A trio of zucchini and thyme

I haven't posted food recently, mainly because I have been away so much that I haven't really been gathering or cooking - the two days I was at home this week I did enjoy the garden though planting out beans, pumpkins and some spaghetti squash among other things. The thing that is really growing out of control is the zucchini - we have three types growing, yellow, green and a light green variety that I am not sure what it is. We also have the gorgeous patty pan squash coming up and they are a real treat when they are small and fresh with a bit of butter and cracked black pepper!

In order to counter the stock pile of zucchinis, I made a delightful three zucchini, leek and fetta tart ...

the raw ingredients picked fresh from the garden

I made a spelt pastry for the base, blind baking it to ensure it was nice and crispy (it was actually the same pastry that I used for the mulberry tarts recently shown!).

Chopped and ready!

The leeks and zucchini were sauteed in a little olive oil, salt and pepper until they were softened. I also added in a big bunch of three types of thyme (to keep with the THREE THEME) which I removed after the veggies were softened. They added a delightful hint of thymeness to the finished tart, wtihout the 'bits' they leave!

Three Thymes for Three Zucchinis

I layered the cooked zucchini in the tart case and poured 5 beaten eggs over the top (the number of eggs will depend on the size of the eggs and how much veg you have in it), I could have added cream to the eggs to make it more velvety and luscious, but as it doesn't work with my body, I left it out! I sprinkled the last of my fetta over the top and a bit more cracked black pepper and a few thyme leaves.

It baked in a moderate oven until the eggs were set - again depends, between 30 and 45 minutes and let it rest for a few minutes before devouring!

The finished tart

Served with some lightly steamed snow peas tossed in a little olive oil and thyme and a chilled semillion...

Served and ready for consuming

Delightful!

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Possum

We awoke this morning to discover a possum had been helping itself to a huge parsley plant in the back corner of our garden, it has stripped the poor plant bare! We are in a huge dilemma about this as not only does the possum have the potential to wreak havoc on our harvest, but it has decided, for the second year in a row, to make its nest in the wall behind our bed...so we have an early morning wake up call about 4am every morning as it slips and slides around looking for a comfy place!
Last year we put up with it, but we didn't have a garden that looks like an organic supermarket for possum and friends!
ARGH!
The hauls from the garden recently have been crazy. Because I have been away so much and my husband doesn't consume as many veg when I am away, everything was a bit out of control.
We have pulled out the snow pea plants, we got probably 20kgs off them this year...incredible!
The beans (climbing and dwarf) are all coming along and we thoroughly enjoyed our first feed of beans in a raw cabbage salad last night (Thai!).
We have three kinds of zucchini and a few squash plants growing crazy, so much so that I simply cannot keep up with picking them!
The cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli are still being harvested and taste sensational as are the beetroot (I have very cleverly planted about 20 plants every 6-8 weeks (that I raise from organic seed) so we have a ready supply rather than a huge glut!
Actually, I pickled some beetroot the other day *you will never eat beetroot from a can again!*
I used a mixture of verjuice, water, fructose and black pepper...it is delightful!
The spinach is great for the chooks (who incidentally are being fed sooo much with the pulling out of the tail end of the autumn veg!) and the asparagus is looking happy as are the carrots.
I have lots of new zucchini, squash and pumpkin plants in and some that have just come up from seed, so we should have an abundant summer.
The tomatoes are going off and provided we can keep the bugs out of them - we will have a bumper crop of gnarly old breeds, heirlooms and some romas! YUM!
I have to admit that I am having trouble getting my herbs to grow from seed, not sure what is going on with the basil, coriander etc...they just won't come up!
The only thing we are really missing now is fruit, olives and a vineyard...all to happen next spring!
Gotta love the GOOD LIFE!!!

Life should be lived and loved!

I have had such a blessed life with a supportive and wonderful family, equally great friends and a husband who is incredibly patient, kind and supportive. What I haven't been blessed with is a simple internal system!
I have spent so many years gazing internally that I am, on some occasions, quite literally, over my body! I become so frustrated with the fact that I work so hard at doing everything right...exercising, eating well, not eating the things that make me ill, taking supplements etc that I cannot believe I am still unwell as often as I am. I do occasionally go into denial and brag about how well I have been; immediately my body retaliates with a bout of pain and my husband reminds me that it wasn't actually that long ago since I was sick ( he has to put up with me complaining and my irrational mood swings!).

What have I learnt that my body reacts to?
Wheat
Milk (not cheese for some reason)
Onion
Garlic
Watermelon
Coffee (decaf okay)
Sugar
HUNGER! I get the worst symptoms when I go too long (ie 3 hours) without food!

What are my symptoms?
It varies from challenge to challenge but generally either one or a combination of many of the following:
Bloating
Reflux
Nausea
Stomach cramps (sometimes so bad that I just have to grab a hottie and head for bed)
General discomfort
Flatulance
Constipation
Grumpiness and Misery
Headache

Generally I am fun to be around!
I think the longest I have gone so far wihtout some kind of an episode of the above symptoms is about 3 weeks (YAY!).

