Home Grown Garlic

Garlic is wonderful. It's delicious and, as an added bonus, totally easy to grow. Last fall, I'd planted 7 cloves in my garden. This spring, braving the frosty nights and hot southern exposure, they popped up and started growing like mad. I harvested the scapes about a month ago and made garlic scape pesto (better than basil based pesto any day). And now, just two weeks into July, I've harvested the little beauties, gave two heads to my grandmother and now am trying to save at least a few heads to plant this fall.

Now I don't know if I'm planting the garlic properly. My uncle plants the whole head in and not just one clove like I did. Also, home grown garlic tends to be bigger than what I've got. I'm not complaining but next year there will have to be some fin tuning and maybe a bit more experimentation. For now I'm just happy with the results.

Iced Coffee

This is just a great picture of the clouds which form in iced coffee when you pour the cream in. Mmmmmm...

Seared scallops and ravioli in a peas, mint and feta salad

I've been working in the bush this summer. I'm gone for 5 days straight and so when I get home I barely have time to catch up with the world and then I'm gone again. The job, though excessively demanding physically, wouldn't be so bad if I could be home at night. Thankfully I only have a week of this to go.

When I do get home I like to treat myself and my fiancé to good food. She's also working very hard this summer so we really do need some time to focus on living the life we want to live and not one centred around work, work, work. That's why I prepared this meal. That and because I was seriously craving to make something delicious.

This dish is a combination of four different elements:

1) sea scallops seared in a very hot pan till they're crispy on the outside and moist on the inside

2) purchased cheese ravioli

3) a salad of sweet peas, radishes and mint from my garden with red onions and a mustard seed, red wine vinegar and olive oil dressing

4) a sprinkle of feta cheese on top of everything

Since it's pretty hot here recently I wanted to serve this dish warm. So I let the ravioli cool down after they'd boiled, mixed it in with the salad which had been getting happy in the fridge and then topped each bowl with the seared scallops sprinkled with feta cheese. The mint sprig is just to make it all pretty.

All in all, this was a great dish, very fresh and totally satisfying.

P.S. we have a new camera which, as you can see, takes amazing picture (Sony A55)