Sunday, February 22, 2009

Green gunje anyone?



My basil is growing fast an furious so I decided to make some pesto to use it up. Here's the recipe:



4 cups of basil leaves, washed.



Blend with 1 cup of pine nuts, 5 cloves of garlic, 1/8of a cup of lemon juice, 1/2 cup olive oil and 1 cup finely grated Parmesan.



Voila! Green gunje!



Some of ours made its way into taglietelle alfredo for supper, the rest is frozen in ice blocks for later use.

Seedlings - and ways to recycle things!

I read about a wonderufl idea in the Shared Earth magazine (www.sharedearth.co.za) where you use your empty toilet rolls to plant seeds. So we tried this today.



And because its summer here, and very hot, on our way back from our MTB ride I normally buy the kiddos and icecream. We have saved the wooden sticks as seedling markers.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Bountiful harvest - well....almost!



This evening I picked and collected this from our garden:

1 small butternut
2 sun ripened tomatoes
Baby carrots
4 ripe corn
1 lonely beet
1 equally lonely patty pan
5 strawberries (they didn't make it to the photo!)
4 eggs

The veggies got roasted along with a yummy roast chicken for dinner.

The butternut went into this butternut dish:

1 peeled cubed butternut
5 sliced baby marrows

Coat in olive oil & herbal salt and roast.

Place a small dish of sunflower seeds in the oven until browned.

Cut up a cube of feta cheese and a handful of chives.

Mix together 1 T of mustard, juice of one lemon.

When butternut almost cooked, remove from oven, mix all together and enjoy!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Organization - seeds by season

Today there wasn't much that needed to be done in the garden so after some weeding and sowing of cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli I organized all my seed packets into season containers.

My wonderful mum brough back lots of organic seed from the UK last week for my birthday pressie....




So now that they are arranged in season sowing I need only look at the month we are in and choose a container.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Roast Vegetable Pizza

I made this scrumptious pizza for dinner tonight...Here's the recipe -

Pick some squash or any good roasting vegetables from your garden :-)



Chop them



Bake them at a high temperature after pouring over a mix of 2T honey, 1t garlic, 1t vegetable stock and 1T olive oil.



Put on top of your homemade pizza base (WW Flour, yeast, sugar, olive oil and warm water. Allow to rise for 20mins spread on a baking tray. Smear with tomato puree and sprinkle with oreganum)



Top with mozzarella chees, bake til cooked...



Enjoy!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Mama Roma

I love pasta...

I have had a small hand operated pasta machine for many years. We love making our own but if I must be honest it's a big schlepp.

BUT I recently had a birthday and my darlin' husband bought me a fabulous kitchen appliance that does everything - except wash the dishes :-)

My machine juices, mixes, blends, makes ice cream, makes sausage, minces, mills and makes pasta....tonight we made spaghetti and it took 1/2 hr from beginning to end and tasted divine!



Making pasta is child's play.



I can make macaroni and rigatone amongst others too! Thanks hubby!