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Yesterday, I paid a visit to Tim Dixon in North Tryon, PEI. Amongst other crops grown on the family farm, Tim grows a small acreage of asparagus which he markets to Island restaurants and also sells at the farm gate. Below is a photo of an asparagus spear just about ready to be harvested. Tim [...]
Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms! What mom doesn’t like to be pampered on Mother’s Day and what says pampering more than breakfast in bed! Dress up an ordinary bed tray with a lovely napkin or pretty placemat and prepare a scrumptious breakfast for Mom. The Menu: Start with a fresh fruit cup presented in [...]
I love afternoon tea. It’s such a peaceful, tranquil, and genteel experience. It’s the perfect way to celebrate Mother’s Day. Today, I share photos from my Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea. Enjoy! On the tea menu: Cucumber and tomato sandwiches, strawberry custard, shortbread, and rainbow marshmallow square. Tea Pairing: New English Teas’ English Afternoon Tea (Coven
The opening of the spring lobster season on Prince Edward Island is always an event. Fishing boats, laden with lobster traps like those in the photos below, depart wharves around the Island in the very early morning to set their traps, often going several miles out to sea. This is called “setting day” and it [...]
Okay, so my recipe is actually eight layers, but who is counting when the meal is as tasty as this one is! Seven-layer dinner (sometimes called “Shipwreck”) is really little more than a full dinner in a casserole and baked in the oven. I grew up (as I am sure many of you have) with [...]
For the third consecutive year, April has represented Burger Love on Prince Edward Island. Yes, that’s right, love of beef burgers! This year, restaurants across the Island paid a $600 entry fee to cover advertising and promotion costs to participate in the month-long celebration of Island beef. PEI Burger Love has certainly created a [...]
Spritz cookies are dainty-shaped cookies that are crisp and buttery. They are made by pushing soft cookie dough through a cookie press which is a cylinder fitted with a decorative disk that has patterned holes through which the dough is “squirted” or pressed into shapes. Typically, cookie presses come with many different decorative disks – [...]
I’m back! I took a brief break from my own food blog to do some guest blogging for PEI Burger Love, a month-long marketing campaign on PEI to support local PEI beef producers. I’ll tell you more about that in a future post. Because this is a month to promote beef on the Island, I [...]
Today, I am sharing my favorite recipe for Honey Garlic Spareribs. This is a recipe that has been used by my family for many years. Sometimes we serve the ribs with rice and other times with baked potato and a side vegetable. This evening, I served the ribs with turnip casserole and a variation of [...]
By now, you have probably concluded that I like afternoon teas! So, today, I share photos from my Easter Tea. Let’s begin with a stylized salad served in a hollowed-out cucumber cup. And, of course, the most logical tea sandwiches for Easter would be made with egg salad and garnished with carrot sticks. The little [...]
Every Spring, I freeze bags and bags of rhubarb for recipes to be made through the remainder of the year. I am always looking for new ways to serve this versatile vegetable. Living on an island on the East Coast of Canada, fish is readily available. Sometimes, I like to eat the fish plain, just [...]
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Today, I am sharing photos from my St. Patrick’s Day Afternoon Tea. I love this little square tablecloth and matching napkins. I bought them some years ago at the Blarney Castle on a visit to Ireland. It has been a tradition since to display this cloth on St. Patrick’s Day [...]
This is a meal that is so familiar to me that it never occurred to me that some don’t even know what a “boiled dinner” is. So, today, I am going to demystify and explain the “boiled dinner” as I know it. There are any number of meats that can be used to constitute a [...]
Well, for my Cookie of the Month for March, I tried to find out if there is a cookie recipe that traces its origins to Ireland or, alternatively, a cookie that is particularly popular on the Emerald Isle. However, I had no luck in tracking down any (maybe it was lack of Irish luck!). If [...]
There are so many ways to serve a sandwich other than just throwing two pieces of bread and some filling together. One of my favorite ways to serve sandwiches is to make them into panini. I bought a Bella panini grill a couple of years ago and I have certainly gotten use out of it. [...]
Well, it’s been another stormy day here on Prince Edward Island. Don’t know why but I have a tendency to want to make Belgian waffles on storm days. Maybe it’s because I have the time, or maybe it’s that I know I’d have the ingredients and don’t need to shop in order to make the [...]
