It took more than two months to make the meal, but boy was it worth it. The snowpeas were grown, the broad beans plucked. The pasta had been lovingly prepared and awaited its dip in a pot of boiling water.

The end result included zucchini, cherry tomatoes and button mushrooms Stephan was kind enough to buy from the Prahran Market. A dash of cream into the pan-fried vegetables added a final touch to the entire dish. I don’t think the mushrooms added a lot, and different mushrooms next time would be a better addition. Everything else though, in my dish, seemed to work very well together.

As I am sure the others will have with their own dish, I pronounce mine to be my favourite. All were equally delicious, but also equally different in their tastes. Stephan used only vegetables from his garden, and included a small amount of mint which–along with the slightly crisp vegetables–resulted in a fresh-tasting dish. Trav’s dish was far richer and creamier than the other two, and the sheer volume of pasta was astounding. Mine, I thought, was “just right” and fit nicely in the middle, with the tasty vegetables and cream balancing well. The cherry tomatoes cut well through the cream as well. I was surprised at how well the spaghetti turned out, given the last time I made pasta resulted in the pasta maker being stored under the bed for more than three years.

Plans are afoot for a Summer Challenge now, with all having agreed it was a resounding success. The home brew beer we shared while tasting all the pastas probably helped, as well.

As the Pasta Primavera challenge nears its deadline, it seems everyone is beginning to step up their preparations.

Both Stephan and I have been fortunate enough to have a number of usable vegetables stay alive long enough to be picked, while Trav’s had an unfortunate infestation, causing a setback. But, Farmer’s Market vegetables are a perfectly good substitute (who knows, I bet they’ll be just as tasty if not better than ours).

Vegetables I am certain to use from our garden are snow peas and broad beans. Both have been blanched in batches (once picked) and put straight into the freezer. I have also prepared some fresh spaghetti, which is in the freezer waiting for its time to shine. The recipe has been chosen, although I am certain I will adapt it as fits my needs. Zucchini and asparagus will likely make an appearance, as will tomato, chili and herbs, but a lot less cream.

D-day is this Saturday, when we will all get together for final preparations.

The measure of success — or at least my success — in the Pasta Primavera challenge is to use at some food grown from the garden, along with homemade pasta. Whether I purchase premium dried pasta or make my own is still up in the air: the dried stuff can be better than fresh, depending on the use so I need to make a move either way. In recent days though, I have made some minor steps in the direction of success.

The success in this case is the food that’s begun to sprout. While watering what we’re now calling “Garden A”, I noticed on one of our taller pea plants, where one of the flowers had bee was a small green protrusion. Closer inspection lead me to realise it was a pea pod! I couldn’t recall what type of peas we’d planted, but it seems that we’d planted snow peas. Not the ideal addition to Pasta Primavera but I’ll take what I can get — besides, the taste will be good once they’re cut up.

Investigation a couple of days later shows around ten of the pods appearing. Since I only intend to make one or two dishes, this ought to be more than enough. However, it also seems that our broad beans are beginning to bear fruit as well! If they grow quickly enough, I’ll be able to use broad beans in the Pasta Primavera challenge as well.

This bodes very well! However, the only real problem is that the things I’m growing technically don’t really belong in a Pasta Primavera. Still, I’ll take what I can get. Now it’s time to hunt down a suitable recipe. Challengeers: it may be time to organise a cook-off date soon!

A few weeks ago, I threw down the Pasta Primavera challenge. The challenge is a personal one, but to make it more interesting I opened it to anyone who wanted to take up the challenge for themselves.

Since it is a personal challenge, it can be as easy or as difficult as you wish (you want to buy a microwave dinner, reheat it and consider the challenge completed? Go right ahead). The road to completion for me, thus far, is still a long one and success a way off in the distance. I want to use vegetables and herbs from the garden, and make the pasta myself (buying those ingredients; I’ll source out the best I can), but the success of the vegetable gardens we have at home will determine how close I get to that lofty goal.

