garden salad | organised castle

You have heard of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’? Well, this is a little different.

Our meal this evening was Zucchini and Corn Fritters. You can find the recipe here.

2020-05-30 01

The accompanying salad was sourced entirely from our garden. Lettuce, cherry tomatoes and coriander were picked today while the cucumber is the end of the last one which we picked about 3 weeks ago.

We found that cucumber stored really well in the crisper section of the refrigerator. The lettuce is going to seed but in our mild climate there is a good chance that we will even have some more self-sown ones during the winter months. There are still fruit on the various cherry tomato plants scattered throughout the garden. We do not experience frosts here so it is likely that we will continue to harvest a few here and there but it will not abundance we have had during the summer and autumn. Coriander has self-seeded throughout our garden area and we are thrilled as the flower heads are particularly loved by the bees.

I made the sweet chilli sauce from chillies from my sister’s garden. The details and recipe are in an earlier post.

Seasonal eating means that we value and appreciate the produce from our garden. It is probably about 5 months until I next eat cucumber and I know that by then I will be really looking forward to that first crisp crunch.

On Saturday we were going to be out for the whole day so I decided to pack a picnic lunch. We knew that we were going out for dinner so it seemed ridiculous to consider ‘eating out’ twice in one day.

This is where we had our lunch. It is not out in the country but a suburban park about 4km from the Brisbane CBD. There is a bus depot across the road and a major freeway and interchange a few hundred metres in another direction, yet it was a quiet and peaceful oasis where we stopped for our picnic.

We unpacked our picnic set and cloth, added the food and drink and we were ready to tuck into our feast.

I had made a mixed salad of lettuce, capsicum (red peppers), cherry tomatoes, cucumber and cheese as well as a couple of hard-boiled eggs. There were rice crackers and some mango chutney as well. I packed some walnuts and dried figs to finish and the whole lot was washed down with lemon cordial and soda water.

A pleasing note is that the lemon cordial, mango chutney and soda water were made at home, the chickens provided the eggs and the cucumber and tomatoes were picked from the garden.

Just a few minutes spent planning meant that we saved at least $30 and were able to enjoy some of our favourite foods in a pleasant setting rather than doing battle with holiday crowds at a cafe or food court.