Lavender and Lovage – Featured Friday

Hello Happy Friday!!!! As you are reading today’s feature, this Momma will be laid up in bed recovering from surgery. A surgery I’ve waited 10+ years for (more on that later) so I want to introduce and talk to you about another #SundaySupper friend of mine! Karen blogs over at Lavender & Lovage! Welcome Karen, I’m so happy to feature you today, I had so much fun scrolling through your blog this past week, I was totally prepared and ahead of schedule as I got ready for my surgery so we actually had your dish for dinner a few weeks ago!

Let me tell you a little about Karen! She has quite the Bio on her page. Click Here to check out her full version about herself but I’ll try to sum it up for you! She was born in South Africa and was brought up in rural Northumbria. She lived in an old stone cottage and her earliest memories of food was picking hazelnuts and foraging for wild herbs and garlic with her grandmother for her famous stew pot. The milk was delivered by the farmer, all the fruits and vegetables were home-grown and their eggs came straight from their hens. Her love of food obviously came very early and from her grandmother. She fondly recalls the home-made pies, scones, preserves, pickles and bread, that no one ever left the table hungry and cooking was seasonal, the seasons were marked the year by feasts and celebrations. Now that’s my kind of upbringing! Wow. Karen has always been passionate about seasonal food and local produce, she is attempting to highlight and remedy with her writing because she is so saddened that many of our British feasts and festivals are being forgotten. Now that is passion in my eyes girl!

Karen shares her time between North Yorkshire and South West France, where she devotes more of her time to food writing, food styling, blogging and photography. I can attest to her photography, it’s amazing, her pictures give me hope that when I have more time on my hands, when my children are older, if I ever have more time on my hands that I can improve my food photography! Karen is a wife and mother and is also working on a writing a cookbook. The book will be based on her research into British food, recipes, customs and traditions. All of the recipes will be her own, based on ancient and old recipes/texts, and they are triple tested by herself in her Cookery School in the South West of France. WOW. I hope I can get a hold of this cookbook when it comes out Karen!

Aren’t you just dying to know what recipe of Karen’s I made?? I know you are by now! Well first let me talk about a few other things, Karen has a whole section on Preserves, chutneys, jams, spice mixes oh my! I can’t wait to check out this section more when I have time. I also love love her Seasonal Recipe section, something about how each season brings out certain dishes to us, I really love that! Here is a picture of Karen’s Apple and Ginger Jam – First Preserves by Vivian Lloyd. How delish does that look?!

I chose one of her 5:2 Diet Recipes, I had never heard of this Diet Fad before, I have to admit I had to Google it to see what it was all about. The diet specifies a low-calorie consumption (sometimes described as “fasting”) for two days a week, which should not be consecutive, but allows normal eating for the other five days. The diet is claimed to promote weight loss and to have several beneficial effects on health, according to the UK National Health Service. Anyways, she has a whole recipe selection on it. I plan on pinning away this week because I want to start eating cleaner once I recover from my surgery. Trust me, check it out, these dishes do NOT look like they are low in anything!!!!!

So I ended up making Karen’t  Cajun Chicken Kebab with Spiced Yogurt Dip. Yummy!!! I have to tell you right away that my picky picky little girl ate this chicken!! I was so happy!! I made these into actual Kebab’s, I baked them in the oven then popped them on a saute pan to give that grilled feeling, I can’t wait to try these during the summer when I can actually throw them on the grill, and the dipping sauce, awesome! Something about having a dipping sauce on the side that just does it for this Momma!

I made the marinade earlier in the day and let the chicken sit in a zip lock bag, easy throw away and one less dish to wash!

Then when it was time to eat I took the chicken out and placed it in a tinfoil lined baking dish, I originally was going to saute these however my husband was late coming home from work due to traffic and my son was a big cranky.

It was easier to pop them in the oven, attend to him, then when hubs got home I stuck them on sticks and sautéed them a bit to give it that “grilled” feeling.

Sometimes you just have to improvise to get dinner on the table because you just never know what the day is going to bring! Well we made do and this dish turned out wonderful! It had a fantastic taste to it with a hint of spice!

I served mine with broccoli and my Smashed Potatoes, probably not the healthy version Karen recommends, I get that, normally I’d skip the potatoes but my girl loves them. Plus I had the leftovers in a whole wheat pita pocket with the lettuce and tomato all week!! Aren’t I lucky!

Look at my happy girl, you have no idea what a big deal this is to me, she eats nothing but Mac N Cheese, Pasta and grilled cheese so I was so ecstatic when she ate just about a whole skew of chicken!!

Now you have to check out the recipe because you will be blown away with what the nutritional value is. That alone made me want to whip this up! I can’t wait to make some more of Karen’s low-calorie meals! Thank you so much for Co-Hosting with me this week Karen and for allowing me to get to know you and Lavender and Lovage! To connect with Karen go NOW!!:

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