Six recipes with six dates for pregnancy

I've been eating dates religiously since finding out that they could potentially lead to a shorter labour. My life has been so busy recently with TV work, writing my book (manuscript's due in September) and travelling - I am currently in Greece - that at times I forget the even bigger changes and challenges ahead. Eating a few dates a day has been something simple that I can do to prepare every day. Whether it actually works or not is yet to be confirmed but the mere act of eating dates brings my mind back into focus. It's something that I can still find time to do (mostly), even if other things such as friends and blogging have fallen by the wayside. Sorry about that, by the way, if you've been affected. I won't bombard you with false promises, let's just agree to some time apart and I will resume my previous blogging schedule once I have handed in my cookbook, agreed?

I'm in my third trimester now and my passion for dates has also waned somewhat, so I decided to find new (or old and lost) ways of ingesting this lovely (and potentially miraculous?) dried fruit. 6 is the magic number when it comes to dates apparently. Here are my favourites:

The date breakfast

300g oats

18 dates, pitted and chopped

1/2 litre almond milk

10-20 pecans halves

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon honey

Boil the almond milk, pit the dates and chop the pecans into smaller bits. Once the almond milk has frothed, take it off the heat, add all the other ingredients, cover and leave overnight. The next morning put it in the fridge, and eat for breakfast for the next 3 days.

The date shake

6 Dates

250ml spelt milk 

Banana

1 tablespoon lucuma powder

Spelt milk makes everything taste amazing and lucuma powder is my favourite pregnancy replacement for maca, which you should avoid during pregnancy. Just blitz all the ingredients together.

The date flapjack

You will find the recipe for these here

The date snack

Dates

Mascapone cheese

Pecans

Stuff each pitted date with a teaspoon of mascapone and a couple of pecan halves.

The date dessert

6 dates

Greek yoghurt

1 tablespoon good quality honey

1 tablespoon crushed pistachios

Enjoy and happy labouring!

Spelt pancakes with stewed vanilla strawberries

I love Ridley road market with it's African fabrics, cheap food stalls and fishmongers. Even the sheeps' heads add a little "je ne sais quoi" to the atmosphere. This is where you come to get cheap fruit and veg in east London. Unfortunately, it's not always the best quality. Yersterday, I was walking through Ridley Road when a torrential downpour started. This wasn't your usual London drizzle, it was like  monsoon had hit us. Fortunately, it was still warm and somehow all the people caught in it - like yours truly - were in good spirits. The market stall holders were trying to get rid of all their produce as quickly as possible and pack up, so I got 2 big bowls - one of cherries, one of strawberries -for £1.50. The cherries were delicious, but the strawberries were a bit squashed by the time I got them home. I ate the solid strawberries whilst contemplating what I could do with all the squashed ones. Half of the squashed ones went into a healthy shake with yoghurt, almond milk, maple syrup and maca root. The other half were made into strawberry and vanilla sauce that went on top of spelt pancakes this Sunday morning, for brunch.

I won't lie to you, it was divine. I simply  simmered the strawberries with a teaspoon of good quality vanilla essence, a tablespoon of brown sugar and 3 tablespoons of water. I won't patronise you with a detailed description of how to make pancakes because I'm sure you know. I just whizzed all the ingredients down there together and fried each ladlefull in little knobs of butter. I also added a dollop of mascapone and a drizzle of maple syrup for that American brunch feel. This will make 2 pancakes.

Ingredients

50g spelt flour

1 egg

150ml almond milk (aprox)

15g butter

Large handful strawberries, chopped in half

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Dollop mascapone

Maple syrup to drizzle

Egyptian breakfast with eggs, dates and tahini

The first ever post on this blog was about breakfasts, complete with my 29 year old self's inquisitive attitude and some rather gross-looking pictures of food. Breakfast is still an obbession of mine, but that's one of the few things that has remained constant. Over the past 5 years I have met many great breakfasts: these seedy, turmeric oats have been a firm favourite of late; there has also been "placki" with roast cherry tomatoes; quinoa; congee rice soups with butternut squash and radish and spinach and egg, not to forget fruit-oat pots. But the reason that I am blogging about this today is because there is a new breakfast in town! This Egyptian breakfast was introduced to me by my love and has made me fall in love with Tahini once more (for many years I couldn't bear the sight of it, but that's another story).

