a bit of both | banana + flax pancakes

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We celebrate both our dogs' birthdays and anniversaries - that is, the day they came home. For Prune the two days fell over the summer just weeks apart. We had a trip to the beach and a walk by the river, as markers. They felt that way. Momentous. Poignant. She turned eight. We've had her six years. There were a few dark days last October I didn't think we'd celebrate in August ever again. Those were cold thoughts, in the heat of August, watching sailboats on the Broads as our girl grinned and sniffed everywhere she shouldn't. Weird to say, but Pruney and I are very similar. Independent, sort of prickly. Sullen when we want to be. Introverted. I don't think I was even 12 when prune first came to us - she was two, but from the start I think she established that I was the kid and I needed to be looked after, for whatever reason. She took it on herself to do so and has the most uncanny way of knowing when something is wrong. Better than anyone in the family, because she knows but she doesn't ask. She'll just sit there - on the cushion in the hallway outside my room, under the couch, right over my feet. Just sit with her ears slightly pricked, as if to say, I'm here if you want to talk, kid. I don't and I think she prefers it that way. Ah Prune, you're just my type.

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We brought Prune back home after her surgery last year pretty late evening. A bitter October Friday - the sky had been doleful, dour, a matte gray and the radios spluttered about how the nights were among the coldest in the year. It was bleak. We felt it, inside and out. Suzi stopped eating cheese without her sister to steal it. We picked Prune up from the vet and her whole stomach had been shaved; pink skin and a 30 centimetre gash of stitches that had put her back together again. She was in pieces - off the operating table with just a shell. She cried. Pain, confusion, abandonment, the whole lot. It was haunting. She was my darling. We couldn't leave her alone with the risk she'd lick the stitches so my mum and I each stayed up half the night to be with her, 2 am, the thermometer on my phone telling me it was below freezing out. I had a kitchen chair shoved next to the radiator where I could face the dogs on their cushions and keep my back warm. Too much time to think. To will her to pull through. Watch her ribcage heave up and down as she slept, fitfully. She was alive. She couldn't go into the garden without a lead so I wore sweatpants and took her out, Suzi a few steps ahead, sniffing the frosty grass, our footsteps louder than they should've been; the moon brighter than suited the occasion. Or maybe it worked, because it put the three of us in a white light. Something uplifting about the clear mornings and watery sunshine when Prune and I took our first slow stroll around the block. She sniffed the air, watched the clouds from her breath in the cold, and I could almost see her smile. 

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Her fur grew back, slowly, the scar healed, physically, for all of us. She was older. I was older. When she was a pup in the summer we would paint her toenails and make daisy necklaces that we'd tuck into her collar, a bit of festival flair. We'd play baseball, she fielded ok. She'd jump in and out of our SUV with reckless abandon and it's now noticeably more of a cautious leap.  She still hops up and down when we come home, she still licks her paws to the point of obsession, she still purrs when you scratch her chin, still has those irresistible puppy eyes. But this year I sat out in the sun reading and she lay in the shed, behind me, where the floor was cool. Took her for drives in my car, music playing, fields and rivers flashing past. I sang, she rolled her eyes, more or less. She lay under the couch where I was sitting with her face resting on her paws, alert and thinking. About the future or the past I'm not sure. Probably a bit of both. About the cold days of autumn that brought her back to life, and the summer heat; the days for living. 

"What she realised was that love is that moment when your heart is about to burst" Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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This is the second time that I'm making Prune pancakes but she loved these to say the least. Easy, pretty quick and you probably have all the ingredients at home right now. I love recipes that have such a short ingredient list, nice and minimalist. The first of the so-called 'autumn storms' hit our nook of the UK last week so I was graced with some beautifully moody September light for the photos. Prune is with me as I write this, using my leg as a sort of prop for her head and thumping her tail when I stop scratching her neck.
Love from the two of us xx

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banana + flax pancakes

gluten free // makes 4-6 pancakes

2 medium bananas, ripe
4 free range eggs
1/4 tspn pure vanilla extract
6 tablespoons flax meal, oat flour or mix of both
sprinkle ground cinnamon
1/4 tspn baking powder

coconut oil, for cooking
pure maple syrup, nut butter, etc for serving

In a medium bowl, mash bananas with a fork until fairly smooth. Crack in eggs and beat together; beat in vanilla. Add the flax meal, cinnamon and baking powder, stir until batter is smooth.

Allow batter to rest 10ish minutes so the flax absorbs some of the liquid. Cuddle your puppy, check your emails, scroll instagram as the batter thickens to something that's pourable but not watery. Get a non stick pan going over medium heat.

