Eating

There was a time when I did all my food shopping in the supermarket.  It was convenient, everything was under one roof, I worked full time and usually went shopping after work.  I didn't want to use up too much time and thought that was the most efficient way to shop.  I would wander through the fruit and veg picking up whatever took my fancy, paying no attention to where it was grown and whether it was in season.  At home I would make whatever I could with the food I had bought usually by looking through my recipe books getting frustrated most weeks by the one vital ingredient I didn't have!  Over time I migrated away form the supermarket, but not entirely, to using a variety of different local shops.  I am aware that I have plenty of time to devote to my food shopping should I want to but I did manage to shop that way in a lunch hour when working part time.

Food is important to me, using good ingredients I always cook from scratch from necessity as I become ill if I eat too many preservatives.  I don't worry about five a day or seven or ten or whatever the latest research/advice is.  I think more about the overall week to keep our diet balanced.  I do this through planning, the basis of which is vegetables.  We eat a mainly vegetarian diet, I am vege and do all the cooking!  I buy meat once a month at a farmers market which I will cook about two to three times over the month.  At this time of year all our vegetables come from the garden for the rest of the year, a veg bag from a local farm co-operative.  I devise a menu of meals for lunches and teas from the available veggies.  At the same time I also plan (or try to) our weeks' activities so that I know how many picnics and quick meals for late days out to plan.  Any ingredients for our planned meals that I don't have in the cupboard go on a shopping list along with items that I have run out of that I don't buy that often which I record on a small blackboard in my pantry, a cupboard under the stairs that we have incorporated into our kitchen!

Planning meals focuses and reduces my shopping time,  I can do all in less than an hour, despite visiting several shops and having two children in tow.  My list keeps me focused especially in the supermarket, I am not tempted by offers, reductions etc unless they are on my list.  It is also saves us money as I only buy what we have planned to eat so every fresh ingredient gets used before it has a chance to go off and we throw away virtually no food.  What little does go off ends up in the compost bin or on the bird table.

One of the major, and in my book best, advantages of planning meals ahead is it has gotten rid of the twice daily dilemma of what to eat, but I still need to focus on our meals.  There is definitely a better flow to our days when I have thought ahead about which meal on the list we are going to have and what time we are going to eat, otherwise I have hungry children snapping at my heals as I try to throw a meal together which is not a great combination.  It is difficult to come up with lots of meals that are quick to cook so sometimes I prepare bits in the morning to speed up the cooking when we do get home.  This salad is a good one for that.  It is a recipe that I have forgotten the provenance of I have no idea where I read this or if I made it up but this is what I do, actually recipe is perhaps a little grand for this as the quantities are made up as you go along.....

Broad Bean Salad

Broad Beans
Feta
Fresh Mint
Olive Oil
White Wine Vinegar

I have not given quantities as it is really hard to work out the weight of broad beans from their pods.  The pile above yielded 110g of beans.

• Remove beans from their pods and steam for a few minutes.
• Put beans in a bowl of cold water to stop them cooking and to make them easier to remove from their cases.
• Remove cases and put in a bowl, I know this is a faff but for this salad the beans taste so much better.
• Chop enough feta into small squares so it balances the quantity of beans.
• Likewise with the mint. which you finely chop.
• Combine oil and vinegar 2:1 I used 1tbsp oil and 1/2 tbsp vinegar for this salad and drizzle over other ingredients.

Stir, eat and enjoy!

****************

So are you a menu planner or do you prefer to fly by the seat of your pants or somewhere in between?

Lunch

At the beginning of last week my husband returned to work as an employee having previously been self employed.  This has meant many changes in our house not least the fact that he is out the house for the same hours five days a week.  It has also meant that I have had to do more food planning and cooking.

