Do you buy flax (same as linseed) for added dietary fibre; to reduce cholesterol or to bake or prepare delicious dishes with?

If you buy whole seeds, you'll know how tricky it is to make flax meal.  I'll show you how, and you'll see the difference between the golden and brown flax meal.

This recipe comes to you from the superb chef I will be working with - Helen Pratt.

Helen has a French cookery training and has now moved to Brisbane's northern suburbs from Perth. Welcome Helen!

Our first workshop together is 'Yummy Mummies and Gorgeous Grannies' at the Grasstree Cooking School in April 2013. Keep an eye on my workshops page for more events that combine our passions of food and organic growing, and do join us.

Helen has generously provided this recipe for your enjoyment. Its a silky smooth pannacotta. I love growing berries and blueberries, strawberries and loganberries are among my favourites. Imagine how delighted you'd be to be able to grow and prepare your own like this!

Do you have trouble fitting in brekky? This is quick and nutritious and simply delicious.

Thanks to all of you who attended the immensely popular Smoothies for health and vitality demo at the Ginger Festival at Yandina. Here are the smoothie recipies for you..

That's a picture of the Chocolate Pudding Fruit Chai smoothie.

This soup is a result of my quest for an alternative to the gazpacho soup that our family all loves in summer. We simply adore Thai Tom Yum soup, but not all of us eat prawns or fish sauce. This recipe uses fresh ingredients you can grow in your garden.

I've also added my recipe for harissa paste. I know it's Moroccan or Middle Eastern, but it goes well in this recipe for the spicy kick too.

The soup takes all of 3 minutes to make and you'll only need a blender or food processor.

This is for all those people who would love a wheat and gluten free savoury biscuit/cracker.  They are simply crispy and delicious. My husband loves them with cheese, I eat them with hommous or just as a great snack.

When I was at the Maleny Real Food Festival, Elizabeth brought in this Buddha's Hand citron and gave it to my friend Martin Duncan from Freestyle Tout for display on his desserts stand.

Isn't it the strangest looking thing? Buddha's Hand citron are a citrus but without much juice. Just for interest, they have been used by Asian people for room fragrance for centuries and yes they do smell quite beautiful!

So, when I asked what do you do with them? Jutta shared her recipes for Limoncello liqueur. 

I just love this drink and plan to make my own with lemons.  Click here for Juttas two recipes and start making your own liqueurs. CHEERS!

Kale is one of those old fashioned vegies related to cabbages that just keeps giving, month after month. It also gives us so much in the healthy food category, providing some protection from bowel disease and a liberal dose of chlorophyll for body cleansing and Vitamin A for bone health and calcium and Vit C. While it has almost no fat, it's also low in sodium and provides fibre. Those on anticoagulants will know that they need to be careful taking large portions of kale as it helps keep your blood thinner rather than stickier.

Use the young fresh leaves in all sorts of dishes. This will be our dinner tomorrow night... Kale frittata. And, I'm pleased to say that at the Ekka, Dominique Rizzo cooked a delicious kale frittata based on this recipe. It just had Ashed Goasts cheese slices instead of the cheddar.

Kale chips

Kale chips are essentially dried kale leaves with a flavour added then dehydrated or dried in a cool oven. The flavour and crispness is sublime!

The 3 types of kale pictured are from left: Cavolo Nero; Red Russion; Red Bor. They are all heritage varieties and each is delicious with  slightly different flavours. My favourite is the Cavolo nero I must admit. They are super easy to grow from seed in cold or warm climates. Harvest the leaves from the base of the plant for 3 months of continual kale.

Sow seed in autumn for winter and spring cropping. Pull them out in the subtropics before Christmas or you'll have a mass of aphids swarming around the hot and fragrant kale leaves.

I enjoyed this salad on a Brisbane winter day while recovering from a virus contracted on a long-haul flight from Spain. (Serves me right doesn’t it? – for flying and impacting on the environment!)

Anyway, it tasted wonderful and was just the thing my body craved. It’s got lots of healthful things that help bodies heal. Onion, garlic and  chilli are antioxidants that also allow mucous to flow freely instead of getting gummed up in the sinuses. 

The organic olive oil is always good for the body cleansing, lemons are packed with Vit C  and carrots with their Vitamin D are just what a jet-lagged body needed.  Thanks to the garden, quite a few of the ingredients were straight outside the backdoor and snapping fresh, still with a full complement of enzymes and nutrients.

While in Portugal we had the enormous good fortune to stay at Duas Quintas B&B in the Algarve just outside the historic fortress township of Silves.

Owners Mary and Les love their adopted Portuguese home surrounded by orange groves and grow a range of herbs and vegies in their garden. We visited in early summer and were offered the run of the garden, which included using up some of the giant zucchinis (which they call courgettes), fresh basil and any of the other herbs we wanted.

