Harvest Monday- 2 May, 2011

This week has been a bit haphazard because of back to school and getting back into routine. The crock pot has certainly been on duty.

I have been harvesting the same things as the previous few weeks but usually just ducking down to the garden right before dinner preparations.

The end of April means I have a harvest tally for the whole month. In April my weighed harvest was 20.168kg which equates to about 44.46 pounds. This has brought the tally for 2011 so far to 92.238kg which is approximately 203.35 pounds. This amount of produce coming in to the kitchen does save us money although in all honesty, if I was buying produce, I wouldn't buy some of the things I grow. I would stick to the basics. I wouldn't buy 9 kilograms of limes for example but that is how many came off my one tree. Last nights harvest meal was a curry. It had a small amount of lamb in it but was mostly vegetables- potato, carrots, onion, garlic and cauliflower. I like to use the slow cooker for curries. This one was just a matter of browning the meat, adding the vegetables, stirring in the curry paste (which was some spicy pickles I made last year), adding the coconut milk and then putting it all in the slow cooker for a few hours. The down side is that you have to put up with tempting cooking smells for most of the day.

On a lighter note another quick meal we eat is a chicken salad. It is pretty much a huge salad with lots of leafy greens to which I add some hot roasted potatoes and some stir fried chicken breast pieces. I usually stir a sauce through the chicken fillets when they are cooked and that dresses the salad. It is delicious even if it looks a little bland. The kids like to bulk it up a little by eating it wrapped up in flat breads.

Today I have been planting out seedlings and have made the decision to remove most of the left over summer crops. But that's a job for tomorrow. Today in the kitchen I'm making pumpkin gnocchi with sage butter sauce and a cauliflower soup too.

If you would like to have a look at what others are harvesting, check out Daphne's blog. There's lots to enjoy there.

Tracy