‘Tis the season for mushrooms, walnuts, spinach, onion and lemons. Here is the delicious food we cooked for lunch on Thursday at Garden to Plate.

Lemony chicken (using a lemon from Jill and a lemon from Sheryl) … and green onions and spinach from our garden, stuffed mushrooms (cheese and walnuts - amazing) and a roast pumpkin and potato mash. So very yum!

Stuffed Mushrooms (blue cheese and walnuts)

Ingredients

• 4 large mushrooms

• 100g blue cheese, crumbled

• 40g walnuts, coarsely chopped

• 6 fresh thyme sprigs (or dried thyme is ok too)

• 2 tablespoons panko breadcrumbs

• 1 1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil or butter

Directions

• Preheat oven to 200C/180C fan-forced. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and finely dice. Arrange mushrooms on the tray.

• Mix mushroom stalks, cheese, walnuts and thyme.  Fill mushrooms. Top with panko breadcrumbs. Drizzle with oil or a small knob of butter and season with pepper.

• Bake for 20 minutes or until cheese melts and mushrooms are tender.

• Serve sprinkled with baby herbs if desired.

Mashed Potato and Pumpkin

Ingredients

• ¼ pumpkin, cut 3 cm chunks

• 4 potatoes, peeled and cut in 3cm chunks

• Salt and pepper

•  Butter

• Cream

• Nutmeg

Instructions

• Roast the pumpkin in the air fryer for 20 minutes, then microwave with a little water for 5-10 minutes to ensure they are well cooked.  Drain and whizz with butter, cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

• Boil the potato in salty water until soft, drain and mash, then add in the pumpkin mash. Add additional cream and butter to get to the right consistency. Taste and season as needed.

Creamy Lemon Chicken with Sage

Ingredients

• 2-4 chicken breasts, sliced in half and pounded thin

• 2 cloves garlic, crushed

• Handful of sage leaves

• Salt and pepper

• Olive oil

• 1 onion, thinly sliced

• 1/4 cup chicken stock

• Zest of 1 lemon, minced

• Juice of 1 lemon

• 2-3 cups packed spinach (or use 1 bag)

• 3 tablespoons heavy cream

Instructions

• Mix oil, garlic, sage and salt and pepper and cover chicken breasts. Marinate until cooking.

• Heat a large, flat-bottomed sauté pan to medium high heat, set aside the sage leaves and fry the chicken breasts for 3-4 minutes on each side, until done through. Remove the chicken from the pan and set on a plate while completing the rest of the dish.

• To the hot pan, add the red onion slices, letting them soften for 2-3 minutes. Pour in the chicken broth. The pan will sizzle. Stir the onions and let cook another 2-3 minutes until they soften more.

• Then add in the sage leaves, lemon zest and lemon juice and mix well.

• Fold in the spinach and cook for 1-2 minutes.

• Turn off the heat, stir in the heavy cream and season once more with salt and pepper.

• Add the chicken back into the pan and reheat in the sauce.

• Serve immediately.

Budgets, grants applications and acquittals, Council submissions … last week was flat out behind the scenes … and busy in person as well.

Lots of people attended the Embracing Life and Death discussions on Thursday afternoon. Crunch was a small group this time (but lovely - we did still life painting with gouache paint), we got a delivery of a couple of cubic metres of compost to keep us busy in the garden on Friday (thanks Nat at Darebin Council for organising this again!) … and two birthday parties were held at ACC 🥳 on Sunday.

This week CWA is meeting at the Gleeson Centre on Monday night, Garden to Plate is on Thursday at 11.30am … and it’s the long weekend … so we’ll see you back on deck next Tuesday.

Hope you make the most of it. I am planning to go to Rutherglen (to check out the wineries) with some of my oldest friends from university. Should be fun!

Cheers Leanne

Hi everyone,

Last week I was excited to attend a meeting with the Minister Grigorovitch, who is the new Minister for Carers and Volunteers, as part of my role on the North East Neighbourhood House Network committee. It is always super to talk at a higher level about both the great things that neighbourhood houses do, and the challenges we face as a sector … and the meeting was particularly timely obviously, as we continue our push for restoration of funding from the State Government.

Closer to home, we are in workshop season at the moment … And we have another coming up this Saturday. Clothes Mending from 10am-1pm. We ran this workshop around this time last year and had a lot of fun. It is a fabulous opportunity to learn how to take up a hem, stitch on a button, repair a tear … and more! You are encouraged to bring your pile of project(s) along to work on. Book into this workshop online for $10. Here at this link.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) our Preserves Group will be running from 1-3pm where we will be making chutney out of chokos that were kindly donated to us last week. We like nothing better than homegrown produce at ACC. Its open to all, so if you have some time free, please come along - no need to book in.

Then on Thursday we will have Garden to Plate in the morning from 11.30am-1pm where we will be cooking with produce from our very own Community Garden. Clare tells me we have spinach, onions and lettuce ready to harvest at the moment ... I wonder what we will make …. It costs $10 to attend this fun and friendly and informative and yummy program and you can book in online here.

And later that evening from 7.30-9.30pm we will have our monthly Alphington Arts session. Book in online here for $15.

This week is National Volunteer Week across Australia and we would like to give a big shout out to everyone that donates their time at ACC every year. Volunteers are integral to neighbourhood houses and we couldn’t do what we do without all the amazing people who help out each week and/or each month and of course at our big events.

Cheers Leanne

Hi everyone,

We hope you all had a nice Mother’s Day despite the weather. Brrrrrr. It’s been a very chilly few days but we still had a lovely turnout to Garden to Plate last Thursday. We made cauliflower steaks and they were delicious…….. read on for the recipe. And we made creative cards at our Community Morning on Friday, before enjoying tacos for Community Lunch on Friday.

We have the first of our two sustainability workshops happening this Saturday from 10am-12pm! Book in online here to come along and learn about soils and their health benefits.

And book in here to join us for Crunch on Thursday from 12.30-2pm.

See you soon!

Cheers Leanne

Here is the recipe for the cauliflower steaks we made at Garden to Plate last Thursday. They were so simple for something so delicious and a great option for a vegetarian meal … or just to add some extra veggies into your everyday!

When we made ours we used a mix of cheeses (because that’s what we had), but parmesan would probably make for a neater look at the end.

Baked Cauliflower Steaks 

Ingredients 

• 1 cauliflower head cut down the middle top to bottom then sliced across-ways. Try and keep the ‘steaks’ together in clumps if the come apart at the edges ( don’t despair - the cheese will help stick them together if needed when cooked).

• ¼ cup olive oil

• ½ cup grated parmesan 

• 2 cloves garlic, grated 

• 1 tsp smoked paprika 

• 1 tsp onion powder 

• 1 tsp salt 

• ½ tsp  chili pepper flakes

Instructions 

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees.

Mix olive oil, garlic, salt, spices and 2 teaspoons of parmesan.

Sprinkle the rest parmesan cheese on a lined oven tray in clumps that will roughly match the cauliflower steaks.

Place the cauliflower steaks on top of the parmesan cheese.

Baste the top side with the oil and herbs.

Cook on high for 10 minutes then lower heat and cook on 180 degrees for 20 minutes until cooked through.

Serve crispy side up.  YUM! We ours with mushrooms, hummus, bread, green beans and tzatziki.