Delicious Roast Vegetables grown in our Vegie Bags

We cooked the most delicious meal last night and it was so incredibly easy I can see it will be a regular item on the menu. First we visited the Vegie Bag patch and picked as many different varieties as we could. There were eggplants, black, red and green capsicums, as well as the little long yellow ones, sweet corn, zucchini, little patty pan squash,chillies, cherry tomatoes and beans. We then cut everything up into quite large pieces except the small peppers, chillies and tomatoes and added chunks of onion, sweet potato and whole garlic cloves ( which we harvested a few weeks ago), tossed in a large roasting pan with olive oil, sea salt, rosemary, thyme, basil and oregano, (all from the vegie bags), and baked for 30-40 mins at  200 deg c. We served this with a little couscous and fried eggs courtesy of the chooks but would also be excellent with any kind of meat. Of course you don’t need all these ingredients, just use whatever is available.

We went a bit mad with strawberries this season and planted 20 bags! You can never have too many strawberries can you? It has been great to be able to pick a big bowl full every day. Our absolute favourite way to eat them is with a squeeze of lemon juice and a generous sprinkle of caster sugar (to achieve the balance you like) and stir through. If you haven’t tried this before you will be amazed! It really brings them to life and taste great when served with cream or ice cream, on a pavlova or just about any desert you can think of. I have also frozen excess berries in zip lock bags, (great for smoothies), and made strawberry jam. They are an ideal crop for Vegie Bags as they like to  be well aerated and off the ground and as well as being out of reach goannas and slaters.

Tonight we cooked battered eggplant. We used beer batter ,a very simple but delicious recipe stolen from my brother in law, Tim  (plain flour mixed with beer to the consistency  of whipping cream). First we sliced and salted the eggplant, left it for a few minutes, then rinsed, battered and shallow fried in peanut oil. It was soooo delicious. My mother, who is from a portuguese background calls this dish “fish from the garden” and now I know why! We also cooked some fish in the same way but quite honestly the eggplant was just as good.