Pine Mushroom Season

Last year Pine mushrooms made me make a delightful pasta dish. This year it wasn't much different and the delights went with some other mushroom

and this

and this from the balcony garden

and turned into this.

YUM! I love Pine Mushroom season at the Victoria Markets (even if they are a little expensive.)

A Berry Little Harvest Monday

Bit of a smaller harvest this week, with only a few staples left in the sun scorched garden. Beautiful berries of the strawberry kind went into my breakfast this morning. There were both wild versions of this little red wonder and some Hokowase strawberries. Usually I just snack on them as I garden but this time there were enough to go in my breakfast fruit salad.

Silverbeet is continual, even though I cut it to the ground just a month ago! It goes in many dishes and adds extra nutrients.

Eggplants, well I showed you them the other day and here they are harvested. These went into a wonderful little pasta dish.

Speaking of pasta, the last of the pumpkins I harvested a while ago was used up in a delicious pesto pasta dish.

And that is pretty much it for the moment. If you want to see other harvests pop on over to Daphne's Dandelions. I looks forward to harvesting chillies this week and int he future some figs and some more eggplants. The corn, the new corn that is, is a fair way off but I will post about that little experiment soon.

And on slightly different matters, if you can solve my friend's mutant tomato dilemma I posted about yesterday please, please, please add your advice. :)

Harvest Monday in Adelaide

While housesitter B is enjoying the spoils of the balcony garden I am here in Adelaide making do with the treasures in my parent's garden. Not that I am without a harvest. There is chard, chard and more chard. Red stemmed chard,

Yellow stemmed and curly chard,

And the most pretty of them all, orangey stemmed chard.

All chardy and all utterly delicious. And still so much of it left to eat. We eat a bit of this steamed almost every night and yet it never seems to deplete. Yay for parents and their gardens. If you want to see posts with different veggies head on over to Daphne's Dandelions for all the harvest news.

Harvest Monday

If you want to see lush Summer harvests, with bowls upon bowls of glistening tomatoes, yards of drying chillis and plenty of zucchini, then this isn't the harvest post for you (for plenty of posts in that manner head on over to Daphne's Dandelions for the rest of harvest Monday.) This is a Winter harvest post, though it is not as barren as one might think. The balcony garden is brimming with the greener side of the vegetable patch and some very well timed citrus. We have lettuce in hanging baskets (with a primrose stuck in the middle)

Baby coriander amongst the garlic (needing to be culled to help give the garlic a chance)

Lemons, four infact, two of which are still on the tree and one which went into this lovey slow cooked roast lamb dish (5 hours in the over, with lemon, garlic and some water in the pan, delicious)

The other lemon went to the fruit bowl, to be with his kind. Note the wonders of apartment living mean the fruit bowl and the powercords are very close friends.

Lunar white carrots, which generally grow more slowly, are the only ones reaching a decent size at the moment. I harvest one or two a day for salads. Wonder what happened to the purple haze and purple dragon carrots which are miniature in comparison.

Silverbeet that isn't silver gets added to stirfries and soups and more each day.

Not bad for a cold, wet, Wintery Melbourne. :) Veggie dinner anyone???

Harvest Monday

I do wonder where my old camera went, and with it the pictures of my long lost harvest. Still it is another week and another harvest and even in my jetlagged-then-food-poisoned state I have managed to pull a thing or two out of the balcony garden. Snow peas are blooming and setting (though it seems too cold for some) but overall broccoli is the main contender. I'll be harvesting more in an hour or two for tonight's slow roast lamb dinner (which was slated to be last night but I was struck down by bad things in my breakfast and not sure where the rest of yesterday went.)

Carrots are also getting added to each meal. They are smaller in size than last time, though still delicious.

Lettuce and silverbeet are plentiful too.

So a Winter balcony garden in Melbourne is definitely a green balcony garden but check out who will be featuring in next week's harvest Monday (probably because I harvested one this morning but forgot to take a photo of it.)

Harvest Monday

Yayayay I finally have something to add to harvest Monday (and the time to add it.) Green veg, carrots, eggplants and even the last of the tomatoes were harvested and used - it is a total mixed bag this week.

I have been using a load of greens. Basil in a yummy pesto pasta

Rocket and a pseudo-rocket lettuce thingo in my wild mushroom pasta.

And lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, yet it still seems like there is loads in the garden. Some are a little bitter as they are slowly going to seed but overall a mixture of leaves is just delicious in a sandwich (such as this fig and prosciutto one)

or in a salad. Also in salads were the last of the tomatoes, some little yellow cherry ones and some carrots, purple and yellow.

This lovely little eggplant went into a rather exotic vegetarian lasagne.

Layers of homemade napolitana sauce, with carrots and mushrooms for extra goodness, mixed with layers of pasta, in amongst layers of rainbow silverbeet, broccoli and low fat riccota, with other layers of pumpkin and eggplant cubes, lightly cooked and blitzed, with shredded yellow carrot and paprika and a dash of cheddar on top. The best bit? I have leftovers to last days! Yay.

