Cooking up a storm

Someone at work this week asked if I was 'nesting' and getting things ready yet. Unfortunately not. The idea of getting down to the study/soon to be nursery and tidying it up so we can set up the baby stuff is so far from my mind it's not funny.

I think at this point, any nesting is manifesting itself in other ways - like the desire to spend all weekend cooking!

Last weekend we cooked...

- Slow baked pasta sauce with our own tomatoes and carrots
- Roasted carrot and pumpkin soup with our own carrots and a pumpkin from A's grandpa's garden
- Pumpkin and red lentil soup with more of A's grandpa's pumpkin
- Homemade pasta using home laid eggs so we could test out the pasta sauce.

Besides the couple of serves of pasta sauce we've already eaten, it's all frozen for those evenings we just can't be bothered. No photos sorry, I'm a bit of a messy cook really!

Last night we had friends over for dinner and did a nice simple roast lamb and veggies (all ours but the potato) with our 'star of the week' Stephanie Alexander's Buttered Beetroot (recipe on another blog here). We've made it two nights in a row now and it's seriously so good I'd probably eat left overs for breakfast if there were any!

This weekend, I've got another 3 kilos of tomatoes to deal with and also want to try these Orange and Cardamom Tarts to take out to dinner tonight. I need to cook a birthday cake for a work colleague and a salad for a shared work lunch!

It's almost lucky it's going to be another cold, miserable couple of days and the only other things I have to do are marking and cleaning out that room!

Hope your weekend is warmer and drier than ours!

From the garden

A whole salad, fresh from our garden! Delicious!

Check out the size of these ones! We must be doing something right!

Last night I cooked dinner!

Not a super thrilling statement in itself, but given poor A has been lumped with most of the cooking for the last, oh, 3 months, it was pretty exciting that I actually felt like doing it!

So, Japanese it was. And it was pretty awesome if I do say so myself!

In the very middle, tofu with soy sauce, ginger and spring onion. On the left Nasu Dengaku from momofukufor2. Really simple, but could possibly do with a bit less sugar?? And on the right, soba noodles with tofu, carrot and zucchini - hot for A, cold for me. 

A quick hello from Axel - he has an obsession with bags/boxes/tiny-Axel-sized-spaces and will happily clamber his way in for a sneaky nap. Very cute.

Anyway, today is get ready to go on holidays day. Get new tyres, clean out the cars, finish staining and sealing the outside of the doors in the picture above, set up watering system and so on. If yesterday's effort is anything to go by I predict I get less than half done and need about three naps so I best get to it!