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.

Home Grown

Sometimes, I despair at my attempts to grow vegetables in our garden. 

Yet there has been more than one occasion on which I have been able to throw together an appetizing green salad of various leaves picked from the garden.

The nasturtiums I sowed last year have finally come good, so I picked a few leaves to make a salad recently.  I'm not a great fan of nasturtium leaves in salads but I don't mind a scant sprinkling of them.  I grew the nasturtiums for the seed because I would like to try and make poor man's capers from them.

I have also grown a few Russian kale plants, these I don't mind so a good handful went into the salad bowl.

My rocket (arugula) bolted to seed but do you know that rocket flowers are edible?  They have a flavour which I think is very much like sesame seeds.  I have noticed that the native bees are very attracted to them as well.

To the salad I added a few blanched green beans and an avocado along with a thinly sliced lemon and voila! - A healthy green salad to serve with the main course.

A vinaigrette is my favourite salad dressing which I make from freshly squeezed lemon juice, olive oil and Dijon or French mustard.

Hmmm, is it still a vinaigrette if it doesn't have vinegar as an ingredient?

Well, here's a recipe for 

Lemon Vinaigrette Dressing

80ml (1/3 cup) olive oil

2 1/2 tbs fresh lemon juice, strained

1 tsp Dijon or French mustard

Fine sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Place all ingredients in a glass jar with lid, shake vigorously and serve.

Enjoy.

Day 310/366

Posh Meatloaf

This is the meatloaf that I cooked for Saturday's dinner.

This is the meatloaf we had cold for our picnic lunch on Sunday. 

This is the meatloaf that the kookaburras stole yesterday.

This is the meatloaf we had re-fried for tea tonight.

This is what I served the meatloaf with tonight

This is the meatloaf recipe.

Opps...

I think I went overboard with the bean sprouts!

Encouraged by the video link  which Leanne at Cottagetails Blogspot posted I have taken to sprouting beans.  

Never have I sprouted anything so well before!

So...if you have any favourite links to yummy recipes to use up my over-abundance I'd be happy to hear from you!  

Have a good day!