Cooking and Gardening pretty much sums up my day today.  Oh and loads of boring paperwork but it had to be done and it does feel good to be more up to date.  Plus sewing (mainly repairs to the boy’s torn clothes), ironing and so many other chores that at 21:55 on a Sunday night I have not actually relaxed yet today 😦

Yesterday was very stressful due to a failure in the heating system and a flood in Ramsgate.  I have had a decorator there all week and went yesterday, anticipating a pleasant(ish) day, reviewing the paint work and some general tidying and cleaning.  Unfortunately I arrived to find water pouring through the ceiling in to a bedroom via the light fitting.  A local plumber came out to assess and do an emergency fix.   I currently have a house with a dripping ceiling (better then pouring but not resolved), no water (I know, how is it still dripping but it is), no heating and no electricity, a very sodden carpet and a room that needs decorating.  After all that I fell off the healthy eating cliff and ate cake, biscuits, bread and loathed myself some more.

So this morning I had a word with myself and kept busy to stop stressing about Ramsgate.

I made some Granola which had no added fat.  It was from the China Sudy Cookbook and tasted fabulous.

These are the raw ingredients

and one and a half hours later, here is the finished product!  It was good on its own but even better eaten with some coconut yogurt and blueberries. I changed the recipe quite a bit as I didn’t have several of the ingredients so this is the recipe as I made it, rather then the recipe in the China Study Cookbook.

Granola (no added fat)

Ingredients

• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 a cup of brown sugar
• 1/3 of a cup of maple syrup
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 level tsp cinnamon
• 4 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1/2 cup chopped almonds
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup dessicated coconut
• 1 cup rasins

Method

1. Preheat oven to 140 °C
2. Place water, brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon in a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar is dissolved
3. Mix the oats, almonds, pecans, raisins and coconut in a large bowl
4. Add the wet mixture from the saucepan and mix well together
5. Spread the mixture out on to 2 baking sheets, spreading as thin as possible
6. Bake and stir every 15 minutes, until dry and crunchy which takes about 1 1/2 hours
7. Let cool, try to not keep nibbling and store in an airtight container.  It should keep up to 3 weeks.

Having just read the recipe properly, you should not have added the raisins until cooking was finished!  Luckily mine didn’t burn and they taste good.

For lunch I made ‘Burrito bowls’ i.e. I made something similar to the Burrito Bowl I buy about once a week from Chipotle.  I stir fried some brown Basmati rice with chopped kale because you can never eat too much kale, right? Chopped some cherry tomatoes and spring onions and seasoned with freshly ground pepper Guacamole made with lime juice and coriander on the side Fried onions, red and yellow peppers. A tin of black beans, heated gently with some water added, 2 garlic cloves, paprika and chipotle, simmered until the water evaporated. YUM YUM YUM I love this meal.  It is so easy to prepare and everyone always likes it.

It was a dull and overcast day which was actually helpful as I had quite a bit of gardening to do.  There’s the spinach, green and purple climbing beans and broad beans.

Mange Tout. Mizuna which has gone crazy and is dwarfing the neighbouring celery. Sadly it’s been munched so it wont last long so I need to chmp my through as much as I can 😦 The courgettes are doing ok. The oregano had a good prune which created space to plant radishes in the same bed as the garlic and spring onions. In the greenhouse the tomatoes are doing well and the cucumbers are beginning to get going. Little tomatoes are already growing 🙂  Well, they are on the yellow tomato plants my vegetable growing neighbours up the road gave me. I was late, as usual, so the 2 varieties I have sown and the peppers are behind but hopefully they will catch up. I was late with the lettuces so they are still very small and I had very poor germination rates from the sweetcorn which is disappointing but overall, given everything else that occupies my time, I am pleased with my efforts.The raspberries and blueberries in the fruit cage are looking very promising but not much action on the blackcurrants.
I snapped piccies of some of the beautiful flowers in my garden and thought about how many beautiful things there are out there. The scent from rose that clambers over the apple tree is quite heavenly.

After taking the dogs for a walk we had hot dogs and ice cream for supper.  We really did.  Vegan tofu hot dogs in a wholemeal roll with mustard, ketchup and vegan cheese followed by raspberry and mango sorbet.  I was not really keen on the hot dogs but Harvey was.  I have no desire to eat meat free versions of meat and am very happy with plants but Harvey likes it and as he is being so supportive we had a supper for him.

I hope you all had a happy weekend and I really hope the plumber can get to the bottom of the problems that have caused me and my visitors so much aggravation over the past month or so in Ramsgate.