Even though this blog is only new I’m needing to take a short hiatus. My father in laws lung cancer is progressing scarily fast and right now family takes precedence over all else.

I can say that having our fruit and veg taken care of with the weekly delivery from Aussie Farmers Direct has been a huge blessing.  One less thing to worry about and we all get to continue to eat healthy, there is far less temptation to stop at a drive through and get take out because I know there is great food waiting at home to be eaten.

Thank you Aussie Farmers Direct.

Updating occasionally at my Stuff With Thing blog still if you want to see what we are up to.

The girls have been eating lots of fresh fruit and veggies. We’ve been out at the park every day and always take some fresh fruit with us for a snack.

I made up a large amount of mashed potato with sauteed onion and fried bacon mixed through and we’ve had that for dinner for a couple of nights. Also fresh corn on the cob and broccoli in white sauce.

It feels like I’ve been doing more re-heating than actual cooking and lots and lots of chopping of fresh food for snacks.

Looking forward to my weekly surprise and seeing what is in the Aussie Farmers Direct box tonight.

Being in hospital with Heidi much of the week means that my fruit and veg (and this blog) have been sadly neglected.

Yesterday I pulled out the ingredients for my favorite Crock Pot / Slow Cooker Ratatouille recipe which I have loosely based on the link recipe from Recipezaar.

This time I decided to roast them first.  I used

1 Eggplant

2 Zucchini

3 Roma Tomatoes

1 Red Onion

1 Red Capsicum / Bell Pepper

I covered two oven trays in foil.

Preheated the oven to 250C.

Drizzled a little olive oil on the foil wrapped trays and sprinkled some oregano onto the oil.

Then I sliced up the veggies so that I could layer them in my mini (1.5L) crock pot / slow cooker.

I put the veggies on the trays.

And then I roasted them for about 30 minutes in the 250C oven. I might have cooked them for a little longer but we had an issue with PreSchool so I just turned the oven off and left the veggies in there as I ran out the door.

When I got home 2 hours later they look like this

I layered the veggies into my Crock Pot / slow cooker as per the recipe
Onion
Eggplant
Zucchini
bit of ground garlic
Red Capsicum/ Bell Pepper
Tomato

I got two layers of each.

Also I didn’t bother with additional sauce, tomato paste or Olive Oil because the veggies had Olive Oil from the roasting in the oven.

It fitted just perfectly into my Mini (1.5L) Crock Pot / slow cooker.

I ground some black pepper on the top and let it cook for 4 hours on high.

The Verdict – This came out delicious. Enough to serve two (hubby and I) perfectly. The only thing I’d do next time is pat the veggies down with a paper towel after roasting them because there was little too much oil for my liking. The girls had toasted cheese sandwiches and apple slices for dinner they were not interested in trying the Ratatouille.