Scoop a sort of conservative quarter cup of batter (maybe 3T)  - keep the pancakes on the smaller side, they're easier to handle that way. Pour into the pan, cook for 2-3 minutes on one side until bubbles form, then (very gently) flip to continue cooking on the other side for around 2 minutes (I cook on an electric stove so this will be different if you have a gas stove) until both sides are golden brown, or done to your liking. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

If you're planning on freezing your pancakes, I recommend letting them cool on a wire rack and then freezing them straight away because they tend to go off really fast (I speak from past experience). Otherwise, keep warm in a low oven and serve with maple, nut butter, whatever you like. The pancakes in the photo were originally frozen (they look fresh right??  except maybe folded funny from the freezer bag?), I just put them in a dry pan over the stove but in hindsight why didn't I just use the toaster?

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currently welcoming tips on how to resist those eyes

breakfast recipes

roasted plum popsicles with cardamom

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Time for pops :) I know it's getting colder - I was wearing a sweater, a sweatshirt  and socks the other morning but the sun's still sharp up north where we are. So make popsicles while the sun shines, with a bit of fall warmth from the cardamom and maple. Plums and blackberries are like those crossover fruits so they were sort of of the obvious choice. Have fun with the layering, I'm not exactly super careful/fiddly but the marbled effect was still gorgeous - the fruit will make the pops pretty, whatever you do.

Love you xx

PS. Shoutout to my amazing grandma who celebrated her birthday earlier this week. Grandma, I picked these berries from the garden, just like you would. xo 

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roasted plum popsicles with cardamom

makes 8-10

2 cups (500ml) full fat yogurt of choice (I used goat yogurt but regular or coconut would be good)
1/4c (60ml) pure maple syrup
Seeds of half a vanilla bean
Fat pinch cardamom (to taste. I like it stronger than I think most people would)

// For the fruit
1 cup (150g) fresh blackberries
Around 4-5 small plums
1 tablespoon coconut sugar 

Start with the roasted fruit - you can even do this in advance. Preheat the oven to 180'C, 350'F and line a rimmed baking tray with parchment paper.

Gently rinse and dry the berries, chop the plums into chunks and spread out on the baking sheet. Sprinkle over the sugar and toss to coat.

Roast for 20 minutes or so, until the fruit is collapsing and smells pretty amazing. Leave to cool, then refrigerate, or continue with recipe.

Into a blender combine the the remaining popsicle ingredients. Blend on high until combined, transfer the popsicle mix into a container from which it's easy to pour (a glass mixing jug or similar)

Rinse out the blender and add your fruit. Blend until pulpy and a little liquidy, it doesn't have to be perfectly smooth.

Into your popsicle moulds pour in some of the yogurt mix - I did about 1/3 but it really doesn't matter, whatever you think looks pretty. Dollop some of the fruit mix (heaped tablespoon or so) over the yogurt, then pour in more yogurt so the mold is more or less full. 

Freeze for 3-6 hours, until solid. If you wrap each individual popsicle they'll keep in the freezer as long as you like. You can run the whole moulds under hot water if the pops are giving you a hard time; they'll release super easily. 

If you have any leftover blended fruit, you can swirl it into yogurt, oatmeal etc a bit like jam.

*This is the popsicle mould I use, I ordered it from the States and it's really good.

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a background murmur | honey-oat nectarine cobbler

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I was driving to go shopping the other day when I turned off the radio in my car. I'd left the house just before 1pm so it was almost time for ads and the news; they were playing a pretty terrible song anyway so I thought I'd save myself listening through all of that. It went quiet. Inevitable consequence, really. In the year or so I've had my car I honestly don't think I've ever driven alone without the radio - it was so quiet it was striking. More like a yell. I'd come to a stretch of road just after crawling through the village at 30 miles and finally I could go 60, a bit like when you've been sitting on a flight too long waiting for the cabin crew to disarm the doors and then you walk off the shoot into the airport and just walk, really fast, even if you have nowhere else to go. Just to test your legs and make sure they still work, really fast? That's what I always do at that point. Test the pedals, just to make sure they work. Really fast, after all that crawling. I could hear the mechanical whir of the engine, a heady thrum of the Mini's electrics doing their thing. Tyres over the bumps in the road.

A sort of cher-chunk when I eased my foot off the brake. A background murmur, as the car was buffeted by wind over the open heath on both sides of the road. It was one of those perfect Norfolk afternoons; a few strands of liquid cirrus clouds, spilt milk on a toddler's table, the sky Malibu blue, so much so it fades to gray over a hazy horizon. The beech trees that delineated fields swayed enthusiastically, sheep grazed in said fields, a tractor ploughed. But it felt different. It wasn't just a Norfolk summer Thursday afternoon without the radio. It was a transplant of some kind. I was in France, maybe, in some region so rural we couldn't find a radio station that actually played. We'd been there before, many times, same thing, different places. I remember a few years ago we rented a caravan and toured the center of the country for the week, we were somewhere in the heart of the Loire where RTL waves didn't reach. We had parked the truck on a green outside a village under a castle, we were by a lake eating off a plastic table on unreliable plastic chairs, sourdough baguettes. I bit into a local peach, it was the juiciest and sweetest I've ever had, the juices dripped down my wrist but I didn't feel like going into the truck to wash it off, so I just sat there with a sticky hand in the hot sun, trying to lean back in the rickety chair, unsteady on the rough grass of that green. 

