The Garden is a WRECK | Spring Garden Cleanup | Family Favorite Baked Pasta

Thank you Bona Furtuna for sponsoring this video. I recently did my monthly order of Bona Furtuna pasta so that I could have my pasta-shelf stocked with my very favorite food in the world. Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and their wonderful blends of seasonings are also on the monthly list for pantry-basics. Make Bona Furtuna your pantry staple by following this link: https://bonafurtuna.com/?sscid=31k8_8rwlc&

After a long hard day of clearing out overgrown garden beds, it is absolutely essential to come inside to a hearty and preferably, made ahead, meal. This baked pasta is one of our family favorites! For the full recipe, click the link and join our newsletter at https://shaye.substack.com

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00:00 Spring Blooms
01:24 Our Garden Bed is a Wreck
03:12 Garden Bed Cleanup
04:12 Our Plan to Prevent Seeding
05:43 The Future Plans for this Garden
07:18 From Planter to Transplanter
10:43 Make-Ahead Baked Pasta
16:55 Enjoy the Every Day Cooking
17:52 Meat Options
18:36 Our Favorite Garlic
21:37 Additional Ingredients
24:49 Ready for Spring
26:09 Passata
27:49 Assembly of Baked Pasta
30:20 Ready to Eat!

Filmed and edited by Stuart Elliott
PO Box 369, Malaga, WA 98828

BLOG: https://theelliotthomestead.com/
INSTAGRAM: @shayeelliott
PODCAST: Homemaker Chic

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Look at this bed needs to be cleaned up it’s in terrible shape didn’t quite get here before winter came I feel like I really dropped the ball on this whole this whole section last year Well you needed to have a place for all the critters to come and make a home didn’t

You well I think what happened is that it got so overgrown that it got to the point you couldn’t even walk in here and I think you uh might have a little bit of an issue with pulling things out that you think look pretty like like uh 10 foot sunflowers and

Fennel I can grow some fennel yeah my goodness so so what I’m hoping we can do today is look everything needs everything needs care so if we can rip out all the old annuals like the sunflowers we got to dig some of the stuff up out of the pathways and if we

Want to keep it we can transplant it into the bed there m but it needs to be compost Twisted the pathways need fresh bark it just needs that like spring lift up M it needs to be cared for so I was hoping that you could help me because

Some of it is really tough especially the fennel it has the most intense Roots yeah so we might actually have to dig some of those up because as much as I love fennel you I mean you don’t e that much no no and uh it went to seed last

Year so it’s probably going to be a big old problem this year as well it’s going to be a bit of a challenge but um you know it’s just one of those things little by little bed by bed so I was hoping we could just kind of tackle this

One together if you’re out for it okay okay let’s get after it so where should I make a pile where do you want me to make a pile out here or over there over here okay yep that way I can easily oh look at that strong okay well luckily um sunflowers

Come up pretty easily after sitting for the winter too they come up even easier not too bad yeah you know it might be easier if we start on the other end so that we don’t have to make it all the way through look at this it’s

Just a jungle I mean look at this fennel it’s 6 feet tall I know it and it’s just unbelievable let’s start with the pathways only way you can we can walk unhindered okay and then you’re going to have to make a packed with me what not to let this happen this year

Well okay how about that I’ll try my best I really will try my best that’s not how a packed works so what do you do in a garden where stuff has gone to seed that you don’t necessarily want it to go to seed what do you what do you do yeah

Well what I’m going to do is I’m going to put a good 4 Ines of wood chips down on the pathways which should snuff out some of the seeds okay um and then do the same thing with compost in the bed which should help to bury things that

Deep but then you got to learn your weeds and you got to learn your flowers and which ones what they look like you know because then you can come in here with a little hoe and do them when they’re really little and it’s not that

Big of a deal okay and usually they do it in huge clumps y so you can kind of see oh that’s where that fennel head exploded and now I’ve got a bunch of baby fennel but it’s so much easier when they’re small yeah so like learning to

Recognize them at that stage it’s the big piece of It All right I’m just going to be working on this for the rest of the video there’s only five of them just kidding there’s only three birdie dig this out so no fennel no No Holly Hawks what no sunflowers in this Garden what no finnel Holly Hawks or sunflowers in this

Garden you need to pick a different place for those different place right am I right I’m right though right I guess yeah I mean yeah the problem is they just crowd out everything and you know what I’d really like to plant in here is zenas let’s do that instead then Zas

