National Fresh Fruit and Vegetable month…

We love our veggies…always have as do our children and grandchildren and a big proportion of our plates are always filled with vegetables…Lily’s all-time favourites are broccoli and cabbage raw or cooked she loves it…Aston’s …Morning Glory or Thai water spinach is the only meat-free dish he will eat with just rice as for other veggies he eats them all …he is not a fan of eggplants or carrots unless they are raw…but no body likes everything do they and they are such good vried eaters that I can forgive not eating a couple of veggies…

Purple vegetables are our favourites at the moment…carrots, sweet potato, eggplants, chard and red cabbage…

Oh! and just saying…It is also National FUDGE Day…

Some of our favourite recipes…

There is no second-guessing kids is there.?.. Our grandson Aston went to the local shop to get a treat for after his dinner…He came back with a big bunch of Morning Glory which is Thai water spinach he had it as an extra vegetable last night and requested it again tonight…

morning glory fresh from the market

Stir-fried Morning Glory or Pad Pak Boon Fai Daeng is also known as water spinach…It is a very popular vegetable dish in Thailand and one I have for breakfast/brunch quite often with rice.
This is a very quick dish to cook once you have all your ingredients prepared..5 mins at the most.
Ingredients:

  • 1 bunch of Morning Glory
  • 4-6 cloves of garlic
  • 3 or more Thai Chillies
  • 2 tbsp of Oyster Sauce
  • 1 tbsp of  Soy Sauce
  • 1/2 -1 tbsp of fermented soybean paste or oil with soya beans ( optional)
  • 1/2 to 1 tbsp of oil
  • water if req


Let’s Cook!

Wash and cut your morning-glory into 4-6 inch pieces.
Bash the chillies and garlic in a pestle and mortar
Heat the oil in a pan until very hot.
Add the garlic and chillies and stir-fry ( stirring) for 15-20 seconds be careful not to let the garlic burn.

Stirfried Morning Glory
Add morning-glory and all other ingredients.
Stir-fry for 40 seconds and add water if required and stir-fry for another 10 seconds.
Serve with steamed rice or as a side dish.
Enjoy!

This next vegetable stir fry uses Lily flowers, Ceylon Spinach and purple beans…

The cream coloured flower buds are called Daylily ดอกไม้จีน usually used in soups and very popular with Thais and often used in herbal medicine and healing but also used in stir-fries. The other vegetable is one I hadn’t seen before so we thought we would give it try…

 

We stir-fried ours with the Ceylon Spinach and it was very nice. The Ceylon spinach had a sort of beetroot taste. It is also used in natural medicine here and is believed to have many healing properties…

vegetable stir fry

We just washed and cut and stir-fried with a little garlic and oyster sauce it made a nice vegetable side dish. It was a vegetable which none of us had seen or tried before and which I love about this market as the food is local and many of the fruits and vegetables not really grown commercially but by local people and farmers. The red Noodle snake beans were also a new variety for me very similar to the green and quite a rare bean so I will enjoy them while I can. It holds its colour when cooked and ideal for salads and stir-fries.

green and red snake beans

Notice how they are tied now with banana leaf and a bamboo tie instead of in a plastic bag and I think it is so much nicer isn’t it?

Now for fudge…Well, it is National Fudge Day…

This fudge is more of a butter tablet fudge a little crumbly not soft and chewy like a fudge made with condensed milk it is an old recipe handed down to me… the brown sugar gives it a caramel colour…

smart

Caramel Fudge…

  • 2 cups (450 g) Brown Sugar
  • 1 cup (225 g) Granulated White Sugar
  • 1 cup (250 mL) milk
  • 1 tbsp (14 g) butter
  • 1 tsp  vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup (170 g) walnuts, salted or unsalted (optional)

Let’s Cook!

Stir together the sugar, milk, and butter over medium heat until it reaches a boil. Continue to cook the sugar mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage when it reads 235°F (118°C) on a candy thermometer. You can also tell if the mixture has reached the soft ball stage if you drop a bit of the sugar mixture into cold water and it forms into a soft ball.

Once it has reached the soft ball stage, remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Beat the mixture with a wooden spoon until it thickens and becomes creamy in texture, then stir in the walnuts (if using).

Pour into a lined tin and let it set for at least 3 hours…

I will follow up with my second fudge recipe on Saturday as I have been making doner kebab meat, tortilla wraps as well as fudge today and I need to write …

Thank you for reading this post I hope you have enjoyed the recipes…xx

About Carol Taylor:

Enjoying life in The Land Of Smiles I am having so much fun researching, finding new, authentic recipes both Thai and International to share with you. New recipes gleaned from those who I have met on my travels or are just passing through and stopped for a while. I hope you enjoy them.

