Have you heard of Good Freakin Food?

I absolutely adore the mother & daughted duo at Good Freakin Food.
Jacq and Rosie deliver plant-based lunch box deliveries twice a week around the Melbourne, CBD and surrounds.
I love that their produce is organic and locally sourced, and the warmth you receive when you meet the pair is contagious, they really make my day!

Cooking healthy food at home is simple...

I remember when I worked behind a deli counter a lady coming up and asking for "200g of ham". I can't remember which ham exactly, but that's beside the point. When I started to weigh it up and price it she looked absolutely bewildered and said, "You're kidding me?! I'm trying to eat healthy and that's all I get? I should have just gone to Maccas!"

You know what, I completely get it but then, of course, I don't...Yes, you can go to Macca's and go and buy yourself a meal completely devoid of nutrition and full of preservatives for $5 - or whatever it is these days; or you can opt for making a few better choices, spending that little bit more as well as putting that time and effort in the kitchen preparing a meal where you know exactly where it has all come from and feel that little bit proud to know that you made it.

I wanted to share a few meals we've thrown together over the years. To me, they each hold their own story. I can recall the recounts of our day we shared, the laughs we had, the frustrations we showed in things we messed up, but most of all the proud moment of saying, "It's done, let's eat!" and then having that first bite together. Nothing surpasses that feeling.

Simple sald of red cabbage, tomato, sprouted almonds, asparagus and shredded cheese with a dash of extra virgin olive oil.

We had so much silverbeet growing in the garden and had no idea what we were going to do with it all. My zia (auntie) always used to make incredible plates of silverbeet mixed with tomatoes, garlic, onion and oil. The tomato gives it a great sauce-like texture and gives it a good moisture. I tried to replicate it here, it wasn't quite like hers, nevertheless it tasted great and was a nice snack and side accompainment to another meal.

 Ah, this was a yummy zucchini and eggplant lasagna dish we put together - completely gluten-free.

I couldn't help but purchase a spiraliser a little while back, and c'mon check out what I was able to do with this incredible gem! The left picture is a zucchini pasta I made with a rich tomato base where I included anchovies to really give it some punch. The second picture are sweet potato fries - not bad for an afternoon snack!

Pizza doesn't have to be a guilty pleasure - you should enjoy it without the guilt! We used pita bread here as our base, topped it up with our favourites, placed it in the over for 10-12 minutes and voila!

At this time of year there are so many tomatoes we have no idea what to do with them all...being Italian the first thing that comes into my head: bruschetta! I love rubbing garlic on the bread first, putting it on the stove with a nice olive oil and really getting the flavours in there before adding on the tomato/basil.red onion toppings.

 Cauliflower popcorn, anyone? Or perhaps some sweet potato fries? No, I do have kale chips?

From memory, this was a Sunday evening meal we put togehter - we always go that little mile extra on a Sunday - more time, perhaps? Here we've cooked up a salmon fillet with lemon and herbs; sweet potato, parsnip and eggplant chips; steamed cabbage and a nice garden salad.

 Oh, this was so yummy! My versions of raw pad thai!

The garden delivers a lot of produce, and when those capsicums start coming through boy, they don't stop! There are two things we love doing with the capsicums: roasting them with lots of garlic and herbs or stuffing them with rice - you should try walking into the house when this is cooking, heaven!

 A few easy meat and fish dishes..

 A few breakfast options - the acai bowl is essentially frozen banana and frozen berries placed in the Vitamix to create an ice-cream texture (you can add a little bit of coconut milk if you'd prefer it less solid) and topping it with some of your favourites - from what I can see here I've topped this with coconut, museli, hemp seeds, cinnamon, kiwi and hazelnuts. The photograph of the eggs, tomato and chorizo is from a recipe from Tobie & Georgia Puttock's The Chef Gets Healthy - it's a cookbook that I highly recommend! And lastly, the buckwheat recipe is from one of my favourite websites: Wholefood Simply who has created this incredible recipe: Not Quite Coco Pops, you'll love it!

 Great for entertaining - a hommus green olive dip topped with paprika and parlseyl and a pesto dip topped with hemp seeds and extra virgin olive oil - these were both winners.

 Something for the warmer months: minestrone, chicken tagine, asparagus, lamb and mushroom...

 And last, but not least, something warming: canneloni, salmon, eggplant with brown rice, rocket and fetta; and a sweet potato spud.


 So, thre you have it! As you might have already guessed, there are plenty more I could share and will hopefully get a chance to do so too. I hope you have drawn some inspiration from some of these dishes, or at least seen that it's not as hard or out of reach as you may initially think. Start with a simple cookbook - some of my favourites are: Crunch Time by Michelle Bridges, The Chef Gets Healthy by Tobie & Georgia Puttock, Eat Drink Paleo Cookbook by Irena Macri, amongst many more - perhaps that's a story for another time!

