Quinta das Abelhas

I am working through a Self-Sufficiency course, and was asked to write a recipe for a balanced meal. So, I thought I’d include it here, as another of my recipes.

Melt a decent lump (i dont use measurements!) of butter in a pan, add flour (wholemeal preferably) and mix, while slowly adding some milk to make a thick sauce. A spoon of organic stock powder, some garlic or sweetcorn kernels are optional.

Meanwhile fry some onions in a wok or large pan, add chopped courgettes, and plenty of fresh chopped tomatoes. A dash of soya sauce is also optional. Cook until all is soft, then add some finely chopped greens, whatever is available, spinach, new zealand spinach, cabbage, kale whatever. Stir in until the greens are soft.

Spoon a layer, about 1cm thick, into a large shallow baking tray. Place a layer of lasagne (from the supermarket I’m afraid) over the top, then spoon a layer of the white sauce over this pasta.

Alternate layers of white sauce with tomatoe sauce, with lasagne between each layer, until the tray is full. Place some slices of tomato and grate some hard cheese over the top, and some black pepper.

Place in oven for roughly 40 minutes, or until the lasagne is soft and the top has browned.

Eat with two salads. One of grated carrot and beetroot, chopped apple or pear, toasted seeds (sunflower, sesame and pumpkin) and pieces of orange, peach nectarine, plum (is very good). The other salad is green, comprised of chopped lettuce and a selection of leafy salad vegetables, and herbs, whatever is available in the garden.

If you add some cooked beans or chickpeas to the grated salad, this will increase the protein within the meal, as the bean protein will combine with the wheat protein in the lasagne.

All of this can come from your garden, except the milk, cheese, lasagne, butter, stock and soya sauce. Hm, delicious, just abou everyne loves it, including meat eaters.

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Having just received a copy of The Sunny Side of Cooking, we are really excited about the idea of cooking and drying fruit and veg in the sun. We’ve laid out slices of tomatoes etc to sundry, plenty of times, but it takes several days, and we are now looking at how simple contraptions of glass, wood and shiny material could increase the efficiency and speed of drying.

We might possibly be able to build a solar drying box, or a solar cooker, into the ruin renovation when we do it. Or, more likely we’ll build a permanent structure for cooking and drying adjoined to the planned bread oven (also very efficient).
We like this idea:

Full information about building it.

And lots more ideas and information about DIY solar cooking projects.

Simple cooking with the sun must be something that we can integrate into our daily lives here, it will just take a little bit of planning and lifestyle changes. No more rushing down to cook dinner at 6 or 7pm, but starting the day with a plan for meals, and putting casseroles, rice, pasta, stews, potatoes and soups into the solar over in the afternoon, ready to eat for supper.

Hay box cooking and other methods of cooking, by heating food on a conventional stove and leaving in an insulated container for some hours, has been talked about here for a while, but I haven’t shown much interest. It felt like a lot of flap to save a little gas, as the pan has to be brought to the boil before going into the insulator.

With this new book, it is apparent that you can cook using the sun without any gas/wood cooking. So I am now much more excited, especially by the idea of high speed sun-drying of courgettes, apples, pears, tomatoes and much more. Solar pasteurisation for canning/bottling produce is also very exciting, as no one likes to stand over a pan of bioling veg for hours!

Initially we will probably make a simple cardboard oven, and as I get used to the changes in my cookng regime, we’ll invest in materials for permanent sun ovens. Less DIY motivated people could actually buy a solar cooker, as there is even a company in Portugal who make and sell them.

As usual, I am also now joining together ideas, and wondering if we would be able to build some kind of solar ‘pasteuriser’ for water running into our proposed natural swimming pool. Provided the temperature gets high enough, water could be cleaned of bacteria before it flows in, thereby reducing the amount of algae growth etc (although the plants in and around the pool keep the water clear). Its just an idea, but i wonder….

Amber thinks its all good ideas!

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I found a copy of The Story of Stuff with portuguese subtutles. This short film is amazing, so I am going to reproduce here:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

Part Six:

Part Seven:

Fantastic stuff. Really makes you think about all the stuff we buy, use and then throw away. The question to ask is ‘Do I really need this?’
Lets all start to create the ‘new way’ that Annie ends on…..

Story of Stuff website for more information.

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Most of the bean plants have finished producing now, but the metre long beans have only just started really. Dome of the bean pods are almost a metre long, as the name suggests, but most are about 50cm. Heres a couple of photos:

So, plenty are now going into our dinners, and then i’ll let loads dry out for seed for next year and perhaps we be able to eat them as dried beans, in stews and soups, through the winter.

Garden Orache was being eaten by us in salads for most of the early part of the summer. Now the plants have seeded and are drying nicely to give us a huge quantity of seed for next year.

Anyone want some seeds? Just drop us a line, and we can sort something out, perhaps a swap or if you dont have any seeds to swap, we’ll be happy as long as you cover the postage.

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