the flag doesn't come down until you finish the leftovers

Canada Day was too hot for anything more than sitting in the shade with a cool drink and waiting for dinner time to roll around. How's this for timing - as if by magic, the July issue of Canadian Living magazine arrived in our mail box mid morning. As usual, a bit late to try out any of the holiday recipes, but very welcome nonetheless. You can't be all that picky when subscribing to magazines from oversease. They show up when they want to and there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes I'm amazed they get here at all.




We started with these smoked salmon and marinated red onion (so good!) appetizers.




Here are some skewered vegetables ready to be thrown on the grill




And everybody's favourite - potato salad. Bacon, hard boiled eggs, red onion, dill pickles, chives, parsley and mayo.




The ribs were done in two steps, first dry rubbed and oven baked and then tossed with a beer-based barbeque sauce and finished on the grill. The original recipe is for beef ribs. I used pork because, you know, we live in Germany. I don't know that I'd use this recipe again. It was good enough, but I had to doctor it up a little to get it to taste the way I thought it should taste.




Dessert was a giant fruit salad


The stars of the show were strawberries from two villages away, yellow cherries from the neighbour's tree and raspberries from our very own garden

In British Columbia, where I'm from, summer is all about locally grown fruit, especially the just-picked berries you can buy at roadside stands. This cake kind of reminded me of that. No recipe, really. The filling is cream cheese, yogurt, sugar, pureed berries and gelatin.




Well, the leftovers are long gone so I guess we can take the flag down for another year.

But before I do that, I have to tell you about the conversation our German neighbour H and I had on Friday.

H: (pointing to the Canadian flag) Hey, was war das für ein Tag gestern? (Hey, what day was it yesterday?)

Me: Es war eigentlich Mittwoch, nicht gestern. Canada Day. Kanada Tag. (Actually, it was Wednesday, not yesterday.)

H: Ahh, Kanada, keiner da! Ha ha ha! (Ahh, Canada, no one's there!)

Me: Ha ha, sehr lustig (because this is a standard German joke that I've heard a million times). Ja, und Sonnabend feiern die Amerikaner den Unabhängigkeitstag. (Ha ha, very funny. Yeah, and on Saturday the Americans celebrate Independence Day.)

H: Ach, ja, richtig. Und die Kanadier feiern dann mit, oder? (Oh yes, that's right. And the Canadians celebrate along with them, right?)

Me: Emm, nein, aber... (umm, no, but...)

He's been living beside us for fourteen years now and I swear he'll never get it. Oh well.

But hold on a second, this year I DID happen to spend the fourth of July with a couple of fabulous Americans and their loved ones. More about that in my next post.