Time and lack of it

My life just seems to turn into one big whirl of busy-ness sometimes! It's nearly Christmas and I'm really not ready for it, although I am ready for the 2 weeks away that we will be having over that time! Kim and I will be having some time off in Western Australia - can't wait to catch up with Kim's family from over there, but especially our daughter.....she wants me to spend some time with her in the kitchen as she wants to get her mojo back.

Has anyone been inspired by my Lucy's Kitchen Facebook page. I've been enjoying posting about our food, and if even one person gets some inspiration to cook something, whether it be something I've done, or just been motivated to cook something from scratch or plant something in a garden, then I've achieved what I set out to do. As I've said before, it's not hard to cook good food, it's all about prioritising time and buying good ingredients.

This afternoon I decided that I'd better make some time to spend in the garden and tidy it up or else I won't have a garden! The green panic grass was starting to take over and shade too much. A little bit of shade in this heat is good, but not the amount I've been getting!

We've been eating kale and other greens, the odd tomato and lots of herbs. My eggplant is not so good - it's always too bitter, even after salting it. My lettuce are really struggling in this heat, so yesterday I bought the first lettuce that I've bought in months! I'm just waiting for my Brazilian spinach, Ceylon spinach and a newly planted Egyptian spinach to get big enough to start eating. The Ceylon spinach got me through last summer as our go to lettuce for salads.

I've pulled all my garlic - I didn't weigh it, but I did get two lovely big plaits. I've planted and waiting to harvest - snake beans, zucchini, tomatoes, capsicums, rosellas. The rosellas I mainly want to make some tea, although if I get enough off my two plants to make a small batch of jam I'll be happy with that too!

This was the first one I did and about the second one was twice as big as this. This one is gone and I'm working my way through the next one.

Below are some shots of my tidier garden, however I've lost quite a few plants from last weeks heat!

This last photo shows my two surviving (out of 5) rosellas and my asparagus that I never managed to eat in time. I didn't have enough netting to go over the top, so I've just put it around some of the plants to try and stop the chooks.

End of January already!!!!

It has been really hot for the last month (okay, for the last couple of months) and even though we've had some rain, we could do with a lot more - we've had just enough to get the grass growing and then the hot dry days come and the grass turns blue! I'm sure the wet will come in soon and we'll be waiting for it to dry out, but at the moment, we are just putting up with the oppressive heat!! I'm hoping to post soon about some farming things, but I thought I might just put up some photos of some of our food experiences while over in the West for our Christmas break.....

Whenever we travel, we like to look for local food and tend to stay in places where we can cook for ourselves. I like the concept of eating out, but it is so hard to find places where the food reaches my expectations! I have certain dietary requirements that aren't easily met. For example, I like food that is freshly prepared, in season and local. Preferably as organic as possible. I don't have dairy, grain or other intolerances, I just have intolerance to inferior quality. So I find it more satisfying to spend my money on good quality produce and then prepare it myself. A lot of the time, this costs as much as what I might spend in a restaurant, but I get to have the pleasure of cooking with quality ingredients and eating within my dietary requirements. And by buying local produce, we are supporting farmers like ourselves - people that care about providing quality food to the local market!

Rosemary grows so well in Western Australia, this plant is huge, and was one of the only things growing happily in my daughters yard - I did make her some rosemary salt as I couldn't help myself after seeing it!

I did a lot of shopping at local farmers markets, however WA is very good at supporting local food and most produce us labelled as grown in WA if it is.

Tomato bruschetta for lunch.

We have friends in the Margaret River area with a farm - they do market their own beef - Leeuwin Grass-fed Beef, however this was some of their lamb. Wiltsure Lamb - eaten on their farm.

Grass fed and finished beef from the Claremont markets. These were huge and very delicious!

Locally made chorizo in a salad for lunch.

Local Fish with veg.

Great seafood in WA, but the crayfish are the best seafood anywhere!!!

One of the main reasons we went to WA was to catch up with Kim's family, and especially his mother who turned 90 this year. We held a party for her, and Kim's cousin in-law finished the evening by cooking paella - it was great to watch the whole process.

I think I need one of these pans!