Batten Down The Hatches

We had such beautiful weather over the weekend.  

Yesterday's Blue Skies

Even so, we managed to receive more than our fair share of rain, which, thankfully fell mostly overnight.  This morning however, most of the south-east coast woke to a dreary wet Monday which is developing into an even drearier wet Monday afternoon with the potential for high winds.

We've lived in the Blue Mountains long enough to know that high winds means exactly that.  The Bureau of Meteorology has become a very reliable weather forecaster and when it issues a severe weather warning for damaging winds, I sit up and take notice.

As a result, all our deck chairs are neatly stacked on the verandah, my potted cuttings are set back out of the winds, and all loose objects (you know, the empty polystyrene box, empty plastic pots, gardening gloves, etc, etc), are packed away so that we don't have to spend the next month collecting stray items from the side of the holt on which we live.

Outdoors, the temperature has dropped from yesterday's comfortable mid 20 'C to around 12 'C so I think this calls for some serious cooking.

The heating has been cranked up but I always love to use the oven to help heat up the living areas of our home; so tonight (well, this afternoon), I'm preparing a slow roast fillet of beef for dinner.

I usually search the Internet for recipes but rarely do I follow a mains recipe completely. After scanning through three or four recipes I adapt them to suit my family's taste and what's available in my pantry.

The garden is overflowing with thyme...seems our dry, sandy, soil and humid conditions are ideal, after all, thyme has Mediterranean origins, so I've flavoured the beef with 25 (or is that 26)springs of thyme . Previously I had rolled the cut of beef in a mixture of freshly ground black pepper and Celtic sea salt.

After inserting the sprigs of herbs under the string I also rubbed some olive oil into the beef.

It is now in the oven roasting away in a pre-heated oven (reduced to 140'C - my oven is a 'hot' fan forced oven.)

  About an hour before serving the beef I'll put on a tray potato, beetroot and pumpkin to roast and just before serving make a nice dark gravy using the tray juices and steam some green beans.

Day 343/366

Today was the last Crop and Swap for the year.

At Crop and Swap there is a "Share Barrow" - "For things you're happy to give away".

This is the Share Barrow at the beginning of the morning.

The Share Barrow quickly fills up during the morning and is almost empty again by the time we're all ready to leave for home.

From the Share Barrow, today I took home a magazine called Organic Growing and a potted Jerusalem artichoke.

I left a bunch of lemon grass stems, and a bunch of thyme as well as an empty egg carton.

Home Grown

Fresh from the garden. This zucchini is bristling with life...when I cut it up, it will just burst with crispness. 

Soup for dinner tonight.  What could be more satisfying on a miserable damp day than soup and toast?
Besides, it's nice and quick and once more I can use up what little there is of the veggies in the bottom of the refrigerator.  Tomorrow is market day and I get to replenish our fresh fruit and vegetable supply with farm fresh produce.
In the meantime I have livened up the soup with a zucchini, freshly picked from the vegetable patch and a bouquet garni made with fresh herbs from the herb garden.
The bouquet is made with sage, rosemary, marjoram (just a touch), and oregano which is then all tied together with a few long stands of thyme.   This way I can lift the whole bunch out of the pot at the end of cooking. Mm mm, such a satisfying aroma is created from these herbs.
The zucchini might be the last of the season, as, it seems, the one remaining plant seems to have succumbed to the fungal disease off the one other plant that was growing.
Celtic sea salt is almost a staple in my kitchen.  If I use this and the bouquet garni in my soups, casseroles and stews, I have found that there is no need to use stock cubes, no matter how 'natural' they proclaim to be!
Unlike sodium chloride which is commonly labelled as table salt, Celtic sea salt is full of minerals and trace elements. It is also claimed to do all the opposite things that common table salt does.
Besides all these benefits; it tastes great too.