Sage, garlic and cream pasta

Today has been another cool spring day that called for something warm at lunch time. With only a few people to feed and wanting something creamy and carby for a change this happened to end up in our bowls.

Today at 12.30 - cool and drizzly

It was too good not to share with the readers of this blog.

We used small pasta shells, but I suppose you could use any pasta. I like the shells, though, as they make mini cups which hold the sauce nicely not leaving half in the bowl with the eater having a predicament of whether to stick your face in the bowl and lick it out or to let it be washed down the drain - which is a sacrilege with this sauce!

I also grow lots of sage. I use it for soap, pork meals and my daughter for the chicken liver pate that she makes and sells. It has just come into bloom again and has the most lovely rich smelling leaves and flowers at the moment.

Ingredients:

500g pasta shells
1 tablespoon butter
250ml cream
4 cloves garlic crushed
Large handful fresh sage sliced
Grated Parmesan
Salt & pepper

Cook your pasta in salted water.

Melt the butter and add the garlic and sage. Fry gently for a few minutes - do not burn the garlic.

Add the cream, a few grinds of black pepper and a good bit of salt.

When your past is cooked, drain it and add it to the sauce. Stir to coat the shells well.

Serve into bowls and top generously with Parmesan cheese.

So delicious!

Growing rosemary from cuttings

When I had the open day a while back one of the things I spoke about was how to make more plants from what you already have. I mentioned seed saving - although I am not a big seed saver as I find it too fiddly for my time constraints. But one of the easiest ways to propagate new plants is by taking hard wood cuttings.

Being the kind of person I am I don't overthink it too much and follow exact instructions but apply the general principle of hardwood cuttings to gain more herbs like rosemary, lavender and sage. Below follows how to do it using Rosemary as an example.

This is mother rosemary. It is a huge plant that stands under my bathroom window and has been growing for about 7 years in this spot. In summer it has delicate purple-blue flowers that attract the bees. While we use rosemary in cooking a few times a week, and don't really need another plant, I have wanted to have a bank of rosemary buses at the pond garden for bees and beauty so have been making baby plants from this one.

Every time I use rosemary, I simply cut the length I need from the plant and strip off the lower leaves to use in my recipes. The remaining stalk gets added to a glass of water with others and stands on the kitchen windowsill. I refresh the water when needed - a couple times a week, generally.

After a few weeks these new roots begin to appear. I wait until the majority of the stem is covered with them before planting them into a smallish pot containing a rich compost potting soil mixture with some added coco-peat.

This baby rosemary bush was planted in November and has set itself nicely to the job of growing up. I will transplant it, and its siblings, in a few weeks around the pond.

As we often need sage for soap, cooking (it's superb with pork) and for the chicken liver pate that my daughter makes and sells, I have started propagating that delicious herb too. Lavender is also useful for attracting bees, making soap and for the sublime honey and lavender ice-cream I have made before. Lavender is also just for aroma therapy when walking through the garden.

Do you propagate herbs and plants from cuttings? Tell me about it! I love to learn from your comments.

Flowers in my garden

I mentioned a while back that I was going to include more flowers in my garden this season as I want to attract more insects to the vegetable garden. This may seem a little counterproductive to pest control but I hope it will indeed do just that - control pests.

The other reasons are to promote pollination by giving the bees and butterflies lots of good food and for beauty. I may be strange but I do find vegetable and herb flowers beautiful. Not a well tended rose garden beautiful, but as I walk through all the green foliage I see little bursts of colour here and there as some of the herbs begin to flower I marvel at the different colours, shapes and purposes.

Calendula, seen above, is such a gorgeous flower that I have planted for the last few years. They are edible flowers, bees love the dark center landing pad and I collect the petals for my soap making. I have normally planted a ring of them around the pond, but this year I gave them the circular bed at the pool below the fig tree. They have grown prolifically here and are a huge burst of colour in our rather drab back yard.


Most of my borage has died down now and has been added to the compost heap. It will self seed all over the garden, I even see some leaves popping up from the last addition of compost to the beds. Most of it I pull out quite small, a few will be left to grow to flower stage. The flowers can be eaten in salads or on cheesecakes and they have a light cucumber taste. I have been told that you can also scrape the prickles of the leaves and slice them into fritters, but have not tried that yet!

I have a few Bulbinella plants around the place. The bees love this plant and so do I when something makes me itch when working in the garden. Its also cooling and soothing for sunburn, cooking burns and animal stings.

