losing my footing | lemon cloud pancakes

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Prune was given a shelf life, but they weren't exactly sure what it would be. The words of the vet ran round and round my head like a batsman between the bases. Could be could be three weeks, could be three days, she might not make it at all. She had been quite happy, when I left her there, in the consultation room. Wagging her tail, tired and confused, why I was sitting on the cold tiled floor with her, with a lump in my throat and her collar in my hand. What do you say to your dog, who is more than just a dog when they've told you'll probably never see her again? What would you say to your best friend or your sister? I said nothing, but tickled her chin as I always do, she licked my face, and I left the vet. The walk out was as if I was on a mountainside road somewhere, my head all spacey, like there was no atmosphere and I was loosing my footing. Slipping, off the road, into an abyss. A dark, empty space, without her.

Drama of mountainside roads aside, that Thursday almost exactly six months ago was a nightmare. I woke up that night and thought, did I dream all this? Please tell me that Prune's asleep on her cushion. But of course she wasn't. There was only one set of tic-tac paws on wooden floors, rushing to greet me, but even to Suzi her solo footsteps sounded hollow, she kept stopping to check for Prune, her big sister, the one who incited all her craziness. We'd had a call late the night before that Prune had survived her operation. The tumour was out, the internal bleeding had stopped, she would have blood transfusions all night. As you probably know, she made it. It changed her, it changed us. If Prune isn't at my door in the morning wagging her tail and practically jumping up and down, I panic. Every time she's sleeping I stop and watch her ribs heaving up and down. I know it's crazy, but people have said that it was a miracle she survived at all. And now she's lasted 6 months! You go Prune. 

She's been in the best mood lately. All smiles. Whoever said dogs can't smile has never met Prune, because she knows how to grin. She'll lie there on her cushion in the mornings, her head propped up against the kitchen cabinet and her tail will thump, frenetically, so I'll tickle her chin, her back leg does this funny circular motion. A bit like she's playing the drums, pushing the pedal with her feet. She'll sigh a bit, snuffle a bit, snatch whatever food we've given Suzi, then leave the kitchen and plop herself down on the floor in the living room. Spirited is a good word for her. Independent. But less so than before. Before the op, she'd squirm and wriggle and wrench herself free when I tried to cuddle her but now she'll stay. Probably through gritted teeth, she lets me sit on the cushion, between her and Suzi. Pruney will heave a heavy sigh, but she likes it. Knowing that we're around.


Prune went for another scan in mid February where the vet gave her the more or less all clear. For now. We'll never know how far out of the woods we have come. A bit like living in the shadow of that mountain, with the high roads where you can't breathe, where there are gaps between the rocks that are dark and empty. But for now she's here and we hold on to that. She's still smiling every morning, still stealing all the food she can find, still digging holes and eating mud in the garden. She's still here and she's still our girl. For now, at least, the mountains just hover on the horizon.

Pruney loves pancakes. So does Suzi, actually, and my dad. We're the pancake squad over here. These pancakes are super fluffy, hence the name cloud pancakes. They are so light, airy and delicate, with a bright lemony tang. Spring pancakes, for the awkward time when citrus is still lingering but the cherry tree is starting to blossom (!!)
They do involve a whipped egg white situation which makes them a bit more effort than other pancakes, but it's totally worth it. They freeze well, too, so you could double the recipe really easily and freeze some.
Hug your pups when you can. They make our lives much richer than they'd ever think.
Hope you have a great weekend, maybe with pancakes xx

Lemon cloud pancakes

makes 5-6 pancakes  // gluten free + easily dairy free

1/4 cup (25g) oat flour
1/4 cup (30g) brown rice flour
1 tablespoon coconut sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
1/2 cup natural yogurt (goat, regular, coconut all work)
juice + zest of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 free range egg, seperated

yogurt and honey,  for serving (if you like)

Combine the flours, sugar, baking powder + soda and salt in a large bowl.

In another bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk together the yogurt, oil, lemon juice and zest, and vanilla. If your coconut oil seizes up (from the cold other ingredients), very gently heat the mix and it will loosen up again. Beat in the egg yolk.

In the clean bowl of a stand mixer, or in a very clean glass/metal bowl, beat the egg white till stiff peaks form. 

Add the yogurt & egg yolk mix to the flour and gently combine with a flexible spatula. Very gently add the egg white, and stir to just combine - there can still be streaks of egg white, you don't want to deflate their poofiness.

Let the batter rest for 5 minutes. You can heat up your pan in this time.