So, what do I do?
I avoid; wheat, red meat, milk (can eat cheese), watermelon, garlic, onion (these are just new discoveries) and sugar
I have acupuncture, generally weekly when I am in town long enough
I take a high nutrition food supplement (Nuferm)
I drink lots of water
I eat 3-5 times a day
I exercise 3-5 times a week

What are my plans?
I plan to have the gene test for coeliac, to rule it out (or not and then get tested properly, which involves going back on wheat products for 6 weeks...which I want to avoid if I can)
I will get tested for fructose malabsorbition
I will keep doing what I am doing and hope that somewhere along the line we can realign whatever is wrong!

The thing is that there could be plenty of things worse, so I am not complaining, I just make adjustments in my life to suit and move on!

Life is too short and should be lived and loved!

The journey thus far

I guess that by this stage you understand my passion for veggie gardening and cooking; and I think I briefly explain in other parts of this blog the fact that I am a long suffering foodie with issues...but I haven't shared a lot of the journey regarding those issues...so I thought I would.

I believe that I have suffered with whatever it is, as yet still undiagnosed, for a long time. I have recollections of severe stomach pain on various occasions;

• age 16 at the Taranaki V Springboks game when I lived in NZ on youth exchange with Rotary - couldn't enjoy the game, I had to lie in the foetal position and breathe
• age 14 + on camping trips to the Warrumbungles in central NSW - mostly climbing the damn hills!
• various ages at home, on horseback, at pony camp....vague memories but poignant when you reflect

I had always noticed, as a teenager, that when I consumed a large amount of milk that I would get a headache not long after, so stopped doing that (although sometimes the nice cold, chocolatey milo milk in the afternoon after a 1hr bus ride home would be too hard to resist and I would suffer!) but I really started noticing and paying attention to other pain and the terrible reflux I was experiencing, about a year after I moved to Lightning Ridge, 11 years ago now, and thought I would start eliminating things myself. 

First to go was the coffee; which I drank alot of, a habit that formed as a result of a 6 month stint as a waitress/barista in an Italian place in Alice Springs - noticeably I ususally drank a milk based coffee (der!)...didn't help.

Over the next few years I gradually excluded dairy (entirely for more than 12 months), wheat (haven't had any - by choice - for at least 7 years), and lastly sugar. 

The irony of this self elimination process is that I still wasn't getting better - AND, the kicker, I was going to doctors pleading for them to help....all I ever got was a new drug to take (by the way, some of them actually made me worse!). I had to ask, just last year, for a gastroscopy to test for coeliac disease, but I had not done enough of my own research and after I went through an anesthetic (which is NOT good for the body or soul) my next GP told me that they wouldn't have found anything because I had eliminated wheat from my diet so many years ago - WHY didn't the doctor know to ask that questions - particularly as we had had a discussion about why I wanted the test?

I forgot to mention that I had prick tests done at the RPA clinic in Sydney (a 10 hour drive for us), simply because I still wasn't feeling well and was in fact getting worse, but they showed nothing...so I thought I could eat wheat and dairy again...BIG Mistake! I do remember how excited I was though to pull up at the White Rose Cafe in Dunedoo and inhale a fresh corn beef and pickle sandwich (an old fave!) on white bread!!!!! Not so good 2 days later!

I could have done the full elimination diet, but the idea of consuming pears for a whole few weeks and not much else did my head in - so I kept paying attention to my body and cutting out things that made me sick!

To be continued!

My day

Yesterday was slightly crazy and just made me realise how complex my life is right now, with so many fingers in pies!

A bit like the seasons, my life is cyclical - it starts with the dormant recouping stage (winter) and leads up to the madness of spring and summer and then a gradual down turn of Autumn (although in my case, I usually skip this season all together and go for a cold SNAP as I crack under all the pressure and throw my hands in the air and take my bat and ball home!).

I have had periods of down time, where I haven't worked at anything in particular, but always, always, during that period I am concocting my next big thing - which then of course I have to bite off and chew!

I'm Not Fussy is one of those projects - a 'chicken and the egg' project and sooo much to do in soooo little time.

I am impatient by nature, my Mum always recounts the story of my first day of school when I threw my bag down in disgust proclaiming that it was a waste of time because they didn't teach me to read and write! I really haven't changed much - although the projects and the risks just get bigger!

So, back to my day....

I am part of this incredible program, the Australian Rural Leadership Program www.rural-leaders.com.au, aimed to create better leaders out of those of us who have a passion for rural and regional Australia (which I really do!) the program does require some work. So after I had blogged and done a bit of work on facebook etc for I'm Not Fussy I set about doing some work for ARLP including my report, project work and stuff for the course council.
Then an email came through about a scholarship to complete the Company Directors course, which I have wanted to do for ever, but couldn't afford...so, I completed my application, hot off the press, because I knew I wouldn't get back to it (and because I was in work avoidance mode too I have to admit!)

Then I set about writing some content for the website www.imnotfussy.com.au.

