I just love cooking this recipe for my family.  Its so easy, I don’t have to think about it, it tastes great and my kids love harvesting alot the ingredients from the garden to use in garden cooking.

GARDEN  INGREDIENTS
500 gms Good quality lean Mincebeef
1 onion finely diced (G)
1 clove garlic, bruised, finely chopped (G)
2 handfulls of Spinach/Silverbeet roughly chopped (G)
1 tblspn extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup Pecorino cheese finely grated
pinch salt to taste
pinch paprika (sweet is better)
2 pinches of dried oregano/basil/parsley.  If using fresh which is better flavor, you will need 1 handfull of each roughly torn.(G)

COOKING METHOD
(P):    Place all ingredients into large mixing bowl. 
(K):    Ask the kids (after washing their hands) to mix it all together with their hands.   Parent may need to superfvise kids here as the mixture needs to mixed until it all blends into a smooth paste.   You will need to “slap” the mixture into the bowl to ensure all of the proteins denature and help the mixture bind together in balls.  Slapping the mixture means grabbing a handful and whacking it back into the bowl.  My kids thought this was hilarious!
(K):    Make small balls of the mixture ready to drop into the fry pan

(P):    Heat a large fry pan with a little cooking oil of your choice, I always go for grapeseed oil.
(P):    Place meatballs in the fry pan, turn once or twice, cook until golden brown.


Cooks Tips:    Mixture is suitable for freezing either at the raw mixture stage or directly after the meatballs have been cooked.

Glueten Free, can be dairy free (just omit the cheese), Not suitable for vegetarians.

P:= Parent recommended technique
K:= Kids can help here.
G:= grown directly from your garden to use in your cooking, harvest the day of use if possible.

Technorati Tags: cooking, Gardening Kids, Garlic, Methods, Onion, Silverbeet, Spinach

Congratulations you found us!  This is so exciting,   I am so glad you have made it to the ultimate garden cooking website!   This site is designed to enable you to maximise the use of your fruit and vegetable growing so that you can use more of this home grown produce in your cooking.   There are so many good reasons for starting to incorporate this way of garden cooking in your lifestyle but probably the number one reason would have to be the rising cost of living.
Families, singles, couples people all over the world have noticed the rising cost of day to day living and by maximising your fresh produce from your own garden you are certainly going to save money on your home cooking.    Other benefits of learning how to get the most out of your garden are:

•    utilise the freshest produce during the season its available;
•    increase the spontaneity in your garden cooking so that you eliminate those mundane, worn-out recipes and introduce some exciting new flavours, textures to well love favourite vegetables/fruit;
•    keep your body healthy by eating  the freshest produce thereby maximising the most available vitamin and mineral source;
•    teach yourself, your friends and family more about growing fruit and vegetables, composting, garden cooking.
So have a lot of fun and I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Ny.

Technorati Tags: cooking, garden, vegetables

1.  Pantry analysis – cooking

The first is to do a thorough analysis of your pantry.  Go through the categories of meals and for this I like to use a simple excel spreadsheet which list the days of the week on the “X”axis and the meals you eat in your house, on the “Y” axis.  Then conduct your research noting down the meals you have over the week to two week period.    It is important to put here as many ingredients in each cell that you use per meal so that you can incorportate and utilise herbs as well as other main garden fruit and vegetables.    
Once this has been done you can then go over your spreadsheet with a highlighter and mark the repetitive ingredients.    The patten will emerge,  you will see things that have been used over that two week period over and over.   My suggestion is that these are the items you should begin planting in your garden with the goal of achieving impressive garden cooking.

Technorati Tags: cooking, fruit, garden, pantry, vegetables