All That Remains

The tender meat of the spot prawn was delicious and only the shell remained. The clams steamed in white wine tasted wonderful but only the bit of shell is left. The pits of the salty Moroccan olives join the shells on the plate. Just the inedible and indigestible bits remain from our evening dinner.

And yet, the taste of the grilled prawns that were tossed with olive oil, garlic and a bit of smoked paprika still lingers in my mouth. I can still remember the strong fragrance as I lifted the lid of the pot of the cooked clams - the blend of white wine, clam juice and the colours of the fresh picked and chopped parsley and the red tomato pieces. The feel of the prawns in my hands as I try to remove the hard shell and not tear the tasty flesh so I can savour its flavour. Pieces of saffron rice cling to the prawns and clams and I taste that beautiful exotic flavour of the saffron and turmeric. My eyes take in the strong vibrant colours those spices have infused into it. The spicy zing of the chorizo sausage pops in my mouth until it is relieved with the lovely taste of the red wine that accompanied the meal.

All that remains on the plate are the things I cannot consume or enjoy. What is left does not begin to let you know how richly I enjoyed the meal of leftovers. Nor does it tell you how wonderful it was to enjoy the evening before as we had our first deck party this summer and had the new teak table surrounded with friends as we all enjoyed taking what we needed, and wanted, from the platters filled with saffron rice, roast chicken thighs, sliced chorizo, steamed clams, grilled prawns and grilled salmon fillet. We all had messy fingers from peeling the prawns! There was a heap of empty shells at the end of the evening. All this was followed by the tiramisu, a fresh fruit pie and the traditional summer strawberries and sponge cake with fresh cream that my husband makes.

Yet the greater percentage of what remains from the evening meal is not visible. There are tastes that linger in your mouth, conversations that percolate in your heart, nurturing that happens as our body processes what we have eaten, aromas that will be awakened again in our memory. The food nurtured our bodies as we ate, the sense of community, the hope and deep sense of contentment nurtures much deeper within my soul - these are the things I can name that will linger, that will remain. There were two delightful children who were part of our evening on the deck. After dinner I came upon one of them lying on the floor beside our frail 22 year old cat, Astrophe, and this old feline was luxuriating in the tender touch of the little one lying beside her., giving her gentle love. Later, on the bocce ball court, a game was taking place and the squeals of delight from the little one and cheers from the adult players enjoying their game floated through the trees up to the deck.

Like our breath being inhaled and then exhaled, this rhythm of life, the season of gathering to feast together in the warm summer air seemed so natural and life giving. This life giving rhythm offers us flavours and scents that weave memories within us. Patterns continue to be woven in the threads of our being and indeed this is what remains and will linger on long after the prawn shells, olive pits and clam shells have been discarded.

So much more remains!

Dining Out

It was a beautiful relaxing day which was capped off by dinner out. One of those evenings where the setting was perfect, the wine was excellent, the food was superb and we lingered over dinner. Dinner out wasn’t far away, no need to drive anywhere - just outside the back door on the deck surrounded by gardens that are coming to life, bird feeders alive with exquisite little winged creatures, hummingbirds zooming in and out of their nectar feeding stops, and the warmth and quiet of this evening on our little piece of paradise completed the picture of the best dining out location I know of.

My husband’s father Jack, used to prepare steaks, his special brand of BBQ steaks, for his wife Pat on regular occassions. Alas, I never had the privilege of meeting either Jack or Pat as they passed away before my husband and I were married. David follows his Dad‘s tradition so when we can, on our quiet days together he prepares his own brand of fabulous steaks on the BBQ, creating our own tradition as a couple.

With the smell of the steaks cooking on the grill on this unexpectedly non-rainy evening, we were relaxing at our new teak outdoor dining table, sipping a delightful Pinot Noir (Mud House from Central Otago, New Zealand) and watching all the wildlife that was greedily feeding at the bird feeders hanging between the cedar and hemlock trees. There were a few vegetables from the previous weeks’ organic veggie delivery so it was easy to just par-boil the broccoli and the fingerling potatoes, add some asparagus that definitely was needing to be used. They were tossed together with some olive oil, drizzled with a light coating of balsamic vinegar and seasoned with salt, pepper and a little oregano. When the steaks and veggies were done and delivered to the table, we just sank into the nice cushiony softness of our outdoor dining chairs, sat back, poured another glass of wine and prepared to dine in this ‘ordinary’ haven we call home.

I think the season of ‘dining out’ in the open air, just outside the back door may have arrived! And how glorious it is when it comes and invites us to linger outside and be surrounded the beauty of flowers, growing vegetation and the multitude of birds.

