Eating Seasons

Awesome Asparagus

Posted by gardenpathfood on February 1, 2013
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Spring foods, Spring Jobs, Summer foods, The plants in my garden, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

No, my asparagus does not normally look like this when I pick it.  Usually in the six to eight weeks in Spring  (here Spring is September to November) that we are picking asparagus, it usually looks like a bed of mulch with spikes sticking out of it. The trick is to eat enough so that you stay ahead of the spikes and it doesn’t get bushy like this.

Asparagus in January

Asparagus in January

This is December to August bush and it stays this way until I get out the weed eater (brushcutter) and cut it back to ground level in August.

From December to August it doesn’t get watered, it doesn’t get anything but a few weeds pulled.  In August we cut it back, throw a pile of compost, horse manure and mulch on top, water it heavily and wait for results.  Very, very tasty results whether it is eaten raw and fresh, chopped in a salad or cooked as a vegetable.

Asparagus is dead easy to grow, very hard to kill and the quickest and easiest vegetable to prepare for a meal.  What more could you want as the backbone for your garden?

Climate-wise, I grew it in sub-tropical inland Queensland as well as down here near the border with New south Wales.

The people at http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/asparagus.html list the many benefits of asparagus including ‘Asparagus is a very low calorie vegetable. 100 g fresh spears give only 20 calories. More calories will be burnt to digest than gained, the fact, which fits into the category of low calorie or negative-calorie vegetables,’ but to me asparagus is also one of the best and most satisfying vegetables you can grow.

And Double bonus!!!  We have just had floods, although my house remained high and dry, but the drenching rain has kick started the asparagus again and we have eaten it every night for the last two weeks.  Asparagus in January!!

Strawberry slaughter

Posted by gardenpathfood on January 26, 2013
Posted in: Autumn jobs, Eating Seasons, Food, Spring foods, Summer foods, Summer Jobs, The plants in my garden, Work Season. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment
IMG_0070

Discarded plants waiting for a new home

Strawberries are tough old things.  It has been over 40 degrees a lot of days here but I decided to thin my strawberry patch and plant the discarded runners somewhere else.  To tell the truth, I wasn’t too concerned if they lived or not, I was more interested in rejuvenating my strawberry bed and getting rid of as many cooch runners as I could.  Once I’ve finished thinning, I will behead what’s left.  It’s gruesome but my strawberry patch will love me for it.

Well, I forgot to water the ones I planted out but luckily a week or so later, we had our own personal town flood with 140 ml overnight just for us and no one else outside a ten kilometer radius.  Gotta love this weather.

Those poor little transplanted strawberries which had brown crunchy leaves, started to produce new leaves in their centres  et viola, I have a new strawberry patch in the outer garden.  How good is that!

So now, instead of the punnet or two punnets of strawberries we have been getting every morning for the last couple of years from August to Christmas, we can look forward to lots, lots more.

Strawberries are magic!

Up the Sprout

Posted by gardenpathfood on January 17, 2013
Posted in: Autumn foods, Autumn jobs, Eating Seasons, Health, Links to other sites, Spring foods, Spring Jobs, Summer foods, Summer Jobs, Winter Foods, Winter Jobs, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Well, I don’t know about you but we have been having over 40 degree days here and the nights aren’t a lot better.  Like people from the Arab world, we are better to close the house up completely and stay inside where it’s cool than to open it up to the hot wind.  At least it is, if your house is designed to do that.  If not, then like most Australians, it’s switch on the air conditioner and use even more electricity.

I was also away for twelve days and in that time we had one shower of rain and a neighbour watered once.  Needless to say, although all Sproutsmy plants survived, they are taking a little bit of time to recover and produce, and the lettuce has completely gone to  seed. Even without this extreme heat, it is hard to grow lettuce or cabbages here in the hot months so….go the sprouts.

I use alfalfa, radish and mustard seed to sprout as a lettuce substitute and I use snow peas for both salads and stir fries. It takes a little more attention to grow sprouts successfully in the hot weather as any that don’t sprout are inclined to rot and smell pretty quickly, if you don’t sort them out early.

I use that little spouting system you see on the right which has a container on the bottom to catch water.  Usually, I lightly cover the bottom of one tray with the alfalfa mix and bottom of another with the snow peas then by the time the alafalfa mix is ready to use, the snow peas are too tall (as in the photo) to be confined in a middle tray any more.  The alfalfa takes about three days before use, but the snow peas take about two days longer. These will grow and thicken quite a bit in the next two days, whereas the alfalfa in the container will be stored in the fridge for use in sandwiches for the next couple of days and I can use the tray to start another lot, or I could have one going already. There are 4 trays.

