An afternoon tea

We put some of our baking into a very good use with this afternoon tea.

Minty Mojitos

With so much mint in our garden, we decided to have a Mojitos party with friends. The essential ingredient is mint but we also got a good Cuban rum. 

Herb Butters

Inspired by a friend and the fresh herbs from our CSA farm, Jen decided to put into practice her culinary skills and prepared a delicious set of herb butters.

The first step was basically to find and think of flavour combinations.

Fleur de sel added a nice touch to the butters.

Honey and mint...
Lemon balm and dill...
Thyme and oregano...

And the finished product... a delicious assortment of herb butters.

~Luc

Branding our homemade jams

We explained in an earlier post about our homemade jams. In this picture we just wanted to show you our "branding" but don't worry... we are not hitting the market yet...
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In this picture: Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam & Rhubarb Chutney.
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~Jen-Luc

Father's Day - Gourmet breakfast & Lunch

I cannot think of a better way to start father's day with a nice, homemade high quality breakfast. This was Jen's surprise to me on this special day.

We had lemon dill bread (from a local bakery in Paris, Ontario), dark-roasted, fair trade coffee, a parfait made with our own natural yogurt and fresh berries, orange low-acid tomatoes from a local farm sprinkled with herbs from our garden and sizzled with olive oil and a truffle omelet (we bought "a" truffle when we visited France a few months ago).

Since our breakfast was plentiful and we had a big dinner ahead of us, we decided to take it easy for lunch and we came up with this idea: a bbq pizza. We decided to use all our fresh produce from the market and our CSA farm to create this pizza. We wanted a Mediterranean flavour. The secret: brushing the dough with a mixture of olive oil, garlic and anchovies paste (anchovies need a public image work - most people have them in a Caesar's salad dressing but at the same time most would not dare speak the poor fish's name!).
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~Luc

CSA - Some veggies for the week

Out latest visit to our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm was very exciting. As the season continues, the quality and quantity of produce both increase.

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This week we got some cabbage, peas, carrots, brocoli, cucumbers, kholbi, spinach, swiss chard, green onions, kale, musclun greens and our regular assortment of fresh herbs and fresh cut flowers.

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This great assortment of fresh, organic and locally-grown produce comes as a great inspiration for our week's menu.

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If you are interested in learning more abour our CSA Farm, visit their blog:

http://www.orchardhillblog.blogspot.com/

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~Jen-Luc

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

When a friend of ours told us about this project we didn't hesitate to get on board. Having shares on the crops of a local organic farm would not only mean we make a tiny contribution to supporting a cause we believe in but it would also mean that we could have a good amount of fresh herbs, flowers and organic produce every week for many months.

Having fresh herbs and produce triggers our imagination to use them during our menu planning system. Part of the fun is never knowing exactly what we are getting each weekend.

Currently, five households got together to alternate our pick-ups. The farm is roughly 45 minutes away from London so we thought it would make sense to do this throghout the season. When we get there, we have a list of the amount of produce we are allowed to take each week. It's a very well organized system and the produce looks fantastic.

One of the favourites features of our CSA share is the amount of fresh herbs we get to bring home every week. There are some herbs we were familiar with (mint, basil, cilantro) as well as others that we never heard of or we didn't know what to do with them (chive blossoms, lemon balm, lovage).
Flowers are also available. There is a "cut flowers" section where we are allowed to get as many flowers are we want.
One of the first produce to be available was rhubarb. It is interesting to see how much nicer the rhubarb gets from week to week.

~Luc

Rhubarb Crisp

We had to put our rhubarb to a good use and Jen had a great idea: Rhubarb crisp. The first week she made it was still a little cool. We had it warmed and we had it with an ice cream scoop on top. Delicious! The dish combines the sweetness of the crust with the tanginess of the rhubarb.

~Luc

Crispy Chicken w/ Organic spinach-mandarin salad

We didn't think we'd be the "menu planning" type of people. But we tried a menu plan system and it has been working very well for us. We are trying to be creative with our dishes, but we usually leave the creative side for weekend. Weekdays are getting busy and we still want to enjoy homemade food so this was a "compromise" that has proven very convenient so far.

The feature of this recipe is the organic spinach we received from our CSA shares. The leaves were tender and tasty, almost too good to be spinach!

~Luc

Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam

After a long time without entering culinary news in our blog, we are back! It's been busy but we didn't forget about good eating and the pleasure of cooking homemade foods.


Summer is almost here! As part of our membership to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Project, we have been getting organic rhubarb from a local farm (We'll write more about CSA in a new entry soon).



In the begining it didn't seem we had many choices for rhubarb but it was only a matter of time until we started coming with ideas. One classic idea is the rhubarb-strawberry jam. Unfortunately, we couldn't use local strawberries yet but the ones we got were decent enough to try this recipe.



While we made homemade jams before, we had a new challenge this time: we wanted to preserve our jam in jars. If properly done, it can keep up to 12 months! We couldn't wait to try and even though we didn't have all the proper equipment for canning, things turned out to be perfect. We thought it would be so exciting to have this jam in the fall.



There are many ideas on how to use this jam best: jam on our homemade rhubarb muffins, filling for a torte (following European baking traditions), or in crepes.



~Luc