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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Vancouver, continued

October 24, 2012 by Mary Frances 3 Comments

Please accept my sincere apologies to all of you, dear readers. Last week and this one have been whirlwind weeks, just back from Vancouver. Many good things are happening at the office and then this past weekend was filled to the hilt with amazing events. On Friday evening, we were invited to the most glamorous and spectacular wedding celebration at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, here in Manhattan. To give you just a flavor of it, one of the bands, (non-stop music) was the Pointer Sisters!!! We danced the night away until 1:30 am.

On Saturday, we tried to recuperate, went grocery shopping and basically muddled about. On Sunday, we attended the unveiling of the tombstone of one of my best friends who collapsed and died suddenly of a brain aneurysm about a year ago. So to go from an incredible celebration to a much softer one, of a life lived far too short. Then to switch back to the present, taking Zach back to school in New Haven, and then back home, to regroup for this week, which has also become super busy. Whew!

But I digress big time. I promised more of Vancouver – and these shots focus on the Farmers Market on Granville Island with some other highlights. We all need food and sustenance every single day. Let us remember the beauty contained in every morsel and the joy you can bring when you serve it filled with love. With all the things happening in the world today, I choose to fill my days with love-filled nourishment. I hope I convince you to do the same!Fresh fruit in Farmer's Market on Granville Island in Vancouver .

Dragon fruit in the Farmer's Market on Granville Island in Vancouver .

Dragon fruit (wish that price sticker wasn’t there!)

Thai eggplant in the Farmer's Market on Granville Island in Vancouver .

Vancouver mask in the Farmer's Market on Granville Island.

He’s hungry!

Sculpture in The UBC Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver.

The terrific UBC Museum of Anthropology

Nitobe Japanese Garden in Vancouver.

Nitobe Japanese Garden

Embossed maple leaves in the sidewalk in Vancouver.

LOVE these embossed leaves in the sidewalk

P.S. The maple leaves are HUGE there! No wonder it’s Canada’s national symbol!

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: dragon fruit, Granville Island Farmers Market, maple leaves, Nitobe Japanese Garden, Thai green eggplants, travel, UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver

Vancouver!

October 15, 2012 by Mary Frances 4 Comments

We just spent eight days in Vancouver. Beautiful, sunny, gorgeous Vancouver for the first four days and then it turned to dark and rainy Vancouver, the more typical version, for this time of year.  No worries for us! Our first four days were planned for our private time and for the second four rainy days, we were working anyway. Fun work, but all inside, of course.

Vancouver is situated beautifully with the Pacific Ocean and inlets all around, surrounded by mountains crowning it in the background. The first four days were glorious!!! Granville Island is beautiful, street performers and all. The Granville Island Farmers Market is not to be believed. The most gorgeous, perfect and unusual fruits and vegetables are there along with amazing cheeses, meats, fish and chocolates as well as local crackers and mushrooms and a myriad of other things, including beautiful flowers and the most delicious cappuccino at JJ Bean, except for my son’s, of course.

So here are some highlights. Every salad we ate was so fresh and scrumptious, very reflective of the farmer’s market fare. Complete meals at touted “best restaurants” were unfortunately, fair, by our opinion. We went to Raincity Grill, C, and Hawksworth. All just okay. But the smaller, more local fare, like Banana Leaf on Denman (Malaysian) and Kadoya Japanese Restaurant were terrific. Are we just spoiled New Yorkers I wondered? But no, I don’t think so. These fancy, expensive places mentioned, missed on so many things. To me, they tried too hard, used too many ingredients or elements in a dish that complicates things, instead of just tasting the amazing goodness of truly great ingredients combining to make unique flavor sensations. The salmon is not what we’re used to – it’s so lean it’s actually rather dry or they overcooked it and it wasn’t so tasty. At C (a restaurant right by the sea – cute eh?), our grilled scallop appetizer arrived cold with a “crispy special flatbread” that was soft and soggy. Unconscionable in my opinion, (they were not busy), and I got my money back for my $18.00 (Canadian) serving.

But the people are lovely, the city is clean, safe and beautiful and the Asian restaurants are so very good. Apparently a whole influx of Asian people began to arrive in the mid-80’s when it was announced that Hong Kong would be turned over from English rule back to the Chinese in 1997.

I wish we would have had a chance to bike ride in Stanley Park but that didn’t happen. I did get to run along the Seawall one morning and that was lovely and we did do a 5 mile hike around Buntzen Lake from South Beach to North Beach and back. We had the foresight to buy some local cheeses (go to Benton Brothers Fine Cheese and get some Alpindon local organic raw cow’s milk cheese – it’s divine) and some local Ambrosia Apples. We also picked up some bagels (well, they really weren’t bagels by NYC standards but they were a good piece of bread) and we were set for breakfast in our hotel room. The UBC Museum of Anthropology is a must see (love the Multiversity Galleries) along with the Nitobe Japanese Garden across the street.