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The radio silence lasted me along that single lane in the heath and onto the two lane highway towards town. We used to drive over to England from Belgium and there was always this awkward patch of land around Kent and Essex where the radio would just sort of cut out, and my dad would put on BBC radio 2 instead, since it plays everywhere, and I hated it. The annoying channel switches would have started somewhere around Calais in France, but the French always seem to play decent music so that was ok. It was worse in England where in general the music was far less ok. But the first part after you disembark (from the Channel Tunnel) was bearable, despite the music, because back then England was a novelty, and it was fun seeing everyone drive on the wrong side of the road, there were these green fields, sort of hilly, with white chalk underneath, and they'd be filled with horses. Thousands, all colours, just take your pick and it would be there, like types of coke in a vending machine. There was this one rest stop where we'd break journey for a while, and the sun would be blindingly bright, the wind sharp as a slap, and we'd always say how the weather would just visibly deteriorate as we headed North. We were almost always right, but I never remember having a bad time. 

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I was almost at the grocery store by now but I didn't turn on the radio because I was stuck in a thought. I was thinking about that kind of silent city ride in a taxi. There have been so many, mostly in Asia. Not because we don't take taxis in European cities but because their drivers seem to like the radio. In Asia they don't, or not with passengers, something like that.  There'd be tired, sagging leather seats sticking to the backs of sweaty legs, feet with blisters. Window down, the heat inside when the car was idling would be so thick you could cut it with that proverbial knife, but you wouldn't be bored, because Asia has a habit of carrying on life outside of closed doors for the benefit of those stuck in sweltering taxis. Sometimes the cabs had AC, which was better, especially since most of those times I'd be wearing jeans and a sweater and we'd be heading to an airport on a tropical highway, which means the possibility of potholes and debilitating traffic jams and errant cows, and feelings would be mixed. It would be Europe, which would be home. Which could be good. If we lived in Asia then it was nice to drive on highways that were free of cows and potholes. But it could mean that's it, the end of the tropical highway was really the end of the tropical highway since the holidays were over and rainy winter loomed on the other side with piles of school work and a freezing cold house. We could contemplate it, either way. Like leaving something to cook in the residual heat on the stove. We could sit and think, stew it out, in the silence in the back of the cab, without the radio.

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I'm told quite often I'm a quiet person. I don't talk as much as people expect me to, considering I'm 18, female and spend an unreasonable amount of time getting ready in the morning. I prefer to listen, is what I usually say. Listen hard enough and my thoughts seem to take me back, snapshots, times and places and feelings I thought I'd misplaced. A lot to fill the emptiness; it overflows. 

"How free it is, you have no idea how free, the peacefulness so big it dazes you" Sylvia Plath

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I hope that you're all not too tired of stone fruit yet because personally I could eat them year round and I'll proceed to eat peaches and nectarines until they disappear from the shelves. I'd intended to make a peach cobbler but we only had nectarines, so be it. You could of course use peaches if you'd like. Not the most glamorous dessert, maybe, but the fruit really doesn't need much dressing up to be pretty gorgeous. I mean, just look at the colours of those nectarines. Hope that you're enjoying these sort of Indian summer days, this has got to be one of the nicest times of the year - cool mornings and evenings, mild days, sun still warm.

Hugs xx

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honey-oat nectarine cobbler

gluten + dairy free

1/2 cup (50g) rolled oats
1/2c  (60g) brown rice flour
1/2 c (50g) oat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4c (55g)  coconut oil, melted and cooled
1/4c (75g) honey
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

//filling
600g-800g (5-7ish medium) ripe peaches
1 tablespoon coconut sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1.5 tspn arrowroot powder / similar starch

Preheat oven to 180'C, 350'F.

Rub a little coconut oil around the sides of a baking dish with around 2L (2 quarts) real estate. An 8x8 square pan would work.

In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dry cobbler ingredients. Add the honey, vanilla and and oil and mix through with a fork until the dough looks, well, dough-y (like cookie or scone dough). Set aside.

Chop nectarines into slices and chunks - no need to peel but you can if you prefer. In your  baking dish, drizzle the lemon juice over the sliced fruit, toss with the arrowroot and sugar.

Top the nectarines with the cobbler - drop blobs, for want of a better word, over the filling. Not so glamorous.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the cookie blobs (sorry) are golden and the filling is bubbling.

You can keep the whole dish in the fridge for a couple of days and serve cold or warm, as you prefer. Some people like ice cream with these things, if that's you, go for it.  As a heads up, if you do keep the cobbler, the biscuits will soften from the fruit juices but it will still taste pretty amazing.

fruity desserts