Is that title too pun-tastic? Guess what I had this afternoon!
But last night first- we went out for dinner to a steakhouse (yes not the first choice for a veggie but all my friends are meat eaters!) but they have a daily veggie special so I was hoping it would be something good. It was a lentil moussakka served with green beans, and it was lovely. It was a good evening all round.
This morning I woke up to grey skies, drizzle and cool air, so I decided to try the Rude Health porridge.
It was gooooooood! I have made a proper review page here. The apple flavour was lovely, and the bits of dates and apricots meant that each mouthful was different. Totally filling and perfect on a cold day. Great running fuel too 🙂
Today for my baking I fancied something like oatmeal raisin; my clif bars came from wiggle yay- So I sort of combined the flavours. I used the base of the Hummingbird oatmeal raisin cookie, but I subbed a few things. In place of the plain flour I used wholegrain spelt (gives such a lovely flavour, kind of nutty), and instead of raisins I used some plain chocolate chopped up, and a handful of walnuts and brazils chopped very finely.
Here they are baking in the oven:
They look so lovely and chunky and tasty- am looking forward to sunday tea tomorrow.
I am also making some sundried tomato bread to have with dinner later, so I might add in a picture.
EDIT- here is the bread waiting to go into the oven:
To make it I put 150g malthouse bread flour, 1tsp yeast, pinch of salt and pinch of sugar in a bowl. Then I added some sundried tomato paste and 90ml warm water. I kneaded it all together, and then added in about 4 chopped sundried tomatoes (I used the merchant gourmet ones). Then I put it in a bowl covered by a tea towel. After an hour of rising (approx) it went into the preheated oven (220Cish) for about 25 minutes.
Here it is fresh from the oven:
And here it is on my plate with some vegetable and bean bake:
Now to the brew-ming marvellous part. I tried some of my teapigs tea- this time it was Darjeeling Earl Grey.
This tea is also good (I expect nothing less)- it has black tea, cornflowers (!) and bergamot flavouring, and it was very perfumed. A lovely light tea, perfect for the afternoon. I had it while I listened to Just A Minute- I used to love this and by chance heard some on Sunday, so I decided to listen to it on the website. Very funny as usual.
I had a walk this afternoon as the rain had stopped (it actually got really warm) and have been catching up on TV. I saw some of the e-numbers story and I found it pretty interesting. For example they talked about vitamin C, and how it was disvovered to stop scurvy. It was in fact trial and error; they gave sailors loads of different potions, and they found that citrus fruits stopped it. We have all heard of anti-oxidants, and the program had a good way of explaning it. Basically, oxygen destroys certain things that it comes into contact with- when you cut open an apple pretty soon it goes brown. But if you cut an orange in half, it won’t, and that is because of the high levels of anti-oxidants- they stop the oxygen doing it’s damage.
I also saw some more of the bake off and it got me thinking- what would your signature bakes be? So far they have made their signature breads, cakes, biscuits and puddings.
For me I think I would choose maybe cinnamon and raisin bread, banana bread for the cake (as it is really a cake), and peanut butter white chocolate cookies. I have no idea what pudding as I don’t tend to make those. They made things like suet based puddings, treacle sponge and so on. Actually they did have to make one bread-based pudding so maybe I would make bread pudding with hot cross buns and marmalade. That is always good in the winter!
Over to you- any signature dishes you would love to bake?