Something new for us: our veggie box subscription

I will shock you now, and post about something that isn't about the girls. A couple of months ago I started to rethink the way we do veggies. When I say do, I mean buy them. Of course in a perfect world we would be growing all that we need. But our world is not perfect. Far from it in fact. We both work, look after the girls, throw in looking after the household chores etc I admit we don't have lot of time to spend in our veggie garden. Not as much as Rob would like. Also Rob would be the first to admit that his garden is for more ornamental pleasure than sustaining our family of four per se.

Last summer was so dry and hot. We had to stop watering everything but the most precious plants as we still haven't set up a pump from the dam. Buying in tankfuls of water just seemed a bit extravagant. We did have a few great crops; the cherries and raspberries, a lone eggplant that was surprisingly prolific and basil. But we have to supplement our home grown produce with shop bought vegetables and fruit.

I was starting to feel a little guilty about the provenance of the vegetables I was buying. Our weekends are precious, and whilst I would love to head to a produce market every weekend, the time and effort with the two girls was just not an option. That's when I remembered a local co-op Channel Living. They have a weekly veggie box subscription. In mid-June we joined up and now I can't imagine our sourcing our veggies in any other way. We pick up our box on Friday at the co-op (they do offer delivery to a few places in the Channel) and it has fast become our favourite day of the week. Looking forward to the fresh produce in the box and working out how we are going to cook and eat them.

We have tried new vegetables that we would never have bought if they hadn't been in the box. The food is fresh, locally grown and either certified organic or grown by those with organic methods. I feel so much better knowing we are supporting local producers and that our veggies haven't travelled a long way to us. Whilst I admit we still buy the occasional veggie from elsewhere if we feel we really need something that wasn't in the box, I don't really like to do it. It has to be a very specific and needed ingredient or craving!

Rob and I have been taking photos of our weekly boxes and sharing them on the Channel Living Facebook and my Instagram feed. In doing so I have come across a hashtag community supported agriculture, or CSA for short. What a fantastic concept of sourcing local vegetables from reputable growers.

I will try to share our photos more often, but here are our favourites so far.

Monday Menu

Thanks for welcoming back this regular post. It was fun for us to go back and look at what we ate last autumn for inspiration, so I decided I wanted to bring it back. Thanks for sharing your menu too. Vegetables from our garden are featuring again - salad, carrots, parsnips, spaghetti squash, garlic, ruby chard and celery. We didn't grow potatoes and pumpkins so found some at our local fruit & veg shop.

M: Osso bucco and baked potatoes.
T: Pumpkin soup & cornbread.
W: Roast spaghetti squash, potato gratin, roast carrots and parsnips, and ruby chard.
T: Pumpkin, bacon and pine nut salad for lunch and blue cheese, pear and rocket salad for dinner.
F: Roast lamb and vegetables.
S: Toast, after eating too much pear and almond cake!
S: Chilli con carne & sweetcorn pudding.

Sorry I didn't photograph the cake, it was seriously good, so good I'd like to make it again this week.

What about you, did you bake Anzacs this week?

Snap it {on my plate}

The last few nights we've been enjoying fresh produce picked just before dinner from our garden. The peas and broad beans are abundant at the moment. Last night Rob and I wandered around the veggie garden and selected carrots and parsnips, silver beet and cute mini cauliflowers.

I snapped this photo of the basket before taking it inside.

Rob just cooked them in a little water and butter, so the carrots and parsnips were nice and firm still but the silver beet wilted. We sat at the table and enjoyed every mouthful.

It makes us so much happier when we eat fresh vegetables from our hut garden.


Playing along with Sarah at Faith Hope and a whole lotta love.

Friday Flowers

Tasmanian spring weather - I don't know how we forget it from year to year. Yesterday was warm (well for Tasmania) but the wind picked up early. I found out via the ABC news website that power went out at the hut at about 10am. Luckily we'd already been invited to my parents for dinner- as a hut without power wasn't that appealing!
The wind hadn't died down much during the day, when we drove home at 8pm we came across the electric company work team dealing with a tree and power lines just down the road from us. The hut was in darkness. After Rob rescued the Weber bbq (it had travelled around the side of the shed on it's trolley!) and some seedlings growing in trays we lit some candles and headed to bed.
This morning we were able to survey the damage. One tray of seedlings (quite sadly some Tangerine fluff poppies I'd won from Phoebe) had flown off in the wind, a few of our eucalypts had been damaged on the fenceline, and most distressing was our big eucalypt we'd been growing near the dam for the last 5 years has lost a significant amount of the main leader trunk (it had already suffered in the terrible wind a few weeks ago, but it's height has been reduced by half now!) The broad beans and peas look a bit worse for wear too, but hopefully they perk back up.
Somehow my tulips survived. Which is something, as a few warm days had brought on the flowering. Thankfully Rob took these photos last week in some morning sunlight.

