So many zucchinis!

The middle of Summer has well and truly hit here in Melbourne with temperatures scoring into the 40s. Although I struggle in the heat, my garden thrives on it. This is when my veggies are in full bloom. As long as I keep them happy with water, they will keep me happy with a continual harvest of fresh veggies for my family.

Every single year I plant zucchini. If I plant nothing at all, I plant zucchini. I'm a novice gardener but have never failed at growing zucchini, no matter where I've lived. This year I'm growing the traditional green type and have 3 plants taking over the garden bed. In this warm weather they have literally been growing over night and we get to the point where I struggle to find ideas of what to do with all my zucchini!

One tried and tested recipe is my zucchini slice. It's very easy! All you need is:

1 chopped onion

375g of grated zucchini

1 or 2 grated carrots

1 cup of self raising flour

1/4 cup of olive oil

5 eggs

4 rashes of bacon 

2 cups of grated tasty cheese

All you need to do is:

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees.

Fry off your onion and diced bacon.

Whisk your eggs and flour together in a bowl.

 Add all your other ingredients. Mix well.

Season with salt and pepper and place in a greased lamington sized tin.

Bake for 30-45 mins. Just keep an eye on it.

One huge tip that I suggest is once you grate your zucchini pop it into a clean tea towel and wring out all the excess water.

Until I figure out what to do with all my zucchinis, I've begun freezing batches of grated zucchini. You simply grate your zucchini, wring out the excess water and pop into zip lock bags so whenever you want to make something that requires grated zucchini, you'll have it at your finger tips!

A great day, Australia Day

Australia Day is not a day that I normally celebrate and not for any particular reason. The only one I can think of is that my husband normally works, other than that I can't think why. Today was a great day because:

• I slept in
• Everyone was home
• I had no where to be
• I watched my girls ride their bikes
• We walked to the playground
• I made lamingtons with my girls
• We made a huge mess and I didn't care
• I didn't worry about what had to be done
• Time got away from me
• I made homemade mayonnaise 
• I made potato salad
• We had a delicious BBQ for lunch
• There were so many left overs that I didn't have to think about dinner
• The sun was shining
• The girls were splashing in their little pool

A cheats lamingtons

Making  a mess

Homemade mayonnaise

Potato salad

It's days like this that I wish came along more often. It was a day that kind of felt like Christmas Day but probably better. We had nowhere to be, no one to please. The kids were so excited about making lamingtons instead of what presents they would receive. Unlike Christmas, I didn't feel exhausted at the end of it; it was a slow day. I felt relaxed and refreshed to begin another school year. I hope you had a great day too :-) xx

A good quiche recipe

For the past probably 10 years I have been cooking this quiche recipe time and time again with much success. A version of it began from my mum but this is my adjusted version that I wish to share with you.

You will need.
1 sheet of short crust pastry
Butter or oil for greasing
1 brown onion finely chopped
8 rashes of shortcut bacon finely sliced
1 packet of frozen pastry thawed and excess water drained
6 eggs
250ml of thickened cream
Good handful of cheese of your choice. I normally just use tasty
Salt and pepper

How to make it.
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees while you thaw out the pastry.

Fry off your onion and bacon until it's golden and set aside to cool. Meanwhile, pop you thawed pastry in your dish and put it in the oven to blind bake.

Mix together your eggs and milk in a bowl.

Once your pastry case is baked  and cool it's time to assemble.

Start by a layer of the onion and bacon.

Next step is the add your layer of spinach, then cheese. Today I used feta only because I had some left over. If I was using my usual grated tasty cheese then I would add this last. It really doesn't matter!

Finally add your cream and egg mixture and even it out as best as possible. Mine clearly isn't perfect. Who really cares!

Pop it in the oven for at least 45 minutes. Today mine took and hour. Just keep checking until it's golden brown on top, has risen and a knife comes out clean when put in the centre.

This was my finished product today. Enjoy!

Ps. If you would like your mixture to be firmer you can whisk in about a tablespoon of plain flour with the egg and cream mix and that will firm it up. Sometimes I do it and sometimes I don't. I just forgot today but I'm sure it still tastes good!

Sunday harvest

This afternoon I was able to harvest some of my first summer veg:-) I filled a bowl with some parsley, green beans and 3 tiny zucchini. Some nice organic veg to accompany our dinner!

Parsley Pesto Recipe

Beautiful zucchini flowers in the morning

I'm happy to say that my veggie patch survived a week of scorching temperatures. I watered morning and night and all was good....we'll except for a little capsicum plant. We aren't huge capsicum fans in this household anyway so no big loss.

Corn seedling heading towards to scorching sun

young zucchinis

an almost ripe grape tomato

tomatoes loving the heat

lebanese cucumbers

Although the heat did stress me and my veggies out a bit, the heat definitely sped things up a bit. So for today I harvested a nice big bunch of flat parsley, a zucchini and a tiny cucumber which I ate straight away!

today's harvest

A large bunch of parsley this good called for another pesto recipe, this time parsley pesto.

You will need:

A bunch of continental flat parsley

3 garlic cloves

1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Handful of walnuts

Handful of grated Parmesan

Teaspoon of salt

2 medium sized zucchini diced

Packet of pasta of your choice 

Method: 

Bring a large pot of water to the boil.

While that is happening, add your parsley, garlic, oil, walnuts, Parmesan and salt to a food processor.

Whizz it altogether until it resembles a pesto consistency.

By now your water should be boiling so add your pasta.

When there is a few minutes to go until your pasta is cooked, add your diced zucchini. You could also add diced green beans or potato as well.

Once your pasta is cooked so too should your veg so drain it all and return back it the pot.

Stir your pesto through the pasta and veg and enjoy!

Home again

I've been away with my family for just under a week for some much needed rest and relaxation. As the holiday started to come to a close I started to think about my garden. The weather had been quite hot back home and it wasn't receiving the regular watering that it would had id been home to look after it. I was wondering....

Is everything still alive?

Is anything ready for harvesting?

How much weeding will need to be done?

Did my seeds germinate?

What will I plant next?

Much to my delight I found some things to harvest tomorrow, 2 young zucchinis and some beans.

Lots of flowers on my tomato, cucumber and zucchini plants so many more to harvest later.

Lettuce and corn seeds have germinated.

Some wilted leaves...many many weeds! But no dead plants:-)

I'm happy to be home, my kids are happy to be home back to their creature comforts, hubby's happy to have another week to wind down at home before going back to work.

Yes there are mountains of laundry to be washed, then folded and put away...meals to be planned, groceries to be bought, meals to be cooked...hems to be taken up, name labels to be ironed onto uniforms and the lists goes on and on with no end. The truth is, it isn't all that bad, it's part of my home, my family, my life that I wouldn't trade for any other.

2014 brings a new baby into our family....more washing, more nappies, more crying, more sleepless nights but most of all more love and joy into our home

:-)

Summer garden

The madness of Christmas has subsided and my garden was in desperate need of some tlc. My tomato, zucchini, bean and cucumber seedlings were growing nicely as the weather has been warmer. However, they were slowly being taken over by weeds!

Today was a mild morning so it wasn't too hot to spend a couple of hours weeding. I dread weeding but the end result is always worth it and my plants will reward me later with summer veg:-) 

I also visited the nursery later and bought some more seedlings ( eggplant, chilli, capsicum, more herbs and beans ), and some sugar cane mulch to try and keep those weeds away!

Let's see how long it is before harvest!