Weird and wacky food trends

I’m always fascinated by the new, weird, wacky and wonderful foods I see being created all the time. You would think that food would get boring, would reach its limits, would somehow just keep going round in circles like fashion trends do. There is, of course, some circularity, with old-fashioned recipes, especially baking, coming back into vogue with the neo-Vintage/mend and make do scene. But there are always crazily wonderful new ideas as well.

As you will know, I can be a bit obsessive with food. So, it’s no surprise that I follow various baking and cooking blogs and Facebook pages and Instagram feeds and constantly see them scrolling down my screen every day. And I’m starting to notice some trends. Here are a few of those trends and some of my favourite examples of each. Be aware that (unless I’ve said so), I haven’t tried making or eating any of these, so I cannot be held responsible for either bitter disappointment or unexpected deliciousness.

Mash-ups

It now seems to be a thing to take two different sweet (or savoury) treats and combine them: cheesecake brownies, Margarita cupcakes, cookie pies, cookie cupcakes … you name it, it’s probably been mashed. Here are some of the weirdest combinations I’ve ever heard of.

Chocolate cake pizza

Ok, so I was hoping that this one would be a strange savoury-sweet melange, but really, it’s a cake with a mixture of toppings that make it look like a sweet pizza. I still like the concept, so I’ve included it here. Could I eat it? In several sessions, perhaps…

Potato chip caramel brownie pie

This one looks pretty disgusting. But I’m sure there will be people out there who will love it. Try this at your peril!

Chocolate chip cookie brownie pie (could they add any more words here?)

Cookie pies have been seen at certain fast food outlets, but these are next level and recipes can be found all over the internet. They look delish, but have got to have a shite-tonne of sugar in them. I guess that’s the point.

Chocolate Chip Brownie Cookie Pie. Image from https://www.chocolatemoosey.com/

Doughnut chips

 Well, that’s weekend breakfasts sorted!

Strawberry Pie Cake

Say whaaaat?? This looks very moreish indeed. Now, I just need an excuse to make it. There must be a public holiday coming up soon… and it IS strawberry season in New Zealand… :).

S’more croissants

This is one I’d like to give a go. I’m sure all the Frenchies and Francophiles I know would gasp in horror at this Americanised gastro-abomination, but it combines two delicious things in one heart-attack-snack! I’d do mine with vegan marshmallows, of course.

I could go on and on… but I won’t. For more mash-up inspiration, check out the following links:

Food 52’s best mash-up recipes

Better Homes & Gardens Mash-up recipes

Dessert Mash-ups from Pure Wow

 

Strawberry Pie Cake. Image from http://www.purewow.com/food

Doughnut chips. Image from http://www.purewow.com/food

Purposely weird or gross

Featuring such gems as Ham and Bananas Hollandaise and Tuna and Jello Pie, this collection of Vintage recipes may not be a new trend, but it is a hilarious rediscovery and will have you gagging… but not for more.

For some reason, lots of food products now seem to have a unicorn equivalent: unicorn cookies, unicorn toast, unicorn everything. But unicorn mac and cheese? Just. why?!?!

Matcha ice cream. Image from http://www.hungryforever.com

Matcha everything. Matcha latte, matcha ice cream, matcha cookies. Matcha overload! It’s not necessarily gross, but it is very … green. But also good, if you like that kind of thing.

I don’t drink coffee, so this is under the gross heading for me, but I’m sure these new coffee trends will delight some.

After the fad of adding butter to coffee, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone started serving cheese tea. Think I’ll pass on this one.

Techno-cuisine

These kinds of things blow my mind, and would definitely blow my budget. When I lived in England, I once visited a nearby town, Bray, and realised it’s the location of Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant, The Fat Duck. I walked up to the door to peruse the menu and noticed that nothing, bar one example of wine by the glass, had a price next to it. That told me that I couldn’t afford anything on that menu. But what a menu! I don’t have the foggiest what was on it now, but some of Blumenthal’s most well-known dishes include snail porridge, triple cooked chips (simmered, cooled, deep fried, cooled and deep fried again) and bacon and egg ice cream. He is also known for using dry ice in his culinary creations.

Blumenthal wasn’t the first to dream up new-age, multi-sensory, techno-cuisine. Here is an article about the rise of molecular gastronomy.

Healthier versions of favourite foods

I quite like these because they make me feel virtuous. And, you know, they still might not be what you can really call healthy, but at least they are healthiER than the alternative.

