Potato & rosemary pizza

Now that fresh tomatoes are a little harder to come by - and good fresh tomatoes even more difficult - we have a new Friday-night-pizza staple: potato & rosemary pizza. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical at first. The whole carb on carb thing seemed a bit much, but oh.my.goodness. it is really very yummy. We have crazy amounts of rosemary growing in our backyard and always have potatoes in the cupboard and tomato paste in the fridge and so this is a very easy dinner to throw together (we make our pizza dough in the bread machine).

The pizza in the photo above has spinach pesto on its base. It was nice, but I actually preferred the other one that we made sans spinach. The rosemary had more of a chance to shine in that one. We also added some artichoke hearts to it, which were really good. Artichoke pesto would make a good base actually...

Weekend

So far this weekend I have:

Shopped. Second failed attempt to buy jeans. But I did buy a potato masher and a round cake container, which are making me very happy.

Cooked. Moroccan tangine for a very dear friend.

Finished. Chapter two of my thesis (second draft)!

Ate. Breakfast at Satis. Scrambled tofu, with spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes on toast. Plus excellent company (and organic coffee).

Baked. Veggies for pasta sauce, spicy bean patties for burgers, Anzac biscuits, and granola.

Made. A 'treasure book' for Lily. Plus copious amounts of 'spaghetti' and 'hair' with playdough.

And there's still another day to go! How good are long weekends? What have you been doing with your weekend?

Summer is here!

The other day I picked this bowl of delicious blackberries from our garden. I have to admit that they started their lives on the other side of the fence (i.e. they are from my neighbour's blackberry plant). However, these particularly berries were totally growing on our side of the fence and their roots were planted in 'our' soil and so I thought that picking a few of them would be OK... (P. tells me that I am wicked).

Oh I love blackberries so much! They positively sing of summer.

The rhubarb, strawberries and (almost invisible) asparagus spear are not quite as morally dubious.

Another totally summer moment was eating this bagel yesterday - topped with homemade pesto and fresh tomato (from the farmers market, not our poor struggling seedlings). How good are fresh summer tomatoes and basil?



The stone fruit are out too now and we have been guzzling them. I am putting in a order for a tray of peaches and a tray of nectarines for the Christmas period. Now I just have to plan the cooked part of the meals...

Veg*n Meal Plan Monday... on a Tuesday

Oops. Sorry about being late and all. I have no decent excuses, so let's move on shall we?

The thing is that I really don't have much of a plan this week. However, I thought that I would share a photo of my Farmers' Market haul with you and let you know what I was thinking it might be good for. Similar enough?

So we got (left to right): some silverbeet; two huge punnets of strawberries; some pesticide-free granny smith apples; some fresh locally-made tofu; some cherry tomatoes; some finger bananas; a bunch of yummy-looking tomatoes; some broccoli; a bunch of carrots; some zucchini; some organic asparagus; some Asian greens; a big bunch of organic basil; some mushrooms; a bag of pesticide-free potatoes (should have opened them for the picture, huh?); a big bag of fair trade coffee; and (out of the picture, because I forgot about them) some cherries and apricots (first of the season for us!).

My plan:

1. The Asian greens, some of the broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms & tofu need to become some kind of stir-fry or soba noodle soup.
2. The basil is asking to become pesto - perhaps coupled with the remaining tofu (crumbled), some tomatoes, mushrooms & olives over pasta?
3. The silverbeet would go well with some red lentils for a dahl-y soup. Or I could leave the tofu out of the pasta and make Spanikopita with some nutritional yeast...
4. More of the broccoli, mushrooms, silverbeet, carrots, zucchini & tomatoes would go well with some beans for a paella.
5. I think that I will roast the remaining carrots with the potatoes and make a roast veggie salad with some tempeh, cherry tomatoes and tahini sauce.

There: five dinners.

Plus:

1. Bananas will go into morning smoothies with oats, soy milk and almonds. - Breakfast (coffee obviously lives here too)
2. The cherries & strawberries (and the remaining cherry tomatoes) will be devoured alone. - Snacks
3. The apricots are becoming a pie. They simply must. - Desert
4. Some of the apples have been juiced with the celery and mint that we have left over from last week. - Drink
5. Another apple and 3 carrots became muffins (along with some flour, raisins, cinnamon etc). - Morning teas

What would you have done?

A garden story

The snow peas in our garden have finally started producing. I was beginning to think that they would never arrive, but I guess they were just waiting for the weather to warm up.


