A busy week, recipes and robbery!

I am sure you can tell by my lack of posting this week that we are back to school. It is actually our second week but this week the kids sports and music lessons started up again. I always say that we can handle our home, garden and schooling but as soon as the afternoon activities are added to the mix it is a matter of "hang in there, juggle another plate and collapse into a little heap at night."

As much as I would like to change this it is really not a possibility. Having 4 children who each do 2 activites means 8 in a week, swim training is 3x a week in itself! Throw in my need for excercise and it becomes a finely timed schedule and requires my full attention.

But this is just a little moan...I know that I will blink and my nest will be empty and they will move on with their own lives, so I savour and treasure each moment that I have them with me 24/7.

Well, onto the things you really want to read about - food, garden and self sufficiency. Here are the pictures and some recipes from this week.

The windowsill in our dining room is the perfect spot for morning bread rising...

Some little pilfering critter is getting to our corn before us....

My daughter's sense of humor! I still have to figure out what to do with these pumpkins...we are not big pumpkin eaters...any ideas? Something better than her idea of a hat stand LOL!

Some corn with a BBQ...the ones the field mouse/squirrel didn't get.

My mom bought me these lovely linen storage bags for potatoes. They are lined with black and can hang next to my stove in ready reach for cooking. They are not big enough for all the spuds we have harvested but I keep some there all the time. The others live in the fridge.

Yesterday while I was out for a meeting, Superman rallied the troops and did the garden chores. This meant more potatoes, tomatoes and a big bowl of Cape Gooseberries. I want to make Gooseberry tart for pud tonight.

A lot of our tomatoes have had to be harvested green. I put them on the counter to ripen. Some just weren't ripening to a full red then "du-uh" I remembered that I had planted some giant yellow tomatoes and a light bulb went on.

Two delicious meals this week were the above Calzone. This is just pizza dough folded over with a filling of mozzarella, spinach, mushrooms and homemade tomato sauce.

Above was a scrumptious Jamie Oliver meal from his Jamie At Home cookbook. It called for 2kg's of cherry tomatoes in different shapes and colors which I have an abundance of. This is drizzled with olive oil and basalmic vinegar and fresh Italian herbs. Roasted at a hig temp until all mushy. Then you add some pork sausages (we had Happy Hog smoked bacon and apple sausages) and cook until all brown and sticky. Served on homegrown mash potatoes...it was a meal to remember. I have a picture of many little heads stuck in the bowls licking the sauce...but my children threatened me with my life if I posted it here :-)