Hi! Heather from Tea with Me here, in the Pacific Northwest it’s been a cold wet month, our spring isn’t ready to let go yet.  I’ve been making warm soups and stew often, keeping our bellies content and warm. When Clare asked for guest posts I leapt at the chance to share.  This is a dish I make to use up vegetables starting to go in the fridge and it’s so easy to make that I hesitate to even call this a “recipe” it’s more of a guideline, an idea if you will.

It’s brilliant in its versatility for any season – fall squashes and hearty winter greens or first season zucchinis and beans; really any vegetable works well. I’ve added red kuri squash and taken out the mashed yams underneath. I’ve added hearty kale instead of spinach and added celery and aubergines before. The amounts vary from time to time as everything is loosely eyed as it goes in. For example, normally I add a can of diced tomatoes and when I went to make and photograph for Clare, surprise, I didn’t have any; so in popped a small can of tomato sauce. It’s always a surprise on how things are going to taste with each pot.

The whole idea of this guideline is to use up any vegetables starting to go, so cut off those brown or soggy spots, use whatever you want and make a vegetable stew for your family. Perfect for those extra vegetables from the garden. Serve alongside with mashed yams and a poached egg on top for a hearty meal.

I serve in a bowl with mashed yams and a poached egg on top. Enjoy!

How do you use up those vegetables that are on the verge of going bad?

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Guest Post: Harvest Veggie Stew

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

1 hour

Total time

1 hour 15 mins

 

Author: Heather – Tea With Me

Ingredients

• INGREDIENTS
• 1 cup cauliflower florets
• 1 cup cubed zucchini
• ¾ cup broccoli florets
• ¾ cup cubed yellow pepper
• ½ cup chopped cooked frozen spinach
• 1 213ml can of tomato sauce plus 1-2 tbsp of water (or use a large can of diced tomatoes)
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-2 tbsp dried basil
• 1-2 tbsp dried oregano
• pepper
• salt
• Optional – poached egg and mashed yams

Instructions

1. I find chopping vegetables relaxing, am I the only one? So take time and chop everything at once, adding it to a medium size pot when you’re done. Add in your herbs and mix together; cooking on medium until things start to bubble before turning it down to low. Simmer until vegetables are cooked or if you’re like me, you accidently forget about them and they’ve been simmering away for an hour. Try not to do that though unless there’s enough water to simmer and not burn the vegetables.

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After a week in Queensland, visiting J’s family, we will be boarding a plane to Kathmandu.

We will have 30 days in Nepal.  The plan is to spend 3 weeks trekking in the Himalayas, and a week in Kathmandu.  We are going to visit friends of J’s, people who he spent close to  6 years risking his life with, climbing big mountains, long before we knew each other.  I think I have the best guide ever.

While I’m living it up in Nepal, I have some guest posts for you from some wonderful bloggers, some scheduled posts from me and I’ll be posting occasionally from afar.

But before I head off, I want to share possibly my favourite soup recipe yet.

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Ham, Vegetable and Barley Soup

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

1 hour 30 mins

Total time

1 hour 40 mins

 

Author: Clare – The Life of Clare

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 800gm Ham hock
• 2 carrots – peeled and grated
• 2 potatoes – peeled and diced
• ¼ pumpkin – peeled and diced
• 1 onion – diced
• Tblsp oil
• ½ bunch of kale – chopped
• 200gm soup mix
• ½ cup barley
• water
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Add onion to the pot with oil and fry until soft.
2. Add all other vegetables, soup mix, barley and ham.
3. Pour water in to cover ham.
4. Cook until meat is falling from bone.
5. Turn off, cool.
6. Remove ham when cool enough to handle, take all meat off the bone and return meat to pot.

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A few weeks ago, we had a friend come to stay from New Zeland, via Queensland.  She needed time away from her life, as most of us do every now and again.  And used our house as a refuge.  Once she’d booked her tickets to come and visit, she realised that she knew others not too far from us.

My friend’s friend, Ailsa, settled in Leopold after living the high life as a rafting guide all over the world.  Now if you know rafting guides, or Leopold, you’ll understand the strangeness of this occurring.  But lucky for me we share a common understanding of going from Outdoor Education to the suburbs. 

Ailsa gets precious little time alone, as most mothers do, so I was honoured when she agreed to spending some of that time with me.

Elk Horn Roadhouse is my favourite place for brunch at the moment, the menu is inspired and difficult to choose from. 

