Eat for the Earth - the picture gallery

So we hosted our Eat for the Earth dinner on Tuesday and it was awesome! I have some (bad!) pictures of the event, so here goes:

The semi-organic lemonade, home-made. Semi-organic because I couldn't find local organic sugar so I sticked to the regular stuff:

Starters was a home-made roasted tomato and red pepper soup:

Fresh organic tomatoes from Woolworths slow-roasted in the oven for about 6 hours:

Until it looks like this:

The peppers were from the Bryanston organic market, and went under the grill until properly blackened. Then into a pot to slooooowly combine all the flavours. We didn't even need to add any stock, because the tomatoes still had enough juice left in them to make the soup liquid enough.

That then got pureed and served. Beautiful.

Then we had a pizza course, home-made bases made from organic flour. One had brown mushrooms and the other mozzarella balls and baby tomatoes (all from the Bryanston organic market). The tomato one had fresh basil from the garden added just before serving.

This was then followed by the main course - butternut canneloni topped with a spinach and ricotta mixture, organic passata and an organic cheese sauce (with organic butter, flour, milk and cheese!) Baked in the oven and served with salad from the garden.

And to end the evening, an Italian apple cake with all organic ingredients except the sugar and baking powder:

Oh, and for the kids I made cupcakes, topped with green icing and let them decorate their own "gardens". They loved it!

All in all the evening was a fantastic success. A few more pictures:

Hanno in the very messy kitchen, filling the butternut canneloni

My friend Dee grating some pecorino cheese from the Bryanston market for the cheese sauce:

Everyone had an all-natural meal, baby included:

And my geek friend Simon wearing my dune-inspired apron, after lighting the fire. The wine was Laibach's Ladybug 2009, a beautiful (and award-winning) organic wine.

The table setting. We used potted African violets as decorations, and they doubled as thank-you gifts for the guests.

And there you have it! The results for the winners should be out this week, and we're holding thumbs that we did enough to qualify for one of the prizes. But even if we didn't the food was phenomenal and the evening was awesome, and it's all for a good cause.