Simple Living Toowoomba ~ Gluten free/plant based workshop

Last Saturday our Simple Living Toowoomba group held a gluten free/plant based workshop presenter by Asher who was the owner of the Little Seed restaurant. This was a very popular and well attended workshop and I am sure that those who attended weren't disappointed as Asher served up some delicious food.

Plant based cooking workshop

Once again our Simple Living Toowoomba group will be holding a really interesting workshop on the 9th March. We are very fortunate to have Asher, the former owner of the Little Seed restaurant, being available to present a workshop about gluten/dairy free and plant based meals.

Too many choices!

I wanted to start off my post with something pretty and remembered I took some photos of the roses in the Queensland State Rose Garden a few weeks ago so here are a couple. If anyone in our area is interested in learning how to prune roses you can learn in the rose gardens on the 4th August at 8.30am.

A visit to Birdsong Market Garden

Today our Simple Living Toowoomba group was given the opportunity to take a tour through Rick and Racheal Cameron's Birdsong Market Garden which is located at Cranley on the northern edge of Toowoomba. The weather was just beautiful and it was pleasant to take a walk around the property in the sunshine on such a stunning Autumn day.

After the rain...

This past week has been a wet one for many areas of Queensland and while we didn't receive anything like the rainfall totals experienced by those on the coast etc. we did manage to pick up some decent totals. Some areas of the garden are like a jungle which gets me down as I can't dig out all the weeds as some have just grown so tall and thick so I took a break from attacking it all to see how the flowers and veggies have benefited from the recent rain.

Bitter gourd/melon ~ what a bitter vegetable!

I first heard about bitter gourd/melon when Nil from The Little House by the Lake wrote a post about Fried Bitter Gourd Salad a while back. I didn't realise you could buy them in Australia but a couple of weeks ago I noticed a strange bumpy looking cucumber at the Farmers Market and asked if it happened to be bitter. The lady who served me said it certainly was so I bought one and she popped another one in my bag for free. I wonder if she was having trouble selling them as other shoppers may have come across these before and tasted them :-)

Why do I bother???

Recently I have been wondering if I should continue to grow vegetables as I find it difficult to shovel dirt and the CEO is having problems with the muscles in his arms. We aren't 21 anymore so I thought I might downsize the veggie patch and when I went to check on my brassicas a couple of days ago that helped me to make up my mind.

A dismal end of summer garden

If you would like to read about successful and thriving vegetable gardens then you might just like to click onto the next blog in your feed as there is nothing to inspire you in this blog post. Normally at this time of the year I am trying to find ways to use up all the cucumbers, tomatoes etc. that are growing but not this summer. I didn't think we had a terribly hot summer apart from a week of dreadful humidity and a couple of days when it was 35C or 36C but perhaps we didn't get as much rain as we normally do. It can get a tad discouraging but I thought I would make a note of how dismal the garden is looking this particular year for future reference.  Firstly though I will show you a couple of photos of a double rainbow that appeared on Sunday as there were storms around but not here unfortunately.

Veggies rule in the new Food Pyramid!

As most of my readers know I have given up sugar in an attempt to bring down my cholesterol level and I often check out 'I Quit Sugar' for recipes, hints and to read about the latest research into healthy as well as junk foods. I found it very interesting to read this week that the Food Pyramid has been updated by Nutrition Australia for the first time in 15 years and it looks like veggies rule!