a boil. Boil for about 10 minutes then add brocolli, carrot, zucchini, tomatoes and tofu/seitan to the pot. Simmer until vegetables are tender.

Just before you are ready to serve, stir in the soy sauce, lime juice and basil.

Eat!

*I sliced mine up thinly then put it all into my mortar and pestle and ground it up almost into a paste. A food processor would also work. You could do the lemongrass, garlic and chilli all at once if you like.

-----------

This was so good. Restaurant quality! I reckon I probably won't buy the jarred paste again :) We had it with a side of rice noodles and peanut butter.

One day if I'm rich I might buy a packet of those weird vegan prawns you can get at Asian food stores. I saw some once and they were like $15!! (I've had vegan calamari before at a restaurant - amazing. And I know calamari.)

Apparently lemongrass is freezeable. So I think I'm going to harvest most of what I have (about a million stalks) and divide the rest and replant it for next summer. I'll either freeze them as whole stalks or process the whole lot and freeze in tablespoon sized amounts like I usually do with tomato paste :)

I spend my weekends gardening

Purple carrot seedling

I did end up putting chicken wire over my carrot seeds because I caught bob sitting on them. But then Charlee walked over the chicken wire and ended up uprooting some seedlings, so I had to rearrange it. The seedlings have all got their second (and some third!) leaves on. Pretty excited.



Hot chillies

My chilli bush just keeps on giving! I can't use them fast enough.

Basil grown from seed

Almost as soon as I planted it out into a big pot the basil just grew and grew! Unfortunately since I took this picture the stupid grasshoppers have depleted a lot of the leaves. I've put a mesh bag I use for fruit and veg over it, and I intend on buying some mesh material at Spotlight or something to make little teepees to put over my pots. Damn grasshoppers.


Bergamot

At work we have a 'rejects' section, where plants that aren't suitable for sale go to finish their lives. A bunch of different herbs got shoved in there last week so I nabbed some, this bergamot being one of them. Ignore the horrendous weeds, I haven't gotten around to tidying it up yet. 

Tarragon

I also got this tarragon from the same section. I have been warned not to put it any where near basil otherwise the basil will just be...tarragon.


Pineapple!

This pineapple was also from rejects! A client had ordered them and no longer needed them or something so they had to go. I took two, and obviously this one has flowered! It's about twice as big since I took the picture. I'm moving it around with the sun in the hopes that I don't get a bitter pineapple when it's finished growing.
I also HAD a fair few beans growing. They were doing wonderfully under the chicken wire, and then I got lazy. I didn't tie them up to a stake in time so they rotted at the base of the stem for being flopped over too long. Dammit. I take this as my karma for calling in sick to work on Tuesday when I probably could have worked. I'm never calling in sick again. Unless I'm dying. I will plant some more in today maybe, and see how it goes.

And yesterday I went and got some more potting mix, along with some turnip seeds. Apparently I can plant this particular variety right now. I might put them in with my carrots. I also might put some radishes in with the carrots - I've planted them at the moment all around a tomato plant, then I read that they are anti-companion plants. That'll be why most of them didn't even germinate! And the ones that did are crap!

Pizza night

We decided yesterday that it was about time for another pizza night.

This time the toppngs were: avocado, corn kernels, kidney beans, capers, kalamata olives, jarred jalapeno chillis, and the base sauce was made from cooked cherry tomatoes, onion, garlic and red wine. Mm it was very good haha. The bread was a little doughy because we got impatient while it was cooking, but it wasn't THAT doughy (like the first time I ever made pizza, in grade 8 in Home Ec class. MMMM raw flour.)

We also decided to splurge and put some vegan mozzarella on top. I had to buy Cheezly brand this time as my favourite little vegan store didn't have any teese mozzarella in :( we hadn't had the Cheezly mozz before (I think) and it was pretty much as nasty as we thought. It's ok cooked, but we could just eat the teese stuff! Oh well. It's also supposed to be 'super melting' but the pizza says otherwise. However, I had a toasted sandwich with copious amounts of Cheezly and some hash browns today and it melted all over the place. Maybe the pizza will need to be stuck under the grill for a little bit next time?

And holy crap it's so unbearably hot. Well obviously I'm bearing it because I'm still in the country and alive. But this morning I thought it a good idea to fix up my garden and plant more stuff, and it was a great idea until sweat starting pouring down my legs and into my eyes. I got most of what I wanted done, except sowing my mint seeds, but I can do that this afternoon when the sun goes away.