I have been following with interest a story that has been in the news this week about school lunches, from next September all children in the first three years of school are to be given a free school lunch. This proposal follows a report commissioned by the government looking into getting children to eat well in school and to get them excited by food so that they want to eat it.  The reports authors spent a year on their research visiting schools, eating in them and talking to a wide sample of people.  I have read most of this report out of interest despite not having a child in the education system.  I agree with parts of the report particularly on pages 35 & 6 when they consider the decline in cooking in households in this country something I have written about in the past.  It was page 47 & 8 on the subject of packed lunches that made me both laugh and cry, they offer a suggested list of contents all to be made from scratch which would apparently be a Herculean task for a parent in full time work. As I am not in paid full time work I expect I am not qualified to comment, but as I am in unpaid full time mothering I had a wry smile at the list.

My husband is not a fan of sandwiches, he loathes them.  His return to work means that as he walks out the door at 8am five days a week he needs to have in his hand a lunch, a packed lunch no less, no sandwiches.  I have been planning our lunches for a while now but most of what I make would not work that well in a lunch box even with reheating facilities at work.  So now I find myself on most of those five days providing a second lunch for him and, as I am not willing to get up at 7am to make it, I have been preparing it the night before.  The first week this was a nightmare as I kept forgetting about it and felt like I was cooking for hours as I ended up making it after we had eaten.  This week I am better prepared and make it up as I cook our evening meal.  So to keep it simple at the moment the menu is:

1. Rice Salad
2. Sandwiches
3. Couscous Salad
4. Pasties
5. Pasta Salad

I know, I know I have sneaked sandwiches into the list!  I couldn't come up with anything else and I wanted at least one relatively easy night.  I made a batch of pasties last week and stuck them in the freezer along with several loaves of bread to make things slightly quicker.  The salads have had a variety of ingredients in them including, not all at once, peppers, cucumbers, chickpeas, fresh herbs, peas, courgette and tomatoes.  It will be interesting to see what he does if the children and I go away!

Busyness

Is that a word?  Whether it is or not it describes me to a t at the moment.  I am not in a manic state of running around, meeting myself coming back,  just busy with stuff and no time for blogging.  We have just had a week away from home enjoying a music festival sandwiched between a few days with friends.  It took a few days to cook and pack everything we needed.

We arrived home late on Tuesday and have spent the last two days unpacking, repacking and buying a huge amount of food.  The car is loaded up again and we are off to help out on an Explorer Scout camp for five days.  We always have a great time but I shall be glad to home again.

I have been away a lot in August and am looking forward to spending some quieter days at home in September.  My garden has been busy whilst I have been away, I have found the time to tend to it  in between my comings and goings and this has definitely paid off.  Despite returning home to an empty fridge and no fruit or veg the garden has provided all we have needed for meals these last two days.  The photo above was the harvesting for a delicious stir fry.

I will return again in September!

Lunch

A while ago I decided that I would extend my meal plans to include lunches too.  I had been wavering for a while, it felt like it would be a bit too organised most of my friends are impressed that I plan my evening meal as none of them do so to add lunches as well?  I can't believe I took so long to cross that bridge, I tried it for a week and it was the best move I have made in a long time.  It now means that I no longer have a 12 o'clock moment of oh my it is lunch time what are we going to eat and I have the ingredients in the house to actually make something interesting as opposed to sandwiches every day.

So recently I have included, omelettes, couscous or quinoa salads, soups, new, to me, homemade breads, homemade tortillas, buckwheat pancakes, cheese scones, bean salad and deep fried cheddar balls.  So many of these I would like to have made in the past but I did not have the right ingredients or enough time to make them but with a bit of forward planning our lunches are far more interesting, ready at a time when we are hungry and healthy!

Eating

I have been giving some thought recently to the ideal of a balanced diet.  What it is that I am trying to balance.  I am a menu planning sort of person.  I plan a seven day menu each week and buy the ingredients that I need to cook it, if I don't already have them in the house.  My plan is not for a specific meal on a specific day, rather seven days of meals which I then decide at some point each day which one I am going to cook, it is also only for the main meal of the day which we usually eat in the evening.