They’re short they grow from seeds so easy yeah they’re beautiful yes they are and it would allow some of this other stuff like the Veronica and the Coline yeah the strawberries to still live let’s do um Hol Hawks and sunflowers and stuff maybe like a little bit further

Away okay let those kind of grow maybe maybe in the greenhouse green big section of the herb garden where they could grow the herb garden yeah okay yeah all right that means every baby sunflower that I see in here I have to pull up yep and and all through here too

Yeah because they get they they end up um they’re really really pretty but they end up overtaking they do they do they’re very bossy y they demand attention so yeah I think we just got to do It What were you saying about um being our own Nursery well I was saying it’s pretty incredible because after you grow for a while you start to collect all the varieties of things that you want right and then if you let them go to seed or some just naturally spread like these

Strawberries then your job becomes less planting and more transplanting right so like over in this Pap over here I have Coline that went to seed so I could go and dig up 45 starts of Coline and Transplant it somewhere else in the garden where I want the Coline or like

You know I I’m really going to try this year to keep my Pathways clear because you don’t think of it as a big thing strawberries in the path kind of charming but then they’re not growing where they’re supposed to they’re creeping into Gardens where they’re not supposed to be so instead it becomes

Kind of coming through and this is a great time of year to do it pulling up the transplants or you know these extra right because these are all these are all just offshoots from the parent plants which are inside the bed and they’re just scroll whichever way they

Want because I wasn’t in here sh them back in where they should go so now you know kind of the way you keep refilling your beds because every plant has has a certain amount of Seasons it’ll grow for right mhm so in order to have Replacements you need to constantly

Be replanting things so these the parent plants you know they only live for a few years and then they don’t produce anymore so you rely on these new ones to produce so if you keep wanting strawberries every year you have to keep them planted you got to keep them going

That just makes sense it’s just good maths yeah it’s good maths and these you know things like strawberry starts of good productive varieties these are expensive like these cost a lot of money to buy good money good monies so when you want you know I

Don’t know it’s just you kind of have to get in like the cycle of making sure you have things growing making sure things are replanted and you know trying to be economical about it because you can’t just go buy wads of new things every year and if you learn how to kind of

Cycle things through hopefully things stay productive yeah especially when they cost good money good money not and that’s good money is different than regular money Dusty slay taught us that oh Dusty So my friend audre and I were just talking about the foods that you can eat all the time without ever getting tired of them MH do you know what mine was probably Pasta Pasta it was pasta and after dirty grimy workout in the garden you’re hungry you’re so hungry and this is the

Time of year when I actually have to put a little bit of extra effort into making sure that there’s food because there’s so much going on outside and stuff that can keep you busy all day long and if you don’t think about food you’re in trouble when it comes time to eat so

This is kind of like a make aead baked pasta dish so you can make it in the morning or at lunchtime when you have time so that it’s ready for you at dinner time which is really a treat isn’t it yeah isn’t it um I thought you

Could help me okay with some of it here to help okay and we’re going to make it a little extra special because we’re going to be using a black pasta which is dyed with cuttlefish ink it doesn’t change the taste but it makes it look really cool with Bona Fortuna products

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I have okay so why don’t you chop we’re going to start Oru um um and like most it starts with this is literally my last carrot and a little bit of celery we’ll just I love the insides of celeries and an onion and this is going to kind of get

Us going so do you want to chop these and I’ll chop the onion all right and then we’re just going to kind of soften those down in some olive oil and a little bit of butter and then add in our meat and to be honest today has been so

Busy outside that I forgot to defrost the ground meat which is totally fine I have it in a little bowl of hot water over there just while we chop the vegetables and I’m going to add it in even though it’s going to be still frozen we’re just going to cook this

Down in some tomato sauce with a little wine with a little garlic it’s so so simple but somehow these flavors combine to make something greater than themselves um so we just want to do a nice little fine Chop on that I’ll get the onion going God forbid I just follow a recipe

Straight all the way through this is based off a recipe in one of my favorite Italian cookbooks Lydia’s mastering the art of Italian cuisine she does hers with a pork regu but obviously we grow lamb here so that’s what we have so that’s what we eat if you’re giving Bona Fortuna a try

Which you absolutely should make sure sure you try out the olive oils which are spectacular and Super Fresh right now olive oils should not be sitting around your kitchen aging you shouldn’t be saving them for special occasions these deteriorate very quickly and they’re at their best right when they’re

Pressed so you really want to get fresh olive oil it tastes so much better one of my very favorite Blends from uh Bona Fortuna it’s called the Forte blend and it’s really wonderful they also have a Heritage Blend that I love as well so there’s really great ones to try um I

