Garden Goodness Pasta Sauce

A nice simple dinner that begins with a walk around the garden to gather ingredients!!

In a saucepan with some olive oil, saute a chopped onion and fresh herbs from the garden (I used sage, parsley stalks, oregano, thyme and basil).

When the onion has softened, add some vegies from your garden - today, I added zucchini and silverbeet stalks at this stage.  I also added some firm tofu which I diced quite small.  After the vegies had softened and the tofu was nicely covered in herby goodness, I added a tablespoon of tomato paste, which I allowed to cook for a minute of two before adding a can of diced tomatoes. (if I had any I would have used tomatoes from the garden, but none are ready yet!!).  Season to taste with salt and pepper, and add a splash of Worcestershire sauce.  I use Spring Gully brand because it is VEGETARIAN (no anchovies!!).

A couple of minutes before you want to serve this, add the chopped silverbeet leaves and some more fresh basil & parsley.


boil up some pasta - I used small shells in this instance - the chunky sauce fills up the shells quite nicely! Serve the sauce with the pasta!


serve with a sprinkling of Parmesan and some more parsley if you like!

Janet likes to eat from a plate

whilst I like to eat from a bowl!

and dinner is always nicer with some fresh flowers on the table!

If I was making this dinner for just myself, I would have added a tin of 4 bean mix to the sauce! In fact I might just do this with the left overs!

Spaghetti Pie!

Here is an easy dinner - delicious too!!

It involves cooking some spaghetti and mixing with a tomato sauce (I make my own with garlic, onion, tomatoes and basil, but use a jar if thats easier!).  You want the sauce to just coat the spaghetti, you don't want it swimming with sauce.

Spread half of the tomatoey spaghetti in the base of an oven proof dish. 

Mix together a tub of ricotta cheese, 2 beaten eggs, a little grated parmesan and a grated zucchini (or baby spinach), and whatever fresh herbs you like.

spread this over the spaghetti.  Top with the remaining tomatoey spaghetti, sprinkle over some grated cheese and backe in a moderate oven for 30-40 minutes!  Cut into pieces to serve. YUM!!

out for lunch - Sizzler Redcliffe

for Janet's birthday, I caved in and said we could go to one of her favourite dining destinations - Sizzler.  I chose Sizzler at Redcliffe so we could go for a nice walk along the water as well as eat!

We both had the salad bar for lunch - and below are our first plates.....its probably not too difficult to work out which is which...



Janet's plate (hmmm a little bit of green seems to have snuck on there...)




and here is my plate.  I was a little dissapointed they didnt have a tomato based vegetarian sauce for the pasta - I ended up putting some roasted capsicum soup on it! Sizzler salads always annoy me, because so many of them have meat in them! But it ended up being a fairly tasty lunch - I managed to make my own salads anyway!




and the "famous" Sizzler cheese toast. I let Janet have half of mine, because I am very nice :-) and because I wasn't really all that fussed on it! oops!




then it was off for a wander along the water! (we drove to get to the water)

Dinner at Home - Pumpkin & Feta Ravioli

I finally got around to making ravioli with actual fresh pasta rather than with wonton wrappers. And yes, it is worth the effort.  I did not go to the trouble of cutting out circles to make my ravioli - I cut rectangles, which meant that I didnt have to waste any of my pasta sheets.  A more patient and perfectionist-minded person would probably have taken more time to make sure that all the rectangles were the same size, but I just cut them with a knife using my eye to roughly guess the right measurements :-)

I filled the ravioli with pumpkin I had cooked with some garlic, onion, fresh herbs and olive oil in a frying pan, mixed with some danish-style feta.

I put small amounts of the filling onto one side of the pasta rectangle, brushed the edges with egg and folded in half to create roughly square-shaped ravioli. Once the pasta was cooked in boiling water, I tossed it through a light tomato sauce (simply tossed some diced tomato through some butter, garlic and onion in a pan)

This dish was based on the below recipe that I got when I did the Perfect Pasta Class at Focus by James restaurant at Springwood last year - just substitute some homemade pasta for the wonton wrappers and add some tomato to the butter sauce.



Ravioli filled with Roast Pumpkin, Persian Fetta, Garlic and Lemon Thyme, with a Sage Burnt Butter Sauce

Ingredients – serves 2:




¼ pkt fresh wonton sheets
100g butternut pumpkin
1 brown onion
¼ bunch fresh basil
¼ bunch fresh sage
¼ bunch lemon thyme
1 clove garlic
35g Persian fetta
75g grated parmesan cheese
100g butter
1 egg
olive oil
salt and pepper


1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C
2. Cut pumpkin into small pieces place on roasting tray, splash a bit ofolive oil and lemon thyme over it and roast until soft

3. Meanwhile, dice the onion and garlic finely

4. Fry onion, garlic in the pan on a low heat until soft, add pumpkin

5. Chop basil and add to mix (save some leaves for garnish)

6. Add fetta to the mix. Season to taste, take off heat

7. Put large pot of water on the boil


8. Brush outside edges of wonton wrappers with egg

9. Place filling in centre of each ravioli, and fold circle in half to form pasta parcels, press edges together to seal, then trim edges

10. Cook ravioli in boiling water till pasta is soft and rises to the surface. This should take about two minutes


11. Grate parmesan with microplane while you wait


12. In a frying pan, melt butter and add chopped sage


13. Cook on medium heat until butter just begins to brown, andsage leaves go crisp

14. Season to taste


15. Immerse cooked ravioli in sauce briefly to take up sauce

16. Plate the ravioli, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and topwith saved basil leaves


17. Serve hot and immediately