Balcony Garden: Harvest Monday #23

By now we all know that in order for our garden to produce fruit + veggies we need flowers. These flowers then turn in to the bounty we've been waiting for all season. Flowers was one thing my eggplant bush had in spades...but where were the darn eggplants?

For months and months and months the bush would produce lovely purple flowers which would then go brown and drop off the plant.  I continued to water and fertilize, my eggplant dream still firmly in place. But after about nine months, yes NINE months, I was ready to give up on the eggplant. Enough was enough - how much time does one plant need in order to get its fruit going? I could have grown a baby in the same amount of time it'd taken the eggplant to do...nothing!

When I say was I going to rip up the place I seriously mean I was out there with my gloves on ready to evict this lazy resident of my garden. As I leaned down to pull up the first plant I noticed a bulge on one of stems. OH MY GOD! Could this be IT? I screamed for The Boy to come and look - we had an eggplant about to pop! And then I spotted a second bulge! I really need to apologize to my neighbours for all the screaming I do on my balcony. Sorry guys!

Within about a week I had four eggplants on the hop on the balcony. After their initial nine month hesitation (or gestation more like it) it only took about 4 weeks for them to grow large enough to consider picking. I had no idea how to tell when an eggplant was ready to harvest so I just crossed my fingers and cut one off the plant (and broke my scissors doing so - these babies are TOUGH).

I always cut everything I've grown in half to check for rot...and for creepy crawlies who may have set up home inside. This may seem a tad OCD but we've had a few near misses with caterpillars still attached to leaves and wot not. Thankfully this eggplant looked like an eggplant on the inside and there were no house guests either.

This eggplant had timed things nicely - arriving in the kitchen for the very first day of Meat Free Week.  I already knew what I was going to make with it - a slow cooked Morocan eggplant stew that I'd made once before from Voracious Vander's blog. I added a half a cup of dried chickpeas to the mix and also doubled the amount of tinned tomatoes in order to give the chickpeas enough moister to absorb.

It's really a VERY simple dish to make as most things cooked in the slow cooker are.  That said washing the slow cooker afterwards is not so simple with everything baked on to the sides - lucky for me The Boy washes and I cook.

We ate the stew with cous cous that had been soaked in vegan 'chicken-style' stock. We always use this brand in our house as I'm VERY dubious about any store bought stock being made from free-range sources (other than The Stock Merchant that is - but that's hard to come across in our neck of the woods and it's a premium product).

And what better opportunity to use some of our HUGE parsley plant. This thing has an epic afro situation happening, so much so that the birds like to sit in it like it's a beanbag (hence the fake bird which is meant to deter them but doesn't).

And there you have it - only nine months to grow, six hours to cook and 10 minutes to eat. Delish and well worth the wait.

You can view more Harvest Monday posts on Daphne's Dandelions blog.

Meat Free Week + Balcony Garden: Harvest Monday #18

Today kicks off the beginning of the inaugural Meat Free Week challenge.  Starting today I'll be cutting meat completely out of my diet for a week (which is really not long at all)...and after that I'll be cutting WAY back on the amount of meat I eat.

I've signed up to Meat Free Week in order to do my bit to help raise money for the animal advocacy group Voiceless who (among other things) aim to raise awareness of the terrible, horrible, cruel and inhumane plight of animals raised in factory farms . I also hope to raise peoples awareness to the fact that we don't need to eat sooo much meat (really we don't) and about the cruel realities of factory farming!  I wrote about why I'm doing Meat Free Week a few weeks ago - check it out - and if you're so inclined you can head over here to sponsor my efforts (please and thanks).

Image from the Meat Free Week website

Back on the balcony garden and my two little tomato bushes continue to do their thing and produce lovely red, flavoursome tomatoes - albeit a little smaller than the packet says they are supposed to be.  No matter how small they're being put to good use in helping me try out some a new vegetarian recipes that might get a look in during Meat Free Week.

Did this tomato commit suicide, or do you think he was pushed? I think a Currawong threw him to his death.

As an aside I recently learned that there are two types of tomatoes, indeterminate which grow VERY tall and fruit over a long period and determinate which are more shrub like and produce all their fruit pretty much all at once.

By a stroke of sheet luck I've been growing the later, which is great as I don't think a 10ft tall tomato plant would fit on my balcony.  The downside is that most of my tomatoes have "happened" in the space of a few weeks. At one stage I had a bowl full of little tomatoes that I had no idea what to do with other than they'd be a good base for something vegetarian...but what?

