Category Lunch

Bring an empty picnic basket to Georgetown’s Mill Street Cheese Market and load up with a moveable feast of well-crafted, artisanal cheese and other goodies.

We chose a delicious Scottish Claret Cheddar (surprisingly creamy with fruity red wine notes), a luxurious Grand Crème Delin triple cream from France, and a decadent St. Agur (our true-blue friend that never fails to please). Store-made baguette crisps are the perfect foil. Melt-in-your-mouth, spicy Mennonite summer sausage and pickled hot-n-sweet cherry peppers balance the richness of the cheeses. And to refresh, the French version of lemonade, a sparking limonade by Rième. On your way, pick up some seasonal fruit from a local farm market (Alisons’ Farm Market or Georgetown Farmers’ Market).

Find your favourite secluded spot – perhaps in a vintage orchard or at the edge of a babbling creek. Spread out and then lose yourself in midsummer’s magic: gentle breezes, chirping crickets, happy butterflies, perhaps a glimpse of a timid deer. Summer celebrated in one afternoon, a lifetime of love in one moment.

My favourite lunch these days features Longo’s already prepared rapini (broccoli rabe). Just warm up the rapini, add poached eggs, canned chickpeas, tomatoes, and a squirt of fresh lemon juice.

As a vegetable, rapini does a great job of helping me reach both my fibre and protein daily targets, not to mention all of the other health benefits of rapini. This entire plate packed in 28.6 grams of protein and 14.6 grams of fibre at only 406 calories. Lunch – fast, healthy, done. Olive it!

Longo’s already prepared rapini makes a great base for a fast and healthy lunch.

A few snapshots of a wonderful fall weekend I spent with friends,

on a beautiful farm near Lake Erie, Ontario.

And a recipe for an easy nibble, perfect for sharing with your own treasured friends this winter.

My contribution to the evening was my take on tartine: little open-faced French sandwiches that I layered with fruit and cheese, sprinkled with nuts and thyme, and drizzled with honey.

Photo thanks to Eleonora Gattesco Roberts gattescohouse.com

We arrived at the farmhouse late so I threw the tartines together too quickly and sloppily as you can see in the photo. But they tasted delicious – feel free to be as sloppy or as artful as time permits. Serve with a salad for lunch or as a substantial snack to share with a glass of wine.

A few tips:

• Ask your bakery to slice your baguette for you (the slices will be uniform thickness).
• Prep all your ingredients ahead (except for the fruit) and store separately in airtight containers.
• For larger crowds, double the recipe and make a variety, using all cheese and fruit listed. Stick with one type of fruit and cheese per tartine.
• Because I knew I would be short on prep time when arriving at the farm, I used some pre-sliced cheese: Les Tranches Cremeuses des Pays de Loire (Coeur de Lion, France) as brie/camembert.

Fall Fruit & Cheese Tartine with Honey Drizzle

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 recipe of Toasted Baguette Crisps (recipe below)
170 g to 200 g of your choice of thinly sliced, good quality cheddar, brie, camembert, or soft ripened goat cheese
2 pears or 2 apples or one of each
¼ cup shelled and roughly chopped, raw walnuts or pistachios or a combination of both
¼ cup fresh thyme leaves (removed from their stems) plus extra thyme sprigs for garnish
Freshly ground black pepper
Your best honey for drizzling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Arrange baguette crisps in a single layer on baking sheet.
2. Quarter, core, and thinly slice fruit.
3. Top each baguette crisp with cheese and fruit of choice, in alternating, peek-a-boo layers (from two to four layers total, depending on your quantity of slices). Sprinkle with nuts, thyme leaves, and black pepper.
4. Bake for a couple of minutes, just until cheese melts. Remove from oven, transfer carefully to serving platter.
5. Drizzle with honey. Garnish platter with extra thyme sprigs. Serve warm. Gather your friends around, tuck in, and enjoy.

Toasted Baguette Crisps

Ingredients:

1 baguette, sliced into thin rounds (about 1 cm thick)
Olive oil for brushing
Sea salt for sprinkling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Brush each slice lightly with olive oil. Spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet.
2. Toast about 3 minutes, just until slices are beginning to become golden at the edges.
3. Sprinkle very lightly with fine sea salt. Cool. Store in an airtight container until ready to use.

I have a favourite little spot I like to wander off to come summertime. I didn’t even know it existed until my friends brought me there one happy afternoon. Glen Williams is a peaceful little hamlet hidden amongst the trees of the meandering Credit River Valley, in the outskirts of Georgetown. The tree-lined street is dotted with just a handful of heritage buildings and homes. It is so quiet you can hear the crickets chirping.

Walk onto the porch of the Glen Oven Café and the regulars give you a nod as if to agree “yep, there is something so serene about this place”. Feel welcome in a modest but charming interior filled with vintage fine china tea cups, little British flags, a few tables, a couple of arm chairs, and a little wood stove.

Order at the counter. Choose from quiche, salad, soup, or sandwiches – all lovingly made from scratch (even the bread) with quality, wholesome ingredients. Everything I have tried has been delicious. My favourite is the Roasted Veggie sandwich: sweet potato, parsnip, red peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and red onion all roasted until tender and slightly caramelized then piled on billowing homemade bread spread with creamy chèvre.

Buy a loaf of bread to take home. This is the home of the Hearty Seed Bread, my son’s favourite flax seed bread; I have to hide it or he will polish off the whole loaf in one day. My friend loves the Whole Wheat Muesli Bread, a breakfast bread with raisins, cranberries, walnuts, and sunflower seeds. Don’t even try to resist the baking displayed in the counter – it is definitely worth giving into. I love the Lemon Squares the most: rich, buttery shortbread crust covered with a luscious layer of tart lemon filling.

Order tea: a pot and a delightful vintage tea cup will arrive at your table with the rest of your order.

Eat inside or better yet, relax in the shade of the big trees on the outdoor porch. Leaves dancing in the gentle breeze on a warm, sunny day – it just feels so summery, so carefree.

Allow enough time to poke in the antique book shop (Reeve & Clarke Antiquarian), marvel at the glassblowing (Glen Williams Glass), and shop for one-of-a-kind art by Canadian artists (Williams Mill Visual Art Centre), or get lost in booth after booth of vintage treasures at the Beaumont Mill Antiques & Collectibles Market. A stroll beside the tranquil Credit River is always good for the soul (Glen Williams Park).

The Glen Oven Café has a second location in historic downtown Georgetown, The Glen Oven Tea Room. It offers lunch and afternoon tea. Catering available.

The cats are away so this mouse spent a busy afternoon testing recipes. After, I slipped out on to the patio (leaving my kitchen disaster behind me) and treated myself to a simple but sumptuous dinner: a Snow Crab Cake from Michael-Angelo’s grocery store. I like it cold on a bed of mixed greens with herbs, topped with chopped avocado, and squirted with lemon.

A dollop of cocktail sauce adds a classic, tangy bite. Amp up the wow factor even more with a hit of zingy cilantro pesto (Jamie Oliver’s Coriander and Cashew Pesto is brilliant) mixed with crème fraiche (both sold at Michael-Angelo’s) or mixed with creamy labneh (Middle Eastern strained yogurt that you can make yourself or purchase from Adonis).

Michael-Angelo’s Snow Crab Cakes are made in-store. A thin layer of light, crunchy breading embraces a generous mound of delicate, sweet crab flecked with minute pieces of sweet peppers and parsley.

Snow Crab Cakes are available year round in Michael-Angelo’s prepared food counter. The quality has been consistently great. The ladies behind the counter tell me that their Portuguese Cod Cakes are also delicious. Well done ladies!