I bought two 40L bags of organic garden soil at Bunnings for $8.50 each because my soil is crap and so far I've dug one bag in. So as of this moment in my garden I have:

Herbs - basil, rosemary, thyme, parsley, lemongrass, garlic chives and regular chives, mint

Vegetables: hot chilli, sweet chilli, eggplant, tomatoes, purple carrots, purple climbing beans, butter beans, radishes, ginger.

I've put chicken wire over my beans to hopefully deter my cats from digging around in the nice new dirt they love. I am reaaallly looking forward to my carrots! I have put them in a nice deep window-box like planter box thing with potting mix with no lumps so in theory they should grow. Unless the cat digs it all up. Maybe I should chicken wire that too.

I'll take some pictures when it all starts sprouting. At the moment it's just a big black expanse of dirt with some wire and some stakes. :)



A minute to relax - 2 recipes!

I had a very busy weekend (I did a painting for a silent auction for donation to the Premier's Flood Relief fund thing and it took AAAGGGES) so it was nice to come home from work this afternoon and actually do something I wanted to do. (Not that I didn't want to do the painting! I just didn't have any chores tonight :)) I tidied my garden! I cut back more lemongrass (the stuff just grows and grows!) some flowers I have that were taking over, and I pulled out my basil because the above little buggers had demolished it all. I rescued enough for a pesto though! I have one bean plant growing (Bob dug up the rest, naughty cat) and I fertilised everything with seaweed and the juice from my bokashi bucket.

On Sunday after we went to the beach we made a light lunch. It may no look very exciting but wow it was delicious. The recipe is adapted from 'Australian Good Food' magazine, Jan/Feb 2011.

Barley and Pea Salad

Makes 4 small serves

2 tbsp olive oil

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

pinch of dried chilli flakes

Handful of mint, chopped

1 red onion, finely chopped

Rind and juice of a lemon

1 cup pearl barley

200g frozen peas

250g frozen broad beans

Mix all but the last 3 ingredients into a small bowl and set aside.

Cook barley as you usually do (I use 3 cups water per 1 cup barley, bring to boil and simmer for about 30 mins). In last few minutes add peas and broad beans. Wait for it to reboil and cook for a minute.

Drain barley mix and return to pot or put in a bowl. Stir through dressing and serve!

To make this go further you can add tofu or seitan or something.

On Sunday evening I decided to make something for work lunch/snacks. I've been wanting to make my own muesli bars for ages since store bought ones almost always contain honey or milk powder, or are coated in yoghurt or filled with sugar, or hideously expensive *breath*, and of course are all individually wrapped in plastic and cardboard and printed and etc. Useless wastes. So I came across this recipe that I used as a base for my own bars! Let me tell you, they are the best muesli bars I've ever had. I had one with toast for breakfast this morning and I wasn't starving like I usually am by morning tea.

Homemade Muesli Bars

Makes about 14 bars

1 cup rolled barley

1 cup rolled rye

1/4 cup unsweetened dessicated coconut

2 tbsp chia seeds (black or white)

2 tbsp sunflower seeds, lightly bashed in a mortar and pestle

1/4 cup chopped dried cranberries

1/4 cup chopped nuts (I used almonds and brazil nuts)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

--

1/4 cup rice syrup*

1 tbsp molasses**

1/3 cup tahini

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

In a small saucepan, bring rice syrup and molasses to boil. Take off heat. Stir in tahini and vanilla.

Mix into dry ingredients.

Line a brownie pan with baking paper and turn the mixture into it. Get another piece of baking paper and press it all down flat.

Let cool and cut up into bars! I had mine in the fridge before I cut them up and they crumbled a bit. I'd cut it up at room temperature next time.

*Rice syrup is my new honey. I swear to god, it looks like honey, tastes like honey and is as sweet as honey. It even burned my throat a little when I ate a teaspoon, like honey. I don't think it has the same antibacterial properties as honey though ;) I bought this brand.

** I didn't have any maple syrup as stated in the original recipe so I used what I had on hand. Maple syrup would be better.

I've also been making yoghurt :) Proper yoghurt with probiotics and everything (except the dairy). I'll take a good photo of my next batch. The last one looked like vomit. As yoghurt tends to do. Haha. Another storebought vegan alternative that just doesn't cut it for me (SUGAR!!!). The cheap-cheap easiyo yoghut maker called for me at Woolworths!

