Lunch time - a simple pasta recipe

Over the last couple of years my love for cooking has expanded. I watch a lot of cooking shows and enjoy messing around in the kitchen. I am by no means a top quality chef - but cooking is fun for me and I love trying to make up new recipes. Most of the things that I make always follow a simple base and then I improvise from there.

Last night I went to a local food market and this woman was selling these delicious looking sausages. I decided to pick one up and make a pasta for lunch today. Below is the method that I followed. It's very basic and I'm not going to give specific measurements for anything because you can make the recipe according to your own tastes. This recipe is really easy and took me about 20 minutes to cook from start to finish, with about 10 minutes of that just waiting for things to cook.

So without further ado:

Serves 2.

1. Put a tsp of garlic and half an onion into a frying pan with some olive oil and fry on medium heat. Get a pot of boiling water going and decide what pasta you want to use.

2. After 5 minutes add some wine and let it simmer away. You want to reduce the wine because it intensifies the flavour.

3. Once the wine has reduced to the point where it is almost becoming sticky then you can add some form of pasta tomato sauce - the choice is up to you. If it is too thick add some water.

4. By now the pot of water should be boiling, so you can add some salt to the water and your pasta.

5. Taste the sauce. Add salt, pepper, sage and sweet basil accordingly. Easy on the herbs though because they can quickly overpower the meal.

6. Almost ready! Now you just want to fine tune your sauce. If you think you need more sauce, add more tomato pasta sauce. If the sauce needs to be thinned out, add water.

7. Check you pasta - it should be about ready. Grab a colander and drain it when it's ready. Once it's drained, stick it back into the original pot and add some olive oil. Mix it up nicely - this will help the pasta not to stick together.

TIP: When I am pouring the hot water off the pasta, I stack the pasta bowls in the sink and put the colander on top of them. As you pour the water, it runs down over the bowls and warms them up. By the time your pasta is ready - your bowls are nice and hot. Them just stick them onto a dinner plate (like the last picture) so that you can carry them around easily.

8. Serve your pasta and sauce and chop some basil to throw over the top.

I hope that you manage to recreate this without too much difficulty!

Enjoy.

Peas & Tomatoes - an update on my aquaponics system

When I first started my aquaponics system about 2 months ago, I added some new pea plants and added an  almost dead tomato plant from the soil garden in the hopes that it might be saved. Having never planted peas or tomatoes before I was very excited to see the outcome.

My 2 little tomatoes!

At first the tomato tree had only 2 leaves on it and was really not looking good. It had not done well at all and had never produced a fruit while it was in the soil garden. Once in the aquaponics system it started to develop leaves and then flowers. After checking today it has 2 tomatoes that have started growing and there are more to come! It's really exciting for me to be able to say that I have grown my own tomatoes. You can see by the pictures that they are very small, but they will hopefully develop into some lovely fruits. I know that it is very late in the season for tomatoes and it's more than likely that they won't ripen on the vine, but that just means that I will have to ripen them inside. I'll write about that when I get to it.

Great looking peas :)

The peas have not looked back since day 1. They have shot up and kept growing and growing. They started to develop flowers about 2 weeks ago and then little pea pods started to shoot up. They're now growing into awesome sized peas. I am really excited to be able to harvest some when they're a bit bigger. I hear that peas start to decrease in their sugar content the moment you pick them from the vine (as with most plant I would imagine) so I am looking forward to eating them right after they have been picked.

Soil bed doing well.

Beetroot in the making

In my soil garden the cauliflower and broccoli are starting to look great. They're still very small, but it looks like they are past their most vulnerable stage. I have also planted some kale, Chinese cabbage and Cape Spitz (a.k.a sugar loaf) cabbage. While those vegetables get settled I have started some beetroot to experiment with over the winter - and those are also starting to look good. I hope to put them into the ground within the next 2 weeks.

I want to write another post soon on how to start plants from seed - because I feel that not a lot of people realise how easy it really can be. So if you think it's something that would interest you - then have a look back in a couple of days.

