Organic food I made

I promised you to get back by Wednesday, but I'm impatient.

Instead of waiting for one more day, I'm telling you a bit about my Sunday, this Sunday, April 29. For most of the day, I was at the organic gardens of the non-profit organisation I used to work for for 3 years.

Each year there are two garden festivals: a spring and a fall (harvest) one. These are little events to help members of the community (farmer and consumer) know each other, to spend some quality time among organic veggies and organic-minded people...

I used to organize those events in the past 3 years, but now I was in charge of cooking.

I have never done something similar - cooking for 30....

and as far as it seemed, it went allright!

This is the Eastern part of the garden. You can see the young fruit trees and the lines of veggies underneath. And on the dirt road, those are my kids.The cooking sort of went on along the use of leftovers from the previous year. Old onion, shrunken root vegetables and potatoes, old packages of brown rice and lots of fresh green oreganos and lovages. I used everything that was available. I think that's what's called 'from scratch' or a low budget cooking.

Here's what I have done, with the help of some volunteering visitors: Ingredients:
vegetable oil
old onion, together with the new springs, chopped
brown rice
carrots, parsnips, parsley roots and some celeriac, sliced
potatoes, diced
garlic, minced

white dried beans, soaked overnight before the day of cooking
1-1 bunches of lovage, oregano and parsley leaves, chopped
water
salt and other spices incl. bay leaves and paprika powder

Preparation:

heat oil and sauté the onions

add rice and sauté, with frequent stirring

add salt and spices

when all the rice is covered in oil and the whole thing is sizzling, add water

and one by one, add all the other ingredients

the fresh leaves and the garlic should come the latest, some 10 minutes before serving

Notes:

I believe quantity played a substantial role in making this particular dish. For 30 servings, I used 15 large carrots, for example. More than 2 kgs of rice was used. Sometimes the same food tastes much better if cooked in vast amounts. I'm also sure that having been cooked above an open fire improved the food.

If you'd like to make something similar, use what you have at hom - that's the main point. If you don't have beans, leave them out.

It is a 'let's-put-everything-available-into-it' type of food. Sometimes these turn out miserable. Sometimes the chef's more lucky.

Bon appetit.