Finally some sun

This weekend has been the first sunshiny weekend since I can remember so I took the oppurtunity to go and repair my tiny little garden and nearly walked into this lovely spider and a baby her teeny tiny man-friend It had created a huge web stretching from my hills hoist clothesline to my lemongrass, which reached my waist. So I left it there and went around (through our lawn which also almost reaches my waist) and weeded and planted some new butter beans.

Bob glared while we had iced soda water and lemon on the back stairs.

Speaking of lemongrass, it was growing over the footpath so I cut it back and am drying it on the back of our kitchen door. (We share the yard with neighbouring units). When it's completely dry, I chop it up in tiny pieces with some scissors, and put it in an empty spice container. 1 tsp makes a good cup of lemongrass tea. Grate some fresh ginger into the pot and it's the best lemongrass and ginger tea ever :) My lemongrass seems to be loving the Brisbane climate. Almost as soon as I planted it out from it's pot it took off. When I figure out how to harvest the stalks, I'll use it in cooking. Ha.

We had a delicious lunch after gallivanting around to shops to buy storage stuff. We now have a shoe rack. It's magnificent. Anyway I made Robin Robertson's 'Very Veggie Burger's from Vegan on the Cheap a while ago to have on sandwiches for work. I didn't really like it because they are too soft, but I thought maybe they'd be better freshly grilled and hot on a burger bun. They are definately better eaten right after cooking! Haha. We had it on wholegrain bread rolls with a spinach/kale salad mix, red capsicum, tomato, kalamata olives, basil pesto and tomato sauce. I also cooked up some potato chips on the side :) I sliced up 1 small potato with skin on each into chip shapes, steamed them until they could be pierced with a fork and then fried them til crispy in a bit of rice bran oil. Pretty damn good.

I am baking some bread right now. If turns out good I'll post it :) This is my third time attempting bread by hand. The last 2 times the bread tasted fantastic but was like a brick! We ate the whole lot at once. This time I'm attempting a sandwich loaf. If it works I'm going to be so excited haha.

Obligatory 2011 resolution post?

I never make New Years resolutions. Well, I lie, I make half hearted suggestions to myself and immediately forget them!

Every year since I can remember I've said 'This year I'll go to the beach to swim more'. And every year since I can remember I'll go to the beach once, remember why I don't like it very much, get sore ears and sand up my bum and come home and don't go again until the next December. So I think that's a pretty useless goal isn't it? Haha. Maybe if I don't tell myself to go, I'll actually go more often? I do like the beach, I just have to remember to get out of the water as soon as my ears start hurting, and learn to ignore the sand. It's kind of unavoidable. (Though in Nice the beach was made of round rocks and pebbles – brilliant idea, France!).

Going to the beach is hard from where I leave. Though we are in a coastal city, the nice beaches are an hour's drive away, no matter which direction I choose. (I generally choose North – we went on a short holiday to Noosa beach at the beginning of last December [2010] and it was fantastic even though it rained everyday. Queensland also seems to have turned the beach showers back on so the sand can go away sooner now ;)).

So, this entry isn't about the beach, funnily enough. I've decided to make a few goals for myself for 2011. I'm older and have more self control now, so maybe it'll work out well :)

• This one seems to be popping up everywhere. Spend less money. I don't really spend that much money (or I thought I didn't) but my savings account has whittled down to zero too many times that I really need to not spend. Seems obvious doesn't it? Besides, big things to buy will be coming up soon. Car. House, maybe one day. If I have no money then that won't happen will it?
• I aim to cook more of my own recipes this year, so I can post actual recipes on this blog for people. How boring is it when you just see a picture of someone's lunch? This isn't a food diary! I don't particularly want readers to think I have some sort of eating disorder.
• This one ties in with the first, make more of my own clothes, and try to only buy second hand materials and other supplies. Vintage fabrics can be very expensive (I just blew $70 on two fantastic curtains from the 70's!! I have been looking at them for months, and still wanted it, so I think I can validate that purchase*) but recycling is very important to me. Most of my clothes now are from op-shops or vintage stores and I like them. What's the point of making my own clothes out of new, expensive, probably sweat-shopped fabrics? I have vast amounts of fabrics in my sewing room now anyway. Use that before I buy more!
• This one is more of a joint goal since we both share house responsibilities. Keep on top of dishes! And cleaning! We don't want our home to be turned into an episode of How clean is your house? We aren't dirty people, but with a tiny kitchen sink from the 50's, dishes do tend to pile up and take over the country, you know?
• Another one that pops up all over is to get more exercise. This doesn't apply to me as my job is pretty much 8 hours of movement (ie. Exercise). So getting more exercise in a 40 hour gym week is useless. However since I am moving so much my muscles – legs, back, arms, neck, you name it – need help. So yoga is this years goal. I used to do yoga 6 days a week before I crashed my bike and hurt my wrist and leg, and even though they have been fine for a number of weeks now I haven't bothered to pick it back up. (Which is silly because now is when I need it most!) I fully intend on paying for a weekly yoga class to help me along. Most places seem to do Saturday sessions, which will fit in perfectly.