The larger seeds like the snow peas or mung beans, I also like to soak for a couple of hours to overnight to give them a bit of a head start as well, but I find it is not necessary for the small seeds.

So why go to all this bother? There is an excellent article at :

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/10-reasons-to-eat-sprouts.html#ixzz2I6s3bvYn  which gives ten health reasons for eating sprouts but I have a few others.

  • They ‘re great when you are travelling, especially in remote areas as you don’t need a fridge, just water every now and then.
  • They look wonderful on a salad and take up less room than a lettuce .
  • My mother, who is now 83 used to grow them when they lived out west as they offer fresh greens for a minimal cost and you can grow them all year round and store the seed for years.

I get my seed sent out from  http://www.livingapartment.com.au/Products/Seeds-for-Sprouting which seems to work out fairly reasonably.

Squish Squash, Eggplant and False Teeth

Posted by gardenpathfood on December 17, 2012
Posted in: Autumn foods, Eating Seasons, Food, Recipes, Summer foods, The plants in my garden, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I would have to say that squash and eggplant were not vegetables I was introduced to when I was young, and it has taken a while for me to learn to cook with them and even longer for my husband to learn to eat them.December harvest

This photo is my harvest for December and you will see both eggplant and a giant squash. These really should be only about 8 cm across, but mine are like small pumpkins.

They are extremely edible though, rather like young choko, and like choko, they only take a few minutes to steam. I suspect they go completely to mush if they are cooked much longer, which is probably why a lot of people hate them.

I have come to the conclusion that the previous generation’s tendency to cook vegetables to mush was probably because so many of them had false teeth and hate chewing.

Eggplant is one of the most versatile vegetables out and the newer varieties don’t need to be salted to get rid of bitterness the way some of the older one’s did.  I still do though, just putting the sliced eggplant in a dish with salt for 1/2 an hour or so and then washing it off before I use it.

The night this photo was taken, I had cooked it by rolling it in egg and rice crumbs, then frying (yes frying) it with crumbed whiting. It soaked up the oil and the fish flavour and was amazing.

I also often use it in rissoles or tacos or spag bog, any mince dish, to reduce the amount of meat and improve the texture.

Vale Kale

Posted by gardenpathfood on December 12, 2012
Posted in: Autumn jobs, Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Spring foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 Comment

I have had kale in the garden, the first time I’ve grown it but I will definitely be putting more in. I had it planted near the silverbeet and often picked them and steamed them together, putting just a little bit of lemon juice on top before they were served.IMG_0386

Apart from the fact that they both have an incredibly long season and so are a very useful and hassle free vegetable, they look so wonderful in the garden among the other plants.

The kale is the silver plant on the right with young silverbeet to it’s left.

But now the kale is looking a bit worse for wear and it is not just because the bugs are eating it. We have had an incredibly hot couple of weeks and kale gets bitter under hot conditions so for the moment, until I replant in February, it is vale kale.

I will leave you with this message:

Kale is one of the healthiest vegetables  http://www.whfoods.com/

  • Kale can provide you with some special cholesterol-lowering benefits if you will cook it by steaming. The fiber-related components in kale do a better job of binding together with bile acids in your digestive tract when they’ve been steamed. When this binding process takes place, it’s easier for bile acids to be excreted, and the result is a lowering of your cholesterol levels. Raw kale still has cholesterol-lowering ability—just not as much.
  • Kale’s risk-lowering benefits for cancer have recently been extended to at least five different types of cancer. These types include cancer of the bladder, breast, colon, ovary, and prostate. Isothiocyanates (ITCs) made from glucosinolates in kale play a primary role in achieving these risk-lowering benefits.

Dog drool and water chestnuts

Posted by gardenpathfood on December 2, 2012
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Food, Spring foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Winter Jobs, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I love the look of water chestnuts in the garden.

There is a period of a couple of weeks in May when the spikes start to die off that they look a little bit untidy, but the exciting thing then is that they are almost ready to harvest, so it doesn’t matter.

Water Chestnuts in December

Water Chestnuts in December

I completely forgot to blog when I harvested the bulbs in June but the year goes something like this:

In June/July you plonk some soil/sand/compost in a couple of tubs and then put in some bulbs which you can buy commercially, but this year I replanted from the bulbs I had harvested. Unlike garlic, you can replant the small bulbs and expect to get reasonable chestnuts.