How to make a simple vegetable garden

Thursday's are our gardening days. So today when I woke up I decided that I wanted to make a small vegetable garden for some winter vegetables. I've been wanting to grow some things for the family over the winter and our normal garden bed hasn't been producing very well because it gets too much shade.

I thought I would walk you through the process to make a simple vegetable garden in a couple of easy steps.

1. Choose your spot. You want a place that is going to get as much sun as possible - even in the winter. This is probably the most important thing.

2. Clear it. You want to get rid of grass, weeds, other plants and things that you don't want in your veggie patch. If you have a compost heap, then most of the things that you take out could go into that. The spot that I used today was relatively clear because we used to grow herbs there last season.

3. Turn it. Grab a spade or pitch fork and start to work the soil. You also want to be adding some form of compost at this stage. Make sure that it's all mixed well. You want to mix the top 20 - 30 cm of the soil. Once the soil is well mixed you can get a rake and flatten it out into the shape of your bed. Try not to stand all over the soil as you do this, because you have just worked a whole lot of air and oxygen into it, and if you stand on it and compact it, you're going to lose some of your hard work. Plants grow better in soil that is not compact because it's easier for them to push their roots down.


4. Trim. It's vital that your crops can get sun to grow. If there are any trees or bushes nearby, then trim them away so that your veggies can get the sun they need. You can see that I took quite a bit of the tree away here, which is fine. I also added some old roof tiles that are broken. These are going to be my stepping stones so that I don't have to compact all the soil. Place them so that you use as few as possible, but that you can reach any part of your garden from them.


5. Plant! Choose what vegetables you want to grow and stick them in the ground. Because we're going into winter here I have decided to grow some cabbage, brussel sprouts, beetroot, peas, kale & cauliflower. I started all of them from seed about 3 weeks ago.

6. Water. Your plants need plenty of water. Ideally everyday, but every second day will do too. The more they get watered, the faster and bigger they will grow.
I'm not a professional gardener by any means, in fact this is the first vegetable garden that I have ever made by myself from start to finish. It doesn't take a lot to make one, but it is a ton of fun.

There are so many different kinds of gardens - I just wanted to make mine super simple. If you don't think that something like this will wuit your needs, or if you don't have the space to do this (living in a flat, etc.), then check out google for some more ideas. I hope I have inspired you to consider planting some vegetables in your own yard!

Powdery Mildew, Blight and new peas!

I know that I haven't written about my new aquaponics system here yet, but I set up a basic system at home so that I could experiment and grow some vegetables for my family.

The plants have really been doing super and the growth has far exceeded the normal soil garden and I'm very happy with most of the growth. It hasn't been without it's own problems though. I have had some problems with my plants. First, the aphids attacked my baby cabbages and almost ruined them, but I quickly learnt how to deal with that (you can either squish them or make this organic spray).

Now I am dealing with powdery mildew on my capsicum plant (bell peppers) as well as blight on my celery. I just wanted to put it here so that you can learn something new.

Powdery Mildew  - Bell Peppers

First off - powdery mildew. It's a fungal disease that effects many different kinds of plants. It's normally one of the easier problems to spot because its symptoms are distinctive. Basically you want to be looking for a white powdery looking substance on your plant. It can form anywhere, but is mostly common on the underside of the leaves. It's common in places with high humidity and medium temperatures. To treat it you can either go out and buy an organic fungicide that will treat for powdery mildew, or you can make a spray of 1 part milk, 10 parts water. According to Wikipedia, studies have shown that in some cases it's as effective as normal fungicides.

Blight in Potato Plants

Next off I found some blight on my celery leaves. So from what I have read, blight is harder to spot than powdery mildew. Blight is not a disease in itself, but is a symptom that indicates that the plant has an infection  by a pathogenic organism ('germs' for the rest of us). It can affect any part of the plant, but is most noticeable on the leaves by chlorosis (yellowing of the leaves) and then browning of those areas and eventually death of the tissue. The first step to treatment is to remove the leaves that are affected. Don't put them in the compost heap because you will spread the problem - I threw them in the garbage. I am going to see how this works out for me. If the problem comes back I'll go and look for an organic spray that I can use.