A lot of the flowers around the garden are simply because they have been left to go to seed. My coriander is about to do that and I will soon have the delicate white flowers to enjoy and eventually seeds for sowing and cooking.

It is the same with the dill below. We use very limited amounts of fresh dill in our cooking. But I love the blooms and we can save the seeds for recipes later in the year. Dill has the most beautiful delicate leaves which we chop finely into yoghurt when eating Greek dishes. We don't eat much fish due to our boys being allergic, but when we do having fresh dill is a winner.

Nasturtiums seed themselves all over the garden in late winter and he flower has always been one of my favourite. I normally have a few small vases of them scattered around the home. They are also a spicy addition to salads and the leaves are used in juices every now and again. We have little black beetles that like to bury themselves head down into their narrow throats and gulp up the nectar.

Nasturtiums are a wonderful way to protect brassicas from the white cabbage moth as these girls will lay their eggs on the undersides of the nasturtium leaves and their little caterpillars will munch away happily.

I also have loads of sage growing in a few places. The flowers are not the most astounding but sage leaves are superb with pork. Sage is also a great companion to carrots so my son planted some with his carrots in his square foot garden.

I also collect the sage leaves and use it in a sage and lemon grass soap which is one of my favourite bars.

Besides for the herb flowers I have also planted sunflowers around the pond. Its a little later than normal, but each year these tall beauties reach up around the pond and show off their faces to the sun. This is what the will look like in summer:

Do you grow flowers specifically in your garden?

Should have listened to Mamma!

Often when I am gardening I remember things that I have read here and there or heard here and there, but there is one voice that I remember from my childhood gardening adventures, which is my Moms.

Sis and Me in the late 1970's

My mom was, and is, a spectacular gardener. My childhood home was up in Johannesburg and we lived on 1/2 acre that my mother had lovingly created, tended, nurtured and established from scratch. Mom and Dad bought the property, built the house and turned it onto our home when they were young parents.

The garden was good enough, no in fact fantastic enough, for Garden & Home Magazine. It was filled with hiding places for us as children where we had a house in the weeping willow with a table and chairs inside made from tree stumps. There were many happy hours spent there in play.

Another of my favourite places in our garden was right down in the bottom corner behind a screening bush. You could go down a flight of old railway beam stairs with dolls and spend a long time playing where no-one could find you.

We had a small section at the back of the house that my mom grew a few fruit trees. When my sister and I left home to study my mom turned this area into a very productive and impressive vegetable garden.

Messy tower

I don't think I paid much attention to her actual gardening tips as a child, but when I became a wife and mom and my heart turned to all things homemaking, I remembered a lot of her lessons.

I would like to think that while my children work with me in the garden, willingly and unwillingly at times, that even if they are not interested now, they will be able to one day draw on their memories of working by my side. My elder daughter, whose thinking is turning to her own home sooner than the rest, is my most eager helper and is the one who asks questions like: "Why did those tomatoes die?" and "Why are we mulching?" etc.

Back in 2010 Superman and Son made me a herb tower in their own design. It has gone through the seasons and because it is right outside my kitchen door it has summer cooking herbs planted in it normally. In winter it is in full shade for almost the whole day, but oregano and marjoram struggle on through the lack of sun.

All tidy!

At the end of last winter I planted some mint in there. This is when I remembered Mom's advice of never planting mint in the ground - always in a pot, under a tap. But I didn't heed her advice in my haste and the mint has gradually spread out and by the beginning of spring it had taken over the whole tower. Mint is one of those herbs that give prolifically and so much more that you can ever use. So it really needs only a smallish pot to grow in for all year round use.

Today we pulled out everything expect the Oregano and Marjoram and started the herb tower over again. Old soil was removed, new soil, compost and a little cocopeat added. I planted in some teeny tiny coriander and basil seedlings I started two weeks ago, as well as some dill and chive seeds. I stuck queen squash seedling in one corner which will spread across the paving through summer.

Caring for your mint is really simple. It will get root bound in the pot and you can just tip the whole plant out when it looks all woody, chop the mass in half with a spade, add new soil and plop the half back into the pot. I also give it a good hair cut when it is woody and within a week or two you will get new tender green shoots for cooking, salads, mint teas and summer cool drinks.

Recently regenerated mint

And the other half? Well why not pot it up too and give it to a friend when it has a new set of leaves? Sharing is caring after all :)

A good week

Our home, like all homes have good weeks and bad weeks. I have been determined to work through our to do lists this week after all the social stuff we have done for the first 3 weeks of holidays. So while I was a bit of a tyrant this week we have also come to the end of it with to do lists done for the most part and a feeling of satisfaction.