My favourite site, as many of you will know, is Chocolate Covered Katie. This brilliant woman has dreamed up healthier alternatives to all your favourite treats. Examples include Healthy Oreos, Healthy Brownies (even Chocolate Workout Brownies! Got to balance out all that Boot Camp, right?), ice cream, breakfasts, pizza… you name it, she probably has a healthy alternative. Katie has also published two books of her recipes: Chocolate Covered Katie: Over 80 Delicious Recipes That Are Secretly Good for you and Hello Breakfast! Both are currently on my wishlist and would be on my shelves if only there wasn’t a self-enforced recipe book ban at the moment. There are only so many recipe books one house can contain!

My other go to place for healthy versions is Wholefood Simply. The latest recipes I’d like to try from this site include Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream, Four Ingredient Chocolate Fudge Cake and 2 Minute Baked Caramel Brownie Balls (pictured below), none of which sound remotely healthy.

Mend and Bake Do

Vintage recipes are all the rage, as can be seen in books such as Ladies a plate. This genius book contains recipes like the ones grandma used to make… if you live in New Zealand anyway. Some of the culinary delights on offer are custard squares (the ubiquitous kiwi treat), sponges, pikelets (like little pancakes), scones and more.

Carbs on sugar on carbs on fat, or what I like to call Carbolicious! (though I’m not sure I could face eating them myself…)

Loaded desserts such as bubble or egg waffles. These. look. amazeballs! I wish I’d had a chance to try them on my last trip to Auckland. Sigh. They are available at Nitro Cow and now also at EGGLOO.

Ice cream stuffed doughnuts. Need I say more??!!

And finally, Macaron Ice Cream Sandwiches. Looks like a combo made in heaven to me.

Imagination gone wild cakes

Massive kudos to the cake decorators out there. I am only an amateur one and I have mad respect for the real artistry of cake decorating. I can appreciate it all the more after having made a few decorated cakes now, not all of which were a success. I’ve also been to lessons with the amazing Paula Jane Cakes (I talk about the lessons here) and to cake decorating shows where I saw some wildly impressive cakes. It seems that you can make anything out of cake these days. Here are some impressive, amazing and just plain weird ones.

Kitty litter cake, anyone? I also found steak cake, Scrabble cake, even an Ed Sheeran cake!

Kitty Litter Cake

For more bizarre cake inspiration, head here. Number one is scarily life-like, number two… she can’t even look at the cake! Can you imagine cutting into that?! Number ten just freaks me out. Why would you want to eat that?

Secret gems

I stumbled across this list and would like to share it with you. It looks like a collection I’d like to delve into (after a bit of vegetarianising of the savoury ones, of course). Strange, little heard of combinations of flavours but, seemingly, delicious.

I’ve also discovered Uncle Tetsu’s Japanese Cheese Cakes. Light and fluffy, unlike your traditional cheese cake, they look simply delicious! Anyone in Auckland fancy posting me one?

I’d also love to hear from anyone who has tried making or eating any of the above. I wish I could try them all, but there is so much food, so little time! Please tell me about your experiences with weird food trends. Looking forward to hearing from you.

 

 

The Wedding: Part Deux

Sooo…. it’s been over a year now since the actual wedding but, as John Lennon said, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Or making babies.

I finally found a few snippets of time here and there (while baby is napping, for example) to put fingers to keypad and get this post done. In The Wedding Part One, I promised that Part Two would dish the deets on “the suppliers, the highlights of the day, the honeymoon, and, most importantly, THE FOOD!” So, here we go.

Since this is (mostly) a food blog, that’s what I’m spending the most time on. However, as the venue were the suppliers of said food, they deserve a mention first.

The venue
Gracehill Vineyard Estate is not only a beautiful setting, it was simply a beautiful experience altogether. From the minute we sat down with Warren Roodt to discuss what he could offer, we felt at ease. Unlike some other venues we visited, Warren spent time going over the options and making us feel like we were important, whether we chose to use their venue for our wedding or not. At Gracehill, Warren and his wife Linda not only presented some lovely options as to how we could use their venue, they did so with a high level of professionalism as well as kindness and humour. We weren’t rushed or pressured and they offered a very competitive winter wedding special. Despite the season, we still wanted the ceremony to take place outdoors. Warren assured us that they could set everything up outside but, at a moment’s notice, could rearrange everything indoors if the weather didn’t hold (fortunately it did). They were open to whatever level of decoration we wanted for the reception and were flexible with the meal selections, which was perfect given that I and several of our guests required vegetarian or gluten free options. They even cooked a special meal just for the BFG-husband-to-be, as he decided he’d like something special for such a festive occasion. The BFG is, decidedly, NOT vegetarian, so they prepared a Beef Wellington for him and even let us have an extra dessert to share :).

