a little spot of gardening...

Look at this beautiful fresh lettuce picked straight from our garden.  After eating this, why would you want to go back to buying lettuce at the shop ?  If you look carefully you'll also see some fresh parsley and a leaf of vietnamese mint - I love that stuff !  So I'm playing it a bit by ear with my vegie garden...so far so good, only got lettuce and a few herbs going...and have to keep everything in pots as we are renting. 

The other day, we came home and the kids next door had an armful of empty plant pots.  Apparently the guy next door to them was having a massive clean up and was getting rid of stuff   -  "Do you want some pots too?" ...well hello !!!!!  of course !!!!!  So I sent Ruby over with them and they came back with a whole pile of pots.  Exactly what I needed !!  Now it's time to get some seeds.  Thought it would be more rewarding to try and plant seeds...we'll see how we go hey !

Ruby planting seeds...parsley, pak choi and lettuce.  She was being so careful ! and counted all the tiny seeds before she planted them.

The parsley seeds were stuck to cardboard spikes and she just had to push them in - clever huh! 

Our basil is doing really well...looking forward to lots of pesto!

more basil...some rosemary cuttings and stevia

parsley and some of the lettuce

As I'm writing this, Ruby is outside chatting to our neighbour while he is servicing his car, i hope the poor guy can concentrate on what he is doing coz she talks non-stop !

I bought a bag of chillis on Saturday at the markets - not really sure why - they looked so nice and red !  I don't cook with chilli because the kids don't like it, but I do like a bit of chilli mixed in with whatever I'm eating.  So, I decided to have a go at making a lacto fermented chilli sauce.

These are the ingredients I used.  Chilli's, salt, sugar, garlic and whey.

I put everything into a jug and blended with the bamix.  A blender would have been so much better though, or maybe just a taller jug - the seeds kept flying out and the fumes were getting right up my nose ...not pleasant !

Anyway, it ended up looking like this...

all I can say is..it's VERY hot.  Maybe I should have looked up a recipe, maybe I should have added something else ?  I'll let it ferment for a few days and see how it goes.  If it's OK, I'll post the recipe.