I came to realise recently that as I do not plan lunches that sometimes our meals, and therefore diet, were not very balanced.  Our lunches relied heavily on bread, coupled with cereal or toast for breakfast and if we had a meal like pizza for tea that was a lot of wheat and yeast in one day.  Bread and sandwiches is an easy lunch, one that I had come to rely on, it does not require any thought, the pre planning extended to making sure we had made some bread.  I was not planning on going gluten free or grain free but just reduce our intake of them a bit as they were starting to dominate our diet.  So if we were not going to have bread everyday what where we going to eat.  We are at home for lunch most days of the week and on most of those days I now have a 12 o'clock panic moment as I rack my brains to decide what we are going to have for lunch.  Sometimes there are leftovers in the fridge which are great for lunch, sometimes I make soup, sometimes omelette but it still feels hit and miss.  Yesterday I did not eat lunch until 3 o'clock because I forgot to give it any thought and then had the rabbit in the headlights moment.

Perhaps I should start a plan for lunches too but I am faltering, it feels like a step to far, a bit too rigid but maybe not.  If I did plan then it would free me up to get on with other things with the children rather than being preoccupied with lunch thoughts from about 12 o'clock onwards.  So I am going to give it a go for next week, it is not an atypical week we have friends and family coming to stay over the next ten days so it may take a couple of weeks before I feel it is worth it.  So if anyone had any great ideas for healthy vegetarian lunches I would love to hear them!

Eating

As a vegetarian who does not eat tomatoes I am often ask what do I cook/eat.  Whilst I realise that tomatoes are a good ingredient in vegetarian cooking I am sure that you would not want to be eating them every day vegetarian or not.  Tomatoes are good at adding bulk and liquid to a recipe, over the years I have become adept at substituting another ingredient, although there are still a handful of recipes I have that I have still not got the substitution quite right.  Many Asian recipes seem to be full of tomatoes which are often hard to substitute as they are one of few ingredients.  I love it when I find one that does not require any creativity and I can just go ahead and cook it.  I love chickpeas and so do my family, we love this chickpea dal and eat it about once a month.

Chick-pea dal

2tbs oil
Pinch chilli powder*
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp caraway seeds
250g chickpeas soaked overnight and drained
1/4 tsp tamarind paste
1/4 tsp salt
3 garlic cloves chopped
1 pt hot water

Heat the oil in a large pan over a medium heat add the chilli powder, turmeric and caraway seeds and cook for a few minutes.
Add the drained pulses, stir and cook for a few more minutes stirring occasionally.
Mix the tamarind paste with 2 tbs of water and add along with salt and garlic.
Add the hot water, cover and cook for 2 hours.

* or more if you like your food spicy!

I usually serve this with rice and or naan. Oh, and I don't eat tomatoes as I have a histamine intolerence and tomatoes are high in histamine.  If I do eat them then I have symptoms of Crohns a disease which I 'manage' by controlling my diet.

Eating

In the early days of this blog I posted about how little attention it appears some folks pay to the food that they eat.  Food that is convenient, cooked for you and has in some instances little in the way of raw ingredients that I would use.  I have been reminded once again of the reliance on convenience foods with the recent revelations in the media regarding certain meat products.  I am not one to eat this type of food I much prefer to make my own from scratch.  It does take longer and requires more thought but it is in my opinion tastier and, whilst I have no proof, I am sure is nutritionally better for you.

I have been pondering for some time why some people rely on these foods.  I know for many it is the convenience they lead very busy lives.  It is possible to be very busy, working long hours and still eat fairly well, if you have the money, there are some very good quality ready made meals that you can buy.  For some though I wonder if the convenience is because they are unable to cook.  To some of us it may seem unbelievable that anyone is unable to cook.  But if you grow up in a house where nobody cooks a meal from scratch how will you ever learn.  Cooking is a skill that is passed on from one generation to another.  I rarely if ever cooked when I lived with my parents my mother, however, cooked a meal from scratch every night.  When I left home I continued to do the same, it was the only way I knew how.

