I’m starting to pick the first of the season’s real spinach. I have silver beet growing most of the year – there’s a couple of months in midsummer when it’s a bit too vulnerable to fungus diseases, grasshoppers and bolting – but with successive planting I can get it most months. And it will substitute nicely for spinach in most recipes. But there are some recipes where only real spinach…
No time for shopping, no creativity for interesting cooking, no patience for lasting more than half an hour. But when I’m this busy, I really don’t want to eat junk food – I can’t afford to get sick or run down.
This is the second of my potato harvest Tuesday Night Vego Challenge recipes. I often have lots of these tiny chats in my spud harvest, and they’re the best bit. Add some egg for protein and avoid loading up with mayonnaise, and it’s a healthy and very delicious dinner.
I have a new favourite bread. This one is sooo good I’ve made it half a dozen times over now. My last favourite was Seedy Sourdough Crispbread, and it’s still up there – I’ve been making a batch most weekends – but this dense, malty, well-textured, chocolatey rye bread is totally addictive.
The thing I am finding about the Tuesday Night Vego Challenge is that the range of healthy, from scratch, vegetarian dinners you can make in half an hour is much bigger if you put a bit of pre-thinking into it. Proving dough, soaking beans, salting eggplant all take only minutes to do, but you have to do them ahead of time.
Sadly this isn’t one of my better examples of photography! I’ve been waiting all year to post this recipe. Chili con Kanga is good on its own, but this time of year there is a little window of time when avocados, limes and coriander are all in season together, and the salsa with it makes it sensational.
I love my kitchen. It has a great big central kitchen bench in the middle of an otherwise very compact space (in a very compact house). I means cooking can be a social activity – several people can chop and stir and roll and fill at once. Kids can sit up at a stool and be involved, and if they play it right get to listen in on adult conversations.