Tea and Sympatico

The other week we both had stinking colds that started on a Monday and lasted a whole seven days. By the time it got to the weekend we were fed up and in need of some serious comfort food. Here's a selection of what went down in our kitchen. I did an oats based breakfast post the other week in which I raved about the Apple and Cinnamon Porridge Bake from the first Delicously Ella book. I tried another baked oats recipe, this time from her website and this was amazing as well. This is Baked Banana, Blueberry and Raisin Oatmeal served with some coconut yoghurt and some toasted coconut chips (picked up in Home Bargains for 49p). Seriously, this was such a nice breakfast that I was still thinking about it at teatime! I occasionally break out the toastie bags for a toasted sandwich and this was one such occasion. I'd made leek and potato soup and it was accompanied by these avocado, tomato, olive, spinach and parmesan toasties. I've never put spinach in a toastie befo...

We've been in our house for a year and a half and we've had to do a lot of redecorating after an extensive rewire when we moved in. We are nearing the end with just the living room left to do and I thought I'd show you what our spare room looks like after decorating it. I loved reading everyone's Kitchen Tours during Mofo so I thought it would be fun to see where people's blogging spaces are as well as their cooking spaces. This room is at the back of the house and overlooks the yard and those of our neighbours. It's a cosy little room and gets some nice light on a sunny day. I decided on a blue palette for this room but keeping with warmer tones of blue although that might not be clear form my bad iPhone pics! The photo of the door below gives the best colour match. The first thing I did was get rid of the double bed that we had in here as it took up most of the space in the room. We donated that to our local furniture project and replaced it with a sofa...

January 8 was Elvis's birthday. Because I live with an Elvis obsessive who now since Christmas has a grand total of 106 biographies of the man, this of course had to be marked in some way. The collection is gradually taking over our attic room! To mark the occasion we watched an Elvis film, That's The Way It Is , a documentary about the Vegas years and chowed down on some Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana Pie. I used this recipe from the One Green Planet blog and was impressed with how straightforward it was to make compared to some of the other recipes that came up in my google search! In other sweet treat news my package from Sugar and Crumbs arrived on the same day as I made the Elvis pie. Sugar and Crumbs make an amazing range of flavoured cocoa powders and icing sugars as well as selling sprinkles and all sorts of baking stuff. Their products are vegan and gluten free.They were kind enough to slip in a free sample bag of banana split icing sug...

Making the Pudla in my last post on New Year's Day morning seems to have ignited an enthusiasm for trying new breakfast ideas. I've been specifically looking for things to make with oats. We are watching our cholesterol and on a limited budget these days so oats are a great choice for us. However Matt's not that keen on standard porridge and we've done overnight oats to death so I needed to go in search of a little inspiration. The bottom two books in the pile are from the library whilst the top one Keep It Vegan by Aine Carlin has been languishing on my bookcase. This fab round up of recipes from it by Susan at Kittens Gone Lentil inspired me to revisit it again though. First up was Wake-me up Porridge from The Chakra Kitchen . The foreword to the book is a bit new-agey for me with talk of using crystals but each to their own and the porridge was delicious and different. It's got chia seeds, ground ginger, maca, coconut, hemp seeds and cacao nibs. All the...

Wishing a belated Happy New Year to everyone. We only returned from our break this week hence the lack of blogging. We had a good, restful break albeit it not the one that we were expected! You may remember that we had booked a week for new year at the castle apartments in Harlech where we had such an amazing break back in October. We were so excited to be going back but when we arrived there was water damage to the apartment and we had to be moved to alternative accommodation. All this happened in the start of a big storm that raged for 24 hours and was a bit stressful and disappointing to say the least. However, the customer service from the rental company was really good and they found us a nice apartment in Criccieth to stay in and have offered us a complimentary mini break in the castle apartments for later this year. Considering the devastation that was happening in the North of England and Wales due to the flooding over Christmas we were thankful to be somewhere warm and dry. M...