Yellow Bellpepper

Just showing a few pictures today of what’s going to be in the garden this year.

Last May I planted an apple tree I had gotten for my birthday. Apparantly it will produce “James Grieve” apples. It has a lot of flowers already and I’ve seen the bees busy with them. Good sign!

In the hallway I sowed cauliflower seeds and leek seeds into a tray about a week ago and the seedlings are already showing their little faces!

Cauliflower:

Leek:

A few days ago I made another soup wiht lentils. Brown lentils this time. Unlike red lentils, brown lentils do not fall apart when you cook them. 

Enjoy!

Brown Lentil Soup with Spinach (serves 4) 

INGREDIENTS:

• 350 grams of brown lentils
• 1,25 liter of water
• 2 teaspoons of olive oil
• 1 finely chopped onion
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 100 grams of spinach cut in small strips
• 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon of  lemon rasp
• 0,5 litter of vegetable bouillion
• 0,5 liter of water
• 2 tablespoons of finely chopped coriander

  DIRECTIONS:

1. Put the lentils in a big pot with the water and boil them soflty without a lid for about an hour. Drain them and put them aside.
2. Heat the oil in another pan. Add the onion and garlic and stir until slightly golden. Add the spinach and stir for another 2 minutes.
3. Add the lentils, cumin, lemon rasp, bouiilion and water and leave it simmering for about 15 minutes.
4. Mix in the coriander.
5. The soup is now ready to be served.

Well summer has officially been over for a few weeks now and I thought I should post a picture of two of the at least hundreds of tomatos I’ve had growing in our garden last summer.

There is nothing nicer than to just go outside and pick your own tomatos. Yum!

I recently came across this article: Is ‘Organic’ Worth It? .

This article describes when and when not to buy organic food when keeping in mind value for money and the amount of residue of pesticides on products.

Though I agree with a lot of the things mentioned in this article, I however do not agree with part of the section called ‘Foods not worth buying organic’. Two of the the items mentioned are milk and yogurt. It is said that, like with milk, any residue from cattle feed ends up in milk fat, which gets removed if you buy low-fat or skim milk. So any residue left in the milk can be discarded and considered not important.

One thing this article does not mention is the hormones a lot of animals get injected with and would ultimately end up in the products we eat. What happens to that?

On top of that, the big question is: Why does organic milk or yogurt taste so much better compared to non-organic milk or yogurt?

Today I made lentil soup for lunch. It’s a soup I cook frequently as it is quick to make, it’s healthy, it’s cheap and last but not least important; the kids love it!

Lentil Soup (Serves 4)

INGREDIENTS:

• 200 grams of red lentils
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 4 (vegetable) bouillon cubes
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 big onion
• 1 potato
• mint to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 lemon
• 1 liter of water
• 1.5 tablespoons of sweet pepper paste (I bought this at a local Turkish supermarket. If there is none available in your supermarket, substitute it for tomato paste.)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cut the onion into small pieces. Peel the potato and cut it into four pieces.
2. Put the olive oil in a sauce pan and add the onion. Also add the garlic (crushed).
3. After 2 minutes add the pepper paste and stir.
4. Next, add the water, the four bouillon cubes, the lentils and the potato and stir.
5. Cover the pan with a lid and let it boil for about 15 minutes.
6. Use a hand blender to blend the soup until it has an almost smooth texture.
7. Add (dried) mint, salt and pepper to taste.
8. Poor into a soup bowl and add lemon juice to taste.

Delicious!

I present to you my favorite grain in the whole wide world: Quinoa. This grain has recently made its way into my kitchen and has since been a favorite food item to work with. In South America it’s considered the super grain of them all, since it’s high in protein and contains all eight essential amino acids.

Today I made a nice lunch of which the recipe I’d like to share with all of you.

Quinoa with black beans and Tuna (serves 4)

INGREDIENTS:

• 5ml Olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 150 grams uncooked quinoa
• 400 ml of tomato broth (or vegetable broth)
• 3 grams ground cumin
• 0.5 grams cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 can of corn, rinsed
• 2 cans of black beans, rinsed
• parsley to taste
• 4 tuna steaks (add fish spices to taste)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the onion and garlic and saute until lightly browned.
2. Add the quinoa into the saucepan and cover with tomato broth. Season with cumin, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Stir corn and black beans into the saucepan and continue to simmer about 5 minutes until heated through. Add parlsey to taste.
4. Fry the tuna steaks (add fish spices to taste) until slightly brown.

Don’t forget to email me your results!

Quinoa , Black Beans and Tuna

Quinoa , Black Beans and Tuna

Earlier this year I bought some zucchini and pumpkin seeds at the local store. I’m quite a newbie when it comes down to gardening, so when it was time to put the zucchini and pumpkin seedlings outside in my garden, I did not really pay attention as to where I put them.

Silly me, because now I’m faced with a challenge to find out as to what it is that is growing in my garden!

To my knowledge, until today, I thought zucchini’s only came in one shape and one colour; long and green. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Not only have I come to find out zucchini’s also come in yellow, they can also be round!

Needless to say, as soon as I saw something grow in the garden where I had put the zucchini and pumpkin seedlings and it turned out to be round, I thought it was a pumpkin. After googling both zucchini and pumpkin plants images I am still puzzled as to what I have in my garden.

If someone could please look at the pictures I took and voice their opinion as to what I have, I’d be so grateful.

Could it actually be a mixture of both ?

It’s quite obvious there are two different kind of leaves involved. (Not to mention the snails have a clear preference for the darker kind…)

Zucchini or Pumpkin plants?

Zucchini or Pumpkin ?