primal cavewife

I bought the Chef Avenue 3 in 1 Slicer over the weekend from CNR and was super excited to use it this week because I can finally make my boyfriend spaghetti bolognaise! I knew that being gluten intolerant, spagbol was something he hadn't had in years, so I decided to make him this delicious surprise. I don't love spagbol that much, but I LOVED THIS! HE loved this, which really says a lot. His only complaint was that the zoodles were too long... yes... I have a newborn toothless child at home. But that can easily be fixed by cutting the noodles up.

Since we usually cook a lot to last us several meals over the week, this recipe serves at least 6. But you can easily adjust the ingredients... or just cook a big pot and bring it for lunch the next day!

Ingredients:
2 onions, diced
5 garlic cloves, minced
1.5kg beef mince
1 cup water
2 carrots, cubed
5 tomatoes, chopped
2 cups mushroom, chopped
2 tbsp oregano
2 tbsp basil
2 tbsp chives
2 tbsp thyme
5 tbsp tomato paste/5 tbsp tomato sauce, optional
grated cheese, optional
salt
pepper
4 zucchini, julienne

• Melt butter on medium heat in a pot. Add the onion and garlic and fry until cooked.
• Add the beef mince and a cup of water and heat until mince is browned.
• Add the carrots, tomatoes and mushrooms and let it simmer.
• Add the herbs, salt and pepper and simmer for about 30-45 minutes.
• In the meantime, place the zucchini noodles on a paper towel in a bowl and add salt. This is to draw the water out of the zucchini. Dab as much water as you can with a fresh paper towel.
• On a frying pan, heat the zoodles up for a couple minutes and plate it.
• Add the tomato paste/sauce in the mince mix and simmer for a couple minutes.
• Serve the zoodles with the sauce and a handful of grated cheese.

• Cut the mushroom up in smaller pieces and together with the herbs, put it through the food processor until they become tiny bits.
• Mix them in with the mince, egg, almond meal and salt and pepper.
• Take a little portion, press a little dent in the middle and place the cubed cheese in it and roll the meat mix around it to form a ball.
• Bake the meatballs at 180C for 15 minutes.

• In a food processor, pulse the carrots and greens until they become tiny little bits.
• Mix all the ingredients together and then form little balls with your hands.
• Bake them in the oven at 180C for 15 minutes.

• Place all the ingredients in a pot and bring to boil.
• Simmer for about half an hour or until the vegetables are soft.
• Cool for a bit and blend in a blender. Serve warm.

• Put everything in a pot and bring to boil.
• Simmer for about half an hour or until the vegetables are soft.
• Blend everything in a blender and serve.

• Wash the herbs to make sure all the soil is removed
• Pat them dry with a paper towel and place them on the food dehydrator. Make sure the leaves are not on top of each other to ensure they dry out evenly.
• Heat them at 35C for 3 hours, rotating the trays every hour.
• You can keep them in a sealed bag. I crushed them in a zip lock bag and then put them in jars.

The parsley is growing huge. I've been using it to cook our prawns for surf and turf, cauliflower mash and even juicing it!

Chilli is riping slowly...

Capsicum was bought as a seedling so it's coming along nice and slow. We were told that they don't grow in winter, but it's starting to flower so we'll see how that goes.

The basil plants are not huge, but the leaves definitely are. Whenever I pluck them to bring back to the house, I always think I am holding store-bought spinach... Like parsley, chives and oregano, I use it for surf and turf, cauliflower mash and juicing.

Carrots... Don't know how they are going since it's all underground. But the leaves are growing really well.

Oregano is growing bigger and bigger and bigger... Also used in surf and turf, cauliflower mash and juicing.

This spinach plant is my pride and joy! The leaves grow as big as my hand! A couple nights a week I would pluck about 6 leaves, wash them and place 3 on each plate and serve our surf and turf, cauliflower mash and baked sweet potato on it to give it some juice and flavour!

Red cabbage leaves are growing so big, it probably would have been a good idea to grow them further apart.

Broccolis are also growing bigger every day!

Cauliflower is getting big though not as big as the cabbage or broccoli... they're getting there!

The sweet potato that my boyfriend just dumped in the backyard. Hopefully we'll get more sweet potatoes... not sure how that works.

Our kale looks small, but that's because you don't know how much trauma it's been through! The snails have been getting into them for weeks... must have known how good they are for you. And for a while we were left with stems and no leaves! But as you can see, it is recovering much better now with luscious leaves. I am confident we'll be able to harvest it as often as we do the spinach soon! Can't wait!