Progress has been slow. Weeks ago, I dug out a reasonable proportion of our garden (approximately eight metres long and over a metre deep), including all the sod, by hand. The garden is now in place and has a small number of different vegetables growing. Almost as many, however, have succumbed to the wild weather over the past few weeks as they are not old enough to weather the storms we’ve been having. To make things worse, birds and other animals appear to have been eating some of these new vegetables. Strangely though, the far more mature garden has not had this kind of animal devastation.

Bird netting is now in place over both garden beds. Although they are far less convenient to enter I hope they will provide the protection our plants need to thrive. We have a large number of peas and broad beans appearing to be on the cusp of growing actual fruit, and we plan to put in some wire to help the peas grow even higher still. Herbs are running rampant in their own little bed and we have a large amount of coriander and parsley drying in our house, which at least gives me something from the garden to use should everything else catastrophically fail.

At this stage, unless the garden takes a radical and dramatic turn for the better, it looks like I’ll be eating Primavera with peas, broad beans and parsley. Not a failure, by any stretch of the imagination.

I’ve been trying to cook (and recently, grow) better food over the past couple of years. There has been some success, and some times things haven’t worked out so well. On the whole, though, putting some time aside to make a nice meal has worked out really well. It’s relaxing, enjoyable, and the result is always good (except for the final final result, which is dishes).

One of the blogs I have also been reading on the “foodie” movement is ruhlman.com. Over the (northern hemisphere) summer, they had a “from-scratch” competition to make a BLT sandwich. Not exactly a difficult sandwich or haute cuisine but when taking an entirely holistic approach (that is, curing the bacon, growing the tomatoes and lettuce, making your own bread, etc) it becomes a much more difficult meal and far more exciting prospect. Obviously, it’s the wrong time of the year for us to do that, and I was away as the competition closed anyway.

However, I like the idea of trying to make something totally from scratch. To that end, I proposed a “from-scratch” challenge (not competition, I have nothing to give away!). Both Trav and Stephan agreed to take part, with the only choice then being what to make? Given that we are going into Spring now, Pasta Primavera seemed like a good idea. Sure, it’s not a traditional Italian dish, but that’s never stopped anyone before.

The rules are simple: Make as much as you can or want from scratch and do it by November 30th (the end of Spring). If you can’t grow something you want or need, try to trade for it, or buy it from a farmer’s market or if you need to from a regular supermarket. So really, there aren’t any rules.

Currently we have carrots, onions, garlic and peas growing so I hope to use those as well as making the pasta from store-bought flour. I’ll be sure to try and post progress and photos as any progress is made.

Over the weekend we watched the fantastic Shaun of the Dead for the first time in what turns out to have been a long while. It is a timely reminder of the inevitable zombie apocalypse, and how one needs to hone their skills in preparation for when the dead once again walk the Earth.

Many skills will be required in the post-apocalyptic world. Certainly, we may be able to train the zombies to perform menial tasks, but this will take time and many will lose their lives in this endeavour. In the meantime, we will have to make do with manpower, not zombiepower.

So how can I make myself useful in order to continue my own pathetic existence as the undead roam free? One has to start somewhere, and learning the skill of growing and harvesting food seems like an appropriate place to begin. I already know how to eat and digest food, so there’s part of the chain ready to be linked.

With this in mind, over the weekend we turned what was previously an overgrown garden bed into a vegetable patch. Or rather, nice-looking dirt with green protrusions. There are no vegetables to be seen at this early stage. Nor has the “vegetable” (read: dirt) patch been zombie-proofed. Those skills will have to wait until I have honed the creation of food.

If the people who live in a large White House in the US, and a larger Buckingham Palace in the UK can do it, with their legion of professionally-trained food growing people, I’m sure I can do it all on my own. Right? I know there will be a large learning curve but one needs to be prepared for Z-Day. Which music should I play to enhance photosynthesis, for example? Do I speak in English, French or Esperanto to encourage water to pass through the Vascular Rays?

Taken whilst on a photowalk with Trav one early (and chilly!) morning.