That's scrambled eggs up there, with dates! Yes, sweet scrambled eggs, with tahini and mini pitta bread on the side (just because they're cute). You melt some butter on a frying pan and fry the chopped (and pitted) dates first for a couple of minutes, before cracking the eggs in. The eggs don't need any milk. Stir the eggs while they're frying on a low heat, season with salt and white pepper, and serve. Simple. Delicious. Reasonably healthy breakfast.

Superfood breakfast or how to make Nigella seeds palatable

The short answer to the question posed is: by adding a lot of other stuff. I first tried Nigella seeds about 5 days ago. I was handed a Nigella seed flapjack by a certain curious confectioner. It was an unusual taste that I fell in... interest with immediately. I was going to say "in love" but it was more of a fascination really. My friend told me that they were a bit of a challenge to work with and he was not lying. They are really, really bitter. But so, so good for you.  They say the only thing Nigella seeds can't cure is death.

Once you balance out their bitterness with lots of honey and a bit of salt, they actually taste quite nice. I pounded them first with a pestle and mortar then used the method of boiling the milk first then adding all the ingredients and allowing them to fuse together and cool overnight in the fridge. This also preserves all their beneficial qualities. I must say that on eating that breakfast you see up there, I was... Invigorated. Truly. I realised it whilst packed into the tube train like a sardine, and I though "I feel pretty good considering my circumstances". I can't say for sure though if it was the Nigella seeds, or the red maca or maybe even the large dose of turmeric.

Ingredients

500ml almond milk

8 tablespoons of oats

2 tablespoons of pounded Nigella seeds

2 tablespoons white chia seeds

2 tablespoons red maca powder

1 teaspoons turmeric

1 teaspoons cinnamon

4 tablespoons raw honey

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Chilli and rye sourdough bread

Thailand was magical as ever. Days spent doing my favourite things: swimming outside; reading cookbooks in a hammock; eating fresh, healthy Thai food and bargain hunting in markets... Immersing ourselves in a different world. On my return, one of the first things I did was make bread. Once you have some sourdough, you see, you are held ransom to it, knowing that it has only a certain number of days before it's no good and I was already a day over. Luckily, I'd left the sourdough in a hyperactive fridge, so it was fine.

Since I was anxious not to loose my dough, I overcame my jetlag and made the bread, combining all the ingredients down there and stirring in the sourdough combined with warm water and adding more water as needed to create that desired peanut butter texture. I put it in a greased and floured tin, covered it and left it for 10 hours on top of the radiator, before baking it this morning (1 hour, 170 degrees C). We ate it with spiced scrambled eggs (ground paprika and coriander to be precise). It's a spicy bread, therefore you need to offset the chilli to create that winning balance. If you would like to make this bread and you live in the UK I would be more than happy to send you some of my sourdough. Remember to always save a couple of tablespoons of your dough for the future. 

Ingredients:

350g rye flour
1-2 tablespoons sourdough

1 tablespoon plain flour

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon linseeds

1 tablespoon oats

3 tablespoons wheat germ

3 dried red chillies, chopped finely

Warm water

Spelt and rye onion bread

My mum has three brothers and they all love to cook. Last week I was in Poland working on an important project. To celebrate my sending everything off on time, my godfather Wojtek (my mum's youngest brother) came round and taught me this way of making proper bread. We made one spelt and one rye one then, whereas this time I combined the two flours and left out the plain flour. This has made it even healthier and taste-wise, it worked beautifully. It's not too heavy at all, if that's what you're wondering.

Wojtek gave me some fermented dough, which I managed to smuggle through security in my hand luggage on the way back to London. In order to make "proper"  bread, you see, we need to use this rather than yeast. The only way you can get it is if you know someone that already has some spare and they give you a bit to use in your dough. Then every time you make bread (it needs to contain a lot of rye flour to make good leaven), you take 2 tablespoons of dough,  put it in a jar and allow it to ferment for a week in the fridge, you then need to make bread again the following week. It's quite a process even though the actual bread making is incredibly simple: Combine all the dry ingredients down there. Fry the onions in some oil, until they're golden like this:

Add the warm water to the fermented dough jar, shake it as vigorously as you can (my weak wrist action appeared to be a source of great amusement to my mentor) and pour that into the dry ingredients. Mix it in, then keep adding more water and stirring until you get the consistency of thick batter... Something like peanut butter maybe... Transfer that into the baking tray, which has been buttered and floured. Now allow to rest for 10 hours in a warm place. On a radiator perhaps? After exactly 10 hours, bake at about 150 degrees C, for 1 hour.

