Here & Now 2

Winter is really making its presence felt here now. The sunlight fades sooner and the sky's pink twilight tinge hints at the cold night air that descends before the earlier night.  Heavy, warm blankets are snuggled into and under and hands cup mugs of hot chocolate and tea. It's a time to seek and share warmth!

A visiting honeybee plundering a basil flower.

Warm yellow blooms of Calendula growing in the garden.

A beautiful and practical book for reading in the sun.
(The Simple Home by Rhonda Hetzel.)

Joining in with Sarah over at Say, Little Hen, here is a snapshot of my own Here & Now: 

Loving // Reading leisurely when curled up or stretched out under a warm sun.

Eating // Warm and gooey self-saucing butterscotch pudding with cream!

Drinking // Mineral water while overlooking the ocean after my long walk.

Feeling // Snug and warm under heavy Winter blankets on cold nights.

Making // Anything that features silverbeet because there is so much of it growing in the garden!

Thinking // It would be wrong of me to cut the basil back when the bees are having so much
                       fun in it!

Dreaming // Of this time, next week, when we'll be 2000km away in the place I will always
                        think of as "home".

I hope you have much that warms your heart in your own Here & Now.

Meg

Healthy Veggie Lasagna

What can you make for dinner with the last remaining veggies in your crisper? This healthy Vegetable Lasagna is a delicious and healthy way to use them up!

Delicious and healthy Veggie Lasagna.

I have made this lasagna time and time again over the years. It's packed with lots of healthy vegetables and is very easy to make. You just need four cups of chopped veggies, from your crisper and/or your garden, for the beginnings of a wonderfully nourishing meal. 

Based on a recipe in one of my oldest cookbooks, The Good Gut Cookbook by Rosemary Stanton, it is a recipe that is highly adaptable to what you have on hand. It changes each time depending on what I have in the fridge to use up and what's growing in the garden. This is how I made it over the weekend just past:

Healthy Veggie Lasagna

1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
glug of olive oil
4 cups chopped vegetables (I used carrot, zucchini, broccoli, kale, silverbeet and capsicum.)
100g -150g leftover mashed pumpkin (Omit if you don't have any.)
handful fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes
200mLs vegetable stock
2 Tablespoons tomato paste

250g ricotta cheese
1/4 cup milk
instant lasagna sheets
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese


1.  Heat olive oil in large pot over a low heat. Gently fry onion and garlic until soft.
2.  Add vegetables to the pot and put lid on. Allow veggies to soften and cook for 10mins. 
      Stir occasionally.
3.  Mix in tomatoes, stock, tomato paste and chopped basil.
4.  Simmer for 15mins with lid off. Remove from heat.
5.  Beat ricotta cheese and milk together until reasonably smooth, adding little more milk if 
      you need to.
6.  Gather veggie sauce, ricotta mix, mashed pumpkin, lasagna sheets and grated parmesan 
      on your kitchen bench.
7.  Preheat your oven to 180C. Line your lasagna dish and prepare to assemble:

All the makings of a nourishing meal.

Make repeating layers of lasagna sheets and veggie sauce until dish is 3/4 full.

Spread mashed pumpkin over the last veggie sauce layer.

Spread ricotta mixture over mashed pumpkin and then sprinkle grated parmesan on top.

Bake for approximately 40minutes until golden.

Cut into generous portions and served with fresh, garlicky bread, it's a vegetarian meal full of flavour and goodness. Perfect for meatless Mondays or for any night of the week. Enjoy!

Meg

p.s. If you want to add a ricotta cheese layer to the middle of this lasagna, simply blend 500g of ricotta with 1/2cup of milk and spread half the mixture between a veggie sauce layer and a layer of lasagna sheets. Then spread remaining half of mixture on top.

Beautiful Barks

I am drawn to trees. Tall trees that reach upwards to the clouds, that hold out their branches for nests, whose leaves fall like confetti on windy days, whose roots are deep and strong. I feel a quiet peace when I walk among them and under them and a humility when I crane my neck up to the dizzying heights of trees much older than I am. 

It was on a recent, meandering walk that I found myself focused on the beautiful barks wrapped around the trunks of trees that grow in our neighbourhood. Creamy, green, brown and silvery. Dull and shiny. Rough and smooth. Papery and crinkly and peeling and scratched. 

Let me show you what I found:

So much diversity! So much beauty! 

Have a lovely weekend. I hope you'll have time to spend  looking closely at a tree (or snoozing in the shade of one). Perhaps there'll be time to run your fingers over its bark and to think how you would describe it.

Meg