So that's it. I think that's doable. We'll see next January, huh.

I'll leave this blathering entry with my favourite picture from 2010!

Every year is a new start!

*The curtains are two different patterns. One is going to continue to live as a curtain in our living room, and the other is turning into an awesome dress when I can find appropriate patterns :)

School's over!

As the title implies, I finished my last class at tafe today! Hooray! Now I have a Certificate 3 in Horticulture (assuming it gets sent to me in the mail) which is very exciting. It means I'm qualified...for stuff. Hmm. It was quite an anti climactic end to the semester. We don't get a 'graduation' or anything. Oh well - I passed and that is all that matters. What am I supposed to do now? There's nothing to procrastinate for! Relax, I suppose.
I do have a job - I've left the fruit shop and got a job at a large production nursery up north a little ways. It's not particularly exciting (I'm a nursery hand on the maintenance team - weeding, pruning, you name it) but I really like it. It's hard labourious work usually in the full sun, but I enjoy a challenge. Never drunk so much water in my life. At the moment I'm doing 2 days per week but I'm almost 100% sure I'll be full time after the little holiday we are going to take. I should find out the major details of that tomorrow :)

Anyway enough of the boring stuff.

My sage is starting to look lovely! Almost as soon as I potted it when I bought it it pretty much died. It just shrivelled away and now it's just suddenly exploded with lovely leaves which smell and taste amazing.

My tomatoes have all got little tomatoes hanging off them now. Some even have 2 or 3! I'm very excited for a tomato. It's been windy lately but none have toppled over yet. Though today I will stake them I think, just in case the wind gets worse. I don't want to lose them before I get to eat them!

Nadine cooked the other night and made this amazing 'Peanutty Pumpkin Stew' from Vegan on the Cheap by Robin Robertson. This book wins the prize for being the most used recently! This stew was so good. So so good. She made it with black quinoa as a base but we had leftovers another night and I cooked up some millet grain as the base instead for something different. Both went equally as well with it. It's basically this very spicy satay-y delicious mess of vegetables and chickpeas. Yum. 

I also made a yummy dessert recently but I'll put it in a separate post because otherwise there will be too much on this one. :)

Monster Salad and cake

I don't tend to like salads very much. I love potato salad and pasta salads though, nice big bowls of carby goodness! When I go out to a restaurant for dinner, I usually assume that a salad will be the only vegan option - usually even salads aren't a vegan option, they are either covered in eggy milky mayonaise, creamy dressings, cheese, or pieces of decomposing cows, chickens, pigs and or ducks! Who puts meat in a freaking salad? Don't even get me started on the other vegetarian options so loaded with cheese you'll have a heart attack just looking at it...!

ANYWAY, today I was planting some beetroot seeds in the garden (I planted some a few weeks ago just before the rains came so I think they rotted before they sprouted) and I noticed 1 radish was ready to be eaten, and that I had millions more butter beans since yesterday! So I harvested it all and wanted to eat it. There's no better way to eat freshly picked radishes and beans than raw, so I decided to make it into a salad.

And damn was it GOOD!

The massive bowl full includes: kale, a large handful of butter beans, 1 sliced spring onion, 1 cob of fresh corn stripped of it's kernels (best way to eat corn!), the 1 tiny radish, 1 tomato, the leaves of the radish, 1 tbsp avocado oil, 2 tsp balsamic vinegar and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and some black pepper.