If you live in the UK (I'm sorry I realise that most of my readers are actually in the US), then do let me know if you fancy making some, because I'd be more than happy to send you some of my fermented dough and pass on the bread love.

Ingredients:

200g rye flour
200g spelt flour
2 tablespoons fermented dough
1 mug of warm water (aprox)
1 onion, chopped 
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon linseeds
1 tablespoon oats
3 tablespoons wheatgerm

Butter for greasing tray

A seedy breakfast: sweet and spicy oats

Not so very long ago, the phrase "seedy breakfast" would have meant something altogether different. Now it means that my breakfast is full of seeds. And turmeric, and cinnamon, and freshly grated nutmeg... it's pretty much the best breakfast ever.

Inspired by Leo Babauta and this blog post, I have given up making New Years Resolutions and focused on changing habits this year. As the Kundalini guru,Yogi Bhajan, taught: your habits define you. I've always believed in setting intentions for the year ahead, yet this may just be a more permanent way of doing it. My January has been all about health. I had an experience during the Christmas period (which I don't feel ready to go into here just yet) that made me realise the importance of it. Good health is a blessing that we often take for granted. So this month I have avoided processed sugar, alcohol and... meat. In fact, I've gone Vegetarian. Or Pescaterian to be precise. I'm not sure how long it will last, because I do love the taste of meat, but at the moment my body feels purer and happier without it.

This seedy, oaty breakfast was invented by my mum and pimped up by moi. The oats are cold - the idea is that you don't cook them, to preserve their nutritious value - instead, you pour hot (almond) milk over them the night before you want to eat them: 8-9 heaped tablespoons for 500ml milk. Then you mix in all the other ingredients down there and allow to cool overnight. The next morning, transfer it into bowls and put it in the fridge - you have breakfast for 3 days.

Ingredients:

500ml almond milk

8-9 tablespoons oats

2 tablespoons linseeds

2 tablespoons raisins

2 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon pumpkin seeds

1 tablespoon sunflower seeds

1 tablespoon crushed walnuts (or flaked almonds)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Spicy chorizo and tomato scrambled eggs

There are so many things that don't quite work out in life, and this is okay. There are lessons to be learnt, compromises to be made, battles to be lost as well won, things given up on completely and things deemed worthy of being worked on gradually. Yet yet... when there is a success, no matter how minor, I am of the opinion that it should be celebrated. I am my father's daughter in this way - any excuse to open a bottle of champagne. While for my dad this is literally the case, for me, the champagne is more of a metaphor. It's a part of the reason why I write this blog, in celebration of the little things. Today I am celebrating this spicy chorizo and tomato scrambled eggs that was made in celebration of my brother's birthday

You need to pour boiling water over the tomatoes first, then peel and chop them. Melt some butter on a frying pan and add small cubes of chorizo sausage and some red chilli slices. Once the butter has turned red in colour, add the tomatoes and continue to fry until the tomatoes have almost disintegrated. Meanwhile beat the eggs and season with salt, pepper and a dash of paprika. Add them to the pan and continue to stir gently as they cook. We ate these with toasted crusty bread and sauteed spinach, slices of avocado and Bloody Marys (with the obligatory celery stick) on the side

Amaranth porridge with berries

There's something that happens when I'm about to get on a plane. I always manage to either miss my flight or create some kind of unnecessary drama. Even when in other areas of my life I feel calm and content, the time comes to catch a flight and something inevitably goes wrong. I should be in Athens right now, but I'm not. I wouldn't say I'm London either. I'm occupying a space in between two worlds, neither solidly in one nor the other. Like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, I'm just not all there. Or here. Some would argue that this is a natural state of affairs for me and they'd have a point, yet at this moment in time this quality is so pronounced that I feel like parts of me could easily just disappear like they do to that cat. Yet like him, I'm quite enjoying it. I'm using this strange space to look at my life  objectively and make some small yet important changes, to experiment with how I normally do things. In my everyday life I'm often too busy in the action of doing to take a step back and reflect on how I could improve the process. There are infinite ways of doing things, why do we get stuck in one mode like machines I wonder... Some things just work so there is no need to change them, yes, but other things don't work, yet we get stuck in a habit - those are things I'm targeting right now. One habit that I have no intention of changing for the time being however, is porridge for breakfast. That's working out very well. There are so many variations that I can't see myself getting bored. I made this one with amaranth grains and berries the other day. It's a grain I've never used before and was a bit puzzled by, yet it turns out that it makes a brilliant porridge, less stodgy and sticky than oats