I was an extremely negligent gardener this year. I bought a bunch of wintery seeds from the Diggers' Club and sowed them in the garden and then, well, I kind of ignored them. I didn't water them. I let enormous weeds grow over them. I was bad. Anyway, then I tried to pull my act together and P helped and things got a little better. Our snowpeas suddenly sprouted, climbed and flowered. Our Asian greens flourished and things seemed to be going very well. Of course, then I was slack again and, sadly, most of our tatsoi came and went to flower before I bothered to pick and eat them (I am planning to eat the one in photo below).


The broccoli was looking great, but now looks like this:


(Any thoughts? I am guessing that lack of water is the most likely culprit).


Fortunately the strawberries are thriving and will be ready to pick soon.


Our rhubarb is also ready and I really should pick it ASAP or it may go the way of our asparagus...



Oh I am so bad.

I have decided to garden on the deck (which comes off our kitchen) for the summer. That way I am more like to be nice to the plants. In preparation I went and picked up some tomato and basil seedlings from our local garden shop today. I was excited to see that they were stocking some from the Diggers' Club. I have been meaning to plant my Diggers' Club tomato seeds for ages now and was feeling a little guilty about resorting to commercial seedlings. Now this seems like a nice compromise.


I also bought a little Christmas tree while I was there. (Yes, it is that little - it is going to sit up nice and high out of little person reach). With all the family function hosting that we will be doing this year I thought that we should make a bit of an effort on the decorating front. I would also like Lily to start enjoying some little traditions and rituals around these family holidays.


I guess this means that I should really be thinking about making some decorations that will last us for at least the duration of her childhood. Any suggestions?

Vegan Apple & Blackberry Pie

A couple of lovely new friends invited us over to brunch the other weekend and so we decided to make a fruit pie to take along with us.

That morning at the Farmers Markets we picked up a punnet of lovely fresh blackberries and so we thought that it would be fun to bake a blackberry pie. We also had a few apples in the fridge and so we threw them in (along with a pear that we thought would add a nice sweetness to the mix).

The result was delicious. The apricot pie might still be my favourite, but really I'd put them neck and neck. The apples and pear were all warm and cinnamon-y, while the blackberries just exploded in your mouth with their tart sweetness. mmmm




Ingredients:
One punnet of blackberries
3 small apples (peeled, cored and chopped)
1 pear (cored and chopped)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1/4 cup of almond meal (or LSA)

Pastry:
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup cold water

Essentially just make the pastry and roll it flat. Then line a pie dish and dry bake it for about 10 minutes on 200-220 C.

Then mix the apple and pear with the dry ingredients and place them in the baked pastry. Cover with blackberries and then make a lid with the remaining pastry - or chop it up into strips in order to make a thatched lid.

Bake for another 35-40 minutes on 200-220C (or until golden brown on top).

Here's a picture of the inside before we baked it:

Vegan Apricot Pie

Now that Summer is upon us, I am trying to focus even more on eating seasonally. And so, starting with the A's, we took advantage of the gorgeous apricots that are now well and truly in season (P picked up a 1kg bag of them for $3 at the farmers markets) and made a scrumptious apricot pie for desert last night.



INGREDIENTS

Pastry
1 & 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup almond meal
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup non-hydrogenated margarine (or non-GM canola oil)
1/2 cup cold water

Filling
500g fresh apricot halves
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup almond meal
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice


Preheat oven to 210C.

Start with the pastry. Sift the flour, almond meal, brown sugar and salt together. Knead the margarine into the dry ingredients until it is like bread crumbs. Add the cold water slowly and mix together. Hold back on some of the cold water to ensure that the mixture doesn't get too damp. Roll into two balls of equal size. Then flatten them and roll them into flat circles.

Place one pastry circle into a pie pan or an round oven-proof dish. Press in the corners and the edges so that it is evenly distributed across the base and the sides of the dish. Poke a few holes in the base of the pastry with a fork and place in the pre-heated oven for around 10 minutes or until slightly browned.

Now mix together the sugar, flour, almond meal, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a small bowl.

Place apricots in a separate large bowl and stir in the lemon juice. Add the dry mixture to the apricots and stir thoroughly so that the apricots are all coated.



Pour the apricot mixture into the partially-baked pastry. Place the unbaked pastry circle on top to form a lid, carefully squeezing down the edges to create a seal. Cut some vents into the top in order to let out the heat during baking.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until golden brown.

Leave to cool for at least 5 minutes before cutting or it will collapse on itself and be too hot to eat!