You should have been here for supper last night!

We eat well, mainly because we grow and raise almost everything we eat. We both enjoy cooking in different ways, one of us will bake, the other cook; alternatively one of us will cook indoors while the other prefers the outdoor setting for cooking. This being summer, BBQ skills are being honed and yesterday was a fine example of 'throwing something on the barbie' as our Aussie friends would say.

There is something satisfying about growing all your own food and being able to preserve it for the year to come, but nothing beats taking stuff out of the ground and having it on the grill 30 minutes later. Good quality ingredients just don't need a lot of fussing, in fact, if you don't have your own garden, just try shopping at a Farmers' Market rather than your local supermarket. You will be amazed at the difference in the flavour and texture of ingredients and at your own ability to suddenly create meals fit for a King!

We raise chickens every year. Used to be we raised 700 broilers for sale but we dropped back to just enough to keep us and a few others in chickens for a year; about 50 each year. We thawed one for dinner yesterday. The recipe is never the same so I won't share it with you but I have discovered that if I cut either side of the backbone and remove it, then I can open up the bird so it cooks a little more evenly on the grill. Our herbs are in pots on the steps so, on my walk from the kitchen to the BBQ area, I can snip a bit of this and a bit of that, no golden rules, just whatever seems to be doing well gets included. Squeeze of a lemon, a few spices and seasoning and the bird is ready to be transformed. It looked a little lonely so a full head of garlic took pride of place, along with a good drizzle of olive oil.

An hour later I walked out to the vegetable garden for inspiration.... a couple of new potatoes, half a dozen baby carrots, a sweet onion all sounded good to me, add a  parsnip and we had the makings of a good dinner. Gardening isn't all about weeding, watering and hard work, if it is then you missed the point. It is about fragrances and textures, about looking round and being inspired, watching a frog eat the bugs and finding a smile on your face. It's about watching your efforts come to fruition and improving on it each year. It's about knowing where your food comes from and exactly what happened to it on that journey from dirt to table.

After cleaning and cutting the veggies to size they were added to the roasting tray along with some thyme and olive oil. A perfect Sunday roast accompanied by some refrigerator pickles we had started a few days ago. We rarely grow cucumbers so a friend had shared their bounty with us. The fun of having your own garden is that you can share with those who don't...... unless of course you are growing zucchinis this year, in which case people are already running away when they see you coming.

I promise we won't always write about dinner but yesterday was Sunday, the day of roasts and rest! It was a quiet day and other than feeding and making sure all the critters were fed and watered we took it easy and enjoyed the summer's day. Soon we will be canning and freezing, the dehydrator will be running day and night, all to preserve our food. In fact the first of the celery came out of the dehydrator today and we turned last years dehydrated onions into onion powder, making room for the new onions. The chickens will be butchered in a month, plenty to keep us busy so what better time to start something new like a blog?

Edith (Half of the Two Old Broads)