We were really impressed with the wait and bar staff and how everything ran seamlessly, including the music (for both the ceremony and the dancing) and the all-important monitoring of the bar tab :). We were also pleasantly surprised by the special touches, such as presenting our Best Man and Maid of Honour (Oh Chief of the Brideslaves) with a bottle of bubbly to celebrate the fact that they had got married at the very same venue, in the same month, but four years earlier.

We can’t say enough good things about this venue and would recommend it to any couple looking to get married somewhere really special.

The food
The food was divine! We had bubbles just after the ceremony along with some delightful canapes: mini BBQ pulled pork burgers with crispy purple slaw; pan seared prawns with garlic, lemon and dill mayonnaise; and mozzarella arancini with tomato and basil coulis for the vegetarians.

For the meat eaters, the entree selections were smoked ham hock rillette with warm mustard veloute and crisp; and grilled thyme and rosemary chicken on a haricot bean and pancetta cassoulet. The vegetarians were lucky enough to enjoy a caramelised shallot Tarte Tatin with roasted peppers and rocket.

The main meal choices for the carnivores were sticky beef short ribs with potato gratin, honey glazed carrots and braised leeks or Marlborough Salmon with a lemon and parsley crumb accompanied by crushed potato and green pea sauce. The vegos supped on potato, leek & mushroom filo pie with baby spinach salad.

Finally, the desserts! Sticky date pudding with caramel sauce and crème fraiche ice-cream or warm chocolate fudge cake with chocolate semifreddo and salted caramel sauce. There was also a spiced apple crumble for the vegan and gluten free guests.

Grilled Thyme and Rosemary Chicken on a Haricot Bean and Pancetta Cassoulet

Smoked Ham Hock Rillette, Warm Mustard Veloute and Crisp

Marlborough Salmon with a Lemon and Parsley Crumb, Crushed Potato and Green Pea Sauce

Sticky Beef Short Ribs with Potato Gratin, Honey Glazed Carrots and Braised Leeks

Sticky Date Pudding with Caramel Sauce and Crème Fraiche Ice-cream

Warm Chocolate Fudge Cake with Chocolate Semifreddo and Salted Caramel Sauce

 

Of course, I didn’t try the meaty meals, but the shallot Tarte Tatin was a perfect balance of sweet caramelised shallots and rich roasted peppers with some very tasty pastry.  I was too nervous about my speech to finish the main course but it was cooked to perfection. Having had the chance to try the first two desserts, I can state with great satisfaction that they were decadent and delicious!

The photographer
Megan Blackwell of Blackroom Photography was absolutely wonderful. We chose her not only because she is a friend of ours but because she does beautiful work. And, as it turns out, she is also a pleasure to work with. We were really pleased with how easy she made the whole process: from discussing possible shots before the event, to helping us to compose great photos on the day, to finally putting it all together into albums and onto canvas, Megan was organised, professional, friendly and just plain delightful. It can be a risk engaging a friend in what is essentially a business relationship but, fortunately, Megan did not disappoint. I have since recommended her to many people for their weddings or other special occasion photography and would not hesitate to do so again. She managed to capture some very special moments. All of the photos in these two wedding posts are from Blackroom Photography. Megan’s blog post on our wedding can be found here.

 

Hair and make-up
Elizabeth and her assistant from Face Me Make-up did a smashing job on my hair and make-up and really did help me to feel like I was the most beautiful bride ever. A special mention here goes to my Maid of Honour, who did the bridesmaids’ make-up and one of my other bridesmaids who did the bridesmaids’ hair. You really don’t have to spend a lot of money to get quality work done! Our budget only allowed for professional hair and make-up work for me, so I am just very lucky to have two very talented friends whose hair and make-up skills were second to none (even the professional!).

The wedding night
We didn’t immediately set off on honeymoon as we wanted to spend the day after the wedding with family at our place. But we did stay somewhere special on our wedding night. Rosebud Cottage was tastefully decorated, warm and cosy. A highlight was the outdoor bath under the stars! Our hosts were lovely and even posted back the tie that the BFG accidentally left behind.

