A trip to the Diggers Club

Diggers Club retail shop in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens [Source]

I was like a kid in a lolly shop! On Sunday afternoon we took a quick trip into the Botanic Gardens to play in the tree roots and visit the Diggers Club shop. They were so great there with all their heirloom veggie goodness and abundance of gardening know how. The girl working there was extra lovely and helped us with all our start up questions.

Missy Moo investigating these magnificent trees. She told me last week that she hadn't climbed a tree so I thought we better rectify the situation!

For organisation fanatics such as myself this store will take you to your happy place! All the seeds are perfectly lined up and have little tabs for those that can be sown now. This made it so easy, a little too easy, to pick up many, many seeds that I could go home and plant!

Ready to sow!

I also became a member. Which gives you 6 magazines per year, chock full of info and tempting catalogues to order seeds, trees and other gardening goodies. Membership also gives you discount on their goods, which is lucky given that I may have splurged a little.

Some of the perks of being a Diggers Club Member, these were ALL free!

I bought a fantastic book "The Australian Fruit and Vegetable Garden" by Clive Blazey & Jane Varkulevicius. The thing I LOVE about it is inside it details how you can grow ALL your own fruit and vegetables in a suburban block! We're in a duplex, but I reckon we can go a fair way to being self sufficient for fruit and vegetables with a bit (ok, A LOT) of creative planning. I'm super excited and can't wait to get into it.

Stay tuned, hopefully I'll have a garden plan soon!

Seasonal goodies cheat sheets

In my previous life I was a consultant working on systems, procedures, resources, marketing and events for people working with families. The temptation to create resources for seasonal eating cannot be resisted any more!

I'm the type of person that loves a good eating plan. I love the organisation and reliability of it. In an effort to relax a bit I've tried to scale back the controlling side of my personallity, and create systems that help me feel in organised but also allow for some flexibility. I know, it still screams control issues - but one step at a time!

Last week a girlfriend (who is super skilled in image design as well as jewellery, make up and photography) helped me out with this little project. We created some pretty cheat sheets to print off and put on your fridge of seasonal goodies. So far we've created a:
year round goodies cheat sheet and
winter goodies cheat sheet.

These sheets have nutritious foods that will hopefully inspire you to use some of their goodness in your next meal, and help me chill out about planning. I love cheat sheets as I know I can revisit them when I'm having a mental blank when writing the shopping list.

I'm also hoping these cheat sheets will help me eat a wider variety of nutritious foods. It's so easy to stick to the veggies and ingredients that we are useful, but I'm hoping to break free of my food conservationism!

Each week (well, when I'm motivated) I'm going to focus my attention on a vegetable or ingredient that is in season. I'm going to link to some info about why that vegetable is so fabulously nutritious and then hopefully give you a stack of seasonal recipes to try out.

Are there any veggies that you would like me to kick off with?