My fellow food blogging friend Muppy suggested I try making Shakshuka Eggs - a middle eastern dish that uses tomatoes as the core ingredient. This coupled with the fact that I was promised it was a super easy dish to make won me over.

A quick fling with Mr Google revealed more recipes for Shakshuka Eggs than you can poke a spatula at. One thing was clear - nearly every recipe was slightly different highlighting that this is a highly personal and regional dish. I just picked the two easiest looking ones (surprise surprise) with the least ingredients and kind of made a blend of the two. The most important thing of course is to use FREE RANGE EGGS as the lives lived by chickens raised in caged-egg (and even barn raised) systems is just horrible and beyond cruel.

The dish turned out...alright but I couldn't help but compare it to the baked eggs that my favourite cafe, Circa Espresso make. Their eggs have a much more rich + spicy flavour which I think is partially due to the addition of Sujak (spicy lamb sausage). I can easily overcome this next time by adding more smoked paprika + chilli. I also spent so long photographing my finished dish that the egg yolks went hard...noooo! I also got in a bit of strife with The Boy as I used his favourite non-stick pan that I then proceeded to eat out of with a metal fork. Oops - sorry!

Nevermind, a good handful of homegrown parsley covered up the overcooked eggs and any scratches The Boy thinks I may have made in the pan.

You can view more Harvest Monday posts on Daphne's Dandelions blog. Visit the Meat Free Website to find out more about the campaign (and for some good reasons why we should ALL considering reducing our meat intake).

Please sponsor me for Meat Free Week here...thanks peeps.

Meat Free Week (18th - 24th March) + Harvest Monday

One upon a time meat used to be a luxury item – a roast chook was a special occasion meal maybe once or twice year. It was expensive because there weren’t a lot of chickens around...it was before factory farming. It was before we expected to eat meat for nearly every meal.

Free range chooks at a friend's farm. Most chickens don't get to roam in lush paddocks like these - they live their lives out in crowded sheds with limited or no access to the outdoors.

It’s no secret that in the last few years my eating habits have changed. Since I became aware of the awful + inhumane conditions factory farmed animals live in I’ve cut a lot of meat out of my meals and started to incorporate more vegetarian meals into my diet. The Boy and I participate in Meatless Monday every week and this year we’re going to be participating in Meat Free Week (18th – 24th March).  

Growing my own veggies on my little balcony has helped me incorporate more vegetables and more vegetarian meals into my diet. It's fun to cook with produce that I've grown myself.

Australia has the second highest consumption of meat in the WORLD and two thirds of the world's meat comes from factory farms! Our bodies are not meant to be eating meat three meals a day, seven days a week. As well as the negative health implications the demand for a constant source of cheap meat has led to the rise of factory farming where animals live in terrible, cruel, uncomfortable, squalid and unkind conditions – if you could see inside a factory farm for just one minute I’m sure you’d change your mind about eating so much meat. You’d make better purchasing decisions, choosing free range and going with meat for a few meals every week.

Some sheep (aka lamb chops) being put through their paces at the Gulgong Show. Most sheep have a better life than factory farmed chickens + pigs but there are still some issues that you can read about here.

When I first starting making more vegetarian meals I found it REALLY hard to cook a meal that didn’t involve meat. I struggled...a lot. I had no concept of cooking a meal where meat wasn't the "star attraction"  Gradually, with the help of blogs like VegeTARAian, She Cooks She Gardens and good old Pinterest, I started to see how simple meat-free cooking could be. When I heard about Meat Free Week I knew I could cut meat right out of my diet for a week. Easy! Especially as they have tonne of recipes on their website to help us along.

A Vietnamese salad with vegetarian springs rolls made from carrots, mint, coriander and shallots grown on my balcony.

For this week's Harvest Monday I’ve attempted one of the recipes from the Meat Free Week website – Stir Fried Curry Brown Rice with Cashews (by Bill Granger) as it looked so super simple, plus I had a few of the ingredients growing out on my balcony.  I'd been having a bit of trouble getting my bok choi past the caterpillars and mould, but after about 3 months I FINALLY had three little bunches of bok choi that would go perfectly in this dish.

Meat Free Week is not asking us to become vegan or vegetarian...the message is simply to think about where the meat you are eating comes from, to make compassionate choices and to try and eat less meat to better serve your health, the environment and the animals suffering in factory farms.

Meat Free Weeks aims to increase awareness about factory farming as well as the health and environmental impacts of our huge reliance on meat. It also aims to raise funds for the animal advocacy group, Voiceless.

If you’d like to sponsor me in this years Meat Free Week you can do so here.