All the while the glass man was fixing the broken window in my office from a break in 12 months ago, and fixing screens to the windows - as protection...all a little too late as the office was again broken into on Sunday - always a day late! Luckily they only got away with a couple of old phones, which will be no good to them anyway as I have blocked them...HAHA!
But they did make a mess and it has really left me baffled that they ransacked my office, the kitchen and shed of the restaurant in the complex but didn't take anything else, why go to all that trouble and not at least take the computers, or screens or the grog? I am not complaining but just pondering the effort required for a couple of useless mobile phones.
So, now I am all caged in, which I don't like, but do feel much better about leaving the office at night (had considered camping out here!).

Next was lunch, which was a delicious fresh cooked chicken breast tossed through some garden greens, snow peas and radish all sloshed in a zingy vinaigrette..Highlight of the day!

I then spent the afternoon volunteering at the Australian Opal Centre www.australianopalcentre.com - a FANTASTIC place that I love working at because the fossils are incredible (100 million year old fossils, some of which are opalised too!) and it is a super amazing project. I also got to catch up with a friend who I rarely get to see, because of my crazy life!

Then I organised to go and sell some opal, so spent a while doing that...was successful which is always a good feeling!

I then dragged my self to the gym, which is always an effort, but well rewarded afterwards, apart from feeling noble, I always feel a couple of inches taller and a million times less stressed!

I reveled in the next hour as I got to play in the garden, pulling out old plants and replenishing the soil with new mulch and seedlings raised from our own organic seed - what a sensational feeling! Apart from the mozzies which gave me a real hiding, it was pure bliss and such a wonderful feeling after such a crazy day!

Dinner was the next plan, and I decided to go Thai and whipped up a Green Papaya Salad (green papaya very luckily found at the Fullers store at Bellingen on our way home from Coffs Harbour on Sunday) with sticky rice and fried chicken....will show picks and recipes another day, but YUM OH YUM! Transported me back to the busy street of Chiang Mai during Songkran!

So, all in all it was a productive, albeit hectic and slightly chaotic day...and I certainly did sleep well.

No sign of Autumn or a cold snap just yet!

Tarts and all that yummy stuff!

I picked a beautiful bowl full of mulberries off the tree this morning and was slightly disappointed that there are fewer red ones than there have been; we may only get a couple more weeks of the delicious deeply sweet treats!

There is simply nothing better than swanning around in your dressing gown, in the garden first thing in the morning, it is such a refreshing start to the day and one that I really miss when I am away.

I thought I would share my mulberry frangipane tart today; I made it last week, but it was sooo delicious!

I started with shortcrust pastry, made from Stephanie's Cooks companion- 3:4 ratio of butter to flour(spelt in my case), roughly rubbed through, worked a little and let to rest in the fridge for 1/2 hour. I believe the trick with short pastry is not to overwork it, if you want that nice crisp crumbly and buttery texture.

I cooked the mulberries down with a little honey (ayurvedic honey in our case) and Madeira until they were softening slightly and the sauce had turned a bloody purple.

The cooked mulberries went in the case (which had been blind baked)..already looking delicious!

Mulberry tarts prior to the frangipane epiphany!

I kept looking at the tarts though and thought that they were just not complete...I didn't have any more pastry left so I could not make the pies...what could I do?

Frangipane - of course! I have never made it before but I know it tastes good and would probably go really well with these beauties!

So 830pm and I have the kitchen wizz out blitzing up almonds and eggs!

Thank goodness for Stephanie again; I just LOVE her book! I used a packet of almond meal, 25g of fructose (sugar replacement -you use a 1/3 less and it doesn't upset my stomach!), some butter and an egg.

The frangipane was liberally spread on top of the mulberry mix and baked until golden.

The golden brown tarts!

They were a super sweet treat that we just devoured and oohed and aahed over!

Who could ask for more - a warming treat from the oven made with love and produce from the garden!

Pizza Dough - recipe by request

Makes 2 pizza bases (enough to feed one hungry person or one not so hungry and have left overs  for after!)

Combine 1 cup of warm water and 7g of yeast in a large mixing bowl then stir to combine and dissolve yeast. Set aside until foamy(about 5-10min). Put 2 cups of plain flour (I use organic spelt flour) in a bowl with 1.5tsp of salt, make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast and water mix. Stir with a wooden spoon, make sure you pull flour from the sides until the dough comes together. If the dough is too stick, add another 1/2 cup of flour. Put the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead in an additional 1/2 - 1 cup of flour until the dough is smooth. Once it is smooth and elastic to feel, shape into a ball and place in a bowl (which you have oiled). Cover with a clean kitchen towel and place in a warm area to double in size (could take up to 2 hours...depending on how warm your area is!). Punch down the dough, divide into two equal portions and use!

Split the dough into two even balls and roll out the dough on a floured surface (if you are using a stone pizza base you will need to heat it up in the oven)

Spread your choice of base (tomato paste, pesto etc) and top with your choice of flavours and cheese!

Place the pizza on your chosen cooking implement (pizza maker, stone base etc) and cook - in a HOT oven will take between 5-10 minutes.

The base will rise and bubble, don't be alarmed - these are the BEST bits!