Dinner

Blade steak casserole done in the slow cooker. Not suitable to the hot weather particularly, but suitable to when I had five minutes to cook today.

Home grown: celery, thyme, oregano, garlic

Organic beef from down the road which where we live just happens to mean nearly 100kms away. Spuds from the Marlborough farmers' market - in laws bought them for us on a recent visit. The rest comes from - - - - *the shops*.

Oh and four guest ingredients, much prized: my borlotti beans. They are actually so beautiful to look at that I have considered drying and shelling them all and putting them in a jar to keep on the kitchen windowsill just for looking at. Then I wondered if they would go mouldy or shrivel and look unattractive after a while so I put them in dinner and I had one on my plate and yes it tasted very nice.

I have another food question: the faba beans from the Spanish dish Fabada, are they butter beans in NZ speak? What is the closest bean that I can grow? When we came back from our first trip to Spain, I adored that dish so much that at least twice I travelled from zone 4, East London, to the a street near the Portobello market on the other side of town just to buy the ingredients to make 'the real thing'. And at local prices, not Borough Market/Brindisa prices. We have a nearby specialty butchers here on the coast which does black and white puddings and perhaps the other ingredients. On my list for winter then.