We arrived home at midnight on Saturday night. I am happy to have traveled to a new place and happy to come home – to cook a meal in my kitchen. Crazy I know, but I did miss cooking!

Cooking a meal at the end of the day is something that I look forward to; it completes me and completes my day. I wasn’t always like this, but this is where I am now.

Vancouver Buntzen Lake from South Beach

Buntzen Lake – from the South Beach

Our walk around Vancouver Buntzen Lake.

Our walk around the lake

A happy dog on the North Beach in Vancouver.

Happy dog on the North Beach. They even have a special swimming and beach section for dogs on the South Beach side!

Vancouver Thanksgiving meal on the beach.

Last Monday was their Thanksgiving holiday. This family had their celebratory meal on the beach!

Men smoking hookah to celebrate att Vancouver Buntzen Lake

Other ways to enjoy the holiday!

Vancouver guitar player at Vancouver Buntzen Lake.

Trees grow out of tree trunks Vancouver Buntzen Lake.

Trees grow out of tree trunks!

More photos to come in the next few days.

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: British Columbia, Buntzen Lake, Canadian Thanksgiving, hikes, North Beach, South Beach, the Seawall, Vancouver

Going to Greece

September 23, 2012 by Mary Frances 12 Comments

Greek sweatshirt artWith autumn officially here, even though I love the season, here’s a way to hang on to summer for just a little bit longer.

I think it’s fun to plan a dinner around a specific theme. Not like the crazy tablescape lady on Food Network. I just learned that she is our Governor’s live-in partner! Yikes! She’s probably a nice woman but really, she’s a bit much.

We had some new friends over for dinner last Saturday. Well not really new. Anne and I did business with one another some 20 years ago! She had a creative placement agency. In those days, my company did a lot of package design for a fragrance company called Tsumara. We often needed textile designers to design the background patterns on these packages. Anne supplied me great ones on a freelance basis.

I ran into her recently at a New York Times /AMEX Business Summit. I gave her a LOVE card and she checked out the blog and recognized Ethel and Ethel’s garlic from an earlier post! We discovered our weekend houses are very close to one another. Isn’t that great?

So for our dinner together, I wanted to take them to Greece. We made a grilled Greek chicken recipe that my husband and I used to make all the time after our visits to Santorini. You take a whole chicken and stuff under the skin: slices of tomatoes, covered with dried oregano, sliced onions and thin slices of feta cheese. Grill it with a lemon-based sauce and voila, you’re in Greece. They do this all over Santorini on the street outside of small restaurants and everything is so fresh and good. Serve it with a simple Greek tomato and cucumber salad and you are set. Try it – it’s delicious!!

And grab a little bit of summer one last time.

SANTORINI GRILLED CHICKEN
– serves 4

1 whole chicken – about 3.75 lbs
1 large tomato – sliced 1/8” thick
Dried oregano
Feta cheese, sliced 1/8” thick
1 small onion – sliced 1/8” thick
salt
pepper
1/2 lemon
Lemon/garlic basting sauce

Wash and thoroughly dry the chicken. Trim off any excess fat. Refresh it with a half of a lemon, squeezing the juice out all over, inside and out. Pat the chicken dry again. Cut the tomato in 4 or 5 slices. Sprinkle each slice liberally with dried Greek oregano. Carefully, use your fingers to separate the skin from the meat on both sides of the breastbone and on both sides of the backbone. Into each quarter slide one tomato slice, oregano side down, one onion slice and one good slice of feta. If you need to cut a tomato slice or onion slice in half, to fit it all in, do so. If you accidentally tear the skin, use a small skewer to sew up the tear. Salt and pepper the chicken all over to your liking.

Grill the chicken at about 350 degrees, basting with the sauce 3-4 times throughout the cooking time. It should take about 45 minutes.

You could also do this in your oven. Preheat the oven to 550 degrees. Place the chicken in for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 350 and roast for 45 – 50 minutes, basting three times with the lemon garlic sauce during this time, every 15 minutes. Check to see if it’s done with an instant read thermometer. It should register at 155 degrees.

LEMON/GARLIC BASTING SAUCE
1.5 tbs. unsalted butter
2 tbs olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbs. finely minced onion
6 tbs. fresh lemon juice
1 tbs. Dijon mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp. light brown sugar
1 tbs. Worcestershire sauce
20 grinds of black pepper
¾ tsp. Sriracha sauce
3 tbs. water

In a small saucepan, melt the butter in olive oil over low heat. Add garlic and onion, cover and sweat for 15 – 20 minutes. Check often, stir and do not let it brown, but you want it to be meltingly soft. Add the rest of the ingredients, except for the water, stirring well. Raise heat to medium-high and whisk in water. Stir until mixture boils and then remove from heat. This can be made a couple of hours before you’re going to use it. Keep it at room temperature.
Greek salad overhead

GREEK SALAD
– serves 4

2 – 3 large tomatoes, preferably heirloom, cut in large chunks
½ of a large red onion, cut in ½” chunks
1.5 hothouse cucumbers, peeled, halved lengthwise & cut in 1/2” chunks
1/2 cup Kalamata black olives, pitted, cut in half
Greek feta cheese, crumbled in large pieces
Extra virgin olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
Chopped fresh oregano leaves

Place tomatoes, red onion, cucumbers, olives and feta cheese in a large bowl. Drizzle with the best olive oil you have and a few splashes of red wine vinegar. Sprinkle with a little salt (the feta will be salty so not too much), fresh pepper and 2/3 of your chopped oregano leaves. Toss lightly to combine. Garnish the top with more oregano leaves.
Greek dinner plate with Santorini grilled chicken, Greek salad, corn, and red wine.Greek dinner plate with Santorini grilled chicken, Greek salad, and corn.

