Quarter Acre Roots - growing food in the Wairarapa, New Zealand

This is a wonderful time of year, the chickens are laying more eggs than we can eat and some of the veges are starting to be edible. These recipes are a great way to use the extra eggs and use new spring vegetables.

Individual Bread Puddings

per person:

in a bowl mix:

• one egg,
• a splashy tablespoon of milk,
• a heaped tablespoon of white sugar,
• a tablespoon of melted butter

1. in a ramekin, stuff a torn up slice of nice bread (sourdough, vogels toast, or mackenzies white) and arrange
2. drop about 30 sultanas over the top.
3. pour egg mix over bread
4. sprinkle ground nutmeg and brown sugar over the top

Bake at 180 for 20 mins or until they look puffy and delicious

It’s very rich - so eat with a teaspoon.

Frittata

A 6 egg frittata will feed two hungry adults or four adults for a light lunch. Vegetarians can drop the pork and it still tastes excellent.

onion, potato, chorizo, onion, silverbeet, feta, paprika
(serve with gewurztraminer, sweet riesling or light red)
- Amazing chorizo sausage from the Common Sense Organics meat fridge is best
- Castlepoint Feta is our favourite

• fry up half small onion chopped, 0.5cm slices of chorizo, and 1cm cubes of potato in a frying pan
• when all browned and nice, drop sliced silverbeet on top beat some eggs lazily and pour over
• crumble feta over the top and sprinkle paprika
• when the bottom is cooked and the top is still raw, stick under the grill - it’s ready when it looks puffy and golden

The same technique can also work for

spring onions or leeks, potato, bacon, caraway seeds, cream cheese, parsley, salt and pepper
(wooded chardonnay)
- bacon from Stoneycreek Farm is best

potato, broadbeans, broad bean tops (if you grow/have them), feta, (allspice, nutmeg or mace)
(sauv b.)

You get the idea. You can do in many versions, the secret is matching cheese / spice / veg and always using potatoes. It naturally happens that we use seasonal vegetables from the garden, this means the tastes always seem to match.

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On the weekend we created a new chicken run, using steel waratahs (Y stakes) and some wire netting. It only takes an hour or so to setup this way and can be reconfigured at any time to give the girls a new bit of ground.

This time we decided to include two of the raised beds in the chicken run, an easy way to add their very high in nitrogen fertiliser as another green layer before we finish filling them. It also has the added benefit of giving the chickens some more vertical space to play in. It might sound funny, but the chickens look really happy jumping up and down over the edges of the beds and sitting on the pile of gravel excavated from below the beds, particularly our star-layer Pearl the Light Sussex. By the way, did I mention we now have three eggs a day? Happy chickens don’t stop laying in winter it seems.

A full raised bed article will update our progress soon.

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