The abundance of ready made convenient foods is, I believe, further eroding a declining skill.  It's enabling those that have money to work longer hours and or be busy doing other things and then pop a meal in the oven or microwave when they return home however late it is.

For those on low incomes it is often cited as an affordable way to live.  It is cheaper than buying the raw ingredients and sadly in many cases it often is.  Although the ingredients that have been used are often dubious as has been demonstrated in the last month.  In the days before refrigeration their diet would have been other convenient foods such as bread which could be bought daily and at little cost.  The need for convenience was I suspect due to very basic, if any, facilities for cooking on.  Over the years and with the introduction of refrigeration the demand for cheap convenient food has not diminished and will continue to grow with each generation as cooking skills are not there to be passed on.

Eating

I have never been one for eating a diet consisting of processed food, of food made in a factory which is then packaged and sold ready to eat.  The last few weeks processed food has been in the news pretty much constantly starting with a revelation that products which were labelled as containing beef also contain horse meat.  Various investigations have ensued and further food has been removed from supermarket shelves as it contains meat that is not listed on the labels.  The supply chain for these products is bewildering and I could not make sense of this map at all.

Personally I prefer to buy, what little meat my family eats, from the farmer themselves or from the butcher in my village who labels all his meat with the farm they have come from.  This is how my mother shopped and I well remember, as a child, visiting the butchers shop ten minutes walk from their house.  This butchers is sadly long gone.  The meat I do buy is most likely, I have never compared, more expensive than the meat sold in the supermarket.  I personally would prefer to pay more for meat that I can be sure of its provenance and has travelled few miles.

I keep hearing that it is the consumer that is going to loose out, that the price of food is going to go up.  My argument is that surely that is what has caused the problem in the first place.  Good quality beef is expensive, as I would expect it to be rearing a cow is expensive.  Beef is only eaten two or three time a year in this house because of that.  So in order to make products containing beef cheap how do you keep the costs down?  I guess it has been bulked out with other ingredients which we now find includes horse meat.

One of the products that has been removed from the shelves in a number of supermarkets is beef burgers.  My mother always used to make these when we were children, whenever I cook them they remind me of the summer weekends as a child as we often had them barbecued and ate outside.  I have not eaten meat for nearly twenty years, the rest of the family eat meat so occasionally when I have some beef mince I make these:

Homemade Beef Burgers
500g minced beef
2 medium potatoes peeled and grated
1 medium onion finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Mix all ingredients well.
Shape into burgers
Chill for about half an hour.
Grill, barbecue or fry for approx ten minutes.

Eating

Breakfast is a meal that I have never given much thought to since leaving home.  I always ate cereal of some sort or on the odd occasion something cooked such as egg or mushroom on toast.   For some time I have been thinking about alternatives, cereal is not a particularly healthy breakfast and it bears little resemblance to the grain it is made from being as it highly processed.  I made my own muesli for a while using grains bought from my local health food shop, but still the grains I was using were processed.

But what to eat instead.  I started to notice a number of articles in magazines and programmes on the radio talking about breakfast, the history of the meal, of cereal and what people now eat.  None of this provided any inspiration for what to eat as an alternative to cereal.  I started to make porridge, as I am unable to tolerate cows milk in its pure form, I can and do eat cheese and yogurt, I made it with water.  It does actually make a good porridge in my opinion, I now most people prefer it made with milk, I add fresh fruit chopped or mashed.  I also started to eat plain yogurt with fresh chopped fruit in it.  Then friends suggested making pancakes for breakfast, they all had their own recipes and preferences some involving large numbers of eggs, some with buckwheat flour which I sometimes struggle to get hold of, some which involved overnight soaking and one with oatmeal.  I took bits of each recipe and made up my own very simple one.  I call them pancakes but they are not like the thin pancake that you would traditionally make on pancake day, more a solid fritter type like a scotch pancake.  They are quick, easy, tasty and filling and I often make them camping.

