Seasonal at its best

Melbourne has been too hot to eat or think about food. And i have been a very tardy blogger. It is hard to be enthused about food when you have heat stroke (and yes I realise playing soccer in the middle of the day in 40C heat was not my smartest move).

Somehow my garden seems to have made it through the heat, with some burnt ferns that should bounce back, and a couple of burnt tomatoes but not too many. We even got our first couple of ripe toms on the weekend which was pretty exciting. The seedlings of leek and celery that i put in the weekend before have mostly died though.

And for cooking? It has mostly revolved around salads, BBQ, and for one dinner, just icecream. Luckily having all the makings of a salad in the garden makes life a bit easier and the grocery bills down.

My fave salad is still the beetroot salad. We have some amazing heirloom beetroot that just need a shave, some lemon and oil and seasoning, and damn that is a good salad. In this case served with salmon, my mother-in-laws potatos in a salad, and the steamed beetroot leaves and some beans from the garden

I havent downloaded all my photos so dont have pics of the tomatoes, zucchinis and cucumbers or the amazing sweet corn. The 6 different varieties of basil are doing really well though and the cinnamon and lemon basils are really adding that special something to slads, sandwiches and basically any meal! The real quantities have come from my beans and my rocket. i just love the purple colour and have been adding it to everything, even sambos!

We went to a Day on the Green staring Leonard Cohen a few weekends back. The show was amazing as was Paul Kelly in support! The best thing though is that you get to relax on picnic rugs and bring your own food. I am just getting too old to go stand at gigs all night (and my back never forgives me). I went with the garden theme and made a quiche using stuff from the garden pictured below. From memory it had onion, zucchini, beans, beetroot leaves and silverbeet and tomatoes. It was bloody good! All the salads were garden specials too ;) Oh and the eggs came from the inlaws and are the best eggs I have ever eaten. Real, fresh, free-range eggs. A bit of babaganoug in the corner there too.

And lastly for today I want to talk about this wildrice salad. Basically I cooked up some brown and wildrice. I drained and rinsed the rice until cold and then added spring onions, a lot of basil and mint, some pepitas, sunflower seeds and raisins. A little bit of red capsicum and dressed with orange rind, olive oil, honey and lemon juice. Oh and some cumin and corriander spice. This salad was absolutely a winner, my husband fought me for the leftovers the next day.

Am waiting for my tomatoes to really start ripening, I have many ideas awaiting!

What are you guys eating in this hot weather?