Just finished off the last of mine so I need to go get another bottle um Juju yeah you want to add these veggies into our pot here the ones Daddy’s chopped yeah okay why don’t you come grab them add them into the pot I just

GRA with my hand let me just finish this last a little bit and then we’ll dump them in okay so I’ve just got a little olive oil and a little butter in the pan you ready ready okay this over oh you’re just going to scrape It careful we do by the way if you’re going to make a vegetarian version of of this without the meat it will still be absolutely delicious but you’re really going to want to up that butter in olive oil in the pan I cook my ground meat and I

Leave all the fat in it’s nutrients it’s flavor so I know that my ground lamb that I’m going to use has quite a bit of fat in it so I’m able to get away with not quite as much butter and olive oil in the pan but just something to think

About if you want to make a vegetarian version with something like eggplants then you’re going to want to add a little bit more fat smells good doesn’t it yeah have one sure woo a little spicy little spicy okay you know if I really had my life together I would just always have

Chopped celery chopped carrots chopped onions ready to go in the fridge like can you imagine having a big tub of it and every time you started a sauce or a soup you could just scoop out some and that what they do in like prep kitchens before before they have to cook for the

For dinner for the evening they just get all their bases ready yeah I never cook like that though because you don’t own a restaurant well it would make it easier for sure but I like the process of daily cooking mhm you know what I mean y I don’t do a lot

Of like Mass food prep or cook ahead or those kinds of things cuz I like cooking mhm thanks yeah there are some things you kind of need to do that for like uh you know sauces and stuff like that may certain kinds of sauces certain kind certain kinds certain kinds all right

Let’s add the meat what kind of meat we got here this is some ground lamb from our Lambs last year lots of ground lamb this year it’s just just such a versatile meat you can use it for so many things and of course you know ground pork is the most traditional for

Like a pork Ru people use beef a lot of times people will just use like an Italian sausage or something like that which is also delicious but you know it’s kind of one of those things it’s like what do you have mhm what do you have use that

That’s going to take a little bit Juju so you know what we can do is actually just put the lid on kind of let it Coke down and let those vegetables soften soften um let’s clean up our area and then we’ll be ready for the next thing

The garlic held up pretty well this year all right yeah some varieties definitely hold better over the winter than others can you think of them off the top of your head what they would be um the one that I find holds the best is this one which is called

Music and what I like about music is that it has these huge cloves and because it’s a hard neck you know it has that kind of hard spine that goes up the middle right and then you have the big cloes that are around it mhm and so you

Don’t have to mess with those teeny tiny little clothes so soft neck is nice cuz you can braid it it’s really beautiful but the cloves get smaller and smaller and smaller as you go towards the inside of the garlic and I don’t want to mess

With that I don’t want to be peeling all those really small uniform you know what you’re going to get each time sort of thing totally consistency and because this garlic I mean this came out of the garden in July last year so it’s old mhm which means I mean that’s why I’m using

I’m using four huge cloves in this recipe yeah and I know Lydia’s only calls for two cloves but this is it’s not super spicy right it’s been sitting for eight months yeah so extra you need a little bit of extra if it was really fresh garlic

There’s no way I’d want to use that much cuz it would just overpower everything right see that green mhm that’s where it’s thinking about thinking about not um growing mhm it starts to put a use all all of its energy to to push out this new green growth right exactly it wants to

Grow all right you’re filming is Juju going to film yep she’s filming all right Juju you know what the next step is no we’re going to put the garlic into the pot with the meat so I’m going to go over here and scoop it up and then I’m

Going to move it over here to this pot okay can you follow me yeah okay here we go Daddy’s going to help okay okay okay go ahead here we go daddy daddy there we go smells good already and then then we have another ingredient to add which is

A cup of white wine this is just the drgs left over from last night’s bottle so this is going to add in a lot of flavor it’s going to add in a dimension that we need so don’t skip it Daddy hang on hold still try all right like all right Daddy’s

Turn okay all right W that was fun was it yeah all right well you can kind of stir that around if you’d like ju or you can put the lid on I want to talk about a few of the other ingredients that are going to go in here

Because this is one of those dishes that’s only as good as what you put in it right so like they need to be good ingredients and the great thing is is that when you’re using really great ingredients you don’t have to do that much work it

Makes your job a lot easier this pasta I cannot say enough good things about and actually I sought Bona Fortuna out because we went to Sicily mhm and I came back and I just thought why is their pasta so good like what is it about it that makes it so different than pasta

