Footstep 48: Anniversay day

On Thursday 19th May, it was anniversary day.  I started my vegetable garden on 19th February, and my blog on 19th March.  This means that the veggie garden is now three months old, and the blog two months old.  So on Thursday I treated myself to a shopping spree.

Woolworths now kindly offer two for the price of one vegetable packs.  I realise I am growing my own, but it is early days yet, and I do not have the variety, nor yet the volume to be self-sustaining.  In fact, as time passes and as I learn, I am realising that to be self-sustaining, I am going to have to grow a lot more vegetables simultaneously.  What I have growing at the moment will be little more than supplementary.

Anyway, back to Wooworths.  I have discovered baby gem squash.  These are simply the nicest veggies to have.  I will explain shortly how I cook them.  I also bought some garlic, carrots and some zucchini and some baby spinach, the latter of which I mentioned in my previous post.  I already had other vegetables at home.

Yesterday, I cut up the following:

6 baby gem squash not peeled but halved;

8 carrots sliced lengthwise;

6 zucchini sliced lengthwise;

2 medium sized red onions;

3 smallish sweet potatoes, large chunks;

4 smallish tomatoes, quartered;

2 egg fruit, large chunks;

6 fat cloves of garlic, quartered;

1/2 sweet yellow pepper;

12 french beans, topped and tailed.

I greased a baking tray with cooking oil, and piled the veggies on top, being careful to put everything skin down, and keeping the baby gem squash on the side.  I then dribbled over some cooking oil and a wonderful invention by Royco called Vegetable Bake, which is a spice which one scatters, rather liberally, over the veggies.  I then put them into the oven on grill at 230 degrees.  Turning them about twice, I left them in the oven for about 40 minutes.  The veggies, by the time they were finished, were soft, but still firm, although the sweet potato pieces were melt-in-the-mouth soft.  Each veggie piece was still distinguishable in its own right, but they all blended together into the most divine mix.  This should keep me going for most of the week, with small additions of meat and possibly baked potato.

The thing about the gem squash halves:  they become little sacks of sweet, succulent squish, encased in an edible skin.  They are absolutely divine!  These will definitely be an on-going inclusion in my meals, and I will hopefully be able to grow them in the summer.

The really nice thing about roast vegetables is that one can literally add anything.  This is particularly handy as one can use vegetables that are in season and therefore inexpensive or home grown, and one can add small amounts of the more expensive things like garlic to give it a bit of pizzaz.  One can also add roast vegetables to literally anything.  They can be used as pizza topping, added to garlic, served with rice.  As my goal is to reduce the volume of meat I consume, and increase the use of vegetables in preparing meals, this will become something that I do, in volume, at least once a week, and retain to serve with most meals during the forthcoming week.

With all this yummy stuff happening in the oven, I cooked up a pot of thai green curry chicken on top of the stove.  I purchased this from Woolworths, adding my own onion, fresh ginger and garlic.  I will make my own in future.  I now have the lemon grass, ginger, garlic and coriander growing in my garden, so should only need to get some green curry paste and some coconut milk in order to make it from scratch.