warm fig fruit salad in port wine

This is such a crazy simple, quick, tasty, sophisticated, elegant dessert. I’d be incredibly happy if I was served this in a posh restaurant. And yet, I feel that most restaurants here are not quite there yet. Is it wrong that I often prefer my own cooking to eating out? If you love the kitchen and you love cooking and you take it seriously – eating out can be such a letdown. Expensive. Boring. Tasteless. Predictable. 

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on self worth and mini cornmeal crabcakes

 

This week I’m thinking about self-worth. Or self-esteem. Or the ability to believe in oneself. Self-love. Call it whatever you like. It’s so important and yet for many of us, our sense of self-worth is difficult to maintain, so shaky, so fragile, so easily eroded…. 

chocolate peanut butter crockpot granola

I’ve taken to making granola in my crockpot / slow-cooker. It’s ridiculously easy. I think it’s the niftiest possible way to cook granola. In addition to being so tasty that I can’t stop eating it, I also love that I can make this in the middle of summer without heating up my kitchen.

I use a large crockpot /slow-cooker on the low setting. Don’t put this on and leave the building. It doesn’t take long – about two and half hours. Time will vary depending on your slow-cooker. A smaller crockpot will take quite a bit longer. Insert a wooden chopstick or equivalent (a wooden skewer, a wooden pate knife, etc.) between the lid and the crockpot – to allow the humidity to vent so you don’t end up with peanut butter chocolate porridge.

• Time: 2hr 30mins
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

• 3 cups large flake oats
• 1 cups shredded, sweetened coconut
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds if you’ve got them
• 1/4  cup chopped peanuts
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup natural peanut butter (I used crunchy)
• 1 tbsp sunflower seed oil
• 1/4 cup liquid honey
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup dried sour cherries (or dried cranberries)

Mix the oats, coconut, sunflower seeds, flax, peanuts, walnuts, and salt in the crockpot. In a separate bowl, mix together the peanut butter, honey and sunflower seed oil. Toss through the oat mixture, stirring well. Set heat to low. Put a chopstick between the lid and the crockpot to vent the humidity. Stir the mixture briefly after an hour. Check again in another hour. Etc. I don’t like my granola super well done so mine took about two and a half hours. But there is huge variability in crockpot temperatures so just judge accordingly. If you prefer to use the oven – try spreading this in a large baking dish or two – and cook at about 275 for about an hour or just longer, stirring it well about every 15-20 minutes.

 

When the granola is browned and cooked to your satisfaction, turn the slow-cooker off and remove the lid.  Toss in the dried cherries (or cranberries). Leave the lid cross-wise on your pot and set the timer for about 30 minutes. When the timer goes off – add the chocolate chips. If you add them too soon, they melt and disappear into the granola. If you add them too late – they don’t melt at all – and you won’t get the fabulous little clumps of chocolate-y granola goodness.

 

 

a very French tart

This week I happened to hear an interview with Chuck Close, considered to be one of the world’s greatest contemporary portrait painters. 

#100happydays: chocolate peanut butter brownie molten pots

Have you heard about the #100happydays project? 

chocolate and fig shortbread

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

stilton and pecan shortbreads

 “Maybe I should make a coulibiac of salmon with a whole salmon.”

it’s gin o’clock: time for a blackberry gin fizz

It’s been one of those weeks. Nothing more need be said about that.  Time for a drink. I

Viva la Mexico – enchiladas de verde pollo

All this week I’ve been dreaming of the warm Mexican sun, of stretching out on the hot sand, and walking into the ocean.