Oatmeal Pancakes
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 egg

The night before mix the oatmeal and yogurt in a bowl, cover and leave overnight.  

In the morning add the egg and mix.
Heat a little butter in a frying pan and add heaped desert spoons of the mix and flatten slightly.
Cook until you can lift the pancake easily and turn over, you may need to add a little more butter, flatten slightly and cook for a further minute or so.
Continue cooking until all mix is used, you will need to add butter before cooking each batch.

The cup measurements are based on an American cup measure, but as long as the amounts are fairly equal it does not matter how much you use.  This quantity makes about six small pancakes.  If you want to make less I would reduce the quantity of oatmeal and reduce the yogurt quantity by more than the oatmeal otherwise your mixture will be very runny as you cannot reduce 1 egg very easily.  For this quantity of yogurt I have found you can increase to 3/4 cup of oatmeal if you want to make more pancakes.  I sometimes put a teaspoon of ground cinnamon in the mix.  I eat mine with chopped fresh fruit.

Eating

At this time of year, because we eat seasonally, I miss the raw foods that are in abundance in the summer, particularly salads.  I know there are some foods around at this time of year that you can eat raw but I do love salads.  It is also good to sit down on a cold winters evening and eat a hot, nourishing meal.  Every now and then I will sneak a salad onto the menu, usually coleslaw made with grated carrot, shredded white cabbage and mayonnaise or this one.  A red cabbage salad that is incredibly simple and very tasty there is never any left for another day.  I tasted something similar in a cafe one time and this is my own take on it.

Red Cabbage Salad

Red Cabbage
Caraway Seeds
Red Wine Vinegar
Olive Oil

Shred the cabbage, I usually use half a medium sized one at a time.  Sprinkle caraway seeds over the cabbage and mix in, I never measure but you probably want a good teaspoons worth, at least a couple of seeds in each mouthful.

Make the vinaigrette, I mix one tablespoon of the vinegar to two of the oil and I use this quantity for half a cabbage.  I don't like this salad to be swimming in vinaigrette so make enough to coat the cabbage.

Pour the vinaigrette over the cabbage, and enjoy eating!

Eating

In cold wintry weather a hearty stew is a comforting meal to end the day.  I have several recipes that I like to make one involving lots of garlic and another has the addition of dumplings.  This winter I have been making a stew with green lentils and whatever root vegetables I happen to have in my veg box in a given week.  The other great thing about stew is that you can chop everything up, fry it a little and then leave it to cook whilst you get on with something else.

Green Lentil Stew

1 onion chopped
2 types of root vegetables chopped*
2 garlic cloves chopped
250g green lentils
1 litre vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried rosemary or a sprig of fresh
1 tsp dried thyme or 4 sprigs of fresh

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan and fry onion until soft and clear, add the chopped vegetables and cook for a few minutes.

Add garlic and cook for a further few minutes.

Add lentils, pour in stock and add herbs.

Bring to the boil and cook on a low heat for 45 minutes, there will not be much liquid left.

*I have made this with a carrot and a turnip, a carrot, a potato and celeriac, a carrot, couple of potatoes and a parsnip all these combinations tasted good.

Weekending

We started our week, as usual, with a trip into the local town for food shopping and a visit to the library.  The afternoon was spend snuggled by the fire reading our library books, we were cold from our trip into town.

On Tuesday we woke to another cold day, we were due to visit friends for our usual play date.  I decided to have an early lunch of soup at home rather than taking lunch with us as we usually do.  We set off and about a mile down the road there was about two inches of snow, we have to drive over a high pass to get to our friends and the snow got deeper the higher we drove.  I hoped that there would be no snow as we dropped down the other side, there was less but still a couple of inches.  We were on a main road at that point which was clear but our friends live on a quiet lane some distance from the main road.  We did make it although it was icy in places and we had to stop to let a huge flock of sheep go past.  Most of the children were playing outside in the snow, but as we had not had any snow we did not bring any clothes suitable for joining in, my children did not seem to bothered as we were offered clothes to borrow.  They had a fun afternoon indoors playing with any of the children who got cold outside or who, like them, did not want to play in the snow.

