Sesame flapjacks (no sugar)

My apologies. My aim is to blog at least once a week, a commitment I've been neglecting of late. I am in a period of restructure. I am restructuring my timetable, my habits, my priorities, my social life and my mind. That's basically my whole life come to think of it. I have 5 months to hand in the manuscript of my book. This sounds like a long time but I know it isn't, because I've been writing my book. For 5 years. Yes, granted - that wasn't full time - but still, there's no room for complacency. This is my dream project, and I don't think I have ever cared about something work-related this much before. That's not to say that I haven't cared, only that this is very, very important, you get me? Everything else will need to stay on the backburner for the time being. Happily, cooking is a big part of my dream project. Also, I have to eat and keep my energy levels up. Flapjacks are always good at times like these.

This is because oats release energy slowly, as do sesame seeds. As usual, I avoided sugar and used good quality honey instead. I also substituted some of the butter for coconut oil. It made them more crumbly, but this was not a problem for me.

Ingredients 

100g oats

100g sesame seeds

150g butter

200ml honey

50g coconut oil

50g almonds

Melt the butter and oil in a pan. Add the sesame seeds and fry until golden. Add the honey and the almonds. And anything else you fancy really. Pour the mixture into a greased baking tray and bake for 25min at about 180 degrees C.

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 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

Malty flapjacks with black and white sesame seeds

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I have deserted my old favourite, the humble flapjack, for more exciting pastures. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth  - I make sugar-free flapjacks at least once a fortnight and have become quite the expert. And as a flapjack expert let me tell you, that these ones are really, really good

I buy the sesame seeds at the Japan Centre whenever I'm in central London, and add them to all sorts of dishes, both sweet and savoury. The crushed, black ones are especially tasty added to porridge and carrots. The malt barley extract is a sweet, gooey substance that tastes like Horlix, if you've ever had the pleasure of tasting that, and has the added bonus of being healthy. Just in case you're not sure how to make flapjacks, let me outline it for you: melt the butter in a pan and add the honey and malt barley, once it's all melted add the dry ingredients and mix well. Transfer the contents of the pan to a buttered baking tin and bake in a pre-heated over at 180 degrees Celsius for about 25min. Score while still warm, then wait until cool before troughing greedily


Ingredients

3 cups oats
1/2 cup black sesame seeds, crushed
1/2 cup white sesame seeds, not crushed
200g butter
1 cup malt barley extract
1/2 cup good quality honey

Savoury porridge

This wondrous spotted creature is my savoury porridge 

It's loosely based on these breakfast soups that I eat in Thailand, which are made out of rice -  a British version, I guess. I cooked the oats with water and a little salt, then added some beef stock. I topped it off with bits of crispy pre-fried onion and garlic, soya sauce and tabasco. I absolutely loved it, but if you don't think your stomach could handle this first thing, then it would also make a lovely, warming supper. I take my leave of you now for a little while, as I go to Poland on an emergency visit. My beautiful Babcia Ziuta (that's my grandma), one of the people I love most on the entire planet, is in critical condition in hospital. I have no idea what's going to happen next. It's one of those times when the immensity of life hits you straight in the face

Seedy flapjacks and the art of patience

I was starting to worry that I'd lost my knack with flapjacks...

But it turns out that I really haven't. You just shouldn't eat them as soon as they're out of the oven, because they need time to set. I ate three in this warm, crumbly state, fretting continuously about how I'd accidently made granola, about what went wrong, that perhaps I hadn't used enough butter... Actually, the only thing that was missing was a little bit of patience

I feel like life's been asking that of me a lot recently. It's a lesson I appear to be quite resistant to. I have moments where I completely get it - why rush towards the future, towards the end of your life... stay in the present moment, relax. Everything comes at the right time. And then I feel like I've been patient for long enough, and where's my reward for being so patient... and completely miss the whole point again. But as a friend said to me recently, "good things are worth the wait". He was right, about these flapjacks at least

