Summer brings colour; plump ruby tomatoes, earthy purple beets and jewel-like green peas. And that’s only the salad bowl….
The above rainbow of colour is smoked mackerel salad with beetroot, potatoes, peas, tomatoes, olives and egg with a vinaigrette dressing.
A simple chickpea salad also managed to transmogrify itself into a vibrant explosion of purple and orange.
By the way, don’t you just love the deformed Siamese twin carrot on the top? I didn’t eat it of course, I’m not a complete monster.
Anyway, the colour of summer stretches much further than a salad, even further than the English countryside, which is at this very moment oozing emeralds and sapphires. In fact, for me the colour of summer will be the rich red velvet of a gondola, the muted jade of a canal and the fire of a Venetian sunset. Yes, I have done it. I’ve found a family to au pair for who live in Venice and I start next week. Although, I must be honest, I’ll only be in Venezia for a few days before we head off to mountains in the North West of Italy.
This is in Valle D’aosta, the place I’ll be staying. If this vista doesn’t shout out ‘The Hills Are Alive!’ to you, then I don’t know what would. What’s more, I’ll only be away for a month, the right amount of time to eat enough pasta and gelato to get comfortably round, without verging on the obese.
So like last year, this summer is shaping up to be a very colourful one; from beetroot to snow-capped mountains, colour is oozing out of every day.
To The Table 
The only down side is that I have to start to cook again!!
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