The vegetable garden is looking so promising, everything is so green.

With any luck the weekend will at least be less windy, and best of all daylight savings starts this weekend!

Monday's Menu

Thanks for all your comments and wishes for my Mum. She's staying positive and so am I.

This weeks menu:

Monday: Left over paella
Tuesday: Potato, pea and purple brussel sprout frittata (disturbingly the next day the brussel sprouts were blue!)
Wednesday: puttanesca pasta
Thursday: Soft-boiled eggs on rocket on sourdough toast
Friday: Chicken and mushroom pie with rocket
Saturday: Roast chicken with roasted potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, carrots, parsnips and the obligatory rocket salad.
Sunday: Chicken, vegetable and pasta soup.

A few other highlights included a lunch date to Tricycle for soup and still warm rye rolls for breakfast in bed yesterday with cumquat marmalade.
We're churning through the citrus at the moment, tangelos, mandarins, oranges and blood oranges, I'm loving it. What's your favourite winter citrus?

Winter garden

Sometimes it's good to remind myself of the good things in life, the beautiful things, the furry friends who make me smile.

Of blue sky and sunshine, and a perfect reflection in the dam in the middle of winter.

Or a puppy so keen to please you, knowing that she will get praised for jumping up onto the log and sitting.

These photos are a couple of weeks old, but the garden is not rapidly growing at the moment.

We are still harvesting rocket for salads a few days each week.

The golden shallots are looking promising, I imagine each plant with 6 fat little golden bulbs underneath, and look forward to the harvest in summer.

Our collection of Tasmanian eucalypts are starting to take off on the fence line, hopefully providing a screen one day.
This week has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for many reasons for me, but infinitely more so for my mother, who has had an unwelcome diagnosis and awaits surgery next week. Whilst I try never to take my life and family for granted, every so often something like this will jolt me into realising how lucky I am. That silly things like washing machines breaking down or cracked car radiators that need replacing really are not that bigger deal in the grand scheme of things. To make the most of every moment with those you care about.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend planned. I'm hoping to retreat to the hut, weed some garden beds and help Rob plant the nine new fruit trees we just picked up from here.

Winter garden {broad beans and shallots}

I could get used to a 4 day week I think!
Just quickly a garden update more for my own benefit, perhaps, than yours.

Despite the cold weather, the optimistic plantings in mid April are growing.

We have a promising crop of golden shallots.


The broad beans are looking happy too.


We have been eating rocket salads for about two weeks now, it's so nice to be able to do that.
The cabbages and broccoli are growing ok, the carrots and parsnips are a little slower though.

We have plans for moving some rhubarb crowns and a fig tree to somewhere which will make them a bit happier, planting out the poor long suffering grape vines, establishing a raspberry patch and when the asparagus crowns arrive, creating an asparagus bed.
We're on the search for some artichoke crowns too, do any locals know of a good source?

In the flower garden the leaves of the ranunculus and anemones are poking through the soil, I've been informed that the roses are on their way from Geelong, and we repotted the gerberas (although one got a bit munched the other night as we had left them up against the hut).

Happy weekend to you.

Garden planning {bulbs and roses}

I am so ready for this weekend. This week has been all over the place for me. Work is busy, and I had a few days that were tough to get through. I try not to let work stress me out too much, but this week it did. But by the end of the week I've found some perspective, so it will be ok.

During the week to keep my spirits up, I indulged in some online retail therapy.
My flower garden looks fantastic, but apart from my lilies it's rather empty. So firstly I ordered 250 tulips, 300 anemones and 240 ranunculus bulbs from Tesselaar.

All of these images are from the Tesselaar website.

Next were my roses. Now Rob and I don't see eye to eye on roses. He loathes them with a passion. I however, would love to be able to pick roses for the hut and for friends and family. This partly led to the separation of the two gardens, so that Rob would not have to go near the roses! They are in the u shaped bed that surround the quadrant beds, so even I won't catch myself on a thorn whilst gardening around them. For the last 5 years I have sent away for the Treloar catalogue, which is in colour and mulled over the roses writing lists of my favourites. But eventually I narrowed it down to 40. Ten each of red, pink, yellow and white. They are all hybrid teas, which I know not everybody appreciates, but at the moment that's what I'd like. We certainly have room later to expand!

All of these images are from the Treloar website.

Last Saturday we had another load of soil delivered and Rob finished his vegetable beds. Although not the best time for planting we couldn't resist, so we planted some self-seeded Speckles lettuce and coriander. On Sunday we visited the Tas Farmgate market and picked up some chinese celery, dill and broccoli seedlings from Paulette at Provenance Growers. We also sowed carrot, parsnip, silverbeet, spinach, broad bean, rocket and savoy cabbage seed.

