All posts filed under: Summer

Italian Fig Salad

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In the midst of summer, it is easy to turn to simple salad recipes. They don’t require any cooking or any intense preparation, and can be assembled (and eaten!) within minutes. Plus, a nice cool salad is perfectly refreshing on a warm summer day! Move Over Lettuce Leaves… While I eat lots of green salads, I like to mix things up once in a while to enjoy a more decadent salad. Because lettuce leaves are not always that filling!  I tend to lean towards more composed salads that use some fancier ingredients. Mozzarella and prosciutto are definitely very decadent, and I could probably just eat these two on their own. But adding in some sweet summer figs and basil make this salad a bit healthier and really bring the flavours together. Topped with some creamy olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt, and you have a fantastic Italian-inspired summer salad! Supporting Local  I picked up my fresh mozzarella and prosciutto from my favourite Italian shop in Victoria, Italian Food Imports. They have a great …

Summer Tomato & Rosemary Focaccia

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One of the best ways to tell that summer is here (other than the heat) is all the fresh garden produce that is available. I’m so happy to see fresh cucumber, zucchini, beans, figs, and my all time favourite: tomatoes! You can’t beat sweet, juicy and incredibly flavourful, summer tomatoes! Whether they are red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green tomatoes, or fancy heirloom tomatoes, you have to gorge yourself on them while they are in season! Plus, since they are so easy to grow and have a high crop yield, they end up being dirt cheap at the grocery stores during the summer! I’m all for that! Tomatoes are an incredibly versatile fruit and can be prepared in many ways. You can simply eat them fresh with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper, make them into tomato sauce to serve with pasta, or even dry them out to make sundried tomatoes. The possibilities are literally endless with tomatoes! But no matter which way you prepare them, they will always pair perfectly …

What to Eat at the Richmond Night Market

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Every summer, millions of people make their way to enjoy the Richmond Night Market. This world-famous international night market is the largest in North America and is well known for the delicious international food and fun carnival entertainment. It’s a great way to spend a summer evening with your friends, family, or even a date! Creative & Tasty Food at the Richmond Night Market Last weekend, David and I made our annual trip to Richmond, B.C. to check out the Night Market. While the entertainment is fun, we mainly go there for the delicious food …obviously 😛 We love that there are so many food vendors that get super creative and think outside the box, and that it’s not just regular carnival or festival food that is available. We always discover something new every year and also enjoy the tried-and-true Richmond Night Market classics! Read on below to see what we ate at this year’s Richmond Night Market, along with some useful tips, and our must-trys for 2019! Crazy Zhang- The King of BBQ From …

Simple Grilled Clams

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While clams are abundant year-round on the west coast, I particularly love to enjoy them in the summertime. They make the perfect light (yet satisfying) summer meal, especially when they are combined with fresh summer flavours and eaten outdoors on a patio or at the beach. This year, I decided to experiment with cooking clams. I typically steam-cook clams in a large pot on the stove, but realistically, I can do that any time of year. However, I can only grill my food for a few months before the rain starts up; so naturally, I opted for experimenting with grilling clams. After a few tries of experimenting with various ingredients and flavour combinations, I came back to keeping it simple, and that’s how my recipe for Simple Grilled Clams came to be! Direct or Indirect, that is the Question I had seen a few recipes where the clams were grilled directly on the metal grates of a grill. While I thought this would be great, I found that the tasty clam juices easily fall into …

Cedar Plank Salmon

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This Canada Day, I am grilling up the perfect west coast Canadian recipe: Cedar Planked Salmon. On the west coast of Canada, we love to eat fresh, wild salmon. While there are many species of salmon available, my favourite has to be sockeye salmon. It’s deep rich orange flesh is so succulent, full of omegas, and is always juicy– there’s nothing else like it! I picked up my salmon fillets from my favourite seafood store in Victoria, Finest at Sea. They always have a great selection of seafood available and it is always fresh! Not only is their seafood fantastic, I love that they tell you exactly where the seafood was harvested along the coast of B.C.– and even what fishing vessel caught it! Bringing this awareness to the customer is amazing and really makes me appreciate my seafood every time I get it! While I used sockeye salmon in this recipe, you can use whatever variety of salmon you prefer– pink, spring, coho, you name it! Just make sure that it is fresh and …

