Nice summer vegetable salad.

Last night I put my foot down. Because you see, my dad loves meat, and loves pasta, and loves fatty things, and, I do to, but there's a limit to how many steaks you can eat in a row you know? So last night I decided to make a fest of vegetables and it was delicious, but also it felt great !

 Aubergines (from the garden ;) ) thinly sliced and lade on aluminium foil with olive oil in the oven at 220 °C.

 Lettuce (from the garden ;) ) torn into a bowl.

 steamed beans (green beans and mange tout, not from the garden :( )

Chopped tomatoes (from the garden ;) )

 Basil, oh how I love thee !

Note : in salads like this one, I like to use herbs, for example basil, as if they were a lettuce leaf, i.e about the same quantity of basil and lettuce.

 Thinly chopped spring onions (not from the garden :( )

 A simple vinaigrette made with olive oil, wine vinegar, salt, pepper and piment d'espelette.

 Parmesan.

Mix it all together

 Tada !

Yummy, even Dad had to admit it was delicious.

Quick side vegetables

Today is even sunnier, it's 16h10 here in france and it's 37°C.
For lunch my dad cooked some lamb so I just quickly made a side of carrots, onions, and courgettes cut in ribbons and cooked in a wok with olive oil, salt, pepper, piment d'espelette and thyme.

Feel-good crêpes

Yesterday was a very nice sunny day ....

Unfortunately my Dad didn't have a very good day, so I decided to cheer him up ! And what's the number 1 food that is sure to put anybody in a good mood ? 

Well crêpes of course !

 You start by folding together 250g of flour and 25cl of milk.

 Then you had 3 eggs beaten in an omelette.

 Then you add 2 table spoons of melted butter, 2 table spoons of sugar and 1/2 a tea spoon of salt.



By the way you must mix it vigorously and for a long time during each step to avoid what we call "grumeaux", which are lumps in the batter.

 Then add 1 table spoon of orange blossom for the flavor that sends you straight back to your childhood (well that's what it does for me anyway ;p )

 Finally slowly stir add 25cl of milk until the batter is runny but not liquid.

Now for the fun part ...

 Take a ladle of batter and pour it in a steaming hot pan ( it must be really hot and add a bit of melted butter on it before with a brush).

You'll know it's time to flip them over when the edges turn brown.

Tadaaaa !

Yum, it's always the big question of "how many did you manage to make with the batter", this time it was 12 :).

 Then it's time to eat it, I prepared a few things to put on them :
Fruit (peaches here), chocolate paste (i mixed together unsweetened coca powder and boiling water, it's very bitter but delicious), and another chocolate paste with bourbon, vanilla sugar, lemon and jams.

And down to the garden we go !

Arriving in Bordeaux

Monday, July 14th i.e. the french national day, I travelled on the train to go to my father's house ( with said father) in a little town near Bordeaux. It's a very typical country house with a big garden, my favorite part is the "potager" which is the vegetable garden. We arrived and there were many courgettes ready to be eaten. But most importantly, there are 4 basil plants, and basil just happens to be my favorite  herb ;).
So for dinner, we hadn't done any shopping yet so I made pasta, it's sort of the tradition to eat pasta the first night because there's never anything else to eat.
I cooked the courgettes in a pan, and I made a "pesto" (not really because there was no parmesan or pine nuts in the fridge) by mixing basil leaves, garlic and olive oil.

 No one was ready to have dinner but the pasta was cooked, so I ran some cold water over it to stop it from cooking and saved some of the water the pasta had cooked in.
Then when dinner time arrived, I mixed together the courgettes, the pesto, the pasta and the cooking water all in a pan to heat it up a bit.

And it was ready to be taken down to the garden for dinner.

YUMSTERS

Afterwards we just had some nice mint and verbena infusion.

Then we left to go watch the fireworks ... :)

Cabbage madness

Let us continue with the tales of my holidays...
So while I was in Paris juicing it up, I still had to find a way to use up the rest of the cabbage, I pretty much ate it at every meal !
For the first dinner, I cooked some cabbage and served it with smoked salmon and green apples (and a little drizzle of lemon juice)

The next day, I mixed some cooked cabbage with rice and added chopped tomatoes, ham and cheese, with a bit of pepper (no salt).

It was actually delicious, I didn't think I could enjoy cabbage as much as I did during the few days that I stayed in Paris.

Juice dance

In order for you to understand what I did in Paris after I returned from Italy, I need to take you back to 2013... (i.e. last year)
Paris had been invaded by a man that already ruled over North America. He called himself Juice, Healthy Juice.
Yes, it was all about the healthy juices : made from all sorts of green cabbages and other vegetables mixed with different fruit, these potions all contained different minerals and vitamins essential for our well-being and survival.
I loved these juices, well to be honest I always got the "easy" ones, made from lots of different fruit and NO vegetables, except the occasional carrot. Basically I liked my juices sweet, no I loved them ! I would force my mum to go to this restaurant where they made these glasses of magic, and I would go on and on about them, so much so that she bought me a juicer for christmas.
At first I used it all the time, every day I would have a home made juice. But my mum was tired of buying lots of fresh fruit that I wouldn't always finish and I hated cleaning this huge machine that, of course, doesn't go in the dishwasher. So it ended up in a cupboard...
Except when I came back from my trip in Italy, after having eaten pasta, pizza and cream for 7 days, I felt like having a cure of vegetables. So we bought loads of fresh ones and I decided to give the juicer another go, and I'm glad. It turns out vegetable juices are delicious, and after all that grease and starch I can tell you it really hit the spot, it felt amazing.
So here's what I did :
My very first juice contained cabbage, cucumber and apple.

 Here's what I do to save the apple in the fridge to avoid it going brown.

 And this for the remaining leaves of cabbage.

















After cutting all the veg:

Juice the hard ones...

Here's the monster in the flesh : 

 Then the soft ones...

I put ice cubes sand lemon juice in a big glass.

I add salt and pepper.

 The wonderful spoon to stir if you're cool like me and don't have the proper utensils...

As a snack to go with the juice i spread some cream cheese and tomato concentrate on a rice cracker :

Voilà ! 

I continued my juice making the next day with an apricot, apple and carrot juice : yum.

Basically you just put vegetables and fruit in the juicer and enjoy !