Vego is Go – Spring Vegetables are the Focus for September

Welcome to spring – where it’s time to explore cookbooks you already own and show off your favourite vegetarian and spring vegetable dishes

 

Gulp – September? Where on earth did that suddenly come from? Anyway, it’s here, and Lambs’ Ears Cookbook Club is totally going to make the most of it. All of our attention will be on making the new season’s spring vegetables shine by exploring the cookbooks we already own to find the vegetable recipes we’ve always wanted to try, or the ones we didn’t even know we had!

This is another opportunity for the cookbook club members to delve into cookbooks already on their shelves, hunting out all of those tempting dishes we never got around to making. And, of course, with the beautiful spring vegetables appearing on the green grocers shelves here in Australia, this is absolutely the best time to showcase them.

This is also a perfect time to check out Eat Your Books, the online index for your own cookbooks, where you just enter the books you own onto your account’s digital shelves, making them instantly searchable. Simply type your ingredients into the search bar and Eat Your Books will present you with a list of recipes from your own books that include those ingredients – simples. I have used this resource for years, and highly recommend it.

So here’s a thing you might not have known …

I’ve been spreading my wings a little and now host a food information radio program on community radio. Every Wednesday at 2pm I share some of the food knowledge that I’ve picked up over the decades. Every week I spotlight and discuss a particular food  looking at history, politics etc, I also take a look at some aspect of food culture, and later in the show I examine what fresh foods are in season and what you can do with them. I make it a point to try to tell listeners at least one thing they may not know, every week.

You can listen to Culinary Conversations live on Lofty 88.9 fm, and those outside of broadcast range can easily stream it via the link on the Lofty website here, or via the Community Radio Plus app, or the TuneIn Radio app. Soon (just as soon as I wrap my head round the tech) Culinary Conversations will also be available as a podcast for you to listen to whenever convenient. I’d love you to join me – Wednesdays at 2pm on Lofty 88.9 fm

The food focus for September

Besides the monthly cookbook selection, each month we also have the opportunity to focus on a particular ingredient in our cooking, once again giving us the chance to further explore cookbooks we already own. This month I’m choosing rice as our September food focus. Approximately 1.1-1.3 million metric tonnes of rice is consumed globally every day – that’s approximately 20% of all calories consumed by humans daily. It’s a brilliant major food source; versatile, adaptable and crosses nearly all culinary cultures, so let’s see what we can do with it this month – and, here’s a tip, rice goes perfectly with spring vegetables.

What did we cook in August?

August was a month of joy for bakers and cake lovers, as we explored Emelia Jackson’s You Had Me At Cake. Here’s few of the wonderful creations from the Lambs’ Ears Cookbook Club members – you’ll find lots more in our Facebook group page.

 

And what’s coming up for October?

As ever, there have been some beautiful new cookbooks published this year and one I think deserves closer examination is Eat Like a Sardinian by Francesco Mattana (RRP $45 – or only $27 if you use this link here). Sardinia is in the famed Mediterranean “Blue Zone” where the locals live longer on average than anywhere else in the world.

This is fresh, delicious Italian food and, while many of the dishes may look familiar on the surface, much of this food is distinctly regional to parts of Sardinia, and there are unique and identifiable characteristics that set the dishes apart. It’s the perfect food for spring cooking – lots of  fresh seasonal ingredients, healthy fats, and wonderful sharing dishes.

It was published back in June, so will be easy to find in stores, on library shelves, or as an ebook – so please do have a look for it.

In the meantime let’s freshen up our plates and our palates with fabulous spring vegetables!

IF YOU HAVEN’T JOINED THE LAMBS EARS COOKBOOK CLUB YET, YOU WILL FIND ALL THE DETAILS HERE.

HERE’S HOW 2026 IS SHAPING UP SO FAR

Our whole-year cookbook selection is any of  The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

September – Vegetarian and veggie recipes from your own cookbooks
August – You Had Me at Cake by Emelia Jackson
July – any recipes by Valli Little
June – Tender by Lucy Tweed
May – Home Food by Elizabeth Hewson
April – Any ONE cookbook from your own collection
March – The Actually Delicious One Pot Cookbook by Poppy Cooks
February – Sunshine, Lemons and Sea Salt by Donna Hay
January – Salata by Michael Mantissas and Kristy Frawley

Please note, this post contains links to online Australian bookseller Booktopia. If you purchase via one of my links you will get a great price, and I will get a very small commission.

 

 

 

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