Cooling down

The weather has been cooling down rather fast, and this morning we had our first serious frost. The fire is keeping us lovely and toasty warm of an evening and my new slippers are a very welcome addition to my slothful wardrobe.

Some of our recently planted seeds are sprouting up in their planter pots, keeping warm in the hothouse. The tomatoes are still giving us plenty of juicy harvest and when the weather gets too seriously cold for them to keep ripening we're going to make green tomato pickles with them. Spikee is very keen to help pick the green tomatoes. He'll be less keen to eat them if history can offer us any clues.

Vinnie and Ra seem to be embroiled in an ongoing war for top cat. Ra is winning by virtue of his sharper claws and nasty disposition. Angus has been driving Ra mad pulling his fur out and trying to get into his bowl when he's eating, but sometimes Vinnie and Ra have quite long standoffs near the cat bowl where Ra decided he's finished eating but won't let Vinnie finish off the scraps. it's almost as if Ra likes flirting with the dog. The dog is very keen to befriend him, and often rolls around in a submissive way trying to get Ra to acquiesce, and sometimes Ra will actually chase the dog around playfully.

Mother's Day

Today was mother's Day. It was a really lovely, simple, stay home family day and the only consumerism we partook in was one pair of lambs wool slippers. The kids made me a card each and Stylish did all the dishwashing for my present. A gave me eggs benedict and a clean house. 

This evening a good friend and her kids came over for dinner. We had lime, chili, garlic, and cayenne roasted chicken thighs on the bone and lots of vegetables. Spikee is the same age as said friend's son so they played contentedly all evening and we watched "It's Complicated" and breast fed upside down babies and folded the clothes. It was a really enjoyable movie, and a lovely day all round. Best Mother's day ever!

Wintering! Making semi dried tomatoes

This is yesterday's harvest. The chard was delicious!

 We cut the larger tomatoes in half and coated them in olive oil, bush spices (wattle seed, pepperberry and lemon myrtle) brown sugar and sea salt. Then I put a cake cooling rack over the top of a baking dish and baked them for about 2 and a half hours on about 150C

The semi dried tomatoes are stored in my second hand tupperware container, covered with olive oil. The flavour is AMAZING!

 Then tonight we added about half of them to a spaghetti bolognaise with more bush spices, lemon pepper, homegrown zucchini and masses of freshly picked parsley. It was delicious!

My thumb is green today!

I finally managed to spend an hour in the garden in between the teething baby, and the other children. I planted a heap of seeds. Pak choy, brussel sprouts, beetroot,  cauliflower, lettuce, radish and silverbeet. I also harvested a whole box of tomatoes of every imaginable colour, a massive bunch of parsley and a beautiful red stemmed chard. 

We had a gorgeous family lunch yesterday with a massive roast consisting of pork, lamb, potatoes, pumpkin, broccoli, beans, and home made mint sauce and gravy. After that there was a choice of melting moments or chocolate cake. Most people chose both. There was also a good whack of the latest home brewed beer which is lime and chili. I think it's my favourite. I like the berry beer but the lime and chili is such a unique flavour with its' mix of green and red chili and fresh limes, you just can't go past it. 

I plan on roasting most of the tomatoes until they're semidried, and making the parsley into pesto with cashews, and having the chard with sour cream and grated nutmeg, but I won't do anything until the teething demon awakes from his nap. 

pesto