I cooked it first in lots of cold water. I'll be honest with you, I wanted to use it for a salad, yet I quickly noticed that it was turning into a porridge-like consistency and went out and bought some quinoa for the salad instead. I think the grains are actually too small for a salad and also I cooked them in too much water to allow them to separate. But for a porridge they were perfect. So the next morning I took a spoonful of the cooked amaranth and diluted it with plenty of almond milk. I allowed it to simmer, along with a handful of raspberries and blueberries, a pinch of salt and some honey for around 10min, until the raspberries disintegrated completely. Then I  added a bit more almond milk to reach a consistency I was happy with. Amaranth is completely new to me in this form (I've tried the leaves before), it has an unusual taste, neither sweet nor savoury, it's lost somewhere between the worlds just like me, so it needs strong, decided flavours that push it in either one direction or the other... I think I've just managed to empathize with a grain

Russian buckwheat blinis with sour cream, salmon and dill

There is a Russian saying that "life begins and ends with a blini", which shows the true value of these mini pancakes in that part of the world. I'm not trying to suggest that blinis are given to babies in Russia, I expect that the saying indicates that when you eat your first blini, this is when "real life" begins. A life of social gatherings, full of family and friends, a life where you can make your own choices, have a voice that's heard and taken seriously. I don't know about you, but when I was a child, I couldn't wait for this life to begin, I always wanted to be a part of that infinitely interesting adult world. Today, I gave blinis a new context when I made them for brunch here in London, which I think it suits them perfectly

You need buckwheat flour to make proper blinis. Sift this, along with the plain flour and a large pinch of salt, into a large bowl. Meanwhile, heat the milk gently (I need to use goat's milk because of my lactose allergy - it works well in this recipe), add the sugar and make the yeast with it. Allow to stand in a warm place for 10min before using. Whisk the eggs as much as you can into the flour, then add a tablespoon of melted butter and keep whisking. Finally, add the yeasty milk and whisk that it. Cover with a wet towel and allow to stand in a warm place for an hour. I usually turn the oven on for 5min, then turn it off and put the bowl in there. Fry the blinis in more butter, and place in a warm oven to keep warm before you serve them, but don't wait too long as they have a tendency to go hard. Serve with smoked salmon, sour cream and dill, sprinkled with a touch of black pepper. Or caviar if that's how you roll

Ingredients (makes 14-16 blinis)

100g buckwheat flour

100g plain flour

2 eggs

Large pinch of salt

100 g butter

300ml milk

25g dried yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

100g good quality smoked salmon

250g sour cream

Handful chopped dill

Black pepper

Coconut and oat breakfast scones

Everyone loves scones. I always forget how much I do until I inadvertently try one, then I'm just all over them. Can't stop. The shop-bought ones are fluffy admittedly, but often unhealthy, laden with sugar and fats, so when I realized I was going to be having a scone love affair (replacing the now tired cinnamon bagels I've been eating all Winter) I quickly made some reasonably healthy ones. They may not be as fluffy as their shop-bought brothers, but home-made scones have their own wholesome charm, especially when warm, and you can add your favourite ingredient to the mix, which for me, at this moment in time, is coconut

Soak the coconut in the coconut milk for a couple of hours, use just enough to moisten the coconut, as we don't want too much moisture. Sift the flour and baking soda into a bowl (we want to add as much fluffiness as we can), add the sugar and the butter, cubed and softened. Work the mixture between the fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs - this usually takes about 10min. Add the coconut and egg, which will make the mixture very sticky. Blend it in as much as you can, then add the oats to soak up the excess moisture. If it is still too sticky then add a bit more flour while rolling it out on to a worktop. Roll it out until it's around 2-3cm thick and use a cutter, or a glass, to cut round shapes out of it, 5-7cm in diameter. Place on a greased baking tray and into a preheated oven (180 degrees C) for around 30min. I used coconut oil to grease the tray, and also to slather the still warm scones, then devoured them with an obligatory cuppa

Ingredients

150g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
150g light brown or coconut sugar
150g salted, soft butter
100g dessicated coconut, soaked in coconut milk
1 egg
100g oats

