Pickled red cabbage

Pickled red cabbage is something that I remember from my childhood in England.  This was something we had mostly at Christmas as it goes very well with cold meat, left over turkey or ham perhaps. Any way My husband bought this beautiful big red cabbage at the farmers Market in Penticton.

 The only thing to do was make pickled red cabbage.

I had never made this before but it fit in to my eating local and in season as advocated by Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal Vegetable Miracle". In order to eat seasonally all year round, you have to preserve some things to be consumed in the long cold days of winter when there is very little grown locally.  So armed with my computer and google I searched the Internet for recipes for pickled red cabbage.  I found quite a few and the one I liked the sound of the most was on BBC.co.uk this seemed simple and I followed the instructions. There were very few measurements, I guess it really depends on the size of your cabbage.

Pesto grilled chicken and Caprese salad

I was having some good friends over for dinner on Friday night after work, I only had about 1/2 hour prep time and I am trying to eat low fat so what  could I cook? On Thursday on the the way home I stopped in to "The Red Apple" on Hastings for inspiration, and they had wonderful fresh boccoccini, so I decided on Italian.

They also had some wonderful looking local new potatoes and tomatoes on the vine and had some chicken breasts in the freezer. Obviously I had to make caprese salad slices of tomato layered with the cheese sprinkled with salt, pepper a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I served this on a dish that I had bought in Capri last year which had caprese salad on one end rather cute.  I love buying serving dishes when I travel they make the best souvenirs, though I think I really should not buy any more I have run out of storage.

While we were sitting on the deck enjoying a pre dinner glass of wine we had hummus and carrot sticks, again with the healthy low fat food.  I served hummus in an adorable little pig dish I bought in Seattle last year.

How could you resist this little pig

I defrosted the chicken during the day while I was at work and then marinaded them in a form of pesto.

To feed 4

Large bunch of basil
3 garlic cloves
Juice of one lemon
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of hot pepper flakes
1 teaspoon of salt
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

Oven baked chicken and chips

Well after a couple of weeks in Europe and a further week in the Okanagan stuffing my face it is time to slow down and try to lose some of those extra pounds.  Though the summer is full of drinks on the patio, ice cream, and other fattening delights it is also full of fresh fruits and vegetables, and lots of daylight for running (or walking) in.

So tonight I tried to make a meal that was filling enough to satisfy my hunger, but low in fat and starch, so I went back to an old favourite from my weight watcher days.

To serve 2

• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut in to chunks (speeds up the cooking)
• 1/2 cup of low fat plain yogurt
• 1 tablespoon of mustard (I used a grainy mustard but any kind would do)
• 1/2 cup of fine breadcrumbs
• 1/4 cup of fresh herbs (I used parsley, basil, rosemary and sage, but any fresh or dried herbs would do.

Mix the yogurt and mustard together.

Then mix the breadcrumbs and herbs together with a little salt.

Salad de Fruits Restaurant Vancouver

My Father met me after work one evening this week and since the rest of the family was not going to be home for dinner we decided to go out.  The choice of where to go was not too hard as one of our favourite restaurants was close by, Salad de fruits.  It turned out to be a lovely evening so we thought it would be nice to sit outside on their deck and enjoy the evening.

Out door seating at Salad de fruits

  We started by sharing a Salade de chèvre chaud. (salad with warm goat cheese) This is a salad that I make sometimes, and we thought it would be a nice light start to the meal.

The salad was good, it had a light dressing on the mixed lettuce not drowning as I often find restaurant salads, and the cheese croutons were warm crisp and tangy.  Nothing spectacular but good never the less.

I ordered my old stand by duck confit.  It came with a wonderful cassis sauce that was tangy and not too sweet, and a selection of tender crisp vegetables.  This really was not authentically french, as in France traditionally the vegetables are well cooked and usually do not come with the meat.  But authentic or not they were delicious and cooked perfectly the duck and vegetables were sitting on a lovely garlic mashed potatoes.  These were so good I think they must have had a whole lot of butter in them, really the duck was not too salty as confit sometimes can be, and it was meltingly tender.

My father ordered Lapin (rabbit) and he decided to opt for fries instead of the vegetables.

There were a lot of fries, but being the good daughter that I am, I helped him out.  The rabbit was delicious cooked confit like the duck and served with a wonderful sauce with olives in it. There was also what tasted like a home made mayonnaise to dip the fries in, if you felt you were not getting enough fat.

Much to our waiters derision we did not have enough room for dessert, but just settled for a cup of coffee.  It was a lovely evening sitting outside enjoying a glass of wine and a wonderful meal together.  The food is always good and the prices are reasonable, with the main courses being around $20.00.  They have a fixed price menu which for $25.00 you get 3 courses, which is a really good deal if you can eat 3 full courses!

Lake Breeze winery - Naramata bench

I have been going to Naramata every summer for about 24 years, and though the village itself has not changed much, the surrounding area has.  When we first started coming, there were a couple of wineries and the remainder of the area was devoted to growing fruit trees, peaches, cherries or apples. It is now reversed, there are ever more wineries and vineyards and fewer and fewer orchards.

One of the wineries that has been there for a few years now Lake Breeze, has branched out in to serving food on the deck. So this Wednesday when finally the weather had turned sunny and warm we decided to go there for lunch.

The patio was full and we were lucky to get a seat with out a reservation.  We had tasted the wines a couple of days before and therefore new that they would be good, and as you are eating right at the winery the wines are not much more that buying them from the wine store.

Two people ordered the cold roast chicken salad.

Though I did not get to try this they both said it was delicious and the salad did not look like it had too much dressing on it and there were some lovely looking berries on it.

Perfect Roast potatoes

Roast potatoes in England are a very important component of a roast dinner, and there are many theories and methods of how to make the perfect roast potatoes.  Recently when I was in London James decided he was going  to try a method that his mother had read recently that apparently would impart the perfect crispy coating to the perfect roast potatoes.

The theory was if you tossed the parboiled potatoes in cornmeal before adding them to the fat they would crisp up even more.

First parboil the potatoes, you need floury potatoes for this not waxy ones as you want them to just be breaking down around the edges before you start roasting.

par boiled floury potatoes

Then he tossed them in a little cornmeal and added them to a roasting tin with the hot beef fat in it.  We got a great action shot of this happening.  If potatoes can be said to be in action.

Italian style dinner on the deck

So far this has been a horrible Summer in Vancouver, we have had far more than our share of rain and the temperatures have been way below normal.  So when Saturday was forecast to be warm and sunny we decided we should celebrate by having the neighborhood over for a dinner on the deck.

Having so recently returned from Italy I decided to make some of the food that we had there, but I did not want to waste the whole day in the kitchen as it was a beautiful day, so I kept it simple.

To start I made a antipasto platter.

I roasted some peppers and eggplant and served them with an assortment of Italian meats and a delicious fresh mozzarella.  This was just like the antipasto platters that we had put together in Florence at our Apartment

For the main course I made pizza using the foccacia bread recipe I made  the sauce by warming 3 garlic cloves that I sliced very thinly in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil until they were just golden.  Then I added a can of crushed tomatoes a handful of fresh basil chopped and 1/4 cup of red wine.  I let this simmer while the dough was rising and concentrate down.  I used this sauce on all the pizza's but three different toppings. One with Italian sausage, my home made sun dried tomatoes and boccocini

Italian sausage and boccocini

Then Over it all I sprinkled Parmesan.

Close up of the pizza with roasted eggplant and sun dried tomatoes ready for the oven