Minty Fresh

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Liz

I may have mentioned previously a side bed I have that is situated directly under next doors large Eucalypts.  Whilst I have successfully grown silverbeet in the bed there is little else that does well so I made the decision to plant it up with mints.  Into this bed I’ve put: Chocolate mint,

Basil mint,

Mint,

Vietnamese mint,

and Lemon Balm.

The bed also has some rogue potatoes coming up here or there which I look upon as a welcome addition (and I do enjoy a bit of mint in my potato salad so I think they are appropriate bed fellows.

Aside from my side bed I also grow mint in pots.  I recently bought a Spearmint

and a Peppermint

which I intend to grow in pots for the time being until see how much my side bed mints grow.  Of all my mints though I am most pleased with this one;

I think my fire experiment worked.  This plant had mint rust and one of the recommended treatments was fire.  I was a little concerned that I had killed the plant, but no, it is clearly reshooting.  I think its probably a little too early to know if I killed all the rust spores but so far so good.

As you have probably guessed I love mint, I use it in salads, rice paper rolls and in tea.  I have to say I use Vietnamese mint and normal culinary mint most frequently and so I would love some inspiring ways to use the other varieties.  I plan to have a play around with them as the weather warms and I eat more salads.  But I would love to hear from you – How do you use mint?

Share
Posted in Herbs & Spices | Tagged , | 23 Comments

Just a few seasonal ingredients including Broad Beans

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Liz

Last week I harvested my first handfull of broad beans for the season.

I do love broad beans – particularly double shelled broad beans.  There are two groups of broad bean eaters in this world, those who double shell and those who don’t bother and I fit firmly in the former camp.  While I have eaten decent dishes, usually involving Indian spicing, with broad beans that have only been shelled once I always double shell mine (unless they are really, really tiny).

I tend to use broad beans either in pasta dishes or in vegetable side dishes.  Last week I ate them for lunch with some freshly harvested potatoes and garlic.  I boiled the beans and potatoes.  Double shelled the beans when they were cooked.  I then heated a little bit of olive oil, sauteed the garlic, potatoes and beans in it and then seasoned with salt and pepper.  I do think a bit of salt really helps this dish along.

I’m sharing this meal as part of Thursday’s Kitchen Cupboard.  Its always great to see what else people have prepared with their harvest this week.

Share
Posted in Beans, Recipes, Spring Harvesting | Tagged | 14 Comments

Top 5 – Vegetables to serve with Burgers

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Liz

Now I have to admit this weeks top 5 is something of an after thought.  After 10 months of writing weekly Top 5s my inspiration is drying up a little.  I reckon I can finish the year but beyond that – who knows?  Any requests or ideas would be very welcome.

I don’t think anyone need think to hard to guess what we had for dinner tonight.  I was just clearing the plates away when my partner suggested this Top 5.  I didn’t have a nice photo of a burger so you will have to content yourself with the remains of Mr 3’s.  Be warned though 3 year olds and food are a messy combination.

The photo does give quite a few clues about this weeks top 5, although he’d eaten all his tomato by the time this was taken.

1. Tomato – Now various fast food restaurants would have you believe that you can eat a burger without tomato.  Well I guess you can but frankly who would want to?  Whether your burger is made from lentils, beef or chicken a couple of slices of tomato are a must and that’s even before you add any sauce!   Personally I add tomato sauce both in the burger mix (when making lentil or beef burgers) and after cooking but then I do like my tomato sauce.

2.Beetroot – I suspect this is quite an Australian addition but in my world beetroot is a must.  It needs to be the pickled variety and it needs to leave a slightly red stain on your fingers after eating.  Incidentally an Australian ‘burger with the lot’ would also include egg but that’s stretching the vegetable thing a bit too far, fruits I can pretend are veg but eggs?…hmm,  not really.

3. Cucumber – Like the beetroot, the cucumber should also be pickled, ideally with a bit of chilli for a slight tang.  Even the evil fast food giants realise that pickles are good with burgers – shame they make neither good burgers nor good pickles to go with them…

4. Lettuce – You simply must have a bit of green with your burger and lettuce fulfills this role admirably.  It is also very useful as if you overfill your bun, like I invariably do.  If you wrap the lettuce around the ingredients it helps to hold it all together.

