I have noticed many of the nutrition and lifestyle blogs I read, use Chia seeds.  I had never heard of them before so I did some research.  The main benefit to dieters seems to be that they have a gelling action when exposed to water which helps to keep you feel full after a meal for longer.  They also contain omega-3 fatty acids which beneficial for heart and cholesterol health, protein, fibre, anti-oxidants, a significant source of vitamin B and several minerals: calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium and boron.  But the seeds do not taste of anything so can be mixed in to other meals such as porridge.  Sounded good to me so I ordered some and today ate them for the first time.

I mixed half a tablespoon in with my porridge this morning.  I also added half a banana for sweetness, a teaspoon of pumpkin seed butter for protein and fat to sustain me until lunch time and blueberries for a vitamin boost.  It was delicious and my son and I really enjoyed it.

I have become very fond of beetroot this summer.  Fresh home cooked beetroot is a different beast to the vinegary purple mush the supermarkets sell.  Mine are not big enough yet so I bought some in the market yesterday.  Lots of people boil beetroot but I just chop off the stalks and leaves, wrap the bulb in foil and bake it in the oven at about 190 for 1 – 2  hours, depending on how big they are.  I use the stalks and leaves raw in a salad.  They are very tasty and and the purple veining in the leaves is very striking.  The tortoise gets the ragged leaves!

They don’t look very pretty when you open the foil parcel.

But when they are cool I peel them and chop them up to reveal their amazing colour.  I have not photo shopped this photo or edited it in anyway – this is the colour of them.  Wow!

I wanted some potatoes for lunch and went to dig some up.  The first ones I have dug up this year.  We have a lot of slugs in our garden and I have often been disappointed with potatoes in the past, so I set off with some trepidation and low expectations.  But what a crop!  They were large and unblemished (apart from the one my fork scraped) so I was delighted.

And they scrubbed up well too.

For lunch today we were having the fish I had bought in the farmers market yesterday.  I bought 4 fillets of grey mullet.  I put all 4 fillets on a sheet of foil, which was on a baking sheet.  I dotted the fish with butter and added ground pepper and then wrapped the foil over the fish to create a foil parcel.    I put them in the oven for 20 minutes at about 190.  Grey mullet is a flaky and meaty fish and they tasted amazing.  Children can be fussy with fish.  They don’t like bones or skin.  So I put them on the foil skin side down.  Then, when I served them, I just carefully slid a fish slice between the flesh and the skin and all the skin stayed on the foil.  So no yucky bits on the plate to put the kids off.

Lunch was great; grey mullet, potatoes from the garden, Fatima’s beans left over from yesterday, salad from the garden and beetroot.    And 4 clean plates were testimony to its yumminess 🙂

Exercise time!  I recently watched an episode of ‘Coast’ (one of my favourite programmes) which visited Dungeness.  It looked fascinating and as the afternoon was warm and sunny we hopped in the car with the dogs and drove down there.  It took about 45 minutes.  What an amazing place.  The landscape is wide and flat and the skies seem enormous.  The nature reserve is the biggest shingle promontory in Europe and is an area of scientific interest as it has so many plants growing in it.  There was a lot of sea kale and   I was tempted to pick some and take it home to cook it.  But as it is a nature reserve, I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea so I left it.  Harvey picked up a sea kale seed head that was blowing around but we eventually left that too.

Quite a few people live there, in little huts and dwellings converted  from old railway carriages and there are some charming painted wooden fishing boats which have been winched out of the sea and appear to balance impossibly on the beach.

Shame about the ugly old power station and pylons.  And an even bigger shame my camera battery ran out of juice so no more photos until tomorrow 😦 We had a lovely walk and then a cold beer in the early evening sunshine.  It was great.  Dungeness we love you and we will be back.

Back at the ranch it was supper time.  The boys had pasta with vegan pesto and I had the last of the Morrocan Couscous with chickpeas – that recipe was only supposed to make 4 portions but that dish has kept on giving!  It was a bit dry and I couldn’t wait any longer for my little treat so I added the small pot of white crab meat I bought at the market yesterday.  Crab is one of my most favourite food items in the world so I treated myself (and only myself as it is so expensive) to a small pot.  I ate it with some mayonnaise and salad and I relished every single last morsel.

Today was a great day.  We all ate well and we discovered somewhere new and wonderful and local.  Cheer me up?  Not necessary as I have been happy all day.