I love shopping at the local markets, finding fresh, natural ingredients, new strange fruits and vegetable ones I have never seen or cooked with. I am generally the only European person and attract much attention and I love to try what I am offered and when I smile and say Aroy or Saab as it is here in the north I am met with much smiling.

Some of my recipes may not be in line with traditional ingredients and methods of cooking but are recipes I know and have become to love and maybe if you dare to try you will too. You will always get more than just a recipe from me as I love to research and find out what other properties the ingredients I use contain to improve our health and wellbeing.

Exciting for me hence the title of my blog, Retired No One Told Me! I am having a wonderful ride and don’t want to get off, so if you wish to follow me on my adventures, then welcome! I hope you enjoy the ride also and if it encourages you to take a step into the unknown or untried, you know you want to…….Then, I will be happy!

Be safe and stay well xxx

49 thoughts on “National Fresh Fruit and Vegetable month…”

  1. Teagan R. Geneviene

    Everything looks delicious, Carol. This year, my idea of “fresh” is frozen. Today a friend had her husband drop off a bag of delicious peaches from their trees. That’s the first fresh fruit I’ve had since January. Just finished peeling and freezing 3/4ths of them (before getting a muscle spasm… but the others need to ripen another day anyhow). I didn’t mind in the least that peach juice was running up to my elbows, LOL! Besides, peaches were always my favorite. 😀
    Hugs on the wing!

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. dgkaye

    Oh yum, your food always looks so beautifully plated too! Gordon Ramsey would be so proud of you LOL. I’ve seen those long beans in my supermarket but never bought them. Always something new here! ❤

    Liked by 1 person

    1. CarolCooks2 Post author

      I eat them most days I just love them..snake beans we call them and I also get some really thin smaller ones so crispy really lovely…I just love all the veggies here <3…Thank you for the compliment I always feel my photos don't do food justice but hope it shows what food really looks like…Hugs xx

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    1. CarolCooks2 Post author

      He is a weird child( I ) mean that in a nice way… he absolutely loves eating if you could see his face when he eats he enjoys every mouthful..He never asks or buys sweets today I asked him what he wanted me to bring him back from the shops..sushimi was the answer …its good and we wouldn’t stop him he just doesn’t often eat sweet things…:) x

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    1. CarolCooks2 Post author

      Thank you, Sally… Yes Bok Choi is a lovely vegetable.. I got some lovely purple chard today… Not sure what the Thais call it.. But we love veg like you and I am sure Ireland has some lovely vegetables.. Hugs xx

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  10. marianbeaman

    Cherries are not a vegetable, but today we got Mt. Rainier cherries from my husband’s home state of Washington. What’s in season always tastes best.

    Yum!

    Like

    1. CarolCooks2 Post author

      They do but we just start them young…my sons favourite was pureed carrots it was all he would eat at one time…I think not encouraging a sweet tooth from the beginning helps …of course they love sweet things but because they eat so many varied foods they are not the first thought every time…

      Liked by 1 person

  15. Becky Ross Michael

    Interesting-looking vegetables that I’m not familiar with! I love cooked eggplant and cabbage. In fact, I’ve recently been eating at least two eggplants a week. Recently, my blood pressure meds were cut in half because it had gone down so nicely. The dr. couldn’t figure out why, and now I read that eggplant can be very helpful for blood pressure. Maybe that was it???

    Liked by 1 person

    1. CarolCooks2 Post author

      Well, maybe not all..but most… some of the veggies here are just too bitter for me although I keep trying… its a palate thing isn’t it with some tastes but yes let’s celebrate the vegetable 🙂

      Like

  17. Jim Borden

    I remember trying morning glory for the first time just a few months ago while we were in Singapore – it was quite tasty. I thought you were going to make a recipe that had both fudge and veggies in it 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    1. CarolCooks2 Post author

      No even I couldn’t make that palatable….It just so happened they were both on the same day…so many food days I can’t keep up with them …Tomorrow is eat all your veggies day…Luckily we /I have never had to force my kids to eat veggies it is just a part of the meal no fuss just expectations that they would eat them and they did 🙂

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      2. CarolCooks2 Post author

        I just think too much emphasis is placed on eating..it should be relaxed and if a kiddie doesn’t like something then leave it and offer something else and go back to that maybe cooked differently…and discuss what they don’t like and why sometimes it’s a simple fix ..I could talk veggies forever and really don’t see what the fuss is about…such a shame you didn’t eat many veggies as a child…do you love them now or just eat them just because?

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