After 5 minutes, ladle about 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) of batter into the pan. Cook for about 2 minutes, till bubbles form on the surface of the pancake. Flip it gently and cook for about a minute more. I use an electric stove and most people don't, but you've made pancakes before.

Repeat with the remaining batter. If you're serving the pancakes straight away, you can keep them warm in a low oven, on a baking tray. Otherwise, let them cool completely, wrap in parchment paper and freeze.

I like them with a dollop of yogurt mixed with honey, but maple syrup, nut butter etc would also be great. Just a suggestion :)

Everybody's number one

what's for breakfast?

rhubarb & hazelnut crumble

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Update 2022: I decided the remove the original text from this post because it felt a bit too preachy (why?) which I hate. This is still a really great recipe and I didn't want to detract from that. Love you

So now as usual I'm going to awkwardly shift gears (that's one of my strengths) to talk about the merits of rhubarb. I've been looking high and low for rhubarb since the season for the early 'forced' crop started... then my sister hunted this bunch down for me, so shout out to her for that. Anyways, various family members like rhubarb for its tartness in sweet things, so I made a super simple crumble, using apples to balance out the bite from the rhubarb. It's actually pretty healthy for desert, so you could have it for breakfast if that's your thing. If you do want it to be more desert-y, you could serve it with some ice cream, or yogurt otherwise. I used hazelnuts here because I thought the colour and richness would be nice, but feel free to use another nut that you have chilling in a jar somewhere. It has been weirdly warm here for the past few days, so spring really made its mark, and the rhubarb is proof that. Hoping that it makes an appearance wherever you are - spring, and the rhubarb.
A lovely end to your week. Hugs xx

Rhubarb & hazelnut crumble

Serves 8-10 // gluten + dairy free

1 bunch of rhubarb (400-500g) (around 1 pound)
2-3 medium apples (450g-ish) (around 1 pound)
seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
1 tablespoon natural orange juice, or fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons (45ml) pure maple syrup

// for the crumble

3/4 cup (75g) rolled oats, certfied gf if you need
3/4 cup (75g) oat flour (same)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (70g) chopped hazelnuts
1/4 cup (60ml) pure maple syrup
1/4 cup (25g) extra virgin coconut oil, melted 

Preheat the oven to 180'c / 350'f. Oil a 9inch square pan, or something with similar real estate.

Slice the rhubarb into even chunks; core the apple and chop it too, you can leave the skin. Add the fruit to the dish, scrape in the vanilla bean, drizzle over the oj & maple syrup, then toss everything gently to combine.

In a small bowl, toss the flour, oats and chopped hazelnuts together with the salt. Drizzle the coconut oil and maple syrup over, then using your fingers or a fork, crumble the liquids and flour together so that clumps start to form. Continue mixing with a fork till the mixture is crumbly, with a few chunks.

Drop the crumble into the pan, over the fruit in an even layer. Bake for around 30 minutes, till the fruits are super soft & bubbling, and the crumble layer is crisp and lightly brown.

The crumble will keep 5 days in the fridge, and I've heard they freeze and defrost well, so I'll be trying that for sure.

more fruity desserts

another bouquet | Mango + coconut ice cream

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Lots of people say that roses remind them of their mothers, and they do for me too. We used to have a few hours wait between when our flight from Heathrow arrived in Bangkok  and our connection to where we lived in Malaysia. We'd wander around the glossy airport; my mum, my sister and I, looking at all the expensive stores, trying on pointless perfumes and reading the back of books. The place we'd always visit was the natural skincare store L'Occitane for their rose hand cream. Papery skin, after a long flight, the prospect of a couple of months in dry heat, that floral scent was always like a throwback to springtime europe. We'd buy a small bottle each, and go to the foodcourt, where each stallholder was still dozy and the European backpackers slept on their gear.  Mum always ended up wearing that same black sweater to travel - our dad and us had tried dozens of times to find something similar, but always failed. Too brown, too formal, too thin, and she was happy with that same one anyway.

We had roses in our house in Belgium. That was my first time with a rosebush of my own. The garden in that house was crazy - it was divided by shrubs and hedges into small sections, each with their own character. It was sloping, everywhere, which made it hard to mow the lawn and the grass was often left long in some areas, so they looked like meadows. We all did a lot of work in that garden, my dad did the patio himself one summer, and my sister and I would rake up after he'd trimmed the hedges, and we built a little run for Prune, with chicken wire, just after we got her. My mum's place was the spot by the back door in the kitchen, on cold fall days when we'd be out tidying leaves, she'd be there, watching out of the window and waving. Too many trees, she used to say. They make the garden dark and wet, and when the leaves fall it's a mess. She joked that we should cut all the trees but leave the rosebush, where it was, frail but thorny, standing out on the patio. Standing out through summer storms, autumn winds, bitter winter frost, but unfailingly blooming bright in late spring. It reminded me of her.

