This post is the basics of growing, storing and cooking beans. Beans are one of my real staples – super easy to grow, prolific, a good source of protein, soluble fiber, folate and a whole range of minerals, and the basis for a big range of recipes
The exciting crop this week though is potatoes. I plant potatoes in August and February. The autumn ones planted this time of year do much better than the August planted spring ones. Potatoes originated in the high country of the Peru Bolivia border area. They like cooler temperatures, especially cooler nights, than we get here in summer.
I’ve made this chutney in bulk (scaled up to 8 cups of tamarillo flesh) with roast lamb for a wedding feast. But the sweetness and acidity go really really well with kangaroo fillet, cooked on a barbeque or pan fried.
Buckwheat isn’t actually a cereal, but seeds of a flowering plant from the smartweed family (which also includes weeds like dock and three cornered jack, along with rhubarb and sorrel). It is supposed to be easy to grow in the garden in the right climate – but mine isn’t right.
It’s an in-between season for fruiting annual seed planting – too late now to put in more seed of eggplants or capsicums, too early for peas or broad beans.
This is another of my favourite summer salads. This salad holds relatively well, so it’s a good one to take to a barbeque or make ahead of time. Goes really well with barbequed fish.
Picked the first pumpkin of the season today. Pumpkins are wild in my garden. These Japs plant themselves every year, rambling over fences and down…