Padron peppers

Homegrown Padron peppers, stuffed with cashew goat cheese (from Artisan Vegan Cheese) and fried:

I only wish the snails hadn't eaten so many of my seedlings -- these were so good that the three pepper plants that survived are not enough for us. Definitely planting more (and defending them from the snails more carefully) next year.

Padron peppers are supposed to be mild, with only the occasional hot one, but so far all of the ones I have harvested have been hot. I think this probably has to do with the climate in Perth. Still, they are delicious, and not unbearably hot.

Garden salads

I'm not really sure why I planted 12 lettuce plants. We've gone from eating salad maybe once a week, to having shopping bags full of lettuce in the fridge and resorting to lettuce soup to get rid of the stuff.

We have had some nice salads though. The first is lettuce, rocket (leaves and flowers), baby broad (fava) beans, golden beetroot, and mulberries. The second is lettuce, rocket, roasted golden beetroot, and homemade tofu misozuke. I really love that almost all of these ingredients came from the garden.

Kale

A proud day: after defending it from caterpillars, cabbage whiteflies and cabbage aphids, I have my first kale harvest from the backyard. This was lunch today.

Fenugreek

I am really only into gardening in so far as it involves things I can eat. At the moment I have a few herbs growing (lemongrass, basil, thyme, mint, oregano, and cilantro/coriander).

On a whim, and to fill in some of the empty pots -- where some casualties of my not so green thumb used to reside -- I raided my spice drawer and planted some fenugreek seeds. I half assumed that the seeds would have been irradiated, and hence wouldn't grow, but was pleasantly surprised:

It's sort of weird to realise that the seeds in your spice jars are actually, you know, seeds.