On Mother's Day and for her birthdays we've always bought her flowers. Apparently my dad has always done it, since Layla and I were very young, and I remember he'd often arrive home, late evening from London with a bouquet of flowers. Just like that, a surprise. They'd grace our dining table in some mishappen vase or the other, whatever we could find. He started to travel more, the flowers appeared less, my sister and I would organise them when he asked.  Somehow Layla or I would scrounge a bouquet from somewhere - carrying the battered blooms back on buses, I'd take them to the last lesson of the day with me because they didn't fit in my locker. My friends would ask, why the flowers? I'd remind them it was Mother's Day on Sunday and they'd just give me funny looks, but I knew that the flowers would soon be in the skinny vase on the kitchen window sill. My mum likes them, any kind, she says they add something to the house. A little beauty every day, makes things brighter, or words to that effect. They enliven our kitchen for a few days and after they're gone, the sill suddenly seems very cold and empty.

Mothers are like that too. Like the bouquets of flowers we buy them. Quietly resilient, cheerfully defiant. Even with the best intentions, we put them through hell. She wants the best for us and we'll pick off the petals. None of us notice that they're wilting until the water in the vase is almost empty and we'll do everything we can to revive them - fresh water, a spot in the sunshine. They bring so much to the house, they are the very heart of it. We know the bouquets will never be enough. But we buy them, as we always have, to see her pretend that she had no idea it was Mother's Day and that we'd been arranging flowers, and she'll open yet another card and put it in the kitchen drawer, we just need to feel like we've tried. There's no real way to show our gratitude. But there's something nice about watching her standing by the window sill on which the vase sits, cradling her mug of coffee in her hands, looking out at the first few buds on the cherry tree. 

To you, Mum. Happy Mother's Day, from all of us xx 

So I'm back, with more frozen/creamy goodness in time for Mother's Day (Sunday in the UK). I know I made something similar recently but  you may now be aware of the fact that my mum shares my passion for coconut? Mango is her other favourite fruit... and mango and coconut are so great together, as you probably know from some tacky beach resort somewhere. Also my mum has been on this health kick thing recently (she's taken up running!!! I am quite proud) and I didn't want to sabotage that by bringing out some cake, did I? dessert ain't no fun if mum can't have none.  Anyway, for Morher's Day, I present you the easiest recipe on this site, with the smallest ingredient list,  ironic considering all I just said about mothers but hey sometimes the simplest things are best, and I'm sure they'll agree. Mine would 100% stand by that.

To all the mothers, aunts, grandmas, sisters, you're loved more than you'd ever know. And we express that through flowers and ice cream. Happy weekend to you all xx

Mango and coconut ice cream

Makes arouuund 1.25L / 5 cups-ish   // Gluten + dairy free

2 small, ripe mangoes (or one super big)

2 cans (800ml) (2 2/3 cup) full fat coconut milk
2-4 tablespoons maple syrup, depending on how ripe your mangoes are (the mangoes in Europe are never ripe enough tbh but taste as you go) 
1 vanilla bean
teaspoon ground ginger (optional)
1 beach umbrella (jk) 

Prepare your mangoes - peel the skin and remove the flesh from the stone. You probably know how to do it better than I do. Chop the flesh into chunks and set aside.

Pour the coconut milk from the can into the jug of a blender. Split and scrape in the seeds of the vanilla bean, add the ginger if you wish, and the maple syrup, then the mango chunks.

Blend on high till smooth and sunshine yellow. I have a crazy strong blender so this took all of 5 seconds, but if yours is less so, just keep blending till there are no more chunks of mango. Taste and check sweetness - it dulls once frozen, so keep it sweeter than you'd like.

Allow the whole jug to chill in the fridge for around 3 hours (thug life, chilling in the fridge)

Once totally cool (totally cool) , pour the liquid into the bowl of your ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer's instructions. Pour into a freezer proof container and freeze till firm if you'd like, otherwise you can serve the ice cream straight away. 

You may need to let it sit out for 10 minutes before scooping if it's been in the freezer. 

Notes

If you don't have an ice cream maker, feel free to make popsicles. Or a slushie-shake type thing. 

more frozen