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, we were not able to have our honeymoon in Thailand, as planned. But we were lucky enough to have two local honeymoons instead: the first in Rotorua just after the wedding, and the second in Wellington a few months later. Highlights of the first included visiting Paradise Valley Springs Wildlife Park, staying in a suite and getting massages. The best bits of the second were the Zest Food Tour, the Weta Workshop tour, and Wellington Zoo, where we experienced a Cheetah encounter.

All in all, we had a perfect day and a lovely pair of honeymoons. What a very lucky girl I am :). And now, we also have a beautiful baby boy. More on this at my other blog The Pudding Club… when he gives me some time to write!

I would love for you to share the best bits of your wedding and any recommendations you might have for those planning their special days below :). Till next time…

From Blueberry to Clafoutis

I do love French dishes and this is one of my favourites. I made this dish in celebration of my little uterus dance party-er, otherwise known as Little Pudding, reaching the 35 week milestone. He had miraculously grown from the size of a blueberry at seven weeks to the size of two clafoutis at 35 weeks. If you’d like to read more about Little Pudding’s journey, pop over to the latest Pudding Post on my other blog, Pudding Club Days, for the whole story.

I found one blog that called this dish a sour cherry baked pancake, but that doesn’t really do it justice. Clafoutis, pronounced kla-foo-tee, is a classic French dessert: a kind of sweet, baked, dense custard filled with cherries. I was surprised to find that this recipe wasn’t included in my favourite French patisserie book, mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, so I had to search the interwebs to find a good ‘un. Since I had a special reason for making this recipe, I wanted to try one that used blueberries instead of cherries, plus it’s much easier to find frozen blueberries than to source affordable cherries in my neck of the woods.

Many recipes vied for my attention, including some lovely looking ones from Julia Childs and Jamie Oliver, and even a chocolate-plum version from our own Mrs Cake, which I HAVE to try making next! This Guardian post describes how to achieve the “perfect” clafoutis and explains some of the more time consuming, fiddly parts of the traditional method, but I was looking for something quick and easy. Finally, I found a River Cottage recipe that employed blueberries instead of cherries, which was closer to what I was looking for. But, in the end, my recipe wasn’t exactly the same as any of the above, which is often more fun than sticking to a recipe :). Here’s my version, roughly based on Jamie Oliver’s one. I hope you give it a go.

Little Pudding’s Blueberry Clafoutis

You’ll can make this in a casserole dish or cake tin, but it tends to be quite flat (especially once it’s cut up), so a flan or pie dish is best.

Ingredients

For the beginning and end of the dish

• Butter for greasing the dish
• 1 Tbsp white sugar
• Around 300g of frozen blueberries, thawed
• Icing sugar for dusting (optional)

For the batter

• 60 grams plain flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 3 large free-range eggs
• 60 grams white sugar
• 300 ml cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• a pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180ºC, grease an approximately 25cm round pie or flan dish with butter and then sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar over the surface.

Mix the batter ingredients in a food processor until completely smooth, then set aside for 20 or 30 minutes. This seems to give the mixture time to get that lovely chemical rising process going.

Place the blueberries into the dish, trying to get them reasonably evenly spread over the base. If you haven’t made time to thaw them first (I didn’t), then put the dish in the oven for five minutes or so to soften the berries.

Once that’s done, take the dish out of the oven and pour the batter over the blueberries. They should be just covered. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes: the result should be a puffy, browned dessert.

Serve warm, dusted with icing sugar if you like. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll also add a scoop or two of ice cream to the bowl.

I’d love to hear if you try out any of the recipes and how you get on.  Bon appétit!

Greased and sugared flan dish

Naked blueberries

Blend, my friend!

Batter up those berries!

Golden perfection

From blueberry to clafoutis!

A vital ingredient

Served with French vanilla ice cream

 

A Date with deliciousness!

So, first of all, if you read my last post, you may be wondering what happened at the Tough Guy and Gal event that BFG and I were participating in. I am pleased to say that I got my time down by another FOUR MINUTES! And the BFG? Well, he blew his time out of the water! TEN MINUTES faster than last year, and getting quite close to the times of some of the people who got placings. He came 21st overall, out of 901 finishers. Watch this space for next year’s times!

