Tea and Sympatico

I've started sprouting again! In my old flat I used to do sprouting all the time. The flat was in an old 1930's building and had radiators run from a central boiler room and it was always nice and warm. The constant warm temp made sprouting pretty fail safe. Now I'm in a Derbyshire stone house where it's not as warm the results haven't been as great and I gave up trying  but with this very hot summer we are having I thought I would give it another go and I'm glad I have done. As I already have the seeds it kind of feels like free food too! I'm using these sprouts  from A Vogel. This week I've grown alfalfa but pictured is my first attempt from the week before which was a mix of radish, lentil and rocket which grew into lovely peppery tasting sprouts that we used to garnish our bowl meals for the week. These took 4 days to grow and I nearly gave up on day 2 because I could see mold. Luckily I googled and found out that it wasn't mold at all but r...

Continuing with my theme of fruit and nuts for breakfast I'm merging this with today's daily prompt which is to share a comfort food that always cheers you up. For me that would be porridge. I love that there's no end to ways to 'pimp your porridge' with allsorts of different fruit and nut combinations. Porridge does not have to be boring! It's also a great breakfast when you are on a budget as oats are cheap and there's always good prices to be found on dried fruit and nuts. I am a big, big fan of Urban Fruit. They do a lovely range of dried fruits which they advertise as 'gently baked'. Whenever they are on offer I stock up. Recently our local Co-Op delisted a lot of lines and brought in new ones so I grabbed some bags of dried strawberries and dried cherries for bargain prices. I like that you can also pick up Urban Fruit in mini bags too. I love the pineapple for snacking on. Here's what the strawberries look like out of the bag....

The other week I had the house to myself as Matt was away recording the songs he's written as songwriter in residence at the People's History Museum . He's even been doing a blog about it here . I picked meals that were easy to put together and that I didn't mind eating more than once! This deceptively simple salad was so tasty. It took minutes to throw together and came from one of my Carol Vorderman Detox books. It's onion, cooked puy lentils, cherry tomatoes, fresh parsley and mint and toasted walnuts with a simple dressing made from red wine vinegar and olive oil. The herbs and the salad leaves were all 'free' from the yard as an added bonus. Also, not pictured I made a millet salad from the Candle Cafe book. I'd decided to dig out my copy of Candle Cafe and try out some new to me recipes as I always seem to do the same ones from it. Above is a Ginger, Miso Stir Fry I had with basmati rice noodles made by King Soba. I love King Soba noodle...