July 2016 - Week 2

Monday 11th to Sunday 17th July 2016

Monday Sam had a meeting in Sliema. I spent the time shopping – I bought two more cook books! Malta is odd with prices. A food magazine can cost more than €10 but you can buy cook books for €6. Go figure! Anyway, I generally avoid celebrity chef cook books like the plague because they seem to be more about making money for the celebs than finding genuinely new recipe ideas. But I find some real gem recipes in specialist cook books that focus on one particular cuisine or food group. Actually, what I really enjoy is the inspiration and ideas that I can get from reading such cook books. I’m not sure there is anything like a new recipe these days – they are all variations on a theme – but even subtle variations can make for wonderful new dishes.

We find ourselves increasingly drawn towards a vegetarian diet. It’s not that we are going to give up meat and chicken but rather that they will become more the exception rather than the rule. We have fantastic fruits and vegetables here year round so it’s not surprising. For dinner Sam cooked us a delicious starter of baked figs with feta, pancetta and pine nuts followed by stuffed peppers. That’s a perfect example – sweet peppers, red onions, courgettes, aubergines, figs, pine nuts, feta, garlic, basil – food heaven.

Tuesday I made a Provencal bean stew with pinto beans, sweet peppers, onions and tomatoes flavoured with rosemary, basil, thyme and chilli. It was delicious and I will put the recipe on my food blog.

Wednesday Sam had a marathon hairdo – 3 ½ hours! For dinner we had left over Provencal bean stew with baked sweet potatoes.

Thursday Sam had art class in the morning. I shopped and worked. We found a small fish on our terrace! Presumably some passing bird dropped it there. In the evening we met friends in Valletta for excellent but ridiculously overpriced ice creams and then went to see a local production of Rock of Ages. It was great fun, if somewhat deafening! We had to eat dinner early so Sam had half a pizza and I had an apple and a banana which continued the healthy vegetarian eating theme.

Friday we went to Eatetna for cappuccinos and cakes. It is a Sicilian coffee shop in Qawra and their English is even worse than our Italian! But they have coffee and cakes to die for and though we haven’t tried it yet, their ice cream looks amazing. Sam’s birthday weekend starts here! We drove on to Sherries Garden Centre where I bought Sam an orchid for her birthday. Then it was on to Steve’s to buy some fresh fruit and vegetables.

I had planned to make a vegetarian Moussaka for dinner but the aubergines weren’t good. The ones I had bought from Scotts were full of seeds and Steve didn’t have anything decent. Anyway, I had already cooked lentils with onions, garlic, celery and tomatoes and flavoured them with cinnamon and oregano – you can’t get much more Greek than that. So, in the absence of aubergines, I made a Greek lasagne instead and it was delicious. I should mention that for some strange reason Sam pronounces aubergine “oobergine” and even she can’t explain why!

Saturday was Sam’s birthday and, I have to say, it was one of life’s great days. After a lazy start we drove over to Armier Bay and had a late breakfast/lunch of bruschette and cappuccini. They were fantastic, as always. The weather was perfect for what we wanted. A gale blew up the day before and the still-dying winds were enough to put most people off so we had the place virtually to ourselves. A warm, cloudless blue sky, a turquoise sea covered in white caps and the sounds of the waves meeting the shore – what more could you ask? We walked across to Little Armier Bay and back; apart from a couple of distant sunbathers, we were like the Omega children, all but alone.

For dinner we went to Lovage which was excellent. Rabbit ravioli followed by a rib eye steak for Sam. Scallop and prawn ravioli with a fish bisque followed by a fillet steak with gorgonzola sauce for me. When we fall off the vegetarian wagon, we sure do it in style!

Sunday we had a totally lazy day chilling, reading, sunbathing and watching TV. For dinner we had left over Greek lasagne.