Posts tagged ‘garden’
Spring bulbs already sprouting!
It’s hard to believe, but the first shoots of snowdrops and crocuses are peeking up in gardens around the neighbourhood, including mine. This photo was taken yesterday afternoon, which you can see was lovely and sunny compared to today’s drizzle and grey. (more…)
Travel Eats: Mas Rabell, Penedès, Spain
Ensaladade Tomate del Huerto (organic tomato salad)
I’ve started going through travel photos recently as a diversion to the grey winter days. Tomatoes have never looked more beautiful to me than they did in this salad, which was served on a hot July day as part of our lunch at the Torres family’s Mas Rabell restaurant in the Penedès wine region of Spain (about an hour south of Barcelona).
The produce was grown in an on-site organic vegetable garden and all of the food was seasonal, local and impeccably fresh. Seasonal and local have a completely different meaning and taste in Mediterranean countries. Vegetables like tomatoes, artichokes and olives come with rich flavours and an abundance we rarely experience in North America, and the olive oil is truly a wonder. We brought some back with us, but it just doesn’t taste the same as it did when the weather was hot and you could see groves of olive and almond trees dotting the landscape.
Everything we ate at Mas Rabell tasted like something from a beautiful dream. Along with the tomato salad was fresh bread with extra virgin olive oil, a cod fish main course, a cheese course, apple pie and, of course, delicious Torres wines: Santa Digna Sauvignon Blanc (2009); Ibericos (2007); Mas La Plana (2006), sweet Moscatel Floralis and the Torres 20 brandy.
Pescado con timbale de cebolla y patata (fish with onion and potato timbale)
Quesos Catalanes (local cheese from the Catalonia region)
Pastel de Manzana (apple pie)
Moscatel Floralis (a dessert wine)
The garden at Mas Rabell where they grow tomatoes, fresh herbs and other produce for the restaurant kitchen.
First flower spotted: snowdrops
I spotted my first flowers of the year a few days ago: a couple of snowdrops blooming on my patio. I planted a handful of bulbs last fall hoping for spring blooms, and here they are already. I wish I’d planted a hundred more.
There are other plants in my garden right now – ivy, bamboo and violets all survive the winter here in Vancouver – but the snowdrops are the first sign of growth. Two seasons wrapped up into one tiny flower – a shoot of green and snowy white that pushes us to accept the thin hope of spring while chilly grey days with gloves and scarves continue for a little longer.
Plants are always the perfect gift
Our sweet neighbours brought over this hibiscus plant as a gift when they joined us for a glass of bubbly on New Year’s Eve. They’ve watched me spend endless hours puttering around our tiny garden and become wise to the fact that plants are always the perfect gift. The plant even came with a name – Judy.
Hibiscus plants are beautiful and I’ve always wanted one. It’s resting as directed in bright sunlight (well, as much sunlight as one gets in during a west coast winter) on the desk in my studio. I hope it lasts for years and years. I’ve seen hibiscus trees for sale at garden stores, plants like this one that have been pruned into a 3 or 4 foot tall tree. There is something wonderfully tropical about these plants that’s particularly restorative in January: if I close my eyes and take a deep breath I can almost imagine myself wandering through a seaside garden in Hawaii and sipping in the sun.
Brandy mojitos!
Our first summer heatwave in Vancouver seems like the perfect opportunity to to share this recipe for the most dangerously delicious cocktail going – brandy mojitos! We discovered it a couple of months ago at a winemaker’s dinner at Fraiche, a very posh place in West Vancouver. I’m not sure that I’ve ever tasted brandy until recently, but now we’re hooked, at least for summer when mojitos are the perfect answer to a sunny patio.
Below are instructions for making one mojito. We’ve started making pitchers of them to avoid having to move from our sunny spot on the deck when it’s time for a refill – double, triple, quadruple as you like. (more…)