Our usual Wednesday friends were away this week so we went swimming together and joined a friend for a play and biscuits afterwards.  My youngest and I made gingerbread men to share, it was a recipe that I had not used before from this lovely book.

The next day our friends from the south came to join us for lunch.  We had soup, I used some from the freezer and the remains of three others which were in the fridge!  It all got eaten.  After lunch the girls and mummies braved the cold and walked and scooted up to the park.  It was a bit cold for standing around, so we headed back after a short play for a hot drink.  My husband had got the fire going which was very welcome.

On Friday we had been hoping to go and join a home ed group for an activity, but it got cancelled on Thursday night as folks were pulling out due to the snow forecast.  I was sceptical about it reaching us, and sure enough it didn't!  So we had a morning at home building and playing with a wooden train track.  After lunch I walked up the village with my youngest the wind was biting but it was good to get out.  She has recently started to ask question after question and we stopped alot to look at and talks about things that she noticed, moss in the wall, ice crystals, lichen, numbers on houses, pub signs and I am sure there were more.

Over the weekend we had a quiet time at home, keeping busy.  We read books together, played with the railway track, drew pictures, read joke books and made each other laugh, played board games, went for short walks up the village, had friends over for dinner, kept warm by the fire and generally enjoyed each others company.

Gratitudes

Joining in with Taryn for her heartfelt Sunday tradition.

A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful.

This week I am grateful for...

...no snow, much as I love the stuff it does make our home edding life much more isolating if we cannot get out and about to visit friends.

...time to finish reading this, it is the first book I have really enjoyed reading for ages.

...spending time outside everyday this week, despite the cold it had been dry and provided you wrap up warm it has felt great to spend some time outside.

...sitting round a tables with home edding mummies, chatting and crafting, whilst all the children played happily together.

...sharing food with friends, I really enjoy cooking and it has been great to have a table full of great company to share it with, twice this week.

...finally working out what has been causing the friction between my children, something so simple and obvious that was very easy to resolve, calm has been restored.

...a cup of chamomile tea first thing in the morning and stories in bed with my children.

...our seasoned wood supply which my husband is now stocking up for next winter.

...decluttering and being able to pass on unused, unwanted or outgrown items to friends who will make use of them.

Eating

This post is all about soup.  At the weekend I visited my local farmers market and bought a large bag of veg with the intention of making a big batch of soup to freeze and eat for lunch during the month.  At this time of year soup is a great lunch meal, whether you at home or out and about.  It is easy to put in a flask and drink to warm you up whilst outside.  I made nine pints, we ate some over the weekend the rest went in the freezer.

I also had some rather wizened looking swede that had not been eaten yet, none of my recipe books had a recipe for swede soup so made one up, all quantities are approx as I did not weigh anything!

Swede Soup
1 onion
400g swede
1 small potato
1 small carrot
Freshly grated nutmeg
2 pints stock

Dice the onion and fry gently in butter in a saucepan until soft and clear.
Peel and roughly chop the other veg, add to saucepan and fry gently for a few minutes.
Add the nutmeg and stir through.
Add the stock and stir, cook for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are soft.
Allow to cool a little and blend.

I also made some carrot soup.  All the recipes that I have found for carrot soup include two ingredients that I cannot eat, tomatoes and lemon juice or it is the ubiquitous carrot and coriander which is notoriously difficult to get hold of where I live.  So I had a go at making it with coriander powder and it came out rather well, in my opinion anyway!  Again quantities are approx, due to not weighing anything.