Quick Potato, Onion, Celery Soup

Rainy days, cold and windy days - those are the times when a steaming hot bowl of soup seems to be just the ticket. Rainy days seem to be lingering out here on the West Coast and with it being very much an inside day, it was a good time to get a pot of soup ready for lunch.

Vegetable soups are very quick and easy and don’t necessarily need to sit for 24 hours to have the flavours fully melded.

In this recipe you can easily substitute leaks for the celery.

RECIPE:

2 medium sized potatoes - peeled and cut into smallish pieces
6 celery stocks - slice into fine slices (use the top leaves but not the bottom white of the stock)
1 medium onion chopped
3 green onions - chopped
½ lemon - juiced and outside rind saved
1 ½ McCormick’s vegetable or chicken stock cubes
1 teaspoon of dry oregano
2 teaspoon of salt- add 1 teaspoon and taste as it cooks and then add more if you would like more.
¼ teaspoon Dijon mustard
4 cups water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
Fresh thyme stems if available - don’t use dry thyme
Splash of whipping cream if desired *


- Heat butter and olive oil in your pot, turn heat down to medium and add the celery and onions. Add a little salt. Cook them together, sweat them, so they become tender but not brown. This is about 5- 7 minutes.
- Squeeze the lemon juice in and then also throw in the lemon piece to the pot.
- Add the chopped potatoes, gently mix together and then add the water and stock cubes and bring to a boil then let it continue boiling on a medium heat for about 20 minutes.
- Add oregano.
- If you have fresh thyme put it in too.
- Check for the taste of the broth to see if you want to add more salt or not.
- Once the potatoes are very soft add the Dijon mustard.
- Remove soup from the heat and let it cool a little. Remove the piece of lemon. Remove thyme stems.

- if you want it to be a cream soup, add a ¼ cup of whipping cream to the soup and bring it to the boil again.*

- Using either a hand blender or a regular blender, puree the soup. Again check your seasoning to make sure it is to your liking. Add more salt if you need to.


If you want to jazz it up, toast little slices of a baguette and then grill a little Gruyere cheese on them to make little cheese croutons. You can also drizzle a touch of Truffle oil on the top of your soup.

"What's In The Fridge" Veggie Soup

One of the challenges I have set for myself in this ‘journey into health by food” is to try and eat more vegetables and fruit. When the organic food delivery arrives each week it means we need to use up what was delivered the previous week before we start the new produce. Fitting this into the way we prepare our meals is a little different for us in that Monday and Tuesday we can easily have all our meals at home but the rest of the week I am in the restaurant kitchen from early afternoon till late evening and my husband therefore has to create his own dinner, and fit that around his various evening committee meetings. We therefore do not have regular evening meals to prepare together other than Monday and Tuesday, my days off work. It is so easy to get lazy and say we will simply ‘pick something up’ and then back track on the goals of healthy eating, and using what we have. Long time habits around what we eat and how we prepare or eat are going to take a while to change and sometimes it just seems like too much effort to do so.
Hence easy to prepare, colourful, ‘what’s in the fridge’ veggie soup has become a new favourite of mine. The basics of this come from my time spent in Italy when in the winter my host family often made vegetable broth and added chopped zucchini, tiny pepe bucato pasta and lots of grated parmesan cheese as a lunch dish. There is a high quality of ‘comfort food’ to this bowl of goodness!

Basic Ingredients
Veggies
Cheese
Stock cube, water or broth
Tiny pasta (Garofalo’s Pepe Bucato pasta works best)

Extras
lemon juice or zest, fresh parsley, fresh thyme, and baked garlic cloves, oregano.

Looking into the fridge there was some zucchini, broccoli, and carrots that could cook quickly. Some feta cheese would add protein so it would be crumbled in when the soup is ready.

- grate 2 carrots
- slice one zucchini lengthwise into 4 and then slice those into small pieces
- chop broccoli florets into tiny pieces and also thinly slice the stems
- bring 4 cups of water to a boil and add 1 cube of either vegetable or chicken stock (McCormicks is the one I like best). Add more broth if you want a stronger flavour.
- throw in 3 stems of fresh thyme if you have it, also 3 stems of chopped parsley and 1 tablespoon of oregano.
- dash of salt
- if you like lemon, squeeze juice of one lemon into the water or put ½ teaspoon of finely grated lemon zest
- through the veggies in the water and bring it to a boil and cook for about 4 minutes
- add ½ cup of the pasta and continue to cook for about 7 minutes until the pasta is tender.
- check seasoning to see if you need any more salt
- remove the stems of thyme
- throw in a handful of either crumbled feta cheese or a little grated cheese of any kind.