And now, some if you may recall the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera… Or my strange affair with dates. No? Oh, well, that’s probably because I haven’t told you about it yet. I never used to like dates, but then I never used to like vegetables either. My parents were really worried when I declared that I was going to be a vegetarian, because they weren’t sure what was left for me to eat. Funny how tastes change. I now LOVE vegetables. In fact, I will eat pretty much anything, except for peanuts and, obviously, meat. But, I used to be very fussy. Not a fan of vegetables, didn’t like nuts, thought Ribena was the devil’s juice. Couldn’t even stand raspberry jam because of all those annoying little seeds. I still sometimes have issues with food texture. My poor parents recall an incident where I was being “forced” to eat – horror of horrors – raspberry jam, on brown bread (!), and drink… Wait for it … Ribena!! I proceeded to bawl and complain and, during this traumatic episode, someone knocked on the door and one of my parents had to answer it while their eldest child sounded like she was being subjected to torture in the background.

But, fortunately, tastes do change. I’ve read that new foods may need to be offered to preschool-aged children five to ten times before acceptance occurs. This continues as we get older. We need repeated exposure to foods and drinks before our taste buds will accept them: hence the expression “it’s an acquired taste”.

So, I never used to like dates and, all of a sudden I do. I guess my taste buds have grown up. I have realised though that there are dates and there are dates. I compared some lovely Persian ones from Iraq with some budget brand ones, as I’ve done this test before with budget versus branded foods and by and large I’ve found that the budget items are just as good, if not better, than the branded ones. However, this is not the case for dates. The budget brand had next to no taste, whereas the dates from Iraq were delicious.  And there was only 40 cents difference in price between the two packets. So, I’ll be buying the “fancy” ones from now on.

The Persian dates were not just delicious; they were caramelly, soft, sweet: nature’s goodness in a wrinkly little package. In short, I have discovered that I am NUTTY about dates!! And so, I decided to try them in a few different recipes.

Before we get to that, though, I wanted to find out more about these tasty little parcels of awesome. According to the Organic Facts web site, dates are a good source of energy, sugar and fibre and contain essential minerals such as calcium, iron, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium and zinc.  They also contain vitamins such as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, vitamin A and vitamin K. Wow! All of that in that shrivelled, ugly, DELICIOUS, little thing!

Dates pack a health punch!

Dates have been used for thousands of years, in the Middle East and the Indus Valley and fossil records show that the date palm has been around for 50 million years! At least, that’s what Wikipedia says.

So, onto the recipes!

Raw fudge slice

This turned out to be a bit crumbly and sloppy, but delicious all the same! The recipe is from, you guessed it, Chocolate Covered Katie and can be found here. You may remember me mentioning this one in my last post.

Sticky date pudding in a bread maker

I wanted to use our bread maker, firstly, because we hadn’t really used it all that much since we were given it (anybody else got one of these awesome machines that is a wonderful novelty at first, and then gathers dust on your bench or in your cupboard?), and secondly, because I was curious to see how desserts in a bread maker would taste. It was … ok. I would probably make it manually next time. The main problem was that the dates were all steamed away to nothing. It was hard to tell that there were even any dates in there. The pudding itself tasted nice, but was probably a bit overcooked. I used the recipe that came with the breadmaker, but it wasn’t good enough to share here. Probably the most interesting thing about this pudding was that it came out looking like a little loaf of bread. Mmmm, date bread … that could be one to try next time…

Chocolate date truffles

These are my absolute favourite! They contain no processed sugars: only dates, oats, cocoa and a little water. I rolled mine in coconut and they were sweet and chocolatey without being crammed full of white sugar and butter. I have made them several times over the last few weeks, including when I needed to take goods into work for a fundraising bake sale. They were a hit! The recipe can be found here and has a few variations for you to try.

Chocolate date tart

This was a Not Quite Nigella recipe. If you haven’t heard of her, check her out. I follow her on Facebook and she’s recently published a book as well. The base was chocolatey and crumbly, with that melt in the mouth sensation and the dates sat comfortably in a not-too-sweet custard. I think the only thing I would change would be to add more dates and maybe chop them up more to spread them through the custard more consistently.

Classic date scones

Just using the recipe from the Edmonds Cookbook, I whipped up a few batches of these over the last few weeks and they’ve always gone down well. The scones are light and fluffy and the dates (if you use good ones) are sweet and tender: all of this is topped off with a bit of sugar and cinnamon. Nom nom!

