Mexican pot roast part 1

The cooler weather has me thinking comfort foods and one of my favourites is beef pot roast.  Normally I would buy a nicely marbled chuck roast or some other rather fatty tough cut, but I am trying to cut down on the fat so I chose an inside round roast. As this can be rather dry I wanted to have a tasty sauce to serve with it.

In August I Made some Home made Salsa and canned it. The idea was so that I could use it in recipes that called for salsa.  So this seemed the perfect oportunity to use it for both flavour and moistness. I spent the afternoon at Ioco Ghost town days helping children decorate the cookies I had made, so I decided to cook my pot roast in the slow cooker.

I placed the beef roast in the slow cooker and poured one of my jars of home made salsa over it.  If you were not lucky enough to have some home made you could use a purchased one.

Then I turned the slow cooker on to high and went to decorate cookies and when I returned 5 hours later I had a cooked pot roast and a wonderful smell in the house.

Halibut with peach salsa

Monday night of the long weekend found just two of us left at Pender harbour the remainder of  family and  friends had returned to Vancouver and Summerland so we decided we wanted to cook light and as we had not had fish all weekend halibut was on the menu.

We found a wonderful slab of halibut frozen at our favourite meat market at Pender Harbor The Oak tree market.  They also had some fresh looking rainbow chard and so we got some of that as well.

I made a peach salsa to go on the fish as we had all the ingredients in the house and peaches are abundent at the moment.

Peach salsa

2 large tomatoes chopped.
1 peach chopped
1/2 sweet onion chopped
1 jalapeno pepper chopped
Handful of chopped cilantro
Juice of one lime
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and let the flavours blend while the fish cooks

While Nancy cooked the rice I got the halibut on the barbecue.

Just barbecued until cooked through, not dried out.  You could also pan fry in olive oil or grill under the  broiler, but as the weather was still like summer barbecue seemed the best option.

Whilst the fish was cooking I quickly stir fried some rainbow chard in a tablespoon of olive oil with a clove of garlic thinly sliced.

Mango Pomegranate Guacamole

Everybody has their signature dish, I believe Nancy has found hers in this dip.  She found it on epicurious.com a couple of months ago when she taking a dish for Caribbean themed party. It was a big hit everybody loved it and she has been making it ever since.  On Friday night we were going to a get together to celebrate a friends birthday.  Friday was a beautiful day and obviously she had to make the Mango Pomegranate Guacamole to nibble on while we sat on the deck enjoying, finally, a taste of the summer to come.

2 ripe avocados
1 cup finely chopped white onion
1 fresh serrano chiles, finely chopped
1/4 cup fresh lime juice, or to taste
3/4 cup pomegranate seeds (from 1 pomegranate)
2 diced peeled mango
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

I just love pomegranate seeds, but they are such a pain to remove, but our local Thrifties sells little tubs of pomegranate seeds, what a joy they are to use and though it is cheating a little and rather expensive, in my opinion well worth it.

Nancy wanted me to show the cutting up of the mango so here goes.