I also harvested one of the daikon radishes and used it in some chicken, chilli and radish dumplings. Totally yum. So yum I forgot to photograph it until after I grated it!

As promised in an earlier post, I should, in the coming weeks, include a few posts on these lovely recipes that use home grown produce. For more harvest posts head on over to Daphne's Dandelions and share in the spoils.

Harvest Monday

This is just a short post as I am short on energy. What looked like hayfever yesterday has turned into a different form of illness today and it has taken all morning just to get out of bed. Harvesting veggies is the last thing I want to do today as it is hard to even stomach water. Ahhh these glorious bugs that go round at this time of year. Not due to illness but due to forgetfullness I don't have any pictures of the 3 baby eggplants I harvested friday night, nor the lettuce and silverbeet and yellow carrots and more.

I do have a photo of something I harvested last Monday, before I left Mum and Dad's house. Almost the last of the mortgage lifter tomatoes! A little bit less than perfect on the outside but yum.

There are a few more left on the bushes as you can see here, but they are definitely on the way out.

While I was there we harvested half of the basil (yes it was originally TWICE this size!!!)

Future harvests at Mum's include these lemons, capsicums, chillis (scotch bonnet and otherwise)

Given how sooky I feel today I wish I was still in Adelaide with them both and getting the parental sympathy and love. Although I'll end this post on a happy, funny note. Mum and I were potting up some new plants while I was there but we ran out of potting mix. Dad in his infinite loveliness went to the hardware store with strict instructions from Mum on what to get and where to find it. She gives excellent directions, foolproof even. Not too hard??? He came back with Mulch!!! Priceless. :)

Familia Familiar

Sorry for the lack of posting. I think the loveliness of being home with family coupled with the stress of thesis work/writer's block (on both the academic and blogging front) meant I just sunk into the couch with the two lovely spaniels and didn't move for a week. I did do a bit of a jigsaw (2000 pieces, alas unfinished) and watched way too many documentaries on serial killers and umbrella assassins, but it was necessary respite. I also managed to get outside and help Mum in the garden, putting in silverbeet and broccoli (Mum hates store bought broccoli but after my urging decided home grown might be good.) I felt like I was home, 'home' home not just in a house. I guess I am a family girl, not a daddy's or a mummy's girl but a family girl. If I lived there again I mightn't feel the same way but at the moment home is a lovely treat I get a few times a year.

That is not to say that Melbourne, my University home, and my balcony garden dwelling are not home either. Maybe someone can have two homes! Returning to find the garden looking lovely, well cared for by special housemate H (who has since moved back to her home, good luck!!!) made me smile. The gurgling of my ears from the place ride meant the smile didn't last long but that's just what happens when you have mangled inner ears.


Anyway enough musing about home and place and blah, blah blah. Now I am back I have to dive headlong into thesis, and blogging and my Melbourne life. But one last point on home - seems my attempt to create the Sagrada Familia went horribly awry, all the towers joined as one, and this latest lego mansion resembles a large, masonesque monument rather than Gaudi's creation. Still it comes complete with swinging doors and flag poles!

Monday Harvest

My camera is currently with a friend so I will be using older pictures, and some from earlier in the week to illustrate this week's harvest. I harvested lots of this, about 3 meals worth (for you Daphne.)

Two of these

One of these (the long one at the bottom which grew bigger, the fridge thing with the pollen worked!!!)

The long beans in this pot (not the peas) and then another large handful of the same tonight

five of these a night

and a handful of lettuce, basil, other herbs and onions pretty much every night! Great harvests for a great summer on the balcony garden

Yellow Flowers in Lieu of Harvest Pictures.

Alas no pictoral harvest post today. My camera is with a friend in the archives, and I didn't manage any blurry shots of the food I picked this week anyway. There was a harvest and it involved an eggplant which I stuffed with tomatoes, zucchini, rice and the insides of the eggplant itself for one meal, a few small zucchini, the dwindling tomatoes that manage to ripen, some carrots (some yellow ones from the carrot pot, some small purple ones from the tomato pot that got turfed yesterday), lots of silverbeet and plenty of herbs. I am not sure if this counts as a harvest post when there are no pictures. Actually here is an old picture of an eggplant - it's from the same bush so maybe we can just imagine! :)

Hopefully next week I can put in a harvest post before I have my 24 month thesis review and head off to Adelaide to visit my family. Still chugging along on the thesis while entertaining some lovely house guests at the moment so busy, busy, busy. I enchanted them with my yellow and purple carrots last night, along with the ubiquitous gnocchi, which went down a treat. In more floral news, things are beginning to bloom yellow on the balcony. Another sunflower has taken flight.

There are plenty more where that came from. I seem to have planted them everywhere in the garden at the moment, 4 around the eggplants, 5 in the new zucchini pot and one randomly in with some radishes! The marigold, even though it doesn't need to protect the tomatoes anymore, is beginning to open.

There is another yellow flower staring at me at present - a female zucchini flower, but no male flower on the plant. There was a male flower in full bloom yesterday so I took Dan's advice and put it in the fridge for safe keeping. Now to see if it actually worked!