I felt nervous when I pulled into the car park, just off Wallington Road, like I was going on a first date.  Ailsa had nearly finished her coffee when I arrived, and I ordered a pot of Love Chai.  Three cups of tea out of a pot is ideal and allowed Ailsa and I time to catch up, to get to know each other. 

After perusing the menu, I decided on being indecisive and chose the Elk Horn Half & Half, Ailsa ordered the Corn Fritters. 

The half & half allows the indecisive, like me, to have a little of everything.  A small serve of poached Moriac free range eggs with either Istra pork sausage or Istra bacon, with half a serve of Elk Horn granola, local honey and Love Chai infused Drysdale goat’s yoghurt and fruit.

The corn fritters are served with Moriac free range poached eggs, a fresh black bean salsa, Drysdale Goats Fettina and a wedge of lemon, served on baby spinach leaves.

Ailsa’s phone beeped and she was alerted to the fact that her 9 month old son was awake and hungry, it was time for her to return to her motherly duties, only then did I realise that we had talked non-stop for two and a half hours.

It was one of those occasions where I felt like I could just be myself, we had engaging banter back and forth for two and a half hours and I can’t wait to do it again.  Thanks Ailsa.

How do you feel about making new friends?  Do you get that first date feeling?

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There is always some sediment left in the bottom of the barrel, this time though, I couldn’t bear to wash it out.  The smell of ginger permeated the shed, and so I poured it into a bottle and set it aside.

I knew that it had to go into a loaf of bread.  I’d been inspired by Celia’s (Fig Jam and Lime Cordial) Guinness and Treacle loaf, and thought I could do something similar.  Ginger beer and honey it was, and as it was going to be a reasonably sweet loaf, fruit was added too. When feeding up Maggie in preparation for this loaf, we used equal cups liquid to bakers flour (166% hydration), this is where we used the ginger beer.

Do you ever find that you just can’t throw the left overs of something out?

Ginger Beer and Honey Sourdough Fruit Loaf

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

40 mins

Total time

50 mins

 

Author: Clare Reilly – The Life of Clare

Ingredients

• 300gm ripe Ginger beer sourdough starter (166% hydration)
• 650gm cold water
• 50gm honey
• 300gm mixed fruit and nuts (I used almonds, macadamia nuts, cranberries, raisins and dried apricots)
• 18gm salt
• 1000gm bakers flour

Instructions

1. Mix sourdough starter, water, honey, salt and fruit and nuts.
2. Then add flour. Squelch until there are no dry bits.
3. Cover until doubled in size.
4. Split into two round loafs, “slash with panache” (making cuts into the top of the loaves).
5. Bake at 220 degrees Celsius for 20 mins and then turn oven down to 175 and cook for a further 20 mins.

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…there is our garbage system. Not perfect, needs a little work but does the trick right now.

In my kitchen…

…is a basket of veggies. Our fortnights vegetable shop cost us $18. I love finding inventive ways to use up what we have left.

In my kitchen…

…Maggie sits patiently on the bench, frothing up in bubbling for her new adventure. A ginger beer and honey fruit loaf.

In my kitchen…

…is beautiful, fresh, locally grown meats. Or butcher is wonderful and completely open to our many questions about where everything comes from.  This weekend we bought their house smoked bacon, their cured ham hock, homemade cabanossi, and some sliced ham off the bone.

In my kitchen…

…yet another pot of soup sits boiling away on the stove. This time ham hock and mixed vegetable.

In my kitchen…

…a list of things to do before we go away sits on the table. It’s growing and having things crossed off daily. Currently on the top of the list is, purchase more chicken food.

What‘s in your kitchen this month? Head over to Fig Jam and Lime Cordial, where Celia is sharing what’s in everyone’s kitchens.

Our most recent bad experience was the worst yet.  It had me dry retching in the chook pen. Even now, to type, I have to take a deep breath to get those horrible memories of that day out of my head.

The smell was all consuming, I could taste it, I could feel it in the back of my throat.  The chook poo tea was a disaster.

We got this bright idea after buying horse poo liquid fertilizer from a girl up the road, where we buy the manure to dig into our garden beds.  She had it for sale for $2.50, presented in nice plastic bottles on her roadside stall.  There was no bad smell surrounding her poo tea.

So we cleaned out the chicken coop, put all the poo into a big bucket and filled it up with water.  We left it for weeks, stirring only occasionally, avoiding the inevitable.

