What's For Dinner?

I was asked yesterday in an interview why I garden - what's the main reason? Simple! To feed my family! Food in your backyard is real food security - when there's no money in the bank you can still eat. And you know what else is nice? When the kids ask the inevitable "What's for dinner, Mum?" you can tell them, and it sounds really fancy :-).

Take last night's dinner - simple fare, all picked fresh from the garden or collected from the property. The menu:

• Minted peas (pick lots of peas, shell them, then gently cook them in the pot with a few sprigs of fresh mint)
• Just-dug new potatoes, served with just-made garlic butter (whiz garlic cloves, olive oil, butter, and fresh herbs in the food processor - freezes well to make garlic bread etc).
  
• Nutmeg-roasted pumpkin (dice up some pumpkin, toss it in olive oil, mix in salt, nutmeg and honey from the bees, spread out in a roasting dish and roast, stirring occasionally, until done)
• Quartered fresh tomatoes (use a mixture of varieties for visual and textural effect)
• Poached eggs (thanks chickens!)

Yum! Everyone had seconds - and it all got gobbled up before I remembered I hadn't taken a photo of the completed meal! Oh well! Here's a photo of the collected items, ready to prepare.....The garlic was harvested a couple of weeks ago, the pumpkin is from our stores from last summer - everything else was straight out the garden.