Have you ever tried smoking your own chicken or fish? It’s very easy. You can use a dedicated smoker or a smoking box with wood-chips in your BBQ. Or you can use the black-tea method which is the easiest, cheapest and I think, most fun. To smoke the chicken breasts we used the black-tea method […]
Tags: chickens, cooking, recipe
Posted in Kitchen | 2 Comments »
As the words of the song suggest, when I moved to the Country, eating a lot of peaches was on my to-do list. Peaches are one of those things that you have to enjoy while you can as the window can be small. Three weeks ago, I was picking the first early fruit and now […]
Tags: cooking, fruit, preserves, recipe
Posted in Kitchen, Organic Gardening | 3 Comments »
Fennel is one of those vegetables that shouts Mediterranean cuisine to me. If you like aniseed flavour as I do, add some finely chopped to dishes such as ratatouille, or minestrone and you will find it improves the depth and richness of flavour. It’s a vegetable well worth growing yourself as it really should be […]
Tags: cooking, fennel, seeds, vegetables
Posted in Kitchen, Organic Gardening | 1 Comment »
You might find the name of this flower a bit confusing as it is also called Pot Marigold or English Marigold, without actually being a marigold at all. I like to grow calendula in my vegetable garden; it adds a nice splash of colour and seems to readily self-sow. Calendula petals make a great addition […]
Tags: cooking, flowers, health, recipe, salad
Posted in Kitchen, Organic Gardening, Sustainability | No Comments »
Angled luffa is a very popular ingredient in Asian cooking, especially in Thai or Chinese dishes. There are lots of yummy-sounding stir-fries, soups and noodle dishes featuring this versatile vegetable, but it is its suitability as a warm-climate stand-in for zucchini that’s the subject of this blog. Whereas squash and zucchini plants tend to suffer […]
Tags: angled luffa, cooking, recipe, vegetables, vegetarian
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Remember the soggy sandwich made of white bread, coloured by mum’s tinned beetroot, sitting in plastic wrap at the bottom of your lunchbox? That lunch box ‘treat’ almost succeeded in putting me off beetroot for life… however I’ve re-established my relationship with beetroot over the past few years, knowing that fresh is best and trying […]
Tags: beetroot, cooking, microgreens, roots, salad, vegetables
Posted in Kitchen, Organic Gardening | 3 Comments »
This festive season, why not roast a crown of thorns as part of your Christmas dinner? Or hunt down Red October to use as a table decoration? It’s not as strange as it sounds – they are both varieties of pumpkin. Pumpkins – what lovable plants! With an incredible array of fruit shapes, textures and […]
Tags: vegetables
Posted in Kitchen | 2 Comments »
Yacon – otherwise known as the Peruvian ground apple, strawberry jicama, Bolivian sunroot, llacon, sweet-root and ground pear – is ready to harvest now. We eat its sweet, juicy tubers raw, cooked or added to juices. I love this winter sweet treat with its great crunchy crispness; it tastes to me like nashi pear and […]
Tags: animal care, cooking, drinks, fruit, livestock, roots, vegetables
Posted in Kitchen | 13 Comments »
We have just had our first delivery of lovely organic garlic at Green Harvest this afternoon and we haven’t stopped talking about how to grow it! How to eat it! Best way to peel it! Garlic in olive oil, garlic in baked camembert! How to plant it! Is it really an allium or really a […]
Tags: garlic, roots, vegetables, vegetarian
Posted in Kitchen, Organic Gardening | 11 Comments »
I can’t remember where my first plant of Warrigal Greens. It spread wide in a mat, self-sowed, was unfazed by the hottest summer and always seemed to be available. Moving north to the subtropics I discovered it really disliked humidity and even though it self-sows, the niche it occupies is much smaller. It tends to […]
Tags: recipe, vegetables, vegetarian
Posted in Kitchen, Organic Gardening | 13 Comments »