"Superfood" healthy french toast

There are few foods in this world that are quite as sexy as French toast drizzled in honey. Yet the dangerous voluptuousness of the classic recipe has made it a once-in-a-blue-moon treat. So imagine my glee at discovering that French toast can be made healthy without loosing its sex appeal. The replacements were simple: wholemeal bread instead of white, coconut oil instead of butter. Then to up the flavour stakes: plenty of cinnamon and vanilla, and a pleasant maltiness added by my superfood of the moment, maca powder

Beat the eggs with a fork on a large plate; add the cinnamon, maca powder and vanilla essence and keep beating until smooth. Halve the bread, and dip each bit in the eggy mixture, covering both sides well, before frying in hot coconut oil. When golden and crispy on both sides, remove from heat. Drizzle in honey and sprinkle with a tad more cinnamon before serving. For 1 slice of bread you will need 1 egg, 1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon, good quality vanilla essence and maca powder
 

The perfect brunch aka Cooking for Simone part 1

By coming to Los Angeles I have unintentionally extended my Summer. It's about 31 degrees C here during the day! I have also made my friend Simone, who moved here a couple of years back, very happy. She's been a little stressed writing her book, so I've enjoyed helping her out by cooking healthy, tasty meals and imagining out-there sexual fantasies (she's writing a book about sex). It's a hard life. Today, I made this brunch

I lie about it being perfect, as there was one thing missing - a Bloody Mary. But with that addition, I couldn't think of a much better one. If I had the kind of lifestyle when I could eat brunch every day of the week (I can dream), then I would alternate this with Eggs Benedict. So it's pretty good. The eggs are my mum's Polish recipe: fry a finely chopped onion in butter, covered, for about 10min, then add the eggs which have been beaten and seasoned with sea salt and paprika. Cover the baby spinach in boiling, salt water and after a couple of minutes, drain it. Toast the pine nuts until slightly browned. Squeeze the water out of the spinach and add to the pine nuts along with some olive oil. Fry for about 5 minutes while stirring. Squeeze some fresh lemon into it and continue frying for another minute or two. Serve with fresh, warm bagels if possible

Malty snickers iced-coffee aka probably the best iced-coffee in the world

After an impromptu barbeque last week, I found a freezer filled with mini Snickers ice-creams, which inspired me to make this particular iced coffee. I've been messing about with various recipes all this week, and finally today, I have arrived at the perfect one which I would like to share with you. I prefer to use instant coffee, using a strong-tasting filter coffee gives it a much stronger coffee flavour obviously, and I prefer it when it tastes more like a milkshake. The maca root powder adds not only health benefits, but also more maltiness. Just blitz all the ingredients down there in a blender until smooth and fluffy

Ingredients

1 cup of coffee

1 teaspoon honey

1 mini Snickers ice-cream

1 tablespoon maca powder

1 cup of almond milk

Handful of ice

Spicy ginger, chocolate and coconut granola

To fully commit to "city-life" and live happily within in, you need to find your balance. For me, that sometimes means cancelling all my plans and mooching around my flat, having a bath, cooking something I really feel like and painting my nails. The important thing is not feeling pressurized to do stuff. This recipe is for one of those nights, it's super easy and fun to make (it's all about freestyling), and it'll give you tasty breakfasts for about a week if you eat it with fruit and yoghurt

Melt about 5 tablespoon of coconut oil on the stove, grate in an entire nutmeg seed and allow to heat gently for a couple of minutes. Mix in 400g of oats, 50g of toasted coconut flakes. Take off the heat and add the remaining ingreditents: 100g raw cacao nibs and 150g of cubed stem ginger (about a jar of the stuff you get in syrup), then bake in the oven for about 20min at 180 degrees C. Make sure you remember to grease your bakng paper - I didn't and it all got a bit sticky

Quinoa blackberry porridge for the Spring/Summer breakfast in bed

During my long search for the perfect breakfast, I realized that my reasoning was inherently flawed. What is obvious to me now is that the perfect breakfast depends on the time of year, on where you are on the planet, and where you are in your mind. Whereas in the heat of Thailand the perfect breakfast might be a banana, some watermelon and pineapple with yoghurt and honey, in London in the midst of a long, damp Winter, nothing quite hits the spot for me on a day-to-day basis like congee. However, if you add a party night to mix, then my perfect breakfast suddenly turns into a BLT on ciabatta with mayo and a fresh OJ. As it gets warmer and the berries starting popping out, I start to crave red fruit with porridge or oats with yoghurt. In this in-between period that we have now, warm quinoa with berries is just perfect