For these two tubs I only need about 6 bulbs total, but somehow this year I must have left a few in the soil because I definitely have more than 6 plants.

Then, put about a 2 cm covering of soil on top and fill the tubs with water to cover the surface by a couple of centimeters. I keep the tubs topped up, which is not hard in winter, until the shoots start to come through as soon as it starts to warm up in September or October. (This is more difficult than it sounds as both the cat and dog prefer the water in the water chestnuts to their own nice clean bucket.)

After that, I keep them moist and let the rain top them up, and although I never really let them dry out ,  they don’t mind a little bit of exposure.  I am very careful in extremely hot weather not to let them dry out completely.

They look wonderful for 8 months of the year, as you see and I will hope to harvest several kilos of lovely, crisp,  fresh bulbs in early June. I keep these in a container in the crisper and use them as I need them.

The taste and texture of fresh water chestnut is as different from the tinned variety, as fresh asparagus is from tinned. They are a completely different food experience.

Onion Breath

Posted by gardenpathfood on November 17, 2012
Posted in: Autumn foods, Autumn jobs, Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Spring foods, Summer foods, The plants in my garden, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

November bounty

Onions are very good for you and have been used by many cultures for their health benefits and apparently they are the world’s biggest horticultural crop, after tomatoes.

According to this website:

http://www.vegetarian-nutrition.info/updates/onions.php

health benefits include relief from asthma, coughs, colds, cardiovascular problems and stomach cancer.

So, I will happily be putting my little red onions on my sandwiches, in my salads and anywhere else I can use them.  There are lots in the garden and since I planted them a bit close, I am picking out the bigger ones now to allow the others to grow.

This collection of garden produce above (and the red throat emperor caught by my husband) became Emperor with red onion and tarragon in white wine sauce.

I have only just discovered Tarragon. I didn’t realise what it was that I love so much in the occasional dish we had eaten out, but now I do know, I will be using a lot more of it.

There have been a mile of strawberries this season and this year they have a particularly sweet, toffee smell. We  have them for breakfast every morning, but we have had so many that this lot teamed up with maple syrup and home- made ice-cream for dessert.  I love strawberry season!!

Phoenix rising

Posted by gardenpathfood on October 17, 2012
Posted in: Autumn foods, Autumn jobs, Eating Seasons, Food, Spring foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Like a phoenix rising…well not from the ashes but I do decapitate them.

Commercially leeks are usually plucked out roots and all but I cut them off with a sharp knife just slightly below ground level, and they regrow. Normally I let those go to seed to produce babies somewhere in the garden.

Although my leeks, particularly the regrown ones are not as long as commercial leeks (look at the climate I live in), each one I cut usually provides the two of us us with all we need for an additional steamed vegetable.  Instead of letting this one go to seed, I will see if we can cOctober Gardenut it and go for a third use.

I love the look of leeks and onions in the garden.  They provide structure, colour and texture.

Even pure vegetable gardens can be amazingly  decorative and look so different at the change of season but I also love the look of edible plants in the decorative garden.  See my next post.

Parsley, Parsley everywhere

Posted by gardenpathfood on October 9, 2012
Posted in: Autumn foods, Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Recipes, Spring foods, Spring Jobs, Summer foods, Summer Jobs, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I’m told that you never let parsley go to seed, so every now and again it needs to be cut back, especially in spring.

Tabbouleh using quinoa

So, fighting off the mating brown snakes in the garden, I did that and then decided to make tabbouleh with the cuttings.

I’m not a great fan of tabbouleh usually, especially the commercial variety but I found this recipe  at http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/4827/quinoa-tabbouleh.aspx

and it is really good.  It uses quinoa instead of burghul and quite a lot of lemon juice.

Parsley has a lot of health benefits including being full of anti-oxidents but you can find them out for yourself by visiting http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/parsley.html

Wholefoods in October

Posted by gardenpathfood on October 7, 2012
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Food, Recipes, Spring foods, The plants in my garden. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Today’s Haul

This was the basis for our dinner tonight.  All of these things are most definitely in season at home at the moment.  As my husbands says ‘Something that cooks up as dark and fresh looking as the silverbeet, has to be good for you.’

I usually add a tiny bit of fresh lemon juice to the kale and silverbeet after cooking since I like the tang that it adds.

This lovely fresh asparagus requires nothing of course and can be eaten raw in salads or very lightly steamed with the other greens.

We usually eat the leeks lightly steamed but I know a lot of people only eat them in casseroles.  We love them just as they are as a vegetable in their own right.

What do you do with leeks?