Tag: garden produce

Feijoas

A few days ago I had picked up a dozen or so feijoas from under the tree and decided on a Nadia Lim muffin recipe. Before I began baking today, I checked below the tree to see if any more had dropped – and (expecting only two or three) filled my jersey hem with 33 of them. The ones I already had, plus two from a friend’s tree, were enough for the muffins. The recipe has more ingredients than the muffin recipes I usually make, but included fresh ginger and yoghurt which sounded good. The mixture is very wet, but the skewer came out clean after just over 20 minutes in the oven.

Taste test: The texture is lovely and soft, the white chocolate adds interest in bite rather than in flavour, the overall taste is a bit overwhelmed by the mashed banana so it’s not easy to detect the feijoa, but there’s a nice tingle of ginger. I think I would leave out the banana next time and substitute it with more feijoas.

There are 33 feijoas left over. What to do with them? Smoothies? Perhaps I will eat one or two every day, scooping each one out with a teaspoon.

Feijoa and apple crumble

Today, I was concerned that the feijoas I had picked up from under the young feijoa tree were going to be wasted. I needed (yes, really) to make a dessert, and was planning an apple crumble when it occurred to me that the feijoas might go well with it. I googled, and before I could put even a single letter, or even a space, after ‘feijoa’ up popped a feijoa and apple crumble recipe. Can it read my mind? I wondered (one of those spooky internet moments). I guess there are simply thousands of people all over the country looking for easy ways to use their feijoas which are abundant at this time of the year. I used the first one in the list, but there were hundreds of them. I had a cup less of feijoa pulp than the recipe required, but it is delicious anyway.

Oaty Autumn fare

We’re back to New Zealand Standard Time today. It’s dark before you know it. Felix is still running to his own clock, asking for dinner at afternoon tea time. Not really surprising as he had his breakfast at 3am which was when Mum, strangely, got up to have her shower, thinking it was 7am. As the mornings will be lighter for a while, it will be easier for her to tell what time it is.

In the meantime, the garden is producing tomatoes, apples, rhubarb. We’ve begun to have soup again, and oaty puddings and biscuits seem right at this time of year.

Anzac biscuits and Apple and Rhubarb Crumble

Getting Creative with Courgettes

Felix continues to explore outside (despite those warnings from the vet). He has found that birds like to eat the grapes, so he sometimes hides in the leaves to surprise them.

Other fruit and vegetables are ripening or ready to eat: apples, rhubarb, tomatoes, lemons, silver beet, kale, broccoli, spinach, lettuces, herbs, and courgettes, while the runner beans are all but finished. My neighbour brought me apples and grapefruit yesterday and I gave her lemons, grapes and tomatoes, and she met Felix for the first time.

I was surprised to find an enormous courgette the size of a submarine hiding under the leaves. They can really get away on you if you don’t check them regularly. Today I made a Courgette and Carrot Kugel from half of it (4 cups, grated), and stuffed the other half with tomatoes, chopped courgette, chives and parsley from the garden, plus garlic, peppers and cheese.

It’s almost like living off the land.