BC Blueberry Pie

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It’s the last day of #BCBlueberryWeek here on the blog! I’m sad to see it go but I have a TON of blueberries still left in the fridge…so maybe I will keep it going with a few more blueberry recipes in the near future. But I hope that you really enjoyed the recipes I showcased so far- from the summer go-to Blueberry and Grilled Chicken Salad, to the healthy Honeyed Greek Yogurt and Blueberry Jam, to the savoury Blueberry Stuffed Chicken– they were all delicious! However, I think that I have saved the best recipe for last…a good ol’ classic…BC Blueberry Pie. The best way to celebrate blueberry season is with a blueberry pie! If you ask me, this is the best way to celebrate blueberry season! It was actually the first blueberry recipe I made this summer when the blueberries arrived at the markets. I love this pie because you get mouthful after mouthful of sweet, heavenly blueberry filling with a little crunch and savoury flavour from the crust. This is what blueberry dreams …

Blueberry Stuffed Chicken

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Blueberries are getting the royal treatment today on the blog with this elegant recipe for Blueberry Stuffed Chicken! We are in the fourth day of #BCBlueberryWeek here on the blog and I am excited to reveal this recipe to you. Not only did I work really hard on the food styling (I feel so professional) but I also worked hard on the recipe too! It had many similar components as my Blueberry and Grilled Chicken Salad that I posted a few days ago- chicken, goat cheese and blueberries (of course)- but these flavours just go so well together! The only thing that’s different is how I prepared and presented them! Stuffed chicken breasts are a mid-week favourite around here. I stuff chicken with spinach and cheese, sundried tomatoes, cheese and ham, rice and spinach- you name it! But I particularly love stuffed chicken breasts because they are so versatile! You can take them from a humble mid-week meal to a star main course at a dinner party in no time! I definitely think that stuffing …

Blueberry & Grilled Chicken Salad

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It’s #BCBlueberryWeek here on the blog and I am sharing a whole weeks’ worth of delicious and nutritious recipes featuring local BC blueberries.  If you missed yesterday’s post that provides a fulsome overview of blueberries including when to pick them, how to store them and how to cook with them, make sure you go back to the post and give it a read- there are so many great tips and interesting facts on blueberries that you may not have known about! Today I am sharing my first #BCBlueberryWeek recipe…and this might possibly be my most favourite recipe in this series. Today I am featuring a delicious Blueberry and Grilled Chicken Salad with Raspberry Vinaigrette. Did you just start drooling? I sure did! I’m not a big fan of salads for most of the year, but when it hot and steamy outside during the summer, salads are what I turn to the most. They’re refreshing, cooling, amazingly healthy and don’t require much effort to assemble. I particularly enjoy creating and experimenting with salad ingredients as I am …

BC Blueberry Week

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We are in the height of blueberry season right now in BC and I just can’t get enough of these delicious sweet berries.  I actually enjoy blueberries so much that I bought not one, but TWO five-pound boxes of these sweet little berries to indulge in before the season is over! I know…it’s a lot of blueberries… but they are just so delicious and are full of antioxidants!  I put them in everything these past few weeks and while doing so, I tested out a few recipes that I am going to be sharing with you this week on my blog! All of these recipes feature local and fresh BC Blueberries, so rightfully, I’m calling this week #BCBlueberryWeek! Read on down below to find out all you need to know about BC Blueberries! And stay tuned this week for tons of delicious blueberry recipes! Fresh blueberries at Arbor Blueberry Farm BC Blueberries, an Overview While blueberries are native to North America, I would have to say the British Columbia grows the best blueberries in the whole world. …

Steak Salad with Roasted Cherry Tomato Vinaigrette

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Summer is the best time of the year to eat the many varieties of tomatoes that are out there-whether they are cherry tomatoes, beefsteak, heirloom, zebra… the list goes on and on! Those sweet, juicy, plump colourful gems taste absolutely delicious after ripening outside under the sun. This gives them a deep and rich tomato flavour and makes them taste incredibly sweet. I also love the texture of tomatoes that have been grown in the summer as they are juicy and yet still firm and not ‘mealy’ like the tomatoes that you get during the winter! While I can go on and on about the reasons why I love tomatoes and tell you about all the different varieties that are available, I will save that for a later post. For now, I would like to share a delicious recipe that uses my favourite tomatoes of the season: cherry tomatoes. They pack an incredibly sweet punch (for a tomato, that is) and just burst open with flavourful juices once you pop them in your mouth. If …