Ingredients

200g butter

3-4 cups oats

1 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup linseeds

1/2 sunflower seeds

1/2 pumpkin seeds

Handful chopped dates

Tiny bit of butter

You melt the butter in a pan and add all the seeds. Fry these for a few minutes before adding the maple syrup, dates and oats. Keep mixing in the oats until you are happy with the ratio. Spread on a buttered baking tray and stick in a pre-heated oven at about 180 degrees C for about 20minutes. Score, then allow to cool before munching

Honey, date and walnut flapjacks, sugarfree

You may be wondering what's going on with all the flapjack recipes recently. The truth is, since I liberated myself from the maple and sesame flapjack, there's been a bit of an oaty orgy going on at my house. So here were are - another brilliant combination. I'm starting to think you can't really go wrong with them, though of course I should know that you can go wrong with anything. So if you want a formula then I guess it's this: 3 cups oats to 1 cup something crunchy and nutty and 1 cup something sweet and chewy (plus butter and some kind of sweetner). This time I've sweetened them with delicious honey from some distant family's beehives in Poland

Ingredients

3 cups oats

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup chopped dates

200g butter

1 cup honey

Sugar-free coconut and apricot flapjacks

When you've had the best flapjacks in the world, it's hard to then try a different recipe. There's such a massive risk of disappointment. And it feels a bit like cheating. Even though you know that the maple flapjacks will always take you back with open arms and no questions asked, it still doesn't feel quite right. Except that I've had this flapjack idea going round in my head for a while now - apricots and coconut, apricots and coconut...

Ingredients

3 cups oats

1 cup desiccated coconut

1 cup dried apricots, chopped

200g butter

1 cup agave syrup

By 1 cup, I mean approximately 200-250g. You make them as you would any other flapjacks - melt the butter, add the agave syrup, then all the dry ingredients. Mix together really well, then bake for 20-25min in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees C (remember to grease the baking tray!). They are completely different to the maple ones - softer in both taste and in texture - but just as tasty and balanced. Sometimes, a risk is just worth it. I wouldn't advocate cheating, but let's just say that me and flapjacks have agreed on an open relationship

Sugar-free maple flapjacks

I've been trying, and failing miserably, to give up processed sugar in January. I feel that I'm addicted to it, and I've come to point in my life where I'd rather not be addicted to anything. Being in my 30s has made me rather sensible it seems. Well, by comparison anyway. However, I've realized that life's a little sad without something sweet to nibble on with your tea, so I decided to experiment with some sugar alternatives last weekend

I made almond cakes with agave syrup and flapjacks with maple syrup. The almond cakes were tasty, and the agave syrup worked well, but they just seemed...(search fruitlessly for the appropriate adjective) a bit "meh" next to the incredible maple flapjacks. I clearly need to perfect that recipe. The flapjacks, on the other hand, they were something else - completely, unexpectedly glorious. I'm not just bigging myself up here, everyone that tried the maple treats has been enamoured with them and I had to promise I'd bring some more into work tomorrow. In fact, just a day after I made them, I've hardly got any left to bring, as my brother came over for dinner and took some away too. In short, a big success and I hope you try them! As usual with flapjacks, they're brilliantly easy to make

Ingredients

200g butter

1 cup maple syrup

3 cups oats

1 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup chopped dates

First, make sure you toast the sesame seeds on a frying pan on a very low heat, stirring regularly, in order to bring out their lovely flavour. When that's done, melt the butter in another pan, and pour in the maple syrup. Add all the dry ingredients and mix well. Transfer to a buttered baking dish. Bake at around 180 degrees C until golden - about 20min. Score while still hot, it will make things easier later. Happy February!

Cherry-peach oat and yoghurt pot

So these little oat and yoghurt pots are my favourite breakfast at the moment. I am one of those people who is hungry every two hours, and oats are one of the few things that really fill me up. And as it's too warm to be eating porridge, this is an ideal alternative

In my previous post, I made a raspberry and almond pot, whereas today, it was peach and cherry. I poured boiling water over the peaches, in order to peel them easily, and blended them along with the cherries, greek yoghurt and honey

I then combined the yoghurt mixture with the oats (to soften the oats and make them less dry, soak them overnight in oat milk/water/fruit juice) and divided it into little pots - now I have breakfast for the next three days. I have also been eating plenty of salads throughout the summer, and have done recipes on YouTube for Salade Nicoise and Goat's cheese and mushroom salad - enjoy while the sun is still shining, something tells me it's not going to be for much longer!