5. Onion – I was tossing up here between onions and carrots.  I like a bit of grated carrot in my burger for sweetness but then I also like some fried onions for much the same reason.  When I make burgers I always have both but for the purpose of this Top 5 I’ll go for the onions, for the decadence mainly – carrot would just be too healthy and virtuous and you are eating a burger after all…

I know that you’ll have your own favourites.  I’d love to know what they are, and after that head over to the New Goodlife to check out her Top 5 for the week.

Share
Posted in Top 5 | 28 Comments

Monday Harvest – November 5th 2012

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Liz

I harvested the first of my broad beans this week.  I always get a bit excited by broad bean harvests – they are one of the last truly seasonal crops, best enjoyed cooked soon after harvest.  Aside from frozen you can really only get them here for a brief period in Spring and even then they are only really available at markets or of course from your own garden like these ones:

I cooked them with some tiny potatoes and some fresh garlic.

I don’t know what to think about my garlic this year, some of it is starting to die back – a month early in my opinion and frankly the heads aren’t really big enough to store yet.  They are great to eat fresh though, so I am enjoying pulling the occasional one and eat it with other Spring produce.

Everything seems a bit small at the moment.  This is my first beetroot harvest for Spring.  I sow beetroot seed in seed trays and then pot them on once before planting out so I do get a few bolting early (like these ones), as I think they prefer not to have their roots disturbed.  Its worth it though as I the turn around time in the beds is really quick growing them this way.  I reckon these couple have only occupied space for about a month.

Smaller still were these carrots.  Mr 3 recognised the foliage in the garden and decide to get himself a snack.  It took my longer to photograph them than it did for him to eat them.  I have suggested he waits a little longer before pulling any more – he’s unlikely to listen of course but you have to try….

Continuing the small veg theme was the first cucumber of the season.  I bought some Lebanese cucumber seedlings, as the slugs/snails got many of the ones I sowed.  In retrospect I think I probably both bought and planted them out too early as they seem to have rushed to fruit without much leaf growth.  I have taken off a few of their fruit to try and encourage a bit more growth.  This one was big enough to eat (just).

One thing that is putting on loads of leaf growth are my lettuces.  I harvest enough for a big green salad each day and still the leaves come.  Yay for lettuces is what I say!

For more veg (much of it a little larger than mine) head over to Daphne’s Dandelions and see harvests from around the world.

Share
Posted in Spring Harvesting | Tagged | 25 Comments

October 2012 – The Wrap Up

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Liz

October, for me, was about two things – planting and bolting.  I was either choosing which seedlings looked best for planting out:

or watching my winter and early Spring crops bolt.

     

The photos are a little difficult to make out but flowering in my garden at the moment are Coriander, Silver Beet, Bok Choi, Cavolo Nero, Spring Onions, Beetroot, Celery, Lettuce, Parsley and Watercress.  I plan to save seed from all of them but I’m hoping they hurry up as I would appreciate their space for other things.

More postively I also have some summer crops flowering.  My early sown Tiny Tim tomatoes:

potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, pretty much all of the  citrus and my broad beans are all currently blooming.

For all the flowering excitement October was really all about planting out.

As well as the tomatoes I also planted out sweet potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, beans, eggplants, golden nugget pumpkin, ginger & turmeric.

This is what the tomatoes looked like on planting.  They are much bigger now though.

and here is the zucchini;

By the end of the month it had begun to set fruit.  On the subject of fruit I am still happily watching my blueberries slowly swell.

Almost as exciting is the reappearance of the leaves of my Scotch Bonnet chilli (this chilli is a Cardinel/Bishop Cap style chilli known as Scotch Bonnet in Australia).

I tried to overwinter 4 chilli varieties; these, a birdseye, a cayenne and a long cayenne.  This was the second winter for the Scotch Bonnet and the cayennes, and the 3rd winter for the birdseye but thus far only the Scotch Bonnets have started growing again (and I’m pretty sure that the others aren’t going to).  I’m not sure whether to attribute this to last winter being a little colder than the previous one or birdseye and cayenne being a fairly short lived chilli varieties.  Anyone know?

Finally I had a request from a reader to include more shots so they could get a feel for my garden.  I found it harder than I thought – too much junk, and kids toys lying around.  So I thought I show it bit by bit.  Here is my potato bed which runs down one of the side fences.  It is overshadowed by my neighbours large Eucalypts but I’m hoping there will be enough light for potatoes.  The silverbeet (you can see it bolting in the shot) I grew here during Autumn & Winter didn’t seem to mind too much.

Share
Posted in Spring Planting | Tagged | 16 Comments