I excelled myself at breakfast today.  Really, I did.  It looked good and tasted marvellous.  But it did frustrate me massively to make it and I ended up with a sink full of dirty dishes.  It was definitely worth it though.

At the moment I am really enjoying a healthy living blog called Oh She Glows which is written by a vegan lady living in Canada.  Her blog just won the ‘Best Overall Blog’ and ‘Best Veg Blog’ at the recent Food Buzz blog awards.  I enjoy her writing style and imaginative recipes.  Last night I started making her recipe for an amazing chocolate banana and oat breakfast.

Frozen Bananas with Chocolate and Overnight Oats
I put 1/3 of a cup of oats in a bowl with 2/3 of a cup of coconut milk, 1 tbsp chia seeds and 1/2 a tsp of vanilla.  I didn’t put it in the fridge but left it covered, on the side and today this is what it looked like.  The Chia seeds look like poppy seeds but having sat in coconut milk all night, they absorb the liquid and swell up.

Last night I also popped 3 small peeled bananas in the freezer.

In the morning the fun and games began.  I finally chipped the bananas off the side of the little bowl I had frozen them in (top tip: don’t freeze bananas in a pyrex bowl as they stick to the side!).

I put them in my blender to start with and added 1 tbsp chocolate and hempseed butter and 1 tsp cocoa powder.  Unfortunately, my blender needs water to blend something so the bananas clonked about in there until I got fed up with it and squished them in to the small blender.  The small blender did its best but they were definitely NOT whipped and aerated like the pictures on the Oh She Glows blog.  They were mixed together well though and did actually resemble ice-cream.  Yum!  If only that was a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s.

I thought going for multiple layers was a bit ambitious so I just went for 3; chocolate bananas on the bottom, overnight oats and chia seeds in the middle and a bit more chocolate banana on top.  I then added 1/2 a tbsp of desiccated coconut.  Doesn’t it look pretty?

I was impressed with the look of it.  How did it taste?

Just like a pudding 🙂  Gotta love a pudding for breakfast!  I am using different oats these days.  I am currently eating Flahavan’s Organic Porridge Oats which work much better in Bircher muesli/overnight oats then Jumbo oats.  I thoroughly enjoyed every single spoonful.  It was worth every single one of its 12 WW points.  If my tongue had been long enough I would have licked the glass too!

It was sunny today :-). I love crisp sunny mornings and the views on the way to school were lovely, with the mist sitting low in the valleys.

Jane popped round for a coffee which was lovely.  Jane makes me laugh and it’s always good to see her.

By lunch time I was in the mood for something creamy with potatoes.  I wanted soup and browsed through the New Covent Garden Soup Co Book of Soups.  I dislike the way the recipes are written and presented.  There are no pictures and each recipe is written in a font made to look like handwriting on a green page.  But the actual recipes are great.  Adapted from their recipe for ‘Arbroath Smokie and Scottish Cheddar Soup’, I give you:

Smoked Trout and Cheddar Soup

Ingredients (made 1 and a half bowl fuls which would do 2 small appetites or 1 large). 14 WW points.

• 1 tsp butter
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 large potato, peeled and quartered
• 500 ml water
• 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 150 g smoked trout (weighed after the skin and bones had been taken off)
• 75 g cheddar
• Salt and pepper

Method

• Melt butter in a large saucepan and fry onions gently until soft.
• Add potato and water.  Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
• Add the carrot and pepper and simmer for another 10 minutes.
• While the potato is cooking, remove the skin and bones from the trout.  This is an ugly old fish.  Well sorry little fishy, but you are!

• With the head chopped off and the skin peeled back, the lovely pink fish was revealed.  It really was very delicious.  I couldn’t resist eating some!  I measured out 150 g and put the rest in the fridge for another day.

Back to the recipe.

• Allow the water and vegetables to cool slightly, then pour in to a blender with 2/3 of the smoked trout (approx 100 g) and blitz until smooth.

• Pour back in to the saucepan, warm gently and add the grated Cheddar.
• Season to taste and serve garnished with the remaining trout.

Yes, I happened to have a smoked trout in the fridge – truly!  I had been persuaded to try it by Julie of Sussex Smokers at the Farmers Market last week who promised me it would be delicious.  I wasn’t sure what to do with it so it had sat in my fridge until today.  The fish was lovely on its own and as a soup it was good.  The consistency was thick and smooth and not too fishy or cheesy.  I was going to add 2 tbsp creme fraiche but when I went to use it, it had gone off – well, it had sat in the fridge for nearly 2 weeks since I opened it!  This would have made it creamier and richer which would have been good but is not necessary.  I would say this is a successful soup.

I have enjoyed cooking today but it was great to know supper just needed reheating.  I had 2 portions of spinach dal and rice left over so popped them in a casserole dish together, put the lid on and heated in the oven on 170 ° C for about half an hour.  It was warmed through perfectly and the liquid in the dal kept the rice moist.  As you can see, I served it again with yogurt and mango chutney.

It was delicious.  One of those meals that improves with resting for a couple of days.

But nothing came close to that breakfast.  It was brilliant.