Does it seem odd eating just one vegetable for dinner? We do it quite often. Variety is the key in nutrition, but it doesn’t all have to be in the one meal. I also love platter meals, where dinner is served on one platter for everyone to help themselves from, rather than individual plates. It’s a nice sociable way to eat. This recipe is great for a fast, easy, informal…
Saag just isn’t photogenic. Unfortunately, because it is very delicious, and I have bucketloads of silverbeet (chard if you are not in Australia) in the garden at the moment and saag is one of the very best recipes I know to use bucketloads of it (and still want to come back for more tomorrow).
My all time, very favourite, can’t be beaten dinner is a plate of roast root vegetables. On their own. Little crispy caramelised bits on the edges and each individual vegetable a star in its own right. With home grown, very fresh vegetables it’s amazing. But even with bought vegetables it’s pretty good.
This is probably a contradiction in terms. Ribbolita is at its best the next day. But it is such a good winter warmer, such a hearty, filling, healthy, cheap mid-winter vego meal, that I needed to rise to the challenge of making it make-able mid-week.
I can do this in half an hour from scratch if I have put the beans on to soak in the morning and use a pressure cooker to cook them. And if there are still embers enough to just put another bit of wood in the slow combustion stove when I get home of an evening. If you start with cooked beans, it should be easy to meet the Tuesday…
I’m not a very authentic cook. I cook by feel, working from the base of what I have in the garden and what is in season rather than from a recipe. With the result that I often have to do the research afterwards to find out what to call it!
We have a few lemon trees, but my two favourites are the Eureka because it has lemons on it all year round, and this bush lemon propagated from a seed that came up from compost.
Sometimes I make something and I think, I know with practice that could be easy, but it is nice enough to be bothered practicing? This one made it through the test. If you are really pressed for time you can use bought wonton wrappers. I find them in the fridge section in my supermarket.
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.