First week of no from Spade to Plate

What a weird week it has been. Nature is in full swing. Birds are in and out the garden picking up materials for their nests. The temperature outside at times is above 12C which brought the (bumble) bees out to pollinate the nectarine and peach trees.
To be honest looking into the garden all seems exciting with a longing for the months ahead.

On the other hand, looking at the TV, papers and shops however, it is crazy. The Corona virus crisis has made us all take big steps to stop the spread of the virus.  For this reason I am not running the cooking sessions with my friends, I had an idea though to keep on giving inspiration on what to cook, by sharing the menu I am making for the family.

So today, I need to bake bread, I found this video on how to knead for those of  you who have not done this before.  The recipe I normally use is either Lazy Dough or my basic bread dough.
One needs eggs and yoghurt  the other just flour, water, salt and yeast.

During the year we made many versions of bread with the Lazy Dough, here are some pictures of us making this dough

Ai and Kim mixing the dough

dough doubled in size

Hiroe showing what the dough should look like

Joan shaping the dough into bagels

Li, Alice, Lucy and Erika showing off their flat bread made with  lazy dough

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Chard and Peanut Soba noodle bowls

Today we used the chard from the allotment and the home made peanut butter to make this lovely Chard and noodle dish

Lesley making the noodle dough

We first made the noodles, Lesley made the dough, and whilst it was resting, we made the peanut butter and the sauce.

Kim, June and Hiroe making the noodles

Look what we made

   
Kim made the peanut butter for use later in the sauce and for the week's peanut butter and jelly



This recipe called for a cucumber pickle. As we have no cucumbers at this time of the year, I used a jar I made in autumn

The smoked  Chickpea tofu was lovely with it too. Crunchy on the outside, and soft in the inside.


      

New to us all, this is a keeper. Instead of cumin or garam masala we used smoked paprika and a table spoon of liquid smoke (because I have it)

It was a very tasty, quick and healthy meal, and most of the recipes will end up in the next cookery book. 

Sauteed Kale with Lemon, Tahini and hemp seeds

Today I went to the allotment and came back with a few monsters of carrots and beautifully clean cavalo nero Kale.



So we turned them into a delicious carrot and coconut soup 
We then made savoury scones (Alice's scones adapted to a feta and spring onion recipe) which we made without the oven and came out really well. As we needed yoghurt for the scone recipe we made our own to save on buying more and creating plastic waste

We made this  Kale recipe we need curry powder, if you don't have this in house, maybe you can make it with the following ingredients
We had this Kale on a bed of lemon couscous.
A lovely quick and healthy meal.

A pre Christmas meal, with sausages

As I had 2 recipes for vegetarian and vegan sausages, I thought we'd do a trial to see which one would end in the next cookery book.

Although they both tasted nice, the vegan version stuck together better and was voted for another mention.

Hiroe cut up some more onions to make an onion gravy to go with the sausages.

The carrots we had was with a honey glaze and the mashed potatoes we had use the riser, it works beautifully, just light and fluffy, especially after adding in some butter and mayonnaise.

As I needed a dish to put in the oven to keep it warm and the silver surrounding needed a good clean, we used a cut potato to polish the silver with. A little tip for every one.

We had  a very festive and tasty lunch.

Vegan Sausages Mash potatoes and Roasted Carrots

Today we compared vegan sausages with vegetarian sausages. We all decided that the vegan version was the best and should go into the next book From Spade to Plate 3.

We made a mash potato, roasted carrot dish with vegan/vegetarian sausages. Rather conventional but very tasty.




 

Setting up the vertical garden

The weather was lovely, chilly but sunny, so we took the opportunity to fill the plastic 2 litre water bottles with the strawberry runners. Hopefully they will give us some deliciously sweet and juice strawberries in June.

Afterwards we made rice and  a mung bean curry with flat bread.
          

We brushed the flatbead with butter, garlic and parsley (fresh from the garden)

and another lovely afternoon with some great friends.

Planting up vertical Garden and mung bean dahl

The weather was lovely, chilly but sunny, so we took the opportunity to fill the plastic 2 litre water bottles with the strawberry runners. Hopefully they will give us some deliciously sweet and juice strawberries in June.

Afterwards we made rice and  a mung bean curry with flat bread.
          

We brushed the flatbead with butter, garlic and parsley (fresh from the garden)

and another lovely afternoon with some great friends.