A New Year - A New Blog

Where to start?  A little about me and my reason for starting this new blog.

My name is Jodie but you can call me Jojo - it's a name an online friend gave me that kind of stuck.  I am a stay-at-home Mum to two kidlets who are my world.  My son is 9 and has Epilepsy and Aspergers.  My daughter is 5 and starting school this year!  My husband Keith is my soulmate and we have been together for  almost 17 years now (married almost 14 of those).

18 months ago Keith and I became vegetarian.  I won't go into the long winded reasons why but there are three main points that factored into our decision - 

• we didn't want to eat animals any more 
• the huge environmental impact of meat production
• the health benefits of eating a plant-based diet

Becoming vegetarian has forced me to expand my horizons around food and cooking.  I get passionate about trying new recipes and then I bore my friends on Facebook by bombarding them with lots of pictures of what I make lol.

Like this for example

Roasted Vegetable Frittata

We believe strongly in eating seasonally and sustainably as much as possible and like to source our fresh food from the Farmer's Market when we can get down there.  I thought it would also be a great idea to try my hand at growing some of our own veggies.

Now if you know me in real life you might be familiar with the fact that before I started this 'growing our own' escapade about 18 months ago - I was THE WORST GARDENER ever!  I couldn't even keep a simple pot of parsley alive!

By some miraculous turn of events I am now doing quite well!  Some of the veggies/fruits I have successfully grown include: broccoli, eggplant, rocket, chilli, sugar-snap peas, potatoes, spinach, kale, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, sweet potatoes, silverbeet, blueberries, pumpkins, carrots and more plus lots of different herbs like parsley, basil, chocolate mint, lemon balm and others that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Now judging by that long list you might think I have quite a large back garden with lots of room.  Actually the opposite is true.  We live on a Villa block and almost all of our backyard is paved (ok WE paved it but that was before I had my gardening epiphany).  

There is one 10 metre long by about 40cm wide strip along the back fence where I grow things and everything else I grow in pots and containers.  Oh, recently we dug up a patch of our front lawn too and I have some very robust pumpkins (as well as tomatoes and an eggplant) growing there now.

It just proves that you don't need acres of land to grow at least some of your own food!

So this blog is going to showcase what is growing throughout the year, problems I encounter and also some recipes using our produce.  I'm also a bit of a baking nut so there will probably be some cake pictures forthcoming :)

Thanks for reading and I hope someone will find this interesting.  I would love to hear about your own garden or cooking experiences so please fee free to leave a comment.