Spicy Carrot Soup
1 onion
500g carrots
2 tsp coriander powder
1tsp cumin powder
Pinch chilli powder or more depending on your taste
1.5 pints stock

Fry the onion in butter in a large saucepan until soft and clear.
Roughly chop the carrots.
Add the spices to the onions and stir in, fry gently for a minute.
Add the carrots and mix throughly to coat with the onion spicey mix.
Add the stock and cook until the carrots are soft.
Allow to cool a little and blend.

Eating

I haven't posted a recipe on here for ages so I thought it was time, with it being the start of a new year, to start sharing them again.  We eat as seasonally as possible here, so we are currently eating lots of root vegetables.  I am always on the look out for new recipes.  I am not sure where this one came from, probably an amalgamation of several recipes.

Root Vegetable and Blue Cheese Bake

1lb Carrots
1lb Parsnips
1lb Potatoes
Knob of Butter
5 Spring Onions
Approx 100g Blue Cheese (I usually use Stilton)

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Peel and roughly chop the vegetables.  Boil in water until tender, drain and put in a bowl.
Chop the salad onions.
Melt butter in the same pan and gently fry the salad onions for a minute or so until soft, add the vegetables and stir to coat with butter and mix in the salad onion.
Chop the Stilton into small pieces
Put the vegetables in a large, buttered dish and scatter the cheese on top.
Put in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes until the cheese has melted.

I usually serve this with green beans (if I have any frozen ones from the garden), cabbage cooked or made into a salad.

Kale

I have masses of this at the moment, it is growing in my garden and I had some delivered in my veg box.  I also still have a glut of courgette despite the fact that we are experiencing regular frosts ( they are warm and cosy in the poly tunnel).  I searched through all my recipe books to find something that I could cook with both and found nothing, a search in the net was also to no avail, not one to be stumped by such things I made something up.  Lasagne.  I did not write down the quantities so I leave you to decide I was feeding one adult and two small children there was a fair amount left.

Courgette (I used about 300g, I think, it was a section of a large one)
Kale (I used about 400g)
Ricotta approx 125g
Feta approx 100g
Soft Goats Cheese approx 100g
Oil/Flour/Milk to make a white sauce
Mustard 1tsp
Grated Parmesan
Lasagne Sheets

Chop the courgette into bite sized pieces and cut the big stalks from the kale leaves and shred.  Steam both vegetables until soft (courgette) and wilted (kale).  Drain water and put the veg in the pan.

Mash the ricotta, chop the feta and goats cheese into small pieces and mix with vegetables.

Put oil and flour into a pan and mix into a paste.  Add milk gradually until mixed.  Put on gentle heat and stir occasionally until starting to thicken, add mustard.

Put half the vegetable and cheese mix in a dish and spread to make a flat layer.  Top with lasagne sheets and some of the mustard sauce.  Repeat and cover the sauce with a thin layer of grated Parmesan.

Cook at 180°C for about half an hour.

You could use any combination of cheeses to make this, and change the vegetables with the season.

Garden

Joining in with Rachel for this weeks catch up of what I have been doing in my garden.

 Carrot Harvest

As much as I love to go on holiday there are a few things I dread on my return unpacking for one, another is going into the garden to see how over grown it has become.  I have been away twice in the last eight weeks so my garden has been rather neglected of late.  However this time I returned to find amongst the weeds a surprising amount of vegetables ready for eating.  We usually have a small vegetable box delivered each week but we were away for a delivery so came home to empty cupboards.  So I managed to put together a few meals using from the garden potatoes, onions, turnip, beetroot, carrots, kale and courgette.

We had Courgette and Cheese Bake with coleslaw using our carrots but sadly not our cabbage as the mice had them.

Potato Fritters with kale fried in garlic and turnip cooked in honey with coriander seeds.

Carrot Fritters with roasted beetroot and potatoes.

I also made Potato and Leek soup using a carrot and potato from the garden and Courgette and Brie soup.

