I can’t quite believe I’m about to share this recipe as it’s an old and very secret family recipe! At every family celebration this pie gets made by one of us – we all cook it slightly differently and we all think that ours is best! So here’s my recipe for Spanakotiropita or Spinach Pie.
Here are a few products that we couldn’t live without or at least our chickens couldn’t….. Natural remedies for parasites, mites and overall good health.
This little film gives you a flavour of who we are and what we’re all about. Family, food, fresh air and fun! Directed by Will and featuring our three children, this was an amazing project for our local biodynamic farm. I hope you love watching it.
This is the most amazing raw cashew, chia and banana ‘cheesecake’ using my raw alternative to the standard pastry case. Dairy free, gluten free and with no added refined sugars, it’s unbelievably easy to make and absolutely delicious! A firm favourite in our family…
An amazingly yummy family meal with a great protein kick! Rice, mackerel, caramelised onion, shredded lettuce, avocado, pecans and cumin seeds. My kids absolutely loved it (and didn’t even notice the avocado!)
Today’s lunchtime inspiration – frittata extraordinaire! Basically, a very thick omelette full of potatoes and veg, that’s served in big wedges like a cake! A meal fit for 3 hungry children and a busy Mummy, plus excellent for using up our delicious homegrown veg and freshly laid eggs.
Of course it’s lovely to save some pumpkin seeds to plant next year, but I definitely don’t need to grow 100 pumpkins! So this recipe is a really satisfying way of using up every last seed! Any variety will do – if you can eat the pumpkin you can eat the seeds! And there are loads of different combinations of spices and flavours to roast them in, but this is our favourite. A very simple and tasty little snack! Happy munching.
Scoop out the seeds. Toss them in tamari and olive oil. Roast for 12 minutes at 170C.
PS: I’m yet to try this, but apparently if you par-boil the seeds for 10 minutes in salty water, they come out much crunchier. Worth a try!
For information on growing organic pumpkins click here!
Pumpkins are such fun to grow. Every year we plant different varieties for size, taste and colour. This year we inter-planted the pumpkins with our sweetcorn, which looked lovely. The tall fluffy fronds of the sweetcorn and the low-growing sprawling mass of the pumpkins appealed to my ‘good-use-of-space’ aspirations! The idea came from the Native American Indians, who went one step further by letting beans climb up the stems of the sweetcorn – maybe we’ll try that next year! It’s called the ‘3 sisters’ and is a classic example of companion planting – the climbing beans use the corn stalks for support, the low-growing pumpkins and squash smother the weeds and the beans provide nitrogen to keep the soil in tip top condition. Perfect!
When I first cooked this meal, my 9 year old said it was the best meal ever “by 300%”! It has now become a firm family favourite. Also great with sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes.
We LOVE porridge any which way! Warming, nourishing and keeps you going for hours. This is a delicious flavour-filled recipe that has us all bouncing out the door in the morning.
Adventures in our kitchen have led to this amazingly delicious flapjack! Gluten free, dairy free and with no added refined sugar, it’s a healthy treat that’s packed full of natural energy. Hooray! Brilliant on an autumn walk, in the kids packed lunch or for extra digging power in the garden.
Yummiest of yummy yummies! This tastes so decadent and yet is actually incredibly good for you. It’s also an amazing way to get reluctant kids to eat avocado!
Late Autumn is a really busy time for us on the allotment. Time to pull up the annual companion plants, tidy up the perennials in the flower beds, clear out the veg beds, plant the over-winter crops, gather seeds and keep harvesting all those luscious greens.
This is a great way to get reluctant kids to consume avocado – in a drink! Sounds weird, but trust me, it is incredibly delicious! Just ask my taste testers…
I call this our ‘allotment juice’, because it’s such a great way to use up our delicious homegrown veg! Obviously at certain times of year it becomes ‘organic farm shop juice’ (oh how I’d love to be growing big, juicy cucumbers in mid-winter)!
Whatever you call it and whenever you drink it, it will always be incredibly good for you. Yay!
Here’s a deliciously different risotto for you to try! It’s a family favourite of ours that’s incredibly tasty, uses up lots of homegrown allotment veg and is really easy-peasy to make!
This is the most amazing jam made with rice syrup instead of sugar and packed with Vitamin C, antioxidants and natural anti-inflammatory properties, so a healthier version of all the usual sugar-laden jams. Hooray!
We had such fun collecting all these goodies from the hedgerows and trees in the fields and woods nearby – crabapples, elderberries, hawberries, blackberries, rose hips, beechnuts, sloes and rowan berries.
I love growing things from my own seeds – it’s the ultimate in self-sufficiency! Every year I try to collect seeds from my plants for next years crops, but it doesn’t always go according to plan – the birds and mice often have other ideas! If I do need to buy seeds then I use three great seed suppliers.
If you’ve never tried making nut milk, do it this weekend. I promise you’ll love it! Packed full of Vitamin E which is really good for your skin and with just as much calcium as cows milk. It’s good stuff!
Oh how I love raw balls! They’re a little nugget of health and incredibly tasty too! Brilliant in school packed lunches, great for an energy boost on the allotment and perfect to take to work.
This was the first and rather messy bottling of our elderberry winter tonic with no refined sugar. Tastes incredible and is full of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties.
This is our amazing healthier than healthy rosehip syrup made with rice syrup. Not a bag of sugar in sight! Packed with natural Vitamin C to ward off winter colds and what a colour!
Very excited to be making healthier alternatives to the usual sugar-laden jams, syrups and chutneys.
We’ve been foraging in the woods, hedgerows and fields around our house for years! Gathering wild food is great fun and hugely rewarding, but you do have to be VERY, VERY careful about what you pick. Either go with someone who knows what they’re doing or take a detailed foraging guide book with you to safely identify plants, seeds, berries and mushrooms BEFORE you eat them.
Homegrown Kate 