Broadcasting live from Wolfville, Nova Scotia

I've thought long and hard about what to do with this blog, now that we've left the original Five Course Garden behind and moved to Canada. I remember the day, back in late December 2009, when I was walking around that blank canvas of an urban garden on Rolleston St, imagining growing some food there, getting ready to test my writing mettle and find out if I had what it took to write a regular column about gardening and cooking. I remember when the blog title came to me, out of the blue. I was thinking about my sisters, and how all five of us like to cook and eat. I was thinking about food, and growing it, and cooking it, and Five Course Garden formed in my mind and it sounded right. It sounded like something I could be excited about. Thank goodness nobody else thought of it first!

I've decided to keep the Five Course Garden blog going, just move it on from 167 meters of terraced urban land in Wellington, New Zealand, to a rolling acre of rich red soil in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. I'm still obsessed with gardening and cooking, I'm still committed to writing, and let me tell you, there's An Awful Lot I'm going to learn in this new place. I'm going to have to learn about a new climate, a new gardening zone, a whole new scale of garden (this garden is 24 times bigger than my last one!) and I'm also going to be learning about greenhouse growing. Plenty of material here. 

Here's what I'm looking at out the window as I write.

Believe me when I say I find this incredibly exciting. All I can see in this view is a couple of dozen heirloom tomato varieties in full fruit, masses of salad veges, bushes dripping blueberries, herbs and veges and fruit galore. Soon. Not tomorrow, but soon. I'm already planting seeds.

The glasshouse isn't even built yet, but the concrete floor is in, and it's warm as toast when the sun's shining. I just planted some herbs and salad to get something growing.

Planted left to right: arugula, basil, chives, coriander, spicy mesclun mix, onions, parsley, spinach. (Yes, in alphabetical order, otherwise how would I remember?)

I still need to bring the trays inside overnight, as it's still freezing out, but in just three days the arugula has germinated, and the rest won't be far behind.

There's a lot more going on in the kitchen than in the garden right now. We came to a brand new fully-kitted-out kitchen, and we brought the absolutely essential kitchen equipment with us: a pot, a couple of knives, potato peeler, lemon squeezer, microplane zester, wooden spoons, egg flip and a roasting dish. And two plastic plates, 2 plastic bowls, and knife, fork and spoon each. We bought a couple of non-stick pans and a cutting board when we arrived. The oven came with a lovely blue enamel roasting pan. So we're sort of camping, with a fraction of the usual cooking kit.

Our pantry and fridge are pretty bare too. We've got olive oil, salt, pepper, vinegar, chilies, lemons. Veges and some meat or fish. Eggs and bacon of course, in case the cooked breakfast urge overcomes us. We've been feasting, and mostly using just the oven to cook.

This was a stellar meal, and incredibly simple. Roast sausages and potatoes, panfried zucchini and salad. These are sage and ginger pork sausages from a local deli, and they are outstanding. They are also small. I would never eat three regular sized sausages in one sitting!

This is roast pork tenderloin with roast apple, onion and sage sauce. Carrot and parsnip mash, and salad. I marinated the tenderloin in a dry-ish rub of sage, salt, pepper, lemon zest and a tiny splash of olive oil. Then pan-seared it on the stove top on all four sides, and finished off in a hot over for about 10 mins. Gorgeous. The apple sauce went like this:

Layer on foil: sliced red onions, peeled and sliced Granny Smith apples, fresh chopped sage, salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. Wrap foil loosely and bake in the oven for about half an hour at 190 - 200, until the apples have disintegrated into a sauce. Serve the pork sliced on top of the apples. Yum.

There's not much in the way of fresh veges at our local farmers' market yet, but there are plenty of beets. Beets are another natural for roasting--they are sweeter and have a much meatier texture when they're roasted rather than boiled. Just peel and cut them up roughly, put them in foil, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, wrap loosely and roast at 190 for about 30 or 40 mins. The smaller you cut them, the faster they cook. You can serve hot as they are, or let them cool off and drizzle with about a tablespoon of vinegar for a great salad.

Last but not least, the trusty Sunday roast chicken. Full instructions here. I just wanted to put this photo in to show off the lovely blue roasting pan that came with the oven. Love It.

I do miss the Wellington garden. I think about it a lot. But I am also incredibly hopeful and committed to this new garden -- the whole snowy, muddy acre of it. I don't miss the Wellington kitchen though. It was an amazing kitchen--I really did love it. But this new kitchen suits me even better. It's got a stainless steel bench on one side and a butcher block on the other. It's a tiny bit bigger, and has a bigger oven. But it sure does look a lot like the old kitchen! I replicated all my favourite bits.

That window looks out to where the glasshouse will be...chock full of seedlings. I can see them already.