We invited some guests for lunch on Saturday, and I decided I wanted to make a really nice summer meal with a variety of dishes. I thought I'd share them to inspire your own creativity :-). Everything was homemade, and the majority of the ingredients were homegrown.
Menu:
| Potato Salad Rice Salad Coleslaw Mixed Garden Salad Slow-cooked home-grown corned and smoked lamb Homemade bread rolls Cultured butter Sliced tomatoes and cucumber Chocolate and strawberry mousse Chocolate crunch slice Kombucha Fresh fruit (strawberries from the garden, melon the friends brought) |  |
Many of the recipes are linked in the menu above.
| The meat was a leg of lamb that we had asked our butcher to corn for us, but had mistakenly also been smoked (making it essentially bacon). I slow cooked this with some malt vinegar and an onion, the day before our luncheon, and served it cold and sliced. It's really delicious like this! |  |
| For the mixed garden salad: I took a bowl out into the garden to see what I could forage. I came back with: a couple of young rainbow chard/perpetual spinach leaves, some curly kale, some fathen (weed, also known as lamb's quarters), chickweed, stems of broccoli flowers, parsley, NZ spinach, nasturtium leaves, a few fat pea pods, flowers of calendula, pansy and nasturtium. To prepare, I washed everything, fairly finely diced the chard, perpetual spinach and kale, and tossed them together. I stripped the leaves from the NZ spinach and fathen, and chopped both, and added them together with the diced nasturtium leaves and parsley, and tossed. I then layered on the chickweed, brocc flowers (I stripped them because the stems had become tough, but I usually would add them whole or chopped a bit), and then petals of calendula. I sprinkled on the peas stripped from their pods, and garnished with the other flowers. |  |
| Bread rolls: I haven't made "normal" (gluten containing) bread in ages. Normally I would triple-rise it for best results, with the first rising overnight, but this time I chose not to. I should have, as the rolls were a bit denser than I would have liked, but tasty all the same. I'll post instructions for bread making soon. These were served with the homemade cultured butter, which was a hit. |  |
| The posy of flowers were mostly edible or from food plants: I just picked bits and pieces in the way of small flowers from the garden. Included are flowers of: chives, potatoes, basil, roses, dahlia, cosmos (this one not edible), oregano, carrot, and some sprigs of mint. |  |
Kombucha: My current kombucha is made with green tea, which tends to yield a sweeter result than with black tea. My husband and one of our visitors enjoyed it served hot (mixed with hot water), while I had a cold glass of it.
Other: Slices of fresh cucumber and tomato rounded out the meal nicely. I could have served various pickles too, but we had more than enough food. It was all greatly enjoyed!
So nice to share our blessings and bounty with others, and to enjoy fellowship over a meal of good, real food.
Other: Slices of fresh cucumber and tomato rounded out the meal nicely. I could have served various pickles too, but we had more than enough food. It was all greatly enjoyed!
So nice to share our blessings and bounty with others, and to enjoy fellowship over a meal of good, real food.
Is there anything nicer than fresh, juicy, sweet strawberries straight from the garden?
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