From soil slab to veggie jungle...

It's pretty exciting watching seeds turn to sprouts turn to leaves turn to flowers turn to produce..!

I only started experimenting with growing vegetables, fruits and herbs in the spring of 2014 when I was working with respected gardener Simon Rickard on his book, Heirloom Vegetables. At the time, I had no idea what an heirloom was, and afterward my world expanded and turned green.

We launched Simon's book at The Diggers Club in Dromana. I got there a little early and looked around the nursery and at all the packaged seedlings, seeing varieties I'd never knew existed. I asked the man behind the counter what do I do to start my own veggie patch, so he set me up with a palette to grow the seedlings, a rich soil and helped me choose some great veggie choices that were ready to sow. I bought heirloom tomatoes, heirloom capsicums, Tuscan kale and eggplant to start off, and decided to even give avocado sprouting a go! Take a look.

Of course, days later little sprouts began to emerge from the soil and my future father-in-law, Tommo, started to prepare the garden bed within our backyard that had been covered with tarp over the last few years when the family had given up on having an active garden. Tommo really got into it too and started to bring other vegetables to plant, we had beetroot, silverbeet, zucchini, cucumbers...check out the space. A good friend of mine saw this photo of our zucchinis and told me it looked like the soil was lacking nitrate, I had no idea! I learnt so much that summer, when the first tomato emerged I was in awe, I didn't realise the produce developed from the flower - I really should have paid more attention in those classes at school!

Soon our garden was becoming its own jungle and to the awe of quite a few of my friends and family as they watched me take so many produce shots!

Have a look at some of the produce we were picking: tomatoes, kale, zucchini and capsicum,eggplant; and a garden shot.
We began to cook some really incredible dishes, Stipe loved stuffing the capsicums and I can't even begin to tell you how incredible the house smelt. Heaven.

Of course we didn't stop there. One weekend Stipe and I drove down to The Diggers Club in Blackwood and I felt right at home. I really wanted to experiment with a winter garden bed - although admittedly it was a lot harder to get out there and find the motivation in those colder months! Tommo helped me replenish the soil and give it a good churning, then we got to work in sowing the new seeds, it was pretty exciting watching the cabbage start to form itself and a few months later really come into its own. Unfortunately, we started to have a lot of issues with pests and I could not work out how to get rid of them, I asked so many people for advice and bought quite a lot of pest controls and tried natural methods too, but to no avail, it was such a shame. Stipe's uncle came over and told me that I had been quite smart without even knowing it - I had companion planted. I had sacrified the cabbage for the broccoli, which was in fine form and replenishing itself days within cutting off the stalks. We had a bit of luck with cauliflower too, but found you had to use them quite quickly before they started to discolour. Oh, I was especially proud of this one - check out the heirloom carrots!

It has been quite a ride this garden of ours. This is a shot from about a month and a half ago, our summer bed for 2015/16, it's getting toward the end of the season now and is quite a mess. I made a slight blunder and planted the tomatoes way too close together, so much so that the gate we have holding them up is now leaning like the Tower of Pisa!! The leaves are starting to die away now too and making quite a mess.

In case you were wondering, the avocado seeds are doing pretty good! We've had a few misses and have thrown them out, but with each new seed we make sure we give it a go. This shot is from the start of summer. And this one is a shot I love from outside the garden where I house all the pot plants - we've tried to get a little creative with wheelbarrows that house strawberries, lavender and basil. Amongst the pots are blueberries, raspberries, mint, chocolate mint, thyme, oregano, dill, corriander, lettuce and nasturniums.

Not bad for some garden experimenting, hey! The neighbours can see over our fence and usually say something when we bump into them, I think they think we're some kind of pros at this, but really we're just having some fun with it, learning from our many mistakes and trying out different things. My favourite part is bringing produce to family and friends who are so impressed by the taste, always commenting that they've never tasted a flavour like it before; the second is when my family and friends show me their own attempts at a garden and telling me that I've influenced them to do the same - what an honour!

I thought I'd close off with the produce I picked tonight from the garden - check out those heirloom tomatoes (I even saved the seed from last year's crop to plant these ones, how cool is that!), and we made this incredible ravioli dish, which I picked up from the Prahran Market's Fresh Pasta Shop, along with the sauce we made from the pick, it was a winner.

Decision made - proud Vitamix owner

I've wanted a Vitamix ever since I saw the first demonstration. I knew it would be a hero on my kitchen bench and would never see the dark side of a cupboard. The hefty price did see me entering competitions, texting for the daily Sunrise cash cow call and researching a  negotiated price from a wholesaler but no one will budge, and no phone from the morning cow just yet!
So we bit the bullet and decided it was time, we were going to fork out for the Vitamix, pros outweighing the cons, justifications concrete.
Wow, what a machine, this baby is strong. Check out one of the first recipes we made, and start tuned for updates!