More berry recipes

I am almost satiated with seasonal berries. I have been eating them in different forms almost every day - I miss them so much throughout the year, that I have to get my fill in the summer months. And I'm so nearly there... but before that happens here's a couple of berry recipes from this week, starting with another pasta one. I realize that  people can't quite get used to the idea of sweet pasta (here's an earlier blueberry pasta recipe) but just look at rice pudding - it's a very similar concept. Except this doesn't have to be eaten as a pudding... Anyway, it's an incredibly simple recipe - you just cook the berries with the sugar and vanilla essence for about 5min, until they turn into a sauce consistency. Cook the pasta separately, in plenty of salty water. Combine the creme fraiche with the berry mixture, and warm gently. And finally combine the two!

Berry pasta - ingredients

Pasta shapes

Strawberries

Blackberries

Creme fraiche

Vanilla essence

Caster sugar

And this is a berry breakfast, which is just natural yoghurt, blended with raspberries, honey, a little vanilla essence,  then mixed with oats (soaked in juice or milk before to make it even better) and some toasted almonds

I made a few of these, so I could have breakfasts waiting for me in the fridge in the mornings, and not have to worry about whether we have milk, or tea, or bread in the flat... we're not very well supplied. However, when I move into my new flat, sometime very soon (I hope), it will be a completely different story. I am seeing masses of various sizes of pots and pans, sharp knives, a clean, non leaky, well-stocked fridge and an ice-cream maker...

The Breakfast Experiment

And we start at the beginning: breakfast. I have yet to find the perfect breakfast and so far the month of January has been dedicated to that search

The healthy breakfast was where it all began, me being on a post-Xmas detox. On a cold, damp, grey Monday morning I was positively dreading eating the above fruit salad. I was surprised at how delicious and moreish it actually was. I prepared it the day before, cutting up kiwis, bananas, pears, nectarines and apples, and adding tinned mandarin and grapefruit segments. I squeezed and little bit of lemon over it so that the apples would not go brown over night. I made enough to last for 3 days for both me and Jamie (my boy who eats huge amounts of everything). I served it with bio yoghurt and honey and sprinkled with black sesame seeds that I bought in the Japanese Centre in Piccadilly Circus. My mouth is watering now I am just writing about it so it was a definite success: 8/10 (points taken off for being neither warm nor seasonal)

Then came the experimental breakfast. I had lots of brown rice and decided to make some kind of a rice pudding-type dish. I cooked it with milk and single cream, and added honey, cinamon, raisins, black sesame seeds and almonds to the mix - all the things I love - and chilled it overnight. The next morning I heated it up with some milk - it was revolting and I would not recommend it to anyone - but have included the recipe in case someone has a pressing desire to try this concoction: 1/10 (the point being given because I'm sure it's not as horrible as some things out there)

The boring breakfast was next, cos sometimes you just want some toast and a cup of tea. I won't bore anyone with the details of my toast making, all I'll say is it has been a fallback breakfast for me all month  so it would be sad not to give it any mention here: 7/10

And that brings me to my current favourite - the warm-your-cockles-porridge-breakfast. It may not look like much but that was the most delicious little bowl of food I've had in a long time. It's very quick and easy too - I just warmed a large handful of oats in a bowl-full of milk (I like it to be very runny) with some chopped banana, a pinch of sea salt, a tablespoon of honey and some mixed spice. Don't leave it on its own for too long or it'll get gloopy - you have time to slather some cream on but not to have a shower. Once it's hot through, it's ready: 9.5/10 (I have to leave hope of there being something a bit better out there otherwise life would not be worth living)

There was also the elusive breakfast I had this morning... last night when I was coming back drunkenly from a girls' night out at the Alpine Lodge (fab by the way) I bought a tomato in a Turkish shop with this amazing idea of what I was going to have for breakfast this morning. The tomato went missing in the night and I spent 10 minutes looking for it this morning. I ended up miserably eating toast: 3/10 (Points for the great idea, the exercise and the toast) I have since learned that Jamie had eaten the tomato as a midnight snack