Argh I just remembered I was going to put some fresh parsley and basil leaves in it too but I forgot. It was still delicious without them though! The avocado oil and corn mix really well.

I was struggling to finish it by the end, but I managed :)

Since it'll be summer soon, I'm going to try and eat raw at least once a week, or every lunch or something like that. There's nothing quite as refreshing (except perhaps a mojito in Spain) and if I keep getting beans, this type of salad will come up often :)

Yesterday I had a bit of an accident while riding to tafe on my bike! I thought I would make it over this tiny little gutter (actually I knew I wouldn't make it but went anyway) and I hit it at the wrong angle and completely stacked it on the concrete! I've ended up with a twisted wrist, bruised shoulder bones, bleeding knee and bruised swollen ankle. What a freakin pain the the ass!

I still made it to school and all the way home on my bike though which is good. Apart from the falling, it felt really good to ride all the way. I've been trying to ride to school a few times lately, but it's mostly failed. The first time I tried I nearly fainted and died (time of month = very low iron levels), the next time I got too hot and ended up with a little bit of heat stroke...so on and so forth. But this time I just kept going! (There's a huge big hill, but once you get over it it's all downhill from there!) So falling and hurting myself has ruined my endeavour to ride to school every day this week. I'll have to start again next Tuesday. Argh!

SO I decided to stay home from school today (I think driving would hurt my shoulder) and I baked myself a big ass banana cake.

I have used this recipe maybe 4 or 5 times now and it's still amazingly good. Everyone I've served it to loves it. I don't even like cake! Or bananas! I found it somewhere on the internet. It's a pretty basic recipe that I have tweaked a tiny bit.

Vegan Banana Cake

Serves 8 (or 2 pigs like us!)

Ingredients

2 cups whole meal flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup raw sugar (this time I used about 1/2 cup raw vanilla sugar* and filled the rest up with dextrose**)

1/3 cup unrefined coconut oil (this is the type that tastes like coconut)

3 ripe bananas

1/4 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla essense

Method

In one bowl, stir together the flour, salt and baking soda.

In another bowl, whisk or beat the sugar and oil together. Mash in the bananas and add the water and vanilla. Stir well.

Plonk the dry ingredients into the wet ones and stir until combined. (Mixture may be quite thick - every time I've made this I've used a different type of oil. This one is the best so far.) Pour into a lightly greased springform cake pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean, in an oven at 180 degrees C.

Let cool for minute and serve!

Sometimes I make up a 'cream cheese' icing using tofutti better than cream cheese, or simply sprinkle icing sugar (powdered sugar) on top. It doesn't need any topping at all unless you feel like it :) The cream cheese one is the nicest, though, but my local supermarket stopped carrying tofutti, which is probabaly a good thing...

*When I buy vanilla beans to use the seeds I just put the pods in a jar of sugar. It will taste of vanilla almost instantly!

**I'm trying to use up the last of my dextrose because I want to use real sugar again...or stevia or something. Dextrose is a bit too processed for my liking. I'll have to research it a bit more I think!

I had this a little while after my monster salad with a cup of freshly brewed Italian plunger coffee with a glob of So Good Vanilla Bliss ice cream in it :) I'm not a big coffee drinker, but I like it with cakes and muffins and cookies etc. I also usually drink it black with no sugar but my lovely Nadine bought me the ice cream last night when I was in my invalid state :) Aawww <3

A pictorial update of my garden - busy busy :)



Sweet basil - is very very healthy and happy right now :)



Soy bean flowers! Aren't they adorable?



Most amazing thing I've ever seen - huge angry wasp diving straight for a huge caterpillar on my soybeans that I didn't even see. It laid it's eggs in it. That is a beneficial.



First beans of a season :) They were tasty.



First purple climbing beans will be ready soon.



My garden is thriving...

...after the straight week of lovely rain we've had!

It amuses me, this rain phenomenon. There has been a loooongg drought here for the past few years (I'm not sure how I'd put a number on it) but this year (and the year before last) our wet season is a wet season again.

When it rains here it bloody pours, and keep pouring until the sky runs out! Floods everywhere, a fair amount of destruction, wondering whether the end of your street is under water and you'll be able to get to work or not..! For me, this year was tame. I didn't once have to call work to say I couldn't drive through the gushing water! (Though if I had I would have been quite ashamed - a lady I work with had to drive for 2.5 hours to make it to work on time, in a 4wd, through flood water. Yes.) However, the year before last I was living in another flat (though in the same suburb) and a dam or creek or river broke it's banks in the sheer amount of rain that we were having! I wasn't home, but my flatmates car got filled with water and actually floated away. Ha. Lucky I wasn't home because my car would have floated away too! (The neighbour was saved by an old fridge that was under the block of units that had floated/crashed through his fence and lodged itself over the stairs by his front door!