Sitting out on the deck with my big bowl of ‘what’s in the fridge’ veggie soup, in the afternoon sun felt so good. It was tasty, healthy, using what was in the fridge and it took only 15 minutes to prepare. And having finished this bowl of goodness it is time to head to work and put my energy into dishes that will be a little more complex for the evening dinner service guests!

Savouring That Hot Drink

Can you remember the places you have sat in the early morning, or mid afternoon, or evening, with your hands folded in a prayer like manner around a mug? Did you too find the combination of warming your hands, sipping something soothing and hot, along with the quiet and stillness in that space of time was a place of utter bliss and comfort? This ritual seems to have no age, social, or cultural restrictions. It is just a universal pose that seems to say “I am resting and I am waiting” with a posturing that is looking out beyond where one is today.

I was sitting here with my hands wrapped around my cup of hot water with lemon slices and a chunk of ginger. I seem to be finding myself quite cold these days, even though the weather is getting sunny and very spring like and so wrapping my hands around a mug of hot soothing and healthy lemon ginger water moves heat into my fingers, my hands and up my arms. In essence it is just a plain cup, perhaps china or maybe ceramic, filled with a very ordinary beverage such as tea, coffee, hot milk, or hot water, and yet, it also holds an ingredient that allows us to savour the extraordinary ingredient of stillness. Somehow stillness also holds hope and there is not one of us who doesn’t need moments of hope I am sure.

When we were children my Mom used to make us hot chocolate or a cup of weak tea when it was cold outside. Each of us had a special mug and we would wrap our hands around it to hold it tightly so as not to spill. But I discovered that this had another advantage - it would warm up my hands and that heat would spread up my arms and such a cozy comforting feeling became associated with a warm beverage. I don’t think this feeling has changed many years later! Life was very busy in our growing up years but I treasure the memories of our early Saturday morning trips to Puslinch Lake. It was a time when church trauma had isolated us from a close knit community and all we had was each other. Dad would start the Coleman stove and first thing was the coffee to be made for Mom. I remember her sitting in the lounge chair with her hands wrapped around that beautiful cup of coffee as she sat for a moment, holding her grief at losses and holding her love for her family as she watched us play. Perhaps this is where my memory of the posture of “prayer and the coffee mug” was first drawn.

No matter where you travel to, in your own community, or far from home, you will find a coffee shop or tea room where someone will be sitting in this prayerful pose, hands wrapped around their warm beverage. They are sinking into this moment of stillness, waiting and watching, inviting us to embrace our own moment of stillness.

Kale - How Do You Cook That?

Organic Basket Delivery Week 3

Kale - a huge bunch of kale was in the last organic box delivery and frankly I had no idea what to do with it. Kale and Holland are always connected in my memory. A Saturday morning trip to the nearby market in Den Haag always yielded fresh bread, a fresh pot of vegetable soup that contained kale, meat balls and various other vegetables, along with a fresh chunk of Gouda cheese on the table. One friend creates a beautiful kale pie made with cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, eggs and kale and it always tastes fabulous but I don’t know how to make it. The Irish Chef I work with has memories of kale chopped and steamed and then mixed with bacon, onions and mashed potatoes.

Kale is one of the best greens you can eat as it is one of the best sources of beta-carotene, and for a green vegetable it is unusually high in fibre. There are a variety of vitamins, especially vitamin A and calcium. Kale also can trigger the liver to produce the all important enzymes that detoxify cancer causing chemicals which we are all daily exposed to - a powerful antioxidant. So that means it is good for you and if we are trying to eat foods that bring us life, this would be a good one. Just how to prepare so we can enjoy it is then the next question.

The internet holds a fabulous library of recipes and makes it so easy to find out how to cook new foods, or find new ideas for giving old favourites a new flavour. Today it was the place to find out how to cook this batch of kale that had arrived in my last organic vegetable and fruit basket delivery.

