Today’s Vege Haul

While much of the country swelters under extreme heatwave conditions, we seem to be having a cool wave today, with temperatures only in the high teens C.  It feels rather autumnal, although we still have about six weeks of hot weather ahead of us.  We have had to hunt out the cardies, which is a bit of a change.  We had temps in the mid 30sC just a couple of days ago, and that is the forecast for next week as well, so we should make the most of this cooler day.

Our vege garden is continuing to produce nicely.  Today I had a little bandicoot around the potatoes in the tyres and found a couple for us to enjoy.  I think they are ready to harvest, but we will leave them a bit longer.  In the mean time, it will be nice to try these little few of our first ever home grown potatoes.  

There was a nice little variety in today’s picking.  As well as our first potatoes, we have our first egg plant, with several more coming along on the plant, and our first cob of corn.  Our corn is a bit of a failure this year.  This cob is rather thin and there aren’t many more coming on.  Oh well, just a small taste will still be nice.  The beans aren’t producing much at the moment, but we don’t mind, as it gives us a bit of a break from freezing them every couple of days.  There are lots of flowers coming on, so there will be plenty more in the near future.

Remember our two zucchinis, one that rocketed away and one that did very little.  Well they were both supposed to be “Black Jack” variety, but the one that had taken off wasn’t.  Initially, it just produced a lot of rather spiky leaves and a few little fruit that mainly shrivelled up.  We seriously considered ripping it out.  Now, all of a sudden, it is producing larger fruit, more like a squash.  I’ll try to pick them while they are fairly small and treat them like zucchinis.

Tonight we have left over chicken and mango curry (yummo), so we won’t be using these veges today.  However, we are looking forward to a meal including lots of fresh veges tomorrow night.

In the meantime, I will make a double batch of Zucchini Slice for the freezer.  A serve is the best thing to take for my lunch on our patchwork days.

The First Two Weeks of Stitching

Now that it is already halfway through the month it is time to see what I have managed on the stitiching front during the first two weeks.

My aim for January was to make some crumb blocks for the Chookshed Challenge and to finish appliquéing the remaining 40 hexy flowers.

In the first week I managed to appliqué a whole two hexy flowers.  Big effort…..not.

One day I decided to have a play with my crumbs.  The result was two red blocks.  Hopefully, I will manage to make some more, but if it doesn’t happen, at least I have something to show for the month.

I did get the twelve inch block completed for our patchwork group’s group quilt.  I’m pleased with how it turned out.  This was achieved during a Zoom sewing session.

In the second week I was somewhat more productive, partly due to the fact that my patchwork group met for the first time in the New Year.

I have made good progress with appliquéing my hexy flowers.  At the end of the second week I had a total of twenty completed.  I have my patchwork group again today, so should be able to get quit a few more stitched.  The goal to get them all done by the end of January is looking very promising.

So far, I have already missed three days of stitching for fifteen minutes.  I’m not worried.  It is what it is.

Despite only minimal machine stitching on the crumb blocks, there is already one empty spool to add to the jar at the end of the month.  That’s a good start.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

It’s that time……

The veges are starting to ripen and we have sufficient tomatoes to make some relish.  This is the condiment that we use the most, and we ran out towards the end of last year.  Tragedy, but it did meant that I supported some little craft shops.  However, I know I am biased, but we really do like ours the best.

The recipe says to peel the tomatoes, but I am lazy, so just chop them finely.  This year our pot contains large tomatoes, tiny tomatoes and yellow tomatoes.  They all work.  Also, the onions are from our garden.  You know they are fresh when they are rather juicy and make you cry lots.  Here are the tomatoes and onions sitting in their brine.  That was supposed to be done the night before, but I forgot.  So, it was done in the morning and sat all day, ready for us to make the relish in the evening.

When it came to adding all the other ingredients, after draining off the brine, I discovered that I didn’t have sufficient malt vinegar, which I usually use.  I really didn’t want to have to go to the shops.  No worries, we used the dregs of some apple cider vinegar, the remaining malt vinegar and then made up the rest with white vinegar.  Once again, it doesn’t matter.  The recipe is rather forgiving.

Ta da!  Our yearly supply of Tomato Relish, all ready to go.

If you would like to try the recipe yourself, here it is.  My cousin’s wife gave it to Mum years ago.  I believe it may be a CWA recipe. It says “will keep for years”, but it never lasts long at our house.  Yummy with scrambled eggs.

For metric conversion, I used 3kg tomatoes, 1kg onions, 750g sugar and 250g sultanas.

Trying a New Recipe

I have not made trying a new recipe each month one of my goals this year, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be trying new recipes.  Last night was my first one for the year.

This came about due to the fact that I had some frozen spinach in the freezer.  This was from the plants when we ripped them out in spring.  It was taking up valuable freezer space which we now need for beans.

The recipe I stumbled across is Beef and Spinach Cannelloni.  I’d never cooked cannelloni.  When it came to stuffing the cannelloni I decided that this will be a one off.  The recipe suggests using a piping bag, but that wasn’t going to work with the filling, so rather fiddly.  Mick came and helped and we had it all put together in not too long a time.  The sauce is really runny, but we figured that is to cook the cannelloni.

Well, it looked the part when it came out of the oven.

When plated up, the sauce had thickened to a really nice thick consistency and the flavour was delicious.  Despite being a bit fiddly, we have decided that I will print out the recipe and it will be made again…although not on high rotation.

Home Grown Veges Are the Best

Our veges are starting to come into full production, so it was time to use as many as I could for dinner last night.

In a baking dish I added a layer of red and yellow mini tomatoes, onion, garlic cloves, zucchini, beans, rosemary, oregano, parsley, basil and thyme, all from our garden. I then added red capsicum and pepper.  the original plan was to add chicken pieces, but when I saw that whole boned chickens were on special, I used that instead.  This one had a herb and garlic marinade, so there was plenty of flavour.

After baking for a bit over an hour, it was looking pretty good.

Simply served with mashed potato, it was delicious.

Guess what’s for dinner tonight?  There’s nothing better than leftovers.

I’ll be making this again and hopefully, next time I will be able to add some home grown baby potatoes to the mix.