Anyway enough about that stuff. The point was that the garden loved the fresh water.



Butter beans and their flowers are growing strongly!

I am so excited to have my own vegetables. It's going to be a tiny but productive little garden plot.

Food update and my first radishes!

I've just started my new job (it isn't very exciting - i'm just a checkout operator at a big fruit and vege shop) and I now literally have no time to do anything.  So I've just been taking pictures of what we've been making. Nadine works a lot too so it's mostly re-runs or easy stuff.

Today I had the day off (yay!) so I made muffins. These muffins in fact. I thought I wouldn't like them because I'm not a big fan of cooked apples, but they were really delicious! I used rolled spelt instead of oats and whizzed them in the blender to try and make meal. It didn't reaaalllly work, but once cooked it added a chewy texture to the muffins. Pretty good :) I served it on this beautiful Japanese china dinner set my mum gave me (it was nana's) but I had coffee in the little teacup and it seemed wrong.

 Spicy beans and olives on pasta swirls...

 I bought a nice eggplant from work because they were really cheap. We made eggplant cutlets (big thick slices fried lightly til soft) with tomato sauce and olives. I made mashed potato and parsnip - amazing. The parsnip managed to make the potatoes coconutty.

My first radishes! I picked the one on the right way too small but the others are alright. They are so much sweeter and more moist than store bought!

Garden update :)

My radishes are powering on! They are almost ready to pull out and eat! Well this one is anyway. All the others seem to be lagging a tiny bit compared. I'm pretty excited. They have had aphids on them (apparently common) so I've just been checking every day and squishing them. Also had a few caterpillars but they weren't doing too much damage. Radishes are such fast growing crops that control is rarely necessary.

They do not transplant well! Those few that I had doubled up on and moved have pretty much had it. They are waaayyy behind all the others.

I've have sown some more radish seeds in a container, one of which has already sprouted, after 3 days! I'll keep sowing them sucessively until I get sick of them I think.

The capsicum seedlings are all doing well - particularly the ones I planted in the old maragarine container. Noticeably. Hmm, who knows why! They are all doing ok though. I of course have way too many (I don't think anyone needs 30 capsicum plants!) but I'll let them go a fair while longer before I start throwing out the weaker ones.

A few I already have to repot - the ones in the cell-pack punnets. Their roots are coming through the hole in the bottom. I'll wait a little longer (maybe a week or so) until I do it though, because that's when I'll have some money to buy more potting mix.

Downside to the potted garden - buying potting mix all the time.

I resuced these banana chillies from a nursery I was doing work experience at. They were practically dead, elongated from being in the cell-pack for too long. Now look! They have flowers all over them and they are giving me nice yellow chillies. Of course the plants are still small so the chillies are also small but that's ok. There will be many of them! I'll need to stake them soon too. They are leaning back a bit too much for my liking.

Most of my tomato seeds sprouted, but most of them went a little rotten. However 5 seedlings were good quality so I've put them into little tubes I had left over from a trip to the nursery. I'm excited for tomatoes - buying them in the shop is so expensive.

My lonely little pea plant...only ONE pea germinated from 9 that were planted. I read the packet and realised I bought a winter pea variety. Dur. It's just too warm. So this one is slowly plodding along - hopefully I gt a few peas.

All my other beans are doing ok - the purple climbing beans only 4 germinated out of 9 which is a pain, but I think that's because the ones that didn't are under the eave of the house and therefore don't get any sun. Also a pain. But the yellow dwarf butter beans are all growing, though I think my stakes will be too short. We shall see. I can always plant more later, they'll probably do better when it's a lot warmer.

Phew...that was an effort. =D I love my gardening. I'm hoping to buy seeds of different vegetables soon - beetroot, eggplant, zucchini. All of which can grow in pots. I've also dried some cucumber seeds from a cucumber I ate. I'll plant them when it gets a tiny bit warmer and see how they go.  