Raw fudge slice

Square sticky date pud

Pud and custard

Date truffle prep, using my fancy red food processor

Date truffles

Chocolate date tart

Date scones

The next post will contain a new kind of culinary challenge. Stay tuned…

 

Food as feast

I am well and truly overdue for a blog post, and I really have no excuse, except that work has been busy, life has been social, and there have been Game of Thrones episodes to watch! Don’t worry, there will be no leaking of spoiler-like information for those who haven’t seen the finale of the current season… except to say that there were a few surprises, as always :O.

This blog is about food as a feast or a celebration. I am currently working in Community Development. This is a new area of work for me and I am learning all kinds of exciting things. This is the best kind of work for me, as I thrive when I get the chance to be a little learning sponge, soaking up new information left right and centre. It’s a refreshing change from my previous role which was, shall we say, quite sedentary, a little monotonous, and very administrative. In my current role, I get to go out and visit community groups, go to workshops and seminars, and interact with people who I would not normally have the chance to meet. The role involves giving advice and support around the governance and organisation of the group, their financial obligations, funding streams, meeting other groups, discovering resources, etc. Basically we are there to help groups set themselves up properly and function effectively. There are sooooo many great groups out there doing wonderful things. Did you know that in New Zealand alone there are over 97,000 not-for-profit organisations? Pretty amazing, eh?

In my workplace, the mantra is to focus on strengths rather than problems, which has affected everything else in my life too. I like to think that I am a pretty positive person anyway, but the stuff I am learning really makes me reframe everything in a positive light. The basic idea is that, instead of focusing on the issues a community has, you instead work with the strengths that are already there and build on those. I love this idea. It seems pretty obvious, but it’s amazing how much of our news, our politics, our funding and beneficiary schemes are around deficit: focusing on what is lacking. But, so many community groups have proven that concentrating instead on what is good in their community and building on that is so much more effective.  Another vital part of this is that change is community-led, which means that the people in the community lead change, instead of getting outsiders to come in and make changes or relying on hand-outs. Accentuate the positive, etc etc,

Anyway, that’s my short blurb about what it is I’m doing just now. The reason I bring it up is because FOOD is a massive part of community development. It’s amazing how food can bring people together in all kinds of situations. It’s present at weddings, meetings, conferences, christenings, funerals, parties, markets… Again, this may seem pretty obvious, but it was really brought home to me when I attended a recent Food Hui as part of my work. The event was held at an amazing yoga/health retreat nestled into the North Shore bush. It was a whole day of learning about community markets, composting, community gardens, seed exchanges at libraries, school gardens, community facilities as food hubs, marae programmes, food festivals, food waste reduction programmes (like the one on Waiheke Island) and more . It was fascinating. Over 200 people attended and shared a delicious vegetarian meal between workshops. Food is not only fun and delicious, but it’s a social tool, a celebration, a bumping place, an excuse to have a gathering. Food is a gift, an apology, a sorry for your loss, a welcome to the world. Food brings people together. And I think that that is one of the many reasons why I love it, and why I love to write about it :).

Before writing this, I was casting my eye over some previous posts.  I looked back at a post on running and read about doing last year’s Tough Guy and Gal challenge. Well, guess what is coming up this Saturday? This time we’re competing in our own city rather than travelling for the event, so it will be a different course and therefore a new challenge. But the BFG and I still want to beat last year’s times! If anyone is keen to spend an hour or so clambering through mud, wading through water, climbing over walls, crawling under electric wires and skidding down hills, check it out. There are still spaces left for some of the events and it’s muddy good fun!

This means that it must be almost a year since I started writing this blog. Well, this is my 12th blog post, according to WordPress, meaning I have one per month to show for the last year…. just! I am starting to get into the habit of writing more regularly, so maybe I’ll be able to bump it up to one a fortnight soon…

In the meantime, let me astound you with some of my culinary creations :). Ok, so the first one isn’t mine. It was the yummo dessert the BFG and I shared at our anniversary dinner at this place in Russell, Bay of Islands. Then there’s some soft, fluffy date scones, recipe courtesy of the Edmonds cookbook, and finally an amazing raw fudge slice that contains no processed sugars, thanks once again to the amazing Chocolate Covered Katie. I can’t believe how many awesome recipes she has on her site. And while they may not be classed as entirely clean eating, these cakes/slices/biscuits, etc are certainly a lot healthier than most out there. I can’t recommend this one enough. It was YUM! Like the scones, it too contained a heap of dates… Can you see a pattern? One guess as to what the next post will be about … See ya then :).

 

Yum yums courtesy of the Duke

Date scones

Raw fudge slice