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.