Filed Under: Dinner, Poultry, Salads, Travel Tagged With: cucumbers, feta cheese, Greek roasted chicken, Greek salad, grilled chicken, kalamata olives, lemon basting sauce, oregano, red onion, Santorini, tomatoes

Weeping for our willow

September 22, 2012 by Mary Frances 7 Comments

Fallen willow tree limb.

This is what we woke up to this morning!!! We arrived last night in the dark and did not see this until today. This probably happened on Tuesday, when there was a big storm and fierce winds. It couldn’t have happened last night, we would have heard something!

Our willow is a magnificent tree, probably at least 200 years old or maybe even older. I showed you pictures of it when we stayed up here for a week in July. I’m not sure if you get the massiveness of this limb that broke off – it’s really like a third of the tree! But thank goodness, two-thirds of it is still standing. Perhaps this is nature’s way of insuring that what’s left will be healthy and strong and keep on going for another 100 years? I sure hope so as we love this tree.Fallen willow tree limb.

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: Hudson Valley, storms, weeping willow, willow

What constitutes a vacation?

July 14, 2012 by Mary Frances 9 Comments

Doing something different? Removing your mind from everyday things? Being with your children 24/7? Having the freedom to do what you want when you want – such as staying in bed, reading or sleeping on and off until 10, or napping at 4 or having a beer at lunch?

You know what makes it for you. For us, last week was a first of being at our little upstate home, with glorious weather all week except for rain one day, no kids, no conventions or meetings and just doing what we felt like, when we felt like, and having some close friends over for dinner on the 4th. It was really perfect. We had sunset cocktails, wonderful local food, tried new recipes, dinner out twice (a treat), and lovely walks after dinner. You know, you feel like you eat too much and you drink too much and you’re bound to gain weight but surprisingly, I didn’t. I did ride my bike from 8 to 21.5 miles almost every day so I guess that helped and worked to sweat the toxins out as well. It is so quiet there and I love having all the windows in the house open to feel the clean soft breezes. (Rare for me because in NYC, it just makes the apartment dirty.) It was a real, clear the head, simply lovely time. We saw two great movies – The Avengers (silly fun) and Moonrise Kingdom – a quirky, must see, coming of age movie with great music and fantastic graphic scenes of Rhode Island.

I hope you get to clear your head this summer as well.

Here are some visual highlights.

Driveway with bike in upstate New York. Road to heaven.

I always think this looks like the road to heaven or the road to nowhere. There actually is a large house way over to the right and this is their driveway.

Upstate New York waterfall.

Our neighborhood waterfall.

Corn field in upstate New York.

The corn is growing!

Yellow roadside flowers in upstate New York.

I love these little yellow roadside flowers.

Horse farm in upstate New York with tractor.

Local horse farm – see the tractor?

Breakfast outside with eggs, toast, and orange juice.

Breakfast outside – my favorite!

Filed Under: Breakfast, Travel Tagged With: bike rides, breakfast, Columbia County, corn, farm fresh eggs, horses, orange juice, roadside flowers, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, toast, upstate NY, vacation, waterfalls, willow trees

Our week upstate

July 7, 2012 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

We are rounding home stretch here on our vacation week upstate. We had glorious weather the whole time to be greeted by rain this afternoon. But that’s okay, it feels like a Nantucket day today so I am writing and reading and hopefully napping soon, a true vacation luxury.

I always end up saying to my husband, after my daily bike ride, that there is no prettier place than here. (Well Bali may be prettier but I’ve not been there yet.) It is just so darn pretty here – the sky even competes with a South African one! We often just sit staring out at our backyard, watching the show of animals that randomly appear, which provides a great sense of renewal to us city dwellers during the week.

Here are some photo highlights of our week. I’ll post some bike riding pictures soon!

Nantucket green backyard.

Our backyard sunset cocktail lounge

Hudson Valley sunset.

Hudson Valley sunsets can’t be beat!

Blueberry pie.

My 4th of July blueberry pie – served with Blue Marble vanilla ice cream and fresh raspberries to make it complete!

Blueberry pie with flakey crust.

I’m very proud of this super flakey crust.

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: bike rides, Blue Marble ice cream, blueberry pie, cocktails, Hudson Valley, outdoor cocktail lounges, raspberries, sunsets

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