The spring equinox has passed without issue or any significant physical event. However, we have had a bit of a shock. We went to the accountant to see what we had to do to for the end of financial year with regard to our situation with the fire etc.

We were given the rather shocking news that any money that is paid into a company is considered income and is taxable! This was a considerable shock to us, as we weren’t expecting to hear that. We run a company called Hot and Sticky Pty Ltd. This means that we will have to pay a third of our insurance money out to the tax dept as Company Tax!

Bummer!

Well what can a bloke do? Go to the garden, pick what’s ripe, and cook it for dinner, that’s what. On the brighter side, the weather is improving. The days are getting longer. The summer garden is all planted out – well mostly, and we have had some rain, so everything is growing well. We have the last of the winters red cabbages maturing, so we have been eating a lot of sautèed cabbage.

I browned an onion in olive oil, chopped in a slice of short cut bacon and a chunk of diced chorizo, sautè till softened, add the sliced cabbage and then cover and simmer with a dash of wine. Pretty substantial and filling.

I spike it up with a chunk of my frozen homemade beef bone marrow and red wine concentrated stock. it rounds it out and mellows it very nicely.

Frugal, healthy and satisfying food, mostly from the garden, using just a little meat as a flavour enhancer. We have also done something similar using savoy cabbage, kale flower heads, carrots and celery.

It’s fun to work out what we can make with what is ready in the garden each day. Because we eat seasonally like this, we tend to heat a lot of similar things day after day. It’s a challenge to keep on reinventing how we can use the same ingredients over and over in different ways. A really big cabbage lasts us a whole week. It can become monotonous if you don’t think creatively about it.

I always trim even the small amount of fat off the short cut bacon, as this becomes a treat for Hillary, the chook formally known as Ginger. She needs to be considered in our culinary planning too.

The other day I made patatas bravas, with our potatoes cooked in duck fat, the last of the broccoli, a couple of slim pieces of pan fried ocean trout, and using the last jar of our home grown and bottled tomato sugo sauce. I used our own dried chilli flakes from last summer. No need to buy in the expensive, specially smoked, Spanish pimenton powder. We have our own naturally bush fire, smoked-on-the-bush chilis!

We may be broke, but we eat well.