Ugh. Just what you need one lazy sunday when you are spending the day resting in bed with a rotten headache. One of the chickens got into the raised vegie beds with their tiny baby seedlings….. she didn’t eat anything, but scratched it all to heck and back. A few confirmed casualties, and hopefully some plants will make a recovery, but man, I was fighting back tears on this one. How she got over/through a 1.2m high chicken wire fence, we are still not sure. We suspect maybe that the bottom of the gate wasn’t secured properly and she nudged her way through, but time will tell if she manages a repeat. I tell you, she nearly lived up to DH’s nickname for her, which is nuggets!!
I didn’t even take any photos of the damage, too depressing. But I’m hopeful that most of it will pull through, and the seedlings on the window sill inside are all doing super well. I suppose that’s gardening for you. Between the flooding, and the mud, it all just seems like a bit too much work right now.
Ok, pity party over.
At least I have delicious dinner for us. I make a pasta bake/lasagne dish based on Pioneer Woman’s Sour Cream Noodle Bake however I make the sauce much richer and manage to make 500gm of mince last 4 meals, for 4 people. The trick is to make it up with lots and lots and lots of veggies – grated carrot, diced zucchini, capsicum, fresh tomato as well as tinned, and sliced mushrooms. Time to clean out the bottom of the fridge type sauce. Chuck it all in, simmer it down for an hour or two until it becomes really rich and mellow. Red wine is optional, but it certainly adds to the flavour – as well as lots of onion and garlic. Next year it will be home-grown garlic, hooray!! I make a mega batch of mince sauce, use half and freeze the other half.
Mix the pasta (I just use ordinary penne) into cream cheese and sour cream (we’re not cottage cheese people). Even some natural yoghurt if you need to stretch out what’s left in the sour cream tub. Pull some diced up parsley from a ziplock bag in the freezer and mix it thoroughly through. Then just layer, add cheese, bake, and watch yourself become everyone’s favourite cook. My family can’t get enough of this one, and it’s (in my humble opinion) easier and yummier than traditional lasagne.
Serve it up piping hot with garlic bread, fresh salad, and apple crumble for dessert. Yum.
So I guess now that I’ve made us all drool over our keyboards, I’d better go heat up the leftovers from last night’s bake for dinner!
So I’ll leave you with this beautiful picture, taken last Autumn….
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Jenny
Oh no! Mischievous chicken! I hope they all survive.
And it’s a good thing I just ate breakfast or your description of the lasagna would have me in the kitchen looking for what’s in the bottom drawer of my fridge. : )