Summer's here, I'm getting there.

So it's Summer and I'm barely getting the rest of the vegie patches clear and putting the runner & bush beans in... but we have heaps of herbs, beetroot, lettuce coming out of our ears, celery and an a huge amount of passionfruits waiting to ripen.

We ran out of pesto the other day (shock!) It didn't dawn on me we had all the ingredients at hand until DH suggested it. I used plain and lemon basil, cashews, Parmesan and olive oil... er, can't remember what else.
It was GREAT! The colour was flippin' amazing! I used cashews because I wanted the pine nuts whole in the pasta dish.

The silverbeet/beetroot/lettuce/garlic/weed patch. Looking scraggly but very productive. Who has time for weeding?! I just about manage to keep my toddler and pre-schooler out of the vegies let alone stop them from copying me when I pull things out.

The re-vamped Strawberry patch. Since this pic (a month ago) the plants are tall and fruiting. Shame about that bane of my life -onion weed. grrrr!

Lettuce, celery and tomato bushes. I planted to the tomatoes as per Gina's instructions from Steve Solomon's book (Gardening When it Counts). I stripped the stem of all but the top leaves and made a ditch and duge it in lying down to have only those top leaves poking out of the ground upright. They've hardly needed watering and they're so healthy and producing like MAD! I'll be doing that every year from now on!

The garlic bulbs are small this year but the cloves are plump and pack a punch! I think these are the easiest thing to grow. I'm not sure if it's the done thing, but I always pull out the flower shoot that grows up from the stem. It only makes sense right? Why would you want all that nutrient and goodness going to the flower and seeds. It's what I do with everything else, pluck the flowers off or pick it before they bolt.

A few of the stems snapped when I was lazily pulling them out of the ground instead of doing it the right way. The beauty of that though is that they'll be perfectly fine there for another week or two ... or .. er...
until I dig it for the next lot of vegies.

Beetroot Beauties

I grew a few rows of beetroot. I normally don't as I don't eat it much (except sliced on burgers) but when I found a golden variety and a pink striped I knew it had to be better than the deep staining traditional variety. It was a mix of three colours so I still have the purpley ones too. AND JUST IN CASE YOU'RE THINKING "er.. they're a bit small!" THEY TASTE BETTER THIS SIZE! :op

 We ate the first lot grated in a salad with carrot etc. YUUUM!

Here you can see the lovely colour of the golden beet and stripes of the pink beet.

I boiled the larger golden beets until soft and MY GOODNESS they were sooo sweet and tasty!! Here's a definite beetroot growing convert.

Fresh fruited bread

I'm a sucker for cheap ripe bananas. There's just so flippin' much you can do with them! This time I decided to re-make the freshly fruited bread from "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" cookbook. I think last time I must have gone grossly overboard with the fruit as it was perfect! This time I went over what the recipe said but not enough. It's still irrisistable slightly toasted with butter and just a tad of honey to bring out the flavours.

I used dried dates, sultanas, mashed banana, grated pears and omitted the orange rind. I added extra lemon zest and juice and mixed the recipe with the sunflower millet bread below. The cooked millet that I added was a goodness booster.

The kids LOVED it and got excited to see kiddy sized slices of bread. I was suprised by that!

The texture worked out better this time as I kneaded it and let it rise an extra time. It made all the difference, no crumbling when slicing.
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Here's a pic of a cake a lady made (for a cake tin trade) for my son's birthday. Awesome!

Science@home

I am thoroughly enjoying reading Deb's Science@home blog. It's exciting and inspiring and full of practical Sciency things to do at home with the kids. I LOVE IT!

I particularly like her de-mystifying section on vaccines. Well worth the read.

I trawl through to find an activity relevant to our family for that day/week and it's great fun!

SCIENCE@HOME

I WON!

 Thank you Food Muster! I can't wait to try them on.

Mulberry irony

It's in stock and I haven't a CENT - ARGH!!! I've been waiting for months for this to become available. I would have a white one if they were a dwarf but they're not. Gotta think of stain minimization!

DWARF RED SHATOOT MULBERRY

So here's hoping they're still in stock in a fortnight when I'll forgo a few necessities and buy one. I hope I hope I hope!!!

{insert that word here} Powdered Pancakes

Yes, yes, I know it's pretentious but the word "perfect" in my opinion applies to these pancakes by Delia Smith. The way my mum used to make them. 

ANYWAY, ANYWAY.. today I had no eggs, no milk and a hankering for pancakes so I gritted my teeth and got out the powdered egg.

It's in packet mixed muffins, pancakes, pikelets, cakes so why not use it!? It's just totally foreign to our modern domestic kitchens but works fine. 

Now Delia's recipe says it makes 12-14 18cm pancakes. We have big ones so this recipe below is double the recipe and all powdered.

 Pancake mix

220g unbleached plain flour

1 1/3 cup full fat powdered milk

4 teaspoons powdered egg (sifted as it's lumpy)

I omitted the salt but you can put in a bit.

Melted butter for the end

Whisk it all together to get a well distributed dry mix. 

In the recipe it says an amount of liquid to add but if you're just using a cup's worth to make a couple of pancakes for yourself then just add as much water a bit at a time to make the batter like a single cream consistency.

For this double batch you'd need 100g of butter to melt then whisk into the whole mix but for a smaller amount e.g. a cup of mix, plus water to make batter then 2tsp of butter. Or something...

hey, it worked for me.