Ever since hearing about cooking a chicken by using bricks, I was intrigued about it and after seeing it on a cooking show a few weeks ago I decided that it was time to try it myself. The first thing that I needed to do was get some bricks and picked up a number of them at my local Home Depot.

The theory behind cooking chicken with bricks is that you start with the skin side down and the bricks on top, applying constant pressure to the chicken and the pan. The end result is that the entire chicken skin browns to a perfectly crispy colour and the rest of the cooking occurs in the oven in the second stage of the cooking.

What results when you remove the chicken from the oven is the most moist chicken that you have ever tasted. The marinade that the chicken basted in overnight imparts just a slight garlic and herb taste that perfectly compliments the crispy texture.

If you’re panning on having guests over for dinner and are looking for a unique way to prepare a chicken, the Chicken under a Brick recipe adds a distinctive way of doing so that is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

You can see the recipe for Chicken under a Brick here.

Baden

Nonetheless, I’m still surprised that we’re continuing to be able to harvest vegetables which are growing in our back yard garden that we started in the spring time (see my previous article).

Many of the vegetables that we have been able to eat have been much smaller than those that you get in the store and we believe that for next year’s plantings we will probably add some fertilizer to the pots that we didn’t do this year. Several of our friends who are more experienced in these matters have given us advice to help increase our bounty for next year.

By far the most productive of all of the vegetables that we have grown have been the tomatoes. Growing in a single round pot about 24 inches in diameter, we have easily harvested about 50-60 tomatoes (of various sizes) and there are probably about 25 more still on the vine in different stages of ripeness. Without a doubt, planting the tomatoes has been a great idea and without exception, each one of the tomatoes has been sweet and superior in every way to the ones that we normally would buy in a store.

One of the lesser vegetables that we have harvested from our garden have been potatoes. In particular, our friends Tony and Anna provided us with some German All-Blue potatoes (actually more of a purple colour) to plant in the spring and only in the past few weeks have any of them been ready to eat. Without exception they have all been very small (usually about 1-2 inches in size) but the blue potatoes offer a unique taste that are quite different from the normal russet, red or yellow varieties normally found in stores here. We had about 10 of these blue potatoes and this morning Barb used them all in making our breakfast served with eggs and accompanied with some fresh fruit.

Within a few weeks we will probably be spending a weekend going through each of our pots and emptying them out for the winter. No doubt we will be spending the months during winter time planning what we will be planting in the spring time again. Having gotten used to home grown vegetables for the past few months it will be tough having to go back to the ones from the stores again.

Baden

While it’s been almost ten days since I returned home from Germany, I find that it always seems much longer and that my memories of just being in Europe a week and a half ago are quickly being pushed into the background of my mind by the day to day demands of life.

I think that part of this is the fact that with us vacationing in Europe fairly regularly (this Germany trip my 8th visit in 12 years), that many aspects of Europe are becoming less and less foreign to us. As a result, when we come home it’s not so much of a feeling that we have been on a trip of a lifetime but more have visited a second home for a short time. Europe will continue to play a large part in our future vacation plans but for the next two years we have plans to explore some different parts of the world so it may be a few years before we return back again.

I arrived home from Germany on a Friday which in itself is quite unusual (as I usually arrive much closer to getting back to work) and even unusual in that it was a long weekend so I had almost four full days to recover before returning back to work. But as everyone knows there’s nothing like returning back to work to bring the harsh reality that the vacation is truly over just like splashing cold water on your face.

Since the weather was so good last weekend when I returned back to Vancouver, Barb and I decided that we both wanted to spend some time together (a commodity in precious short supply in the previous four weeks with both of us doing our separate vacations) so we decided to make a day of going downtown to walk around the seawall around Coal Harbour.

Coal Harbour is on the north side of downtown Vancouver just east of Stanley Park and like Yaletown, is one of the relatively new areas being built up in the downtown area. Since Barb and I had made several trips to Yaletown during the summer and walked around the False Creek side of the seawall many times, we decided to walk along the north side by Coal Harbour for a change.

Starting just east of Stanley Park, the seawall at Coal Harbour stretches for several kilometres up to Canada Place. There were still several cruise ships in port when we walked by Canada Place last weekend but in a few weeks they will have all moved south for the season until next spring.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the walk along the Coal Harbour seawall compared the False Creek side is the spectacular view of the mountains on the North Vancouver side across Burrard Inlet. On a sunny day like last Saturday, the view is really hard to beat and reminds me of why so many people from around the world that we talk to tell me that they would love to visit Vancouver.

Baden

Before I continue, if you’re in the dark as to what My SAP is all about, you can get the background on it on my previous post on the subject.

As it turns out, I was able to collect a record 4 more SAP pictures from the Frankfurt airport which I’ve added to my SAP collection.

Baden