The quinoa gives this a lightness that you don't get with oats, and the blackberries give it tang and that specific British flavour. You could just as easily replace them with another soft berry though. I cooked the quinoa in water, then when it was ready, added some goat's milk (I can't drink normal milk anymore), a pinch of salt, lots of honey and the blackberries. I cooked it all until the blackberries fell apart and the milk turned pink and frothy

Thai-style fishy congee (nicer than it sounds)

Tiny, dried fish in my congee remind me of Thailand

This congee I top with fish sauce, chillies and spring onion. I cooked the rice with a couple of chicken carcasses and a bit of sea salt, nothing else. LT, who doesn't usually feel like breakfast much, loved it. Needless to say, I love this too - it's one of the few things that fills me up until lunch. And it makes me think of the time when I would eat this kind of breakfast sitting on a cushion, looking out over the beach in Koh Tao, breathing in the familiar smells and basking in the warm humidity, as the sun rose over the sea

Spicy sweetcorn congee

I've decided to get my not-so-healthy butt on a massive, Chinese health kick. I've been on many Western health kicks and detoxes but I'm ready to try something different. To say I am unhealthy does not feel completely accurate, I am much healthier than I was a year ago, two years ago, but I have one persistent health problem and I would like to know I tried everything before I need to undergo a rather intrusive and wholly inconvenient procedure. So I am giving myself and Chinese medicine 6 months to sort it out. You know how I like my experiments, especially when they involve plenty of food

It's difficult to understand the intricacies of Chinese food rules from simply reading articles on the internet. The rules are different for each individual and it's a whole new way of thinking to get your head around. But congee is something every expert agrees benefits everyone. Congee reminds me of something that we ate in Poland when I still very young and sick in bed - rice soup with cooked apples. It was called "kleik" - little glue. Sometimes it was all I'd be given to eat for days on end, which eventually ruined it for me, unsurprisingly. But now, after rediscovering congee in Thailand, I am ready to eat this rice soup once more. However, I prefer the spicier, Asiatic versions to the Polish one. You basically cook the corn on the cob and the chicken, ginger, chilli and lemongrass with the rice and water for about 3 hours. Add a little sea salt to get the minerals out of the chicken bone. About half way through, take out the corn and chicken, allow to cool and take the meat off the bone (discard the skin) and the corn off the cob and add back into the rice soup. After another half an hour, take out the lemongrass. After 3 hours I found that my congee was the perfect consistency. Eat it straight away and allow the remainder to cool before putting in the fridge. I am now keeping it in there and just warming up a little each day, with some extra water for breakfast. I believe it can keep for about 5 days, but I will try and eat it in 3, just to be on the safe side. What I really love about congee is that the variations are infinite. I will keep you posted on my ones, of course

Ingredients

Cup full of rice and 7 times as much water
Lemongrass - 2 stems
2 inches of fresh ginger - peeled and chopped
Organic chicken thigh on the bone
Fresh chilli
2 corn on the cob

Soya sauce and chopped spring onion to serve

Menemen at the Z Cafe, Kingsland Road

...Is the best brunch I've ever eaten. No that's a lie, Eggs Benedicte and a Bloody Mary somewhere in New York is probably my favourite ever, but this comes a close second

It's a combination of eggs, tomatoes, sausage, feta and peppers. The description said there was spinach in there, but the taste was definitely that of sorrel, which I adore. Sitting outside and people watching with LT was really fun too. I may have said that it was the best thing he's ever shown me. Don't think he took that as a compliment

Breakfast in bed - bagels with spicy, chive scrambled eggs

Because I'm worth it. And so are you...

There's no better way to recover from a successful Saturday night, than by lounging in bed with tea, warm food and plenty of reading material (cookbooks in my case). The bagels are from the bagel shop on Brick Lane, as usual. Incidentally, fresh, warm bagels are one of the best things I have ever tasted (this thought occurred to me as I was shoveling one into my mouth just 24 hours prior to this breakfast taking place). The eggs are scrambled with the addition of chives, salt and pepper, then finished off with more ground pepper and tabasco. An ex boyfriend of mine, Layo, taught me the secret of beautifully scrambled eggs, that I will now share with you - it's the slow pace. You keep stirring, on the lowest possible heat, and don't be tempted to rush the process. Patience in a virtue.