Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program

Despite forecasts of rain, we had three excellent mornings in the vegetable garden. Having prepared our raised beds with either green manure crops, compost or manure we were ready to start sowing and planting this week.

Stevan planted mini red cabbage seedlings

Amelia planted spring onions

Amelia also planted chives in pots. The pots are kept in wine bucket stands - we obtained a stock of them and they are

very useful!

Our potatoes were planted in very large pots a few weeks ago. When the shoots start to show we cover them with soil. We will continue to do this until the pots are full of soil and then will let them grow up into the air.

Liam and Riley worked hard covering all the shoots.

We also planted radish, carrot and coriander seeds and some leek seedlings.

Watering has become a regular job again - good fun on warm days!!

This week we cooked:

Pasta with a creamed spinach sauce

Wholemeal rolls with pumpkin seeds

Carrot and cumin dip

Asian Carrot and Turnip

Minted Mixed Melon Salad

Mini Asparagus Quiches

The carrot and cumin dip was as popular as the previous week! We tried to concentrate on specific flavours this week - some of our recent dishes have been made up of a huge number of different ingredients. This week we wanted to simplify things - so just spinach in the pasta sauce, just melon and mint in the salad, just asparagus and parsley in the quiches, etc.

Here are some photos:

It is great to see skills developing. Rochelle has become quite an expert with eggs! She cracked the eggs and whisked them for our quiches.

And we are always pleased when someone takes the initiative to start setting the table. William is always a big help with this.

We were given some melons this week so decided to invest in some 'melon ballers' and make a melon salad. It was absolutely delicious and enjoyed by all.