Lemon thyme polenta with roasted vegetables and brown rice pudding

So I noticed the other day that I wasn't being diligent with dead-heading my little viola flowers I grew from seed in a window-box...and a fair few of the flowers has gone to seed! I have never seen it before so I took a picture. I then picked this open seed pod and planted the seeds in a new pot...I hope they were ready. Judging by the fact that the pod has split open and the seeds are dry and hard, I guess they are ready :P I might put a little step by step how-to of germinating seeds soon...I think it's handy to know. And growing from seeds is so satisfying!

Nadine cooked last night and she whipped up this delicious recipe from Vegan Italiano (lots of nice warm-weather recipes in it). It's Lemon-thyme polenta with roasted vegetables. Amazing. Though the veges took a million years to roast (I think this is because we have a gas oven - I have always had issues with my gas ovens and roasting) the end result was yummy. It's basically polenta cooked with a squeeze of lemon and a spoon of thyme then spread out and set firm. Grill it on both sides til slightly browned and crispy. Serve the roasted veg on top! The veg were marinated in olive brine and balsamic vinegar. Mmm...

And for dessert tonight I made the Brown Rice Pudding from Organically Me. I thought I should make it before the weather got too hot...It was pretty damn good! The almonds provide a nice crunchy contrast to the chewiness of the brown rice. Mmm. I always forget the rice pudding gives me stomach cramps though! And I didn't have any garam masala so I just used allspice instead.

Recycled newspaper seedling pots!

I found this great idea a little while ago.

We get hideous amounts of junk mail (granted, most of it is shiny horrible catalogues which you shouldn't use) but there's always a 'newspaper' or news-like catalouge, which are just fine.

You can make little seedling pots out of sheets of newspapers, and then just plant the whole thing right in the ground! It biodegrades quickly and the plants grows up happily. The same thing can be done with toilet rolls which are plentiful. Everyone uses toilet paper.

With the toilet roll pots, I bent over the edges at the bottom to make it a smaller hole, and put in some kitty litter (we put used stuff under the stairs/in garden. It's compostable) for drianage at the bottom before putting in potting mix. Plant you seedling and away you go!

In there is also an empty (washed) container of nuttelex margarine. We may as well use them too...I pounched about 5 holes in the bottom with scissors for drainage. Drainage is very important.

And to think I was thinking about buying up some plastic seedling tubes! Shocker. Ha.

Anyway, the above picture are my cpasicum seedlings that I've pricked out so far. The toilet rolls are in the tupperware container to help them stay upright. I intend on filling up the window box tray with the newspaper pots (also to help them stand up).

The only disadvantage that matters is that you can't just leave it out in the rain...they'd disintegrate way too quickly. So I've just put them under the eaves where the rain doesn't fall, and then I can control the water that goes on them :)

I'm surprised I got such a good success rate with my capsicum seeds, especially considering it was just a regular conventional supermarket capsicum. Hopefully some of them continue on their merry way.

Vege Patch

I am a very good procrastinator. I have a research project due tomorrow morning and what am I doing? Updating my blog.

I had already planned to plant some beans, peas and radishes yesterday, but not only did I do that, I re did my entire patch!

It doesn't look like much now, but it will soon :) I live in a block of units so I've made do with a tiny little patch of dirt that I've made a little bigger by pulling out some grass. I wonder if I'm allowed to do that? Oh well.

I relocated almost all of my plants that were already there except the cauliflower (center back) it's growing very very slowly because it hasn't had much sun this winter. The sun is moving across now though and in spring/summer it will be full sun. I don't think they'll ever cauli-flower though, but I'll give it until they die :)

I've got lots of little chilli plants that I'm trying to rejuvenate, a few basils (which aren't very nice at the moment :( ) various other herbs in pots and some flowers. I've planted purple king climbing beans at the back on the tall teepee (left) and soy beans on the other side. I'm not sure if they climb. Peas in front of the soy beans and butter beans in front of the purple :) And I planted some radish seeds in the very front. Apparently they are very simple to grow and can be grown all year round - why then are they so expensive to buy in the shop?

Anyway Bob (our cat) decided she would like to dig a hole right in the middle of it just after I took this photo. GARgahghdajfeni. Luckily she didn't dig up any seeds...besides, who could stay mad at this?

Or this?

Or this??

I can't :) I may have to put up some chicken-wire though...I would like some beans peas and radishes, personally :) We also have bush turkey problems too...