The inevitable being, straining, collecting and using the foul smelling potion.

It wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined… IT WAS WORSE!

Armed with gardening gloves, a hose and each other, J and I got to it.  Pouring the rank liquid and it’s sunken solids through some shade cloth to retain the liquid gold was and a smelly, hair raising nightmare. After filling up the two containers that we had saved from the horse poo tea, we were stumped as to what to do next with the rotten water.

The only solution was to use it on everything that we had just planted. We used (wasted) two buckets of this liquid fertiliser watering again and again what we had just planted (it had better do the trick).

When I was just about ready to wash the stink from everything, I felt some drops land on my face.  I HAD POO WATER ON MY FACE!  To which J happily responded, “Now I can call you poo-face”.

I quickly finished rinsing everything, all the while wishing that it would rain, so that the stink could be washed from our garden, and then went to wash myself off.

It was an experiment we will not be trying again. Instead we have covered the chook pen, about 10cm deep with pea-straw.  This way, the chickens will work for us, not only giving us eggs but also making our compost.

Our garden is a very important aspect of our new lifestyle, one that aims to be self-reliant. We plan to grow enough to sustain our vegetable needs and even trade with others for a little variety. This post shared what we had planted for the winter. Some took off, and sadly others didn’t make it.

Beetroot, silverbeet, the peas and beans will be a bumper crop throughout the cooler months. I look forward to roasted, pickled and raw beetroot. The peas and beans will be bursts of fresh in our hearty winter soups and stews. And the silver beet will be a lovely addition to breakfast, soups, stews and J’s favourite spinach, ricotta and feta pie.

The carrots, broccoli, parsnip, coriander have all been eaten, right down to the ground. I’m not sure if it was birds, snails or slugs. It made me so excited to see their shoots bursting out of the ground, then one morning, I was heartbroken to find nothing. Do you have any tips? I’d love to do something organically, something without chemicals. I have heard a beer trap is good for snails?

There are still something’s growing left over from summer. The broccoli florets are flourishing, but are covered in healthy looking green caterpillars. I’ve heard a garlic spray will get rid of them, but for the moment I’m happy to pick and wash them off.

The perennial additions to the garden, the chives and spring onion continue to thrive, and make great additions to freshen up our winter fare.

Across the 5 spaces we have designated for vegetable growing, we are growing a variety. We are yet to plant out our onions from their seed raising mix, but it will have to happen in the next few days.

There won’t be much action in our garden over the next month, but everything will keep growing, without our watchful eye, and a good dose of winter rain.

What’s happening in your garden this month?

Mary Bond is my grandma, my mum’s mum. The slice mentioned is light and fluffy, crispy and browned on top, with tender bites of apples nestled throughout the slice, a recipe that I have also baked hundreds and hundreds of times.

The Herald Sun has contacted Grandma and they are going to re-publish the recipe, but I thought I’d share it with you guys first.

Update: here is the re-published recipe. Printed in The Herald Sun Thursday 30th of May.

Apple Slice

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

50 mins

 

Author: Mary Bond

Ingredients

• 3 apples – peel, cored and cut into 1cm chunks
• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 125 gm butter – melted
• 1 egg

Instructions

1. Add apples, sugar and flour to large mixing bowl, combine.
2. Add butter and egg, stir until well combined.
3. Press into lined slice tray.
4. Bake 180 degrees for 35 – 40 mins.

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The Buy Bellarine Produce barn is where we buy our fruit and vegetables once a week. The market is only open on Saturday’s and only supplies locally grown, seasonal produce. We buy only what they have there, and this is all that we eat throughout the week.

Some weeks this means that we might live off a bunch of kale and a pumpkin, others we have an impressive variety.

For some reason, this week we were abound with carrots.

This recipe with an impressive selection of Moroccan spices and a touch of honey, is my perfect after school snack.

What do you do when you have excess of something? What’s your perfect after school snack?

Moroccan Carrot Dip

 

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Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

20 mins

 

Ingredients

• 2 cloves of roasted garlic
• 3 large carrots, peeled and chopped into large pieces
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp paprika
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp honey
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• Juice of 1 lime
• Sea salt to taste

Instructions

1. Boil carrots until very soft.
2. Drain well, return to hot, dry pan to dry carrots further.
3. Add carrots to food processor, with all remaining ingredients.
4. Cool and serve.

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