News

I’m clearly a bit late in posting this so apologies chaps!  Attempting to get myself up-to-date tout-suite..!

KITCHEN GARDEN NEWS

Spring is springing with a force to be reckoned with: the garden is full of winter, spring and even almost summer crops due to this super-warm and dry bushfire weather… Cauliflower, cabbage, beetroot, spinach, lettuces, snap peas, radishes, broad beans and quite a few tomato plants sticking their tendrills out! And still mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms…

We’ve doubled up a few menu items this time due to few classes missing out recently – and we’re none the worse for it as all dishes these last weeks have been delicious. We whisked up another batch of Mushroom and spinach omelettes, but the Salad of broad beans, radishes and goats cheese, with beans so young they didn’t need a double-pod, was beautiful and delicious, and had the children almost licking the plates!

We blitzed and mouli’d cruciferous veggies with our Cauliflower and nutmeg soup & Speedy croutons, and also stirred and stirred Mushroom and Tuscan kale risotto (with beetroot leaves too in the last classes). The Pizza ai funghi e rucola we jazzed up with some lovely peppery rocket with parmesan and balsamic, and for the Upside-down blood orange and cardamom cake we whipped up a few bowls of Vanilla bean yoghurt too. And it was good…

Before I go I’d like to say thanks to Ligia for the two and a half years we have worked together – Bondi PS’s Garden Specialist and I have been through thick times and thin, drought and deluge, plague and plenty (of broad beans, last year…!) and I wish her well in her travels back to Brazil for Term 4, and whatever 2014 holds in store for her and her family… viagem segura chica!

And from Ligia: As I am finishing up this term, I would like to thank ‘the Bondi School community’ for all their hard work and support with the garden program. Cheers. Ligia

Cheers all!

Hear ye, hear ye! Why did the mushroom go to A Night at the Bondi Oscars? Because he wanted to be a fun-ghi like all the fabulous BPS kids! Boom tish.

Yes yes yes! It’s Musical Madness around the school this week and it’s Mushroom Mayhem too… we’ve been wiping and slicing like crazy in the cottage ‘cos these mushrooms are mushrooming up everywhere! Wherever you look at the moment these little sporous (?) creatures are blooming – under tables, in cupboards and even under Ali’s house – and we are totally taking advantage!

So the menu has been a right quattro stagione!  We’ve had the old classic Cream of mushroom soup, set off nicely by Soft parmesan polenta with sautéed mushrooms and a poached egg, and also brought back the favourite Pizza ai funghi! (see joke, above).

We’ve played around a bit with the salad also, and come up with a rip-snorter: the Leafy salad of kale, rocket and lettuces with roasted chickpeas, goats’ cheese and raw mushrooms. Yum Yum! Super-textural: crunchy, bouncy, creamy…

And the lucky few classes with 5 helpers have also been able to whip up our favourite dessert from 2 years ago (Ellie made the best by far): Upside-down blood orange & cardamom cake. Too good!

And to accommodate 3B’s short class on Wednesday we changed the format and had all the children whisk up their Omelettes aux champignons and A simple side salad for their own groups, where they got to create their own salad dressings. Delicious and very inventive!

Goodness me, I can’t believe it is week 5 already! The school has been so busy this term and with so much more to do we’ve all been swept up in all the excitement of the activities… and of these lovely warm days! How lucky we are to be in the middle of winter with 24 degree temperatures (and our wonderful broad-beanstalks loving the weather too and absolutely shooting to the sky!) – although a few of us have been suffering from the lurgy currently doing the rounds…

To combat the sniffles we’ve been chopping up loads of garlic and veggies for our winter soup: cannellini beans, kale and rainbow chard, with onion, carrots and potatoes. We also rustled up a super-speedy soda bread to have with it – and mastered the art of the soufflé (and tying their collars..!) with our ‘two cheeses’ trusty failsafe version. We squashed, prodded and juiced lemon quarters, cinnamon, salt and bay into sterilised jars – and will come back in a month for lovely preserved lemons to play around with… and whipped up a little Sunday-mornin’ best mushrooms on toast! But the winner of the best ingredient so far this year has to be from this recipe: Poached egg salad with limehairy mayonnaise! So what is limehairy? Ask your kids!