primal cavewife

• Cut up the vegetables in chunks and boil the sweet potatoes in boiling water for 10 minutes. If you eat the broccoli stems like we do, I would suggest boiling that along with the sweet potatoes to soften it before you stick it in the oven.
• Place all the vegetables in your oven dish.
• In a saucepan, melt butter and then add corn flour. Mix well.
• Add the milk and cream in the butter mix over medium heat stirring constantly.
• When the sauce is thickening, add in grated cheese, salt and pepper, nutmeg and herbs.
• Once the sauce has thickened, pour it over vegetables in the baking dish and bake in the oven for 40 minutes.
• If you like more cheese, sprinkle more grated cheese on top after 30 minutes and bake for another 10 minutes.
 

• Grind the mustard seeds.
• Cut slits in the lamb at 3cm apart and stuff garlic, rosemary and ground mustard seeds in the slits. Salt and pepper the lamb.
• Place more rosemary sprigs on top and under the lamb.
• Chop up the sweet potato and broccoli and place them around the lamb.
• Cook at 180C in the oven. Cook for 15 minutes for every 500g and add another 30 minutes. Set aside for 10 minutes before serve.
• Flip the vegetables every once in a while to cover them with the lamb juices/oil so that they don't get dry and will get tasty with the lamb flavour!

• Blend everything in a blender!

• Wash the vegetables and chop up the capsicum. Place the vegetables in a bowl and sprinkle the capsicum on top.
• In a saucepan, boil the eggs for about 5 minutes in boiling water. Once cooked, cool them in a bowl of cold water.
• In a frying pan, grease it with coconut oil and fry the bacon on medium-high heat.
• Once the bacon pieces are crispy, put the them on top of the vegetables and drizzle the bacon fat on top like you would a dressing.
• Shell the eggs and slice them and place them in the salad bowl.
• Salt and pepper to taste. Add from herbs if you want.
   

• 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.

• Pluck any stem out, wash the leaves and pat them dry.
• Drizzle some oil and sprinkle the salt on top.
• Mix the leaves together and place them in the dehydrator at 35C for about 5 hours or until they get brittle.

This beautiful tiny strawberry plant is one of our latest addition to the vege patch family. I've been wanting to get a strawberry plant for a while but the first time we went and bought all these plants and ran out of money so we had to forgo it. Second time, both Bunnings we went to, ran out of them. Seems like third time's the charm!!

Next up is this beautiful aloe vera plant. This is another plant I've been wanting to get for a while. I get tanned very easily, so I don't get sunburnt very often. My boyfriend on the other hand needs a fair amount of sunscreen when we go to the beach in summer and sometimes if he forgets he would get burnt. Applying aloe vera onto burnt areas soothes the skin. Taking the juice internally is also very good. So once the plant gets bigger we are going to pluck a few and juice it!

Last but not least, a lavender plant. I was going to say that it doesn't really fit in the vege patch because it's not edible... but you can make lavender tea! That is an exciting thought! With our food dehydrator, I can not only make potpourri but also lavender tea! And who knows, maybe a bit more googling and I'll find more cool things to do with my lavender! Just like I found out I could use cauliflower and broccoli leaves to juice and make chips! Going to pluck some leaves once I get home since they are overtaking the vege patch.


As you can see, our capsicum plants are growing quite well. Capsicums are finally sprouting! The seedlings we bought are a mix of the long and bulb ones. So hopefully they will give us some red, green and yellow capsicums of different shapes and sizes!

There are many ways to make sweet potato chips. You can fry them in coconut oil, bake them in the oven or dehydrate them. Since we have recently acquired a dehydrator, I decided to dry my own sweet potato chips.

Warning: The jar was full to the brim at 9am. By 5pm, the jar was empty.

Ingredients:
1 medium sweet potato
coconut oil
salt

• Slice the sweet potato as thinly as possible with a sharp knife. Soak them in cold water for an hour, changing the water after 30 minutes.
• Dry the sweet potato and coat the slices lightly with coconut oil.
• Place them on the racks in one layer and sprinkle salt over them.
• Dehydrate for 12 hours at 70C, rotating the trays every couple hours to ensure that they dry evenly.

We did turn it down to 30C before we went to bed in case the chips burnt.

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!

• Make sure the spinach is washed because they get quite sandy.
• Once all fruits and vege have been laid out, turn the juicer on and juice away!
• For best results, place spinach and parsley between two apples or pears so you get more juice out of them or else they just go through the juicer.
• Enjoy!

I don't normally cook pork because it's not the kind of meat we often buy. But I saw this recipe and thought why not? And oh my God! It's SOOOOO GOOOOOOD!

Ingredients:
2 tbsp coconut oil
sea salt, pepper to taste
4- to 5- pound pork loin roast
1/4 cup desiccated coconut
6 carrots
a celery stalk
2 onions
3 1/2 cups chicken broth
2 cans of tomatoes
6 fresh thyme branches
6 garlic cloves, crushed
4 tbsp organic butter

• Heat coconut oil over medium heat in a large frying pan.
• Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the roast and then roll the roast in the coconut.
• Sear the roast in the frying pan for 4 minutes on each side.
• While the roast is searing, chop the veges into large pieces.
• Remove the roast from the pan, add all the veges and cook in the drippings from the roast until the onions become tender.
• Add the stock, canned tomatoes, thyme branches, garlic and pepper.
• Stir well and bring to boil.
• Place the roast in a slow cooker and Pour the vege mix over the roast. Cook on high for 4 hours and then on low for another hour.
• After the roast is done, remove the roast from the vege mix.
• Remove the thyme and pour half of the vege mix into a food processor or a blender. Add the butter and blend until smooth.
• Place the sliced meat on a plate, top with the remaining cooked veges and pour the blended sauce all over it.