The oranges and lemons are so prolific, on the trees they are just begging to be used with the excess dropping to the ground like a sunset coloured carpet. Les tells me that in summer the best of the oranges have passed so these late season ones lack the depth of flavour. However, I am not convinced. The orange whose juiced slurped down my shirt this afternoon was the sweetest and most captive of sunshine I have ever tasted.

So it was that in our little kitchen, a range of citrus and zucchini recipes adapted to holiday cooking from a backpack of easy to buy foods items, graced our tables. Here is my recipe for the stuffed zucchini we enjoyed. While it’s not my regular type of cook from scratch recipe, it was fantastic, with a suace to enhance it and used the ingredients we harvested locally.

I made this soup from Mary and Les’ garden at Duas Quintas where we stayed in Silves, Portugal. It was nourishing and delicious for travellers sick of restaurant food.

Sorry no photo just yet. Let me download my holiday pics then you´ll get a shot ...

THis soup is one way to use up the results of a bumper zucchini harvest. You´ll see I have made some shortcuts like not making my own stock and just squishing the soft vegies with a fork rather than processing them. But heck, when you´re on holidays, you have fewer kitchen items right?

I´m sure you´ll love this soup anyway. If you get a chance, make the stuffed zucchini recipe too. It´s the best way to use up a whole massive zucchini that I know of. (Except maybe for raw zucchini chips.)

Granny Smiths and Rosellas mmm, both ready to enjoy in autumn and early winter in Brisbane.

When i harken for a dessert from my childhood I think of baked apples. These are a cooked version of my raw recipe. Hope you enjoy it too.

Got too many ripe bananas? Don't throw them out, don't freeze them. Dry them/dehydrate them and enjoy them as a healthy snack. Here's how in pictures

Wing beans grow profusely on an arch outside my bathroom window. I have been waiting for months for them to finally produce something from the rampant luxury of growth and here now, in April, the beans are dripping from the vines like green lanrterns. I think they flower in response to shorter daylilght hours.

Wing beans need hot days and warm evenings to grow, as they are such tropical beauties. So, grow them from seed from Nvember to December.  Give them a sunny fence or trellis to climb over and they’ll reward you with plenty of weirdly shaped, crispy beans that taste like snow peas and that can be eaten raw.

Here's a recipe for a raw wing bean salad I'm sure you'll enjoy.

Grape succesGrape Success! How to dry your own grapes for year round use.

Since buying a dehydrator, I have been enjoying drying the surplus from the garden and making the most of the bounty in the markets by drying vegies and fruit when they are economical to buy.

I started with apples and quickly moved to mango and plums as the seasons progressed. Now, in March, grapes are just delicious and cheap, so I’ve branched into drying them too.

Whether you have a dehydrator or not, you can dry your own grapes.

Drying your own means:

1. They are not dipped in sulphur which can cause trouble with asthmatics

2. Buy or grow organic and they are completely chemical free

and most wonderful of all,

3. they are like no other dried grape/sultana/raisin you have ever tasted.  Each one is plump, juicy and a joy to eat.

Here is how to dry them...

If you have lots of bananas or avocadoes, you'll be looking for ways to use them.

These are just delicious spoonfuls of goodness without dairy and eggs. In fact they don't even have sugar, just a natural sweetener. 

Herb and Cashew ‘cheese’

Dairy allergic people, vegans and raw foodies don’t eat dairy cheese. But, if you have any of these dietary requirements, here is a delicious alternative you can make at home based upon raw cashews. It’s quick, easy and really delicious.

You'll get to use some of those beautiful fresh herbs you have in the garden too, and why not make the cheese into these open sandwiches while you are at it?

What to feed vegans, vegos and raw foodies at Christmas? Well, these raw wraps were truly stunning. And most popular with the carnivores too. I came across delicious wraps like these at the 'Its Rawsome Cafe' 522 Petrie Creek Road Rosemount. I searched high and low for a recipe that sounded good enough to eat and came up with the combination of wraps, filling and sauces from the book entitled 'Art of Raw Living'  by Doreen Virtue and Jenny Ross.

Because the food is raw, organic and fresh, you feel a million dollars after eating it. It doesn't weigh you down, make you feel bloated or even overfull. Just enlivened...

Hope you enjoy this recipe. There are a few steps to it, with the wraps, filling and sauces, but you'll have enough for 8 wraps and if you don't eat them all on one day,it keeps well for the next day or thereafter.

The sauces are delicious on other foods as well. And that avocado sauce...it feels so smooth you could perhaps use it as a body sauce if you felt a bit sensual! Just being cheeky!! Make it and you'll know what I mean.

Rosellas, (not the feathered type) are really delicious to eat once cooked or preserved. A couple of bushes of these hibiscus relatives provides so many of them that they keep us going all year with frozen, preserved and dried pieces.

I served this recipe at a workshop and received rave reviews. It's a smooth, creamy,

and decadent dessert.

My recipe for rosella preserves follows too.

In the picture my model Emma devoured the props shortly afterwards!