beetroot recipes: A road trip, a pumpkin and a well deserved coffee!

19/5/12 - Tunne Cliffes Lane - about 7km north of Heathcote along the Northern Highway

A really good night sleep followed by wholemeal pancakes for breakfast kicked my weekend off to a fine start. An easy hour's drive sout-west to my home town, Heathcote (shiraz country), a quick catch up with some extended family, stacking a load of firewood in the trailer, then lunch at Flynn's winery - http://www.flynnswines.com/ for a friend's birthday.

We then stopped by my folks place to for a cuppa and to raid Mum's latest batch of kasoundi and green tomato chutney. Home grown tomatoes of course! She also dug up some jerusalem (f)artichokes which will be made into soup this week, and gave us the most amazing pumpkin I have ever seen:

(apologies for the upside-down photo on the right). It is a good 40 cm across the loop, the bulb on the end is about 15-20cm diameter, and the long stem part is about 8cm diameter. It is hard to show the size of it in these photos. I cut and used about 500g of it tonight and 3/4 of the long stem part remains, so it will feed us for a while!

A quick game of scrabble with my sis [she thrashed me as usual], then off exploring for fossils in Trilobite Gully (oh the places you'll go with an enviro-science type for a hubby!). Didn't find any dinosaurs, but snapped the lovely photo that opens this blog entry. Hit the road and home with a bit of daylight to spare. Threw a few sticks for the pooch into the river to burn off some of her sillybeans. 'Helped' collect wood to get the fire started (mostly watched). Easy dinner and quiet night. Just what the doctor ordered.

A sleep in this morning, then a 16.6km run* to the lovely riverside town of Murchison. Lunch and (the well deserved) coffee with some great friends. Highly recommend Wagner Bros Fine Food Store http://www.locavored.com/wagner-bros-fine-food-store/. Delish coffee, and really good, wholesome food. Eyed off the cakes but resisted somehow.

[*Currently in training for the Run Melbourne half marathon (21.1km) in mid-July. 16.6km is my longest distance for over a year. Hello pain my old friend.]

Home for a relaxing hot bath and an afternoon of pottering around the house. A cuppa visit from a friend exploring an off-the-beaten-track mountain bike route from Murch to Shepp - looking forward to trying that one out!

Now, back to the pumpkin!

I am fortunate to have a very big family, and one of my many wonderful aunties hooked me up with a great recipe book recently: River Cottage Veg Everyday (http://www.amazon.co.uk/River-Cottage-Veg-Every-Day/dp/1408812126) in which the very lovely, passionate and talented Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall teaches us to turn boring old veg into tasty meals in their own right. Yes folks, there was no meat in sight tonight!

Using Mum's pumpkin, and a few alterations to suit the larder supplies, I whipped up North African Squash and Chickpea Stew. Hubby suitably impressed. Plenty of left overs for lunchest this week.