Roasted Kale with Red Onions, a Better Homes and Gardens recipe, caught my eye. As I began to prepare it I decided to add a couple of other ingredients that seemed like they would fit. I am afraid that sticking to a recipe is like trying to colour within the lines with a child and their colouring book - I just can’t seem to do it very well! The basic recipe suggests caramelizing red onion, adding it to the chopped kale, tossing it together with a little olive oil and throwing it into a medium hot oven for 15 minutes. The variation recipe for kale -
Roasted Kale with Caramelized Onion and Apples

1 bunch of kale - chopped
½ large onion, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to flavour
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 crisp apple, thinly sliced but not skinned
1 teaspoon of oregano

- Heat oven to 375F
- line a 9 x 13 pan with tin foil
- heat olive oil and when it is hot add sliced onion and cook for 5 minutes
- add brown sugar, stir constantly, and cook for a few more minutes
- add the balsamic vinegar and the oregano and continue to cook for 5 more minutes so that the sugar and balsamic have created a syrup for the onions.
- add the caramelized onions to the chopped kale and season with salt and pepper
- melt the butter in the pan you had the onions in and add it to the kale. Toss everything together so it is well coated.
- add the sliced apple
- place the kale in the oven and bake it for 20 - 25 minutes.

It will have a slightly crispy texture and the slightly bitter kale with the caramelized onions and sweet tender apples is a lovely burst of textures, sweet, salty and bitter all rolled into one bite. Caramelized onion always adds a burst of flavour to whatever you combine it with and the balsamic especially adds a stronger aroma to the onions. Apples, surprisingly, also add a delightful sweetness when they are cooked together with other ingredients. They do not have the tang of citrus but rather a more gentle infusion of their character that adds a lovely subtle change to any dish.

Next time the kale arrives in our organic basket we will search for another way to enjoy this very nutritious bunch of greens.

New Organic Delivery - What's For Dinner?

The new surprise box of organics had arrived! Time to check out what we can do with the contents of this weeks delivery. The fresh fruit is great for breakfast and snacking on, the kale is something I have not cooked with so I look forward to trying new recipes with that and the rest of the basket will provide some basic vegetables for our new week of meals.

In the last basket there was a lovely chunk of ginger which has provided daily cups of ginger lemon tea. There were a few things left to use up quickly before starting the new produce so this dinner is a combination of what was left and some beet tops from the new box.

What I want to use this time: carrots, onion, garlic, potatoes, yams, apples, beets and beet tops, pork tenderloin. There was not a lot of time in this busy day so everything needed to be prepared and ready within 1 hour.

Roasted Vegetables - ready in 40 minutes
Roasted vegetables are always tasty and easy. Some chopped carrots, onion and yams, along with a couple of new little red skin potatoes are sprinkled with a little oil, some salt and pepper to taste along with some oregano. Whole garlic cloves in their skins are nice to add to these veggies and when they are ready the soft garlic comes out of the skin very easily and has a caramelized taste to it. In the oven at 425F they can roast and be ready in 40 minutes.

Steamed Beet Tops - ready in 15 minutes
Beet tops are often thrown away and only the beet root used. The green leafy tops are even more rich in iron than spinach, as well as being loaded with vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C and vitamin K. The beet root can wait but just taking the beet tops and steaming them for about 15 minutes they are a tasty rich green vegetable. A touch of butter and some seasoning makes them a very easy addition to dinner. The only caution on these is that beet tops are one of the things that anyone on blood thinners should eat very little of (Vitamin K rich greens react with medications such as Coumadin)

We had purchased a package of pork tenderloins a few weeks ago and they were frozen individually. My husband makes some beautiful dishes with pork tenderloin. But these recipes all involve various kinds of marinade that requires more time than we had today. So it had to be a dish that would be prepared, cooked and ready to serve within the 60 minutes we had available.

Herb Crusted Pork Tenderloin - ready in 45 minutes
After trimming of the skin and fat and cutting the tenderloin in half, it was seasoned with salt and pepper and then seared it to a light brown colour in the waiting hot fry pan with a little oil and butter. Take any of the oil from the pan after it is seared and keep it aside for the herb crust. Put the tenderloin, in the fry pan, into the oven for 20 minutes.

It is a bit early in the season for my herbs in the garden to be really luscious but there is still enough out there to use once in a while. I gathered some fresh thyme, rosemary, a couple of sage leaves and some chives and chopped them finely. Pounding them together with the mortar and pestle it is nice to also add a little fresh lemon zest before adding the oil removed from the fry pan. A little bit of bread crumbs were added to bind it all together. After the pork had cooked for 20 minutes, it was brushed with Dijon mustard and then the herb mixture packed on top of the tenderloin. Slice up an apple into nice thin slices and put them around the pork. Throw the pork and apples back into the oven for about another 10 minutes.

Dinner prepared from our organic delivery with some meat added, herbs from the garden, and nice glass of Malbec wine was tasty and it felt good to sit down at the table and take time to enjoy this meal before heading off to evening appointments.