All more more chafing was that the gas I used to cook the bejesus out of those beets probably cost $864. And gas is a one time burn, never to be seen again. So I needed to do something with the Pyre of Beet, like make something in the crock pot. Hooray! Here comes some Red Stew.

I had no canned beans so I had to boil up half a kg of dried kidney beans for about an hour and a half. While the beans were on the boil, I cut up the onions and threw them into the pot.

Here's the list of all the things that went in this Red Stew:

1 med red onion
1 med brown onion
3 jalapeño peppers from a can, chopped small, seeds included
2 med bulbs roasted garlic, squeezed out of the papery bits
1 400 g can condensed tomato soup
2 tablespoons dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
400 g fresh mushrooms, cut into quarters
2 sticks celery, chopped very finely
500 g dried red kidney beans (I reckon about 5 of the 400 g can variety)
750 mL vegetable stock
250 mL water
What used to be 1 kg of beetroot, roasted to buggery

Aside from the beans having to be boiled and being drained then added last, everything went into the crock pot in a pretty haphazard way. My strategy for crock pots is really just to throw all the food in there and leave it cook for as long as I can wait, preferably at least six hours! I know that seems like forever sometimes, but it means the food is usually rather good. All the flavours develop and the hard things go nice and mooshy.

Anyway, I've ended up with a fairly runny product after being in the slow cooker on low now for four hours. It could do with some thickening up. You could cut up some carrots to really small dice and check them in and turn up to high, or add some flour or cornflour. Otherwise serve it with some millet or brown rice. Or put some rice in there for the last hour or so! I think we will need to discard the beets out of this stew, as they're probably going to be a bit too chewy, but they've imparted a gorgeous red colour and a lovely sweet flavor to offset the low burn of the jalapeños. And I feel heaps better for not having to waste the bargain beets straight up. Hooray!

It's local, seasonal, farmed by small farmers and I think usually organic.  One model is you get a box each week with whatever is in season in it.  Another is you have an annual budget and you just spend what you want each week at a CSA stall at the farmers' market.

So one week you might buy $100 worth, another week pass if you're away or don't want anything.  It's AWESOME, whichever model your co-op follows.

So, I came home hoping to find a similar thing here.  Well, all along it has existed in a small way right under my nose.  (if you aren't local to me, skip this bit).  The Food Integrity Group runs a co-op at Ourimbah, about 30 seconds from where I work.  Each week you pre-pay $30 and the following week you get your box of goodies.  Here's a pic of my haul the first week:

not bad!  It's not even close to being on the scale of the CSA to which my friends overseas have access- but hey it's a start.  I'm guessing that the more people who subscribe, the more local farmers will participate and the more produce we'll have access to.

and at the image you see above in particular.  I'm not really a grammar po-lice, honestly I don't understand the intricacies of English grammar well enough to join that force.  I do however get kind of stabby over abused quotation marks and their sadly misused cousins, the apostraphes.  I just thought I'd share that fun fact- since when I typed "alfredo" up above I started thinking about fresh brown "eggs" and giggling.  Because I am 5.

Anywhoo.  My stepmom An anonymous vegetarian emailed me some time ago a recipe (I really wanted to type "recipe") for a vegan alfredo based on cauliflower (look away, K-dog).  Caulis are cheap or seasonal or something here at the moment and I find myself with 4 in the fridge.  I like cauli, but 4?  It could be time for a Big Roast Up.  The recipe, as written originally would have been pretty bad, but heroically I managed to diddle it into something quite good.  It wasn't very photogenic, but I did take a pic of an empty bowl with about 6 green peas in the bottom.  That was all that was left after one of the dogs cleaned up a portion that I couldn't store.  I figure that if my hounds ate the pasta and sauce, and carefully licked the peas clean before spitting them out, it wasn't too bad.

Here I "present" for you- Pasta "Alfredo":

-1/2 cauliflower steamed until very soft (I threw mine in the slowcooker on HIGH with some boiling water- an inch or so while I went to kid-ballet for about a hour)

 
-an onion (I used one red onion and a few spring onions.  Don't think it matters.  Onion flakes would have been ok too)

1 stock cube (I used Massel "chicken" (see what I did there?)).

- garlic (to taste.  This was pretty bland so I ended up using about a teaspoon of the dried garlic stuff).

- parsley

- salt, pepper

- nutritional yeast

- flour

- pasta

brown onions, add stock, simmer

put cauli, onions and stock into blender (I used a stab blender because that's all I have) and blend it all up.  Taste it- add salt, pepper (lots) and about 1/2 cup of nutritional yeast.  I added some arrowroot flour to get rid of the slightly watery consistency, and simmered it while adjusting seasonings.  When it tastes the way you like it, add some frozen peas- it was so bland looking I had to and even though the dog wasn't impressed I think it was a good move.  The consistency when I served it was like a thick soup, and in fact it would not make a bad soup!

Served on pasta, and it was indeed good.  They way I remember Alfredo is a lot richer and this wouldn't fool anyone, especially cauli-haterz.  But if you like cauli this is a nice, very light pasta sauce.

"enjoy"!