Here are some of the things we got up too...

Starting with a not so good experience - my daughter breaking her toe on New Years Eve! X-rays showed a spiral break on her toe next to baby toe on her left foot.

The brave kid saw the evening through and the next day until we could go for the X-ray. The swelling and bruising was quite bad and she was obviously in pain.

I made up some comfrey ointment for her as comfrey helps with bone knitting. Arnica is being used for the bruising and her toes strapped for the next 3-4 weeks.

We have comfrey in the garden which I infused in olive oil. I grated in 1/2 cup of beeswax and then let it set.

She applies this twice a day then restraps her toes together.



We have also been digging up potatoes to make space for our short season summer crops and some autumn harvest crops.

This has traditionally been youngest one and Lucky's job so in the cool evenings BEFORE bath time they get stuck in and dig.

Over three days they cleared one bed and this was the product............................................. :

He then had to search through the pile to find the perfect one and this was his choice:
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 Of course this huge harvest has one small problem...we have not been eating potatoes like this for many months - gosh...I really don't know why I planted so many!!

But for now we will eat and enjoy them and live with the consequences.

The first meal was simple baked potatoes and salads for lunch yesterday and they were delicious hot with butter...so yummy!

I have been experimenting with making nut butters in my Green Star Juicer and made a lovely almond butter and a very creamy macadamia butter. I have also made almond flour which we used to make the most delicious breakfast pancakes with the flour.

{For those in Cape Town - I am now buying nuts in bulk at the Yellow Submarine in Ottery. I had a long chat with the owner about the age of the nuts (rancidity is a concern for me) and about which season they grow in. They have a limited but sufficient range of the most popular nuts in the organic section.}

My sons helped me make up some sauerkraut. It's the first time I am making it but have been wanting to learn the skill of lactofermenting vegetables for a while now and cabbage seemed to be the easiest one to try.

We used one whole BIG cabbage. You shred it in your food processor then bash it down into a jar in layers. You have to sprinkle a little salt between each layer and bash the shredded cabbage really well between each addition.

The juices of the plant are released and eventually the kraut is covered by this salty water.

Then the jars are covered with muslin or netting and left to stand for 7-10 days on the counter to ferment.

If you followed the link above you would see that I have been experimenting with Paleo recipes. I am not sold out on the whole idea but I think that there are many ideas that are worth incorporating into our eating.

We are dedicated meat eaters, but I also enjoy the odd bean dish and cannot do without humus! I am not a big organ eater, but do enjoy a well made liver and onions.

I love the treat recipes (hence the nut butters) and some of the other precepts fit in with the Nourishing Traditions thinking.

So I will, as normal, harvest the ideas I like and use them in my home and for our health as far as my budget and time can handle.

This was a salad recipe from Paleo that I adjusted for my non-tuna eaters....

3 smoked chicken breasts (sliced)
2 oranges (peeled, segmented, halved)
1 cup pecans
2 apples cored and sliced
1/2 cup mayo
1/2 cup yoghurt
2 butter lettuces
Salt & pepper

Mix everything together except lettuce. Place lettuce on a platter top with the mixture, serve and enjoy...so very yummy!

Harvest of a different kind

Yesterday evening I picked all the Calendula blooms I could find to dry for soap making. I also picked a good deal of sage leaves. I have been cooking with sage quite a bit, but these leaves are also to be dried  for soap.

On the weekend I hope to make this Calendula soap which I have made once before and it was lovely.

I also want to make Sage and Lemon Grass soap which I have also made before and the recipe is found here at Slow Living Essentials.

It's a pity I have to take the glorious blooms from the garden but I always leave the rest that come at the end of spring to enjoy then shake the seeds out all over the place for them to pop up and surprise me next spring.

The garden pantry

It's so exciting to see the winter crops come into full production. While we have been eating Asian Greens, spinach, broccoli and peas for a while we now have the long awaited broad beans making their appearance.

There are loads of pods on the plants, and even though many were damaged in the storms of the last weeks, we will have plenty on our dinner table over the next while.

The last of our beets are big enough to harvest now so we will clear this bed out this week so that I can plant the last spinach of the season which should see us to December. A nice bowl of steam baby beets will go down well with a roast chicken this week. I also use the leaves like spinach, so perhaps a spinach and feta pie will be on the menu?

