Cheap cheap produce

Because I now have a job (woe! jk) that usually involves working Sundays (good thing = extra pay) I don't get to go to the farmer's market as often. I suppose I could go before I start work (market 6am, work 9am...) but I usually don't have the energy. So I go on my sundays off :) (Though I will probably start going before work starts. I need to get off my lazy ass.)

Anyway! Last Sunday I went, and I got a little excited about this bunch of beetroot.

This thing weighs a freaking ton and is about as big as two of my head. I was struggling to hold it up for the photo!

It cost me $3! 3!!! That's amazing. Loose beetroot (ie: without the tops, sold singly) usually costs from $4-$5 a kilo. I always bought those in the past because I was unaware that you could eat the tops (headsmack) and thus thought it would be a waste.

Except, now I don't know what to do with them. I was intending to juice most of it with carrots (yummm) but it's literally been pissing down with rain for a week and it's really not juice weather.

So now there are giant beetroots in my fridge waiting for me to use them. I am sure I will think of something :)

Also at the markets I went a bit crazy with the leafy greens. I bought a kohl rabi that had huge leaves, the beetroot greens of course, also a silverbeet and a bunch of kale (a different kind that I hadn't tried before - I prefer the curly leaved variety but it's still good). AND some dandelion greens because I like them. My fridge is full to bursting - luckily I can chuck it all in pretty much anything I cook because it all wilts down to pretty much nothing. I've been eating whole wheat pasta with sauteed random greens for lunches lately. It tastes good to me, and that's what matters.

The nicest thing about this market is that everything is organic - and works out to be so damn cheap! I literally filled an empty fridge for $23. That's one hour's work on a Sunday for me.

Go to your local farmer's market (they are everywhere - even in the middle of the city) to buy your fresh fruit and vegetables - it costs so much less than going to a supermarket, and the people probably picked it that morning or the day before - it hasn't been in cold storage for months before ending up in your fridge and on your plate.

So busy, everything breaks at once!

It's been a while! Our internet was down for over a week. It's amazing how much we depend on technology. We were pretty much lost, ha. 

I made a few yummies, mostly cheap re runs like bean curries and lentils and rice etc, as I found out I get paid fornightly and it leaves me without money for ages but that's okay. 

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.  

Another purple risotto!

Rainbow Risotto

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 cup arborio rice

1/2 cup vodka

about 5 cups stock, mixed up with 2 bay leaves and a teaspoon of dried basil left to simmer on stove

1 carrot, chopped

1 zucchini, chopped

1/2 red capsicum, chopped

1/2 cup frozen corn kernels

1/2 cup frozen peas

5-6 cloves garlic, chopped

Almost a whole 1/2 red cabbage

Sprinkle of nutritional yeast

1 tsp vegan margarine

Balsamic vinegar and lemon juice to serve

Method:

Fry all vegetables except the cabbage in a little bit of oil until just starting to soften. Put in the arborio rice and stir until slightly translucent. Add the vodka, stirring until it's all absorbed. Then continue to add stock until rice is almost cooked. Stir in the cabbage and some more stock and let cook until cabbage is slightly wilted and stock absorbed. If needed continue adding stock until rice is tender.

When done, stir through the vegan margarine and the nutritional yeast.

Serve on a plate with a squeeze of lemon juice and some balsamic vinegar if you like!

This is a great way to use up the last little bits of vegetables in the fridge, but you don't want to make a stir fry. This tasted really fresh and summery. Make it with whatever you have on hand!

For dessert we had this:

Also made to get rid of excess crap in the fridge/freezer. We had one lonely sheet of puff pastry left that was taking up too much room and a little bit of leftover strawberry sauce I made a while ago. I bought a tin of apricots yesterday - they were discounted to $1.50. I put them in the pastry, folded it over into a triangle and brushed it with melted vegan margarine. I even sprinkled sugar on top! (Well I actually use powdered dextrose instead of sugar but it's essentially the same thing. You buy it in the home brew section for about $3 a kilo. It's packed with carbohydrate glucose energy but doesn't have the bad-for-you part of sugar in it...or something like that. Don't quote me.) Anyway, I baked it and served it with strawberry sauce.

I am never making it again! It was delicious but waaayyyy too sweet for my belly. I feel sick now! I much prefer sweet pastries to be shortcrust...it was still good though :)

Mock tuna salad!

This is what some of my lunches have been this week...Mock Tuna Salad from here. I obviously had it with sliced raw vegetables...it's been hot this week here. In there I had: kohl rabi, carrot, cucumber and celery, all from the farmers market. The Mock Tuna Salad was awesome, I'll definately make it again. Texture-wise it was quite tuna-y, but not too much in taste which is good because I always thought tuna was icky. I could have made it more fishy by using more seaweed (I finely chopped up some nori for sushi), but this was fine for me!

Speaking of sushi, this salad would be really good inside it! 

Kohl rabi is amazing by the way. Every week at the market I buy one thing that looks interesting or that I really like. Kohl rabi has always intrigued me but I could never afford it! But this one was only $2.70. I didn't take a photo of it because I forgot. But it was bright purple. It tasted like radish, but without the spicy! Yum.

Nyah to those people who think I MUST be anaemic and calcium deficient purely because I don't eat animal products. This is what I choose to snack on a fair bit. It's may favourite way to eat kale. Very lightly sautee it in vegan margarine until it turns bright green. Grind some black pepper on top. Then eat! This time I added the greens from the kohl rabi. Pretty good - they tasted a lot like regular spinach. I find a lot of people think kale is bitter or tough, I don't think so...I also try not to cook it to death. But that's just me :)

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.