Over the weekend the weather was dry so my husband and I spent several hours weeding, pruning and deadheading.  We are far from done but it is certainly looking a lot better.  In the next few weeks I need to buy some garlic for sowing and plant out the lettuces into the poly tunnel for overwintering.

You can see some more photos from my garden in this post about autumn colours.

Garden

I have neglected my garden of late, left it to its own devices, in the main this has worked well but there are places that are in need of attention.  The weather has been harsh for us this year.  Cool, cold temperatures throughout the summer months left me thinking I would have no produce at all.  However my neglect has paid off, as I have no being paying any attention to it at all I had not noticed what was really growing.

Tonight we have had a meal made from vegetables picked from the garden, the first this year.  

We had roasted beetroot, beetroot peeled and chopped into bite sized pieces roasted in oil, balsamic vinegar, water, garlic (from the garden) and thyme (from the garden). 

I also made up a lasagne with kale and courgette.  I shredded the kale leaves and cut the courgette into chunks and steamed both when they were cooked I added ricotta, goats cheese and two crushed cloves of garlic (from the garden).  I made a white sauce with oil, flour and milk to which I added mustard.  I layered the lasagne up and sprinkled grated parmesan type cheese on top and bunged in the oven at 190°C for about 25 minutes.  

We were so hungry I did not get a picture and there is none left, it was very tasty.

Inspiring

As I am always keen to find out where the food I eat is produced, other than that we grow for ourselves!  I have visited the place where the veg box I have delivered every week is packed up and where some of the contents are grown.  I have been having a box delivered since the beginning of last year, a few months ago the place I visited today took over the delivery of my box.

It is run as a community owned food co-operative and registered as an Industrial and Provident Society.  My last paid job was for a company incorporated in the same way and it is a model that it would be good if more companies adopted especially those who are driven by profit.

We were given a tour of the site, it is not huge but it took nearly two hours to look round as there was so much to see.  The company took over the site, which had been previously used to grow bedding plants, in 2000 and inherited several very large glasshouses.  The whole place felt like one of innovation, of creativity, of experimentation, flourishing.

There are many large, multinational companies who are owned by even fewer global organisations.  They are so big, inpersonal and cannot possibly be in touch with all the countries that they operate in, and most are profit driven.  It is refreshing to find a company who are the complete opposite of this.  Who are actively involved in local food production though such positive means, long may they continue and inspire others.

Tabbouleh

I have decided to start sharing a recipe each week. As the weather has got warmer we have been enjoying lots of salads at the moment. This one is a particular favourite, there is rarely any left for another day.

It is made using bulgar wheat, derived from wheat berries which are cooked, the bran removed and then crushed. It is often used in salads, but can be cooked and used for bread making. Traditionally tabbouleh is made with tomatoes, but I do not eat them as they set off my crohns so I make it without. I am sure the purists would find this recipe wanting and not call it tabbouleh, but we love it.

This recipe is taken from the 1985 version of the Cranks Recipe book, it was the first recipe book I bought in 1991 (I have dated when I bought it!) and have used it so much that it is falling apart.

Tabbouleh
Bulgar wheat 8oz (225g)
Medium sized onion 1
Fresh mint chopped 1tbsp
Fresh parsley chopped 6 tbsp

Dressing:
Olive oil 50 ml
White wine vinegar 50ml
Spring onions or chives chopped 1 1/2 tsp
Demerara sugar 1/2 tsp
Paprika 1/4 tsp
Soya sauce 1/2 tsp
Salt pinch
Whole grain mustard 1/2 tsp
Pepper to taste

Place the bulgar wheat in a dish and pour over enough boiling water to cover.
Leave to soak for at least half an hour.
Finely chop the onion.
Combine the onion and herbs into the bulgar wheat.
Make the dressing up and mix well.
Pour the dressing over the salad and combine.
Cover and chill until required, this salad will dry out on the top if not covered.