 The last purple broccoli is waiting to be picked, we still have some of the sprouting variety so these two combined will go into a pasta or broccoli cheese for a meal.

 Peas are nice and fat in their pods and we have mange tout for salads at the moment. I am also harvesting the pea sprouts that we planted in our asparagus  beds for salads.

And then our shy Mary Washington asparagus is arriving. We have about 10 spears in different stages peeping through and will make a lovely hors d'oeuvre one evening. In the book "Animal Vegetable Miracle" they talk about asparagus being the first sign of spring...this may well be but it is still freezing here.

Our herbs of coriander, majorum, celery, origanum, rosemary and thyme have been used heavily this winter. I also have a Bay tree but it is infested with scale....so it is being pulled...it is actually in the wrong place anyway. Today I planted a new Bay in a pot and put Penny Royal and Thyme at the base. I need to rethink all the herbs I do have growing as I use so much of them that I need to allocated more space....time to plan!

What's growing in your garden?

Rich fragrant vegetable stock

As our wormery is in no need of peelings and our compost heaps are breaking their boundaries, I decided to hold back a couple of days vegetable peelings and make a rich stock. I'll admit to being quite generous in the celery department by not using the leaves in other meals so that they could be added to the stock, but for the rest it was just the parts not used like garlic and onion outers, tops of marrows and squash, ends of tomatoes and carrot peels. After 2 days we had a packed bowl full.

I gently browned a few cloves of garlic in some olive oil....

Then tipped the peels etc into the pot.....

And covered it with spring water....

About 1 hour later I added a huge bunch of herbs - thyme, parsley and majoram. I also added about 10 whole peppercorns.

Allowed to simmer for 3 hours, then left overnight to cool.


This morning I strained it and put it into jars for use this week and some into plastic containers to freeze for later use.

I wish I could explain the fragrance of this stock. We have been making meat stocks for a couple of years now and they have their own warming smell. But this vegetable stock had such a full bodied smell....can't wait to use it.

Marbled lavender soap

This is the recipe that my daughter and I used yesterday for a new soap. It is quite soft and it should lather well. The oatmeal soap I made about 2 months ago is a hard bar and has a low lather, but the cucumber is glorious!

I dried the lavender heads for a week and they were fully dry depsite the rainy weather.

378g coconut oil
250g palm oil
350g olive oil
151 g caustic soda
385ml rain or distilled water
15ml evening primrose oil
15ml lavender essential oil
15ml mauve pignment
2 handfuls dry lavender flowers

The key to making soap is to have everything ready. You need a pot for the oils, a scale to weigh them, 2 wooden spoons, 2 thermometers, 1 large plastic bowl, stick blender, greased mould.

Cover the counter with newspaper as well to stop messes. I am a bit negligent with gloves and eye protection, I used to wear them but have found that I am more adept at not messing now.

Measure the oils and place them in the pot on the stove at a low temperature to melt.

Place the quantity of water in the bowl then measure the caustic soda and add to the water. I do this outside. Stir gently until dissolved then set aside.

Check temperature on oils. You want both the water and the oils to be at the same temperature. I use 50 deg C.

When they are the same temperature add the lye to the oil while stirring. Then use your stick blender to bring to light trace. Add the essential oil and Evening Primrose now. Pour out 1/3rd of the mixture (back into the plastic bowl) and QUICKLY add the pigment. Stir.

Pour the uncoloured soap mixture into the mould. Then pour the purple ontop. Take a skewer or the back of the thermometer and do large figures of eight through the two layers.

Lastly press the flowers into the gooey surface of the soap. Cover with towels and leave overnight.

In the morning turn the mould over and the soap should flop out. Cut into desired size. Our yield was 22 generous bars.

This needs to cure for 4 - 5 weeks.

Simple Steps to Frugality and Green Living #7 ~ Grow your own herbs

Simple Steps to Frugality and Green Living #7 ~ Grow your own herbs

No matter where we have lived, from small apartment with no balcony to where we are now in suburbia, I have always grown fresh herbs. I know you can buy a bottle of dried herbs and use them all year and now you can buy fresh herbs at most grocery stores, but having your own fresh herbs really gives a cook a good feeling.

Herbs are simple to grow from seed, but if that is too much of a bother buy a selection of herbs at the plant nursery and grow them onwards from seedlings. Herbs will grow anywhere providing they get sun during the day and that you do not over water them. They hate having "wet feet"!

If you are in an apartment with only a sunny windowsill you can successfully grow your culinary herbs right there. Make sure that you have the seedling replanted in a pretty pot standing in a saucer so that when you water then you do not have a waterfall going down your windowsill to the floor!