Watering in the speckles lettuce.

Lastly I just thought I'd share a little diagram I drew of our dream harvest year. I've joined in Chantelle's  April Photo-a-day challenge. Today's photo was something I drew. Believe me I don't draw very often. But this was fun. Not so sure about the likelihood of growing tangelos and mandarins in Tasmania, but the rest should be doable.

Happy weekend, I hope to drop by your blogs over the next few days, sorry I've been a bit slack at commenting this week. Well it must be almost beer o'clock! Yippee.

A belated Monday's Menu

We're making the most of the late summer/early autumn produce at the moment.
I didn't mention that we visited a friend on Friday evening and she begged us to take tomatoes, pears, quinces, plums, prunes, zucchinis and grapes. We were happy to oblige.
Our basil plants are still going strong.

Monday: Pasta carbonara. A favourite recipe in our home.
Tuesday: Steak on the Weber with silverbeet, beans, leeks and mash.
Wednesday: Fresh super sweet corn (from another friend's garden) and tomato and meatball soup.
Thursday: Pesto risotto with Meredith's goat cheese (if you haven't tried that cheese, please do, you'll thank me).
Friday: Pan-fried tomatoes, zucchini, speck, onions with basil and parsley.
Saturday: Nigella's aromatic lamb shank stew (an old favourite recipe of ours that we hadn't cooked in years)
Sunday: Fresh mozzarella with tomatoes and basil, a piece of Asiago cheese and Pigeon Hole rye bread (can you tell we visited Bottega Rotolo the day before?)

The sushi was a lunch date during the week from our favourite sushi shop R. Takagi.

Our Sunday

We woke this morning to rain, which made us quite happy our tank was running a little low.
After breakfast we headed down the road to the farmer's market at Cygnet. First priority was some Red Velvet Lounge sourdough and a fruit loaf. Greedy I know! Then we picked up some rhubarb and vegetables. There was an art exhibition in the hall. My favourite was this barbed wire horse. He was gorgeous with his coppery wire mane and tail. We looked in a few of the gift shops, and I found a raspberry red skirt in an op shop. We couldn't resist an Eccles cake each from Lotus eaters. We took our spoils home. The sun came out so Rob did some digging in his veggie patch. I made granola and a vegetable soup for dinner.
A pretty perfect day.
P.S. like many others I'm totally addicted to instagram: my name there is hazelnigella. But I've decided to join in Fatmumslim's March photo a day game. Today's theme was bedside. Let me know if you're equally as addicted and I'll follow along.

Monday's Menu Megamix

So what's been on the menu?

Vegetables- in the form of stir fries, fresh sweetcorn, pumpkin and rocket salad, baked potatoes and minestrone soup.

Pasta- pesto, Spaghetti Bolognese,

Meat- Roast chicken, slow roasted lamb shanks with quince jelly.

With both of us away last week there was a bit of a hole in my digitally recorded menu (I still feel self conscious about taking photos of food in public and will only really do it if it's just Rob and I. A few people have been teasing me about my Facebook page as I often post images there too - one friend even commented to me as I took a photo of a pavlova I'd made,  "we know it's good if it goes up on your Facebook page!")

However, I did find a little cafe that made great smoothies for breakfast, I had a mango and a espresso whilst staying in Brisbane. The food at the conference hotel and the dinners were surprisingly good. One dinner was served on shared platters for each table. So you got to try fish, lamb, beef, chicken and there were lots of vegetable side dishes too.

What have you been eating recently?

Village spirit

We headed to the Cygnet market today. We love these country village produce markets, and have tried a few around the Huon & Channel. But this was the first time we'd gone to this one.
It was buzzing from when it opened at 10am, even though it was a cool day. We bought quite a lot, actually. Rhubarb, lettuce, spring onions, broad beans, carrots, strawberries, a Korean gardening tool, a celery top spatula. Then we wandered along the main road, a new shop front beckoned us, with it's welcoming timber door and pot belly stove. Part second hand book shop, part homeopathic pharmacy and part toy shop. We couldn't resist a tiny bunny and a fox. We were quite taken with the billy goats gruff though!
We had a coffee and some lovely crisp pastries at the Lotus Eaters, before picking up some bread and jam doughnuts (for later, I promise) from Red Velvet Lounge.
Finally some new pink eye potatoes and free range eggs from the shop.
It was the best market we've been to, the stall holders were friendly and it was so busy (in a good way).
Back at the hut we made two different Christmas puddings and I made a batch of speculaas for a Dutch friend.
I'm counting down the days to go to our holiday now, roll on Friday.