Saturday, January 2, 2010

Qualicum and the Beach and More Seafood


Hello everyone! So here I am, finally catching up on all the posts I've missed out on in the past little while! After Parksville we headed to my Grandma's house on Christmas Eve, and there is no wireless at her house! Then we headed to Seattle where the hotel conveniently had the cord type of internet (i apologize for my lack of tech-y knowledge) which did not work out well with my Macbook Air. Anyways I am home again and have a lot of post catching up to do! I think the way I'm going to do this is just do a post for each day that I missed out on posting about, instead of one giant post...that would be just tooo large (I do have to fit a whole Christmas dinner post in here)! So here is the last full day of Parksville!

This day started out with a nice hearty breakfast...pie and ice cream. Okay, maybe not so hearty. But delicious none the less. Every once and a while I absolutely love to just have a piece of cake or pie for breakfast!





After breakfast a few of us Flanagans headed just a little up island to Qualicum where we perused some antique stores and us girls took a few pictures!





So many pretty and interesting things.





Our little adventure really worked up an appetite though so it was back to the condo after Qualicum to have some delicious split pea soup made by Aunty Daphne. With this I had a rice cracker with some yummy home-made hummus spread on it!





After lunch we lounged around watching the Jamie Oliver marathon that was on the food network that day for quite a while. We had checked the tide chart that day, and low tide was at about 4 PM, which unfortunately was close to dusk! But we trekked down to the beach regardless, and it was so beautiful!

Here is Chloaye looking stunning on the beach!






It felt so surreal walking around the beach with the tide out and the night approaching, it was a little bit foggy too...I felt like I was in a dream!





When it got dark we headed back up to our cozy little place where I cooked up some dinner. Dinner this night was just a simple but tasty pasta with shrimp. As the pasta boiled I cooked the shrimp in a little butter and garlic, and when they were done I set them aside. Then I made a simple garlic, butter and white wine sauce which I poured onto the pasta in the pot when it was done!





Mom made this DELICIOUS "salad" from the Hippie Gourmet which was a big hit!





Here is the recipe copied exactly from the Hippie Gourmet cookbook!

This isn't your usual eggplant salad, made from those big, bitter eggplants that look like some kind of giant purple monster's pod. Instead it uses slim, long, graceful Asian eggplants. If your eggplant is shaped like a cucumber, you've found the right vegetable.

2 Asian eggplants
2 large tomatoes, sliced as thin as you can
2 tablespoons chopped white onion
6 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
5 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons vinegar of your choice
salt and pepper, to taste
large leaf of romaine or several endive leaves, for serving
greek olives or sliced radish, for garnish

Preheat the broiler.
Slice the eggplants in half lengthwise and broil until soft, approximately 10 minutes per side. Be sure they're cooked through.
Let them cool, then peel off the skin and discard it.
Chop the eggplant into bite sized chunks.
Mix the chopped eggplant, tomatoes, onion, parsley, oil, and vinegar.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serve on either a large romaine lettuce leaf or several endive leaves, garnishing with Greek olives or sliced radishes.

Mom served them on the endive leaves, which was delicious! Also, a change she made to the recipe was that she added the greek olives and radishes right into the mix...which was a good choice!





And of course there was wine going around the table before and at dinner!





It's so much easier to do a "serve yourself" dinner for  more than a couple people...so that is how we ate the whole time in Parksville. Here's Tate plating up her pasta!





Here is my plate! Dinner turned out very yummy.





Pasta with simple white wine and butter to dress it is my favorite sometimes. It is so much lighter than rich, creamy sauces...and always delicious with all types of seafood (with clams is my favorite).





xoxo

Mariel

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