If you have a sunny balcony, then transplant your herbs into suitably big containers and keep them in the sunny spot. Remember not to over water them, three times a week in dry times and twice or less in wet/cool times. Certain herbs can also be grown in hanging baskets or ones that fix to the wall. Shallow rooted salads also will grow like this. Coriander, chives and thyme will all be happy in baskets, or even the new trend of "gutter" gardening.

Of course if you have a small garden and want to grow herbs then you can use your walls like mentioned above or you can make a herb spiral. My herb spiral turned into a herb tower but it works very well. The idea is to plant sun loving herbs that like less water at the top of the spiral/tower and ones that enjoy moist soil and less sun at the bottom. My herb tower is in sun all day in summer and only afternoon in winter. Today it contains mint, celery, majoram and origanum.

This is not the only place I grow herbs. I have all my culinary herbs right outside my kitchen door so that I can get them quickly for a meal. I do however plant lots of celery so that is interplanted in other veggie beds too. In summer I give big sections to basil so that also flows into the vegetable garden. At the moment the raised bed has borage (flowers for bees and salads, leaves for compost), bulbinella (for burns and stings), majoram, sage, chillies, celery and coriander.

I also have more sage and rosemary and nasturtiums planted at the base of my lemon tree outside the kitchen. I have recently learnt to love sage in cooking, but I do grow lots of it for sage and lemon grass soap.

There are not many instances that I have to buy fresh or dried herbs, unless coriander is out of season and while its not a huge savings on a grocery budget that is well, rather big, it is something. For me its more about the smells of fresh herbs, the beauty of them and knowing they are always ready for me. I have lavender planted in pots around our courtyard and I love it when I can brush my hand over them and get the smell. My mom always planted penny royal between her stepping stones and that is a smell I remember from my youth.

If you only have a little space, I suggest that you grow only culinary herbs like:
Mint

Coriander
Parsley
Chives
Rosemary
Thyme

Fennel

Basil
Sorrel
Bay (plant in a big container, not in the ground.)
Garlic
Oregano
Tarragon
Chives
Dill
Majoram,
And then only the ones from this list that you know you will use.

Here are two recipes that I made this week which called for bouquet garni (which is just a French term for "a bunch of herbs!"). Traditionally you would tie it up in a muslin bag or in a parcel form, but I don't bother. I take the leaves off the twigs and I remove the bay leaf, which is big enough to see, before serving. You can use different combinations of herbs for different meats and vegetables.

For red meat use bay, rosemary and thyme. You can add oreganum to this aswell if you want an Italian flavour. For chicken use sage, fennel, parsely, thyme and bay. For stock I always use celery, thyme, bay and sage.

End of week soup with sour dough bread.

This is such a cool meal as it uses up veggies about to go over, contains nutritious beef or chicken stock and barley.

Melt a good knob of butter, then sizzle a very generous bunch of your chosen herbs. I used sage and thyme in our soup today. Then add any washed, peeled or chopped veggies that you need to use up. I used carrots, celery, baby marrows, 4 tomatoes and 2 red onions. Let these sweat for a bit in the herbs and butter. Then add 1 litre of homemade stock - either beef or chicken - and one cup of barley. Bring to the boil and then turn down to simmer for 2 hours. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with bread.

We served it today with the sough dough bread, the starter I nursed through the week. So nice to have bread after many weeks away from it.

Ratatouille, my style.

I know that this traditional vegetable stew is meant to be made with Aubergine, but none of us really like that veggie. I don't mind it, but it does make my lips itch! Again you can make this dish with veggies that need to be used up in a hurry, and is even better cold the next day. Here is how I make it:

Slice in lengths: 2 bell peppers, 8 baby marrows (courgettes) 2 red onions and 4 tomatoes.

The tomatoes need to be skinned first by pouring a kettle of boiling water over then and the puncturing the skin once. The skin will fold back and then you can drain the water and peel them easily.

Heat a drizzle of oil in a wide pan and fry up your chosen herbs. Sage, bay and thyme are great. You can substitute thyme for oregamum or majorum. Fry your onions until soft then place in an overproof dish in a layer. Add another drizzle and fry your marrows, putting them ontop of the onions when done. Then do the same for the peppers and lastly tomatoes.

Place this at medium heat in the oven for about 1hour. The recipe can be doubled for a main meal, but these portions are for a side dish.

I hope you are now inspired to try your own herb growing!