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Be sure to use the occasion to show special appreciation for those you love. One of the most ultimate ways to pamper a loved one on any day (and not just on Valentine’s) is by preparing and serving him or her breakfast in bed. This is a very simple breakfast menu [...]
Today is Shrove Tuesday, often commonly referred to as “Pancake Day” or “Pancake Tuesday”. Shrove Tuesday always falls on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday which signifies the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period leading to Easter in the Christian calendar. In some denominations, Lent is a period of abstaining from certain things, which may include [...]
My choice of Cookie of the Month for February 2013 is the old-fashioned sugar cookie. These are one of the plainest cookies yet they have endured throughout time. These cookies are aptly named given the amount of sugar in them in proportion to the amounts of other ingredients. Despite the amount of sugar in most [...]
It’s time again for me to share another tablesetting with you. This time I was preparing for a casual dinner party for six and I was featuring Island-grown tulips in my centerpiece. I wanted to keep the tablesetting very simple and streamlined, unpretentious, and understated. But first, let’s go on a field trip to Vanco [...]
Today, I begin my new 2013 monthly series on my food blog. Once a month, I will be posting a recipe and photographs of a favourite cookie. To start, I will share my recipe for shortbread. There are so many recipes and versions of shortbread. This perfectly plain, delicate cookie attributes its origin to Scotland [...]
I am still experimenting with black garlic in recipes. If you have been following my postings, you will recall my January 12, 2013, entry using black garlic in a sauce over sea scallops. My latest culinary escapade finds it is a suitable flavouring for sauces for meat as well. Below you will find the recipe [...]
One year ago today my blog went live! It’s been a great year of cooking, baking, and traveling across the Island to meet local producers and write feature stories about the great food products they grow, fish, or produce. I have thoroughly enjoyed taking their products and creating recipes that feature them. It’s amazing the [...]
Ever heard of black garlic? What do you think of when you hear the term? Black garlic is not a variety of garlic grown. Rather, it is regular garlic bulbs that have gone through a fermentation process. Fermenting garlic to turn it into black garlic is truly food transformation. I say that because black garlic [...]
For the past few weeks, I have been sharing some of my tablescapes as well as table and afternoon tea settings. I will share one more afternoon tea setting before I return to my usual food stories and recipes. What better way to spend a snowy afternoon than having tea with friends. Living in northeastern [...]
Happy New Year, everyone! Today, I followed a New Year’s Day tradition in Prince Edward Island — attending several levées in Charlottetown. There were many of these events across the Island today. The list below is just a partial list of those in the Charlottetown-Cornwall-Stratford, PEI areas. One man told me that he had attended [...]
One of the most relaxing ways to spend an afternoon over the Christmas holiday season is with an afternoon tea. As someone who loves to bake, I always seem to “over-do” it on the baking front at Christmas! Living on an Island on Canada’s East Coast, we have ready access to lobster. I maintain there [...]
So, Christmas has come and gone. I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday. Today, I am going to share my third seasonal table setting with you. This is the one I used for Christmas Eve dinner. My dining table is not large but comfortably seats four and can accommodate six guests. To give an air [...]
Cupcakes, anyone? For this, my second tablescape of the Christmas season, I have opted to go with a more casual look, using everyday plain white dinnerware because it is not always necessary to have fine china in order to set a festive table. This setting would be quite suitable for weekday family dinners over the [...]
It’s no secret that I love setting beautiful tables! I genuinely believe it enhances a wonderful meal by providing the ambiance and it shows your guests that you put some thought and care into the dinner party. Christmas is a wonderful time to be creative (and a bit over the top) in extravagant table settings. [...]
This year seemed to be a particularly good year for growing pumpkins on the Island. Everywhere I looked I saw fields, bins, and wagons full of the bright orange pumpkins which are members of the gourd family. Funny how we can’t wait to display them on our doorsteps and in fall displays but, once [...]
Be sure to follow me on twitter @PEIBistro as, in the days leading up to Christmas, I will be posting Christmas gift ideas for the foodies on your list.
As we draw near to the end of harvest season, and before we embark on the busy Christmas season, I thought I would share some photographs from my Harvest Afternoon Tea. Happy Thanksgiving to our neighbors to the South who are celebrating the American Thanksgiving today (November 22, 2012). I like the rich colors [...]