Not all my news is bad though! My pea & tomato plants have started to show some flowers so hopefully I will be seeing some fruit soon (even though it's a bit too late for tomatoes). I will post some pics of the fruits when they come out.

I hope you learnt some thing from this :)

Zach Sobiech - an inspiration.

I just wanted to share with you a video that I watched earlier today. I really thought it was amazing. I must say, I did find it very emotional and I thought that there are a lot of lessons that can be learnt from it. I thought that Zach's courage was amazing and it definitely showed me that the good things in life are the little things - things like family, memories and friends.

If you have 20 minutes of free time I really recommend that you check this out. I hope that it teaches you as much as it taught me. Rest in peace Zach.

Yoga & Meditation, the good life.

Semester is almost finished and exams are starting next week. Feeling the need to study is at it's highest, but I can't manage to find the concentration necessary which isn't normal for me. I'm normally always able to sit down and bash out some work very easily. Today hasn't been like that. I keep finding that my thoughts wander onto new projects and times in the future. Buddha would be very upset with me, well at least as upset as Buddha could be.

To try and combat this I went for a run this afternoon. My aim being to run so much that I would be too tired to think. Halfway through the run I decided that it's about time I abort that plan and just relax into the run. It was great from then on. I stopped to watch some kids playing soccer, walked a little further and then continued my run. Once I got home, I just did a couple warm down stretches and then I realised - I was busy doing some yoga. I then started to remember how when I was in India I would do a little everyday and mix in some mediation and how relaxed and empowered I felt. I haven't done it much since then. So, I have decided that I am going to start stretching and mediating in the morning and I am going to try and do it everyday this week, and then continue from then on.

I'm not going to go all intense into the yoga, but just a couple morning stretches to get the blood flowing nicely. I'm going to start with a very simple 'salute the sun' stretch that works all the major muscle groups in the body and then I am going to sit for 10 minutes minimum and do some breathing exercises and get my mind on track for the day.

I decided to list a couple of good things about what I plan to do, this way it'll help me to stay on track because I know what I am doing has benefits. The basics:

1. The breathing exercises help you to get rid of all the carbon dioxide that has accumulated while you sleep. Carbon dioxide is converted to a mild acid molecule when it isn't able to be expelled from the body. By breathing deeply you can get rid of a lot of it and it will leave you feeling rejuvenated.

2. Stretching will help you keep your flexibility. It helps to increase your full range of motion that is possible in your major muscle groups. It also helps to improve your muscle circulation.

3. Meditation will help you to relax and set the tone for the day. If you take some time in the morning to  plan the day, you will find that you are more focused and use your mental resources better during the day.

So on that note, let me go now and do my 10 minutes of meditation.

Heirloom Vegetables

While I have some free time I thought I would teach you something you might not know. If you do know about heirloom vegetables - I'm glad you do!

So what are heirloom vegetables? According to wikipedia, heirloom plants are old cultivars that are "still maintained by gardeners and farmers particularly in isolated or ethnic communities". They're basically all the different kinds of vegetables that we don't see any more in big supermarket chains.

You might be wondering what types of vegetables these are? Well have a look at some of the pictures below. This isn't GM foods - it's natures way of diversifying it's plants to protect itself and give us more beautiful things to look at.

You may have never known that carrots weren't always orange. They were first found in Iran and Afghanistan areas and were white in colour. There were also purple, red and yellow varieties.

And it's not only carrots that come in all shapes and sizes. You can find almost any kind of vegetable that is different from what you would normally see. 

I have decided that I want to grow some of these when the winter ends, so in the meantime, I get to decide on what I would like to grow. I'm thinking some tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants would be a great start.

I'm really excited to try and grow some of the heirloom corn available, not so much to eat it - but more so because of the colours available. I will probably order the strawberry popcorn variety, named because it looks like little strawberries when it's still on the cob. I think that it would very interesting in salads too!

So I hope that I managed to show you something new that you never knew about before today. Keep an eye out here in the summer if you want to check on the progress of my vegetable garden. I will also be posting helpful tips and hints for gardening.