That I’ve had before I get online I try some various Brands and they’re kind of hit and miss and then I find this Heritage GR pasta from Bona Fortuna that’s grown made processed the whole shebang in Sicily and you guys it’s so good all pasta is not created equal and one of

The simplest ways that you can tell that of course you can’t see the heirloom grains inside there right but what you can see okay do you see the dark can you see kind of the texture mhm on the outside of these noodles mhm do you know

What makes that it’s the I know you know what makes I know what makes it’s the brass dye it’s the brass dye M and so when this is pressed through the machine or bronze that’s what you’re think yeah sorry bronze and it goes through the bronze dye it creates this texture on

The outside of the noodle which holds the sauce on and it doesn’t sound like a big thing but when you eat pasta that hasn’t gone through a bronze dye the sauce just slips off of it and it tastes slimy it’s a completely different eating experience in your mouth oops as I drop

It okay one other product that you should know about is the Tomato pada we grow a lot of tomatoes a San Marzano style tomato that grows really well here we process Our tomato pada and we put that up every year we don’t always get the amounts right and so when we run out

Or when we need more of one kind then we get it from Bona Fortuna but I will tell you buying these delicious bottles of pada is so much easier easier than doing it yourself I love growing tomatoes I love making pada but that’s certainly that’s not what everyone’s going to do

Because it’s a ton of space and it’s a ton of work to actually to do that and I love the process of it and I think that’s why I appreciate really good bottles of pada cuz you know how much work goes into doing this especially last year because our um saucer broke

Yeah remember that uhhuh that was no good um okay so that’s really the rest of our ingredients we’ve got everything kind of simmering softening here I’m going to boil my pasta till it’s all Dente cuz it’s going to finish cooking in the stove um I’ve got some tomato pada here

I’m going to use an Oregan one too cuz that sounds good and that’s it then we’re just going to assemble how are you feeling about the gardens after today today’s work I mean there’s still a lot of work to do but I actually feel pretty good about where

We’re at with everything it’s not done is it ever and it’s not it’s not like ready for spring necessarily but Spring’s coming whether or not it’s ready right um but I think we’ll be ready because we’ve had a mild winter and that’s given us more time to

Actually work out like we’ve had more bare ground this winter than we’ve have had in the past so we’ve just been able to work outside a bit more so that’s been very helpful and we’ve gotten a lot yeah having the compost and the wood chips on hand too is really helpful

Because then as you kind of clean through the garden beds right you prune things back you pull out weeds everything’s getting a top dressing of compost which helps thepress weeds help hold in moisture add nutrients all the good stuff what you don’t get any pasta

And then of course the same thing on the pathways right the wood chips they help P down the weeds and it makes it look nice so each time we go out and we work and we touch a bed then you go out and you see it you

See that bare ground even though there’s no flowers or anything yet it does look better it looks nice pada save these jars by the way because you can use them for your homemade pada if you’re so inclined oh tomato P yum got really beautiful lamb Ru going on

Now what do you think Jude it looks really good all right see what you got there is that enough yeah another a pinch that’s not a pinch that’s a good old pinch we’re going to add this too some spicy pepper can I can I add it Lydia adds um crushed red pepper flakes

To hers so we’re going to add you kind of have to you kind of have to break it up and then you don’t want to touch your eyes afterwards cuz it’s a little spicy do you want to try yeah then you know what I think we need

More olive oil just a little bit more olive oil e yeah there we go all right gently Stir It gently okay It’s perfect it’s hot it’s just a little firm it’s perfect but it’s hot it’s perfect perfectly hot we’re Hot Okay there’s one important thing to remember here you got to add in a cup of the pasta water cuz those noodles are covered in flour and when that comes off in the water the starch gets into the water it just makes a creamy sauce it’s good okay

We got to be careful here okay this is my point guys got make might have should have used a bigger pan okay but we’re not done yet oh it just smells so good I just want to eat it okay it’s looking so delicious but this is going to go into the oven

And it’s going to bake the noodles are going to finish cooking the regu is going to cook down a little bit more which means that we are pretty much required to put cheese on top because it’s going to get all creamy I’m going to use a combination of a hard cheese

And a soft cheese because ricotta goes all creamy it’s going to mix in with the Ru and just be delicious so I’m going to add in just some dollops of that across the top mozzarella would be wonderful here too is mozzarella right this is ricotta oh okay similar and because it’s our very

Favorite cheese in the whole wide world what cheese are we going to do now [Laughter] cheddar that might be your favorite cheese but it’s not mine parmesan doue okay here we Go Bye