Grandma Naylor's meat and potato pie

Grandma Naylor was my Maternal Grandmother and though she had a very limited repertoire of very simple food, she cooked what she did very well, and meat and potato pie (after her Yorkshire puddings) was my favourite.  She was born and brought up in Yorkshire in the north of England and believe this dish is local to the area that she lived in.

It is very plain with no spices no herbs this was the England of mid 20th century, but don't be put off by that it has a wonderful simple clean flavour and well worth making on a cold rainy early winter day. This can be a week night dinner if you start the night before which is what I did.

Spice rubbed pork tenderloin

This is a quick, easy and healthy weeknight dinner, I have had a bit of a gippy stomach since Egypt, so I wanted something that was not too rich or heavy for dinner and I picked up a pork tenderloin this weekend. (You could also use chicken breasts if you had those instead Leah)

Preheat the oven to 350 then mix together the spice rub.

Thanksgiving - Pecan pie

Thursday was American thanksgiving, and though I was born and brought up in England and live in Canada, I don't see that as any reason not to celebrate it.  Luckily I have several American friends, one of whom invites us every year to a wonderful turkey feast.  Everyone brings something, and as it is a traditional holiday and we are traditional people we always bring the same things.  My mission is to bring pies.  Usually I make Pumpkin pie.  (for some of us it is not thanksgiving with out pumpkin pie) and at least one other for non pumpkin pie eaters.

This year I am making pecan pie, and apple blueberry pie.  It was going to be apple pie, but I had less apples than I thought and there were some blueberries in the freezer. The pastry for the apple blueberry pie was the same as for the apple pie I made earlier in the fall, I just mixed some frozen blueberries with the apples and tossed in about 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch to thicken some of the juices.  Any way it turned out well and Dov a good friend declared it the best blueberry apple pie he had ever had (I suspect it was the only blueberry apple pie he had ever had but thank you any way) He said he usually found blueberry pie to sweet and sickly and the apples helped cut the sweetness.

Blueberry apple pie

For the pecan pie I used a traditional french pastry Pate Sucre (sugar pastry) this is rich with butter and cuts almost like a shortbread cookie and I think it goes well with Pecan pie.

Egypt a Nile cruise

I was lucky enough to spend 7 days drifting down the Nile with my Father, a woman I have known since I was 5 and she was a new bride and her husband.  We flew to Luxor from London and were picked up by our tour company representative.  Thank heavens I do not know how we would have made it out of the airport to the boat without him.

The Nile cruise boats

The boat was moored along with many others just South of Luxor, we settled into our room and went for dinner.  The food on the boat was about what I had expected, nothing special.  This normally would have been a major problem for me as one of the reasons I enjoy traveling is the food, but this was Egypt the place I had always wanted to go to.

The first day we visited the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens along with many other tourists in many other buses.  This was my first time on guided trip and though I am not sure how many others I will go on, for Egypt it did make things easier as there were so many people and most of the people working both on the boat and all the tourist destinations had only a rudimentary understanding of English and I have no Arabic.

Hatsheput's temple

On the back side of the Valley of the Kings was Hatsheput's Temple massive and Awe inspiring as were all the temples.

A day in Capri

We had decided that this was the day to go to Capri as the weather was warm and fairly clear, so we climbed down the many, many steps to the harbor and bought 3 two way tickets to Capri, there was a time for our return journey of 3:15, which as we were getting a 9:30 ferry would give us a few hours to poke around the island.

On the ferry to Capri

we were approached by a friendly man offering to show us around the island on a bus promising "free time to shop"  but after a little consideration we turned him down and turned out to be very glad that we did.

We walked down the same sea wall the that the cars used to drive on to the ferries with. BC Ferries would be horrified, then went to find a cafe to relax and watch the people go by.

Very good very expensive Cappuccino

Barbecued lamb

First night back in London from Italy Jacky's husband (from New Zealand) volunteered to barbecue a leg of lamb for dinner, this is his speciality and I was really looking forward to it.  We decided to make an appetizer using the buffalo mozzarella and lemon oil that we had bought in Italy.  And as we still had celeriac left over from last week we thought we would make a variation on the previous weeks side dish using sweet potato and regular potato along with the celeriac.

This was a meal made with whatever we found in the house.  O happy day when you find fresh buffalo Mozzarella from Italy in your fridge.

We had a whole leg of lamb which Jacky studded with garlick and surrounded with beautiful fresh rosemary from the garden, then wrapped in foil and baked in a medium oven for 40 minutes.

ready to bake

After the lamb was baked Howard (Jacky's husband) took it outside to their built in wood fired barbecue where he had readied the fire so that the wood was mostly burned down to charcoal.

Another Evening in Sorrento

We had had a good drive down the coast, came back to the hotel had a bottle of wine that we had got at the super market (not great) and contemplated where to go for dinner. Having not come to a decision we went down below the central square and sniffed out something that looked good.  It was getting late about 9:00 and we were not too hungry so just wanted something light.

We found a place in a piazza that we could sit outside and watch the world go by.  Candy ordered a salad that though it was not called a salad nicoise  in fact was.  Jacky ordered an omelet and I ordered a seafood salad. But before our meal arrived we received a free pizza bread.  It was like a pizza base with a brucshetta topping, another thing I like to try when I get home.  We all loved it and ate it though we were not that hungry,

free bruschetta bread