The season for birch tapping will soon be upon us and I’ll be heading out to gather some of this delicious natural nectar. Whilst I rifle around in our shed looking for the hand drill and collect wood to make taps and bungs on the lathe, you can get a few tips and tricks from a little foraging piece I’ve written for one of my favourite magazines – The Simple Things.
This is a very tasty recipe from another of our cookbooks, Superfood Breakfasts. It’s a little book that packs a big punch of healthy breakfast inspiration, so ditch the coco-pops and try an on-the-go Amaranth Breakfast Bar instead!
Amaranth is a really cool grain that’s just as high in protein as quinoa and adds a little extra crunch to these muesli-esque bars. A brilliant portable breakfast when you’re late for the bus, an energy-boosting afternoon snack to fuel some digging on the allotment and delicious with a dollop of yoghurt for pudding.
Up for grabs was a copy of our very tasty Power Bowls cookbook. First name out of the top hat was….. foodfreedomnaturally from Instagram. Yay! Humungous congratulations. Your copy is winging its way to you over there in the USA. Hope you love all the healthy recipes and luscious pics as much as we do.
Boo hoo for those that left lovely comments and didn’t win a copy. Here’s a recipe from the book to cheer you up! The promised Harissa Chicken & Rice with homemade harissa marinade and salsa verde. All is not lost.
The last 12 months have whizzed by and I can’t believe Power Bowls is now a whole year old! Our copy is looking well-thumbed with splodges and stains on our favourite pages. Current loves are the Ancient Grains Porridge (perfect for chilly autumn mornings), a dead easy Kimchi recipe and the Roasted Roots & Pulses Bowl – brilliant for using up homegrown veg.
I loved pulling these ideas together for DK and Will took some glorious pictures, as always! To celebrate our 1st birthday we’re giving away one lovely copy of Power Bowls to one lovely person. All you have to do is leave a comment here or on our Instagram, Twitter or Facebook pages and we’ll pull a name out of a hat on October 31st.
Over the next few weeks I’ll post some sneaky-peek recipes to tempt you like Spicy Harissa Chicken & Rice with homemade harissa marinade and salsa verde (the kids are loving this one) and maybe even a Pho Bowl or two! Best of luck….
We’ve had ‘the letter’! You know, (or perhaps you don’t) the letter from the Parish Council that tells you your allotment needs a good tidy up or you’ll be evicted… Yes, that one. Admittedly, we’ve had a very busy few months and not paid nearly enough attention to our beloved patch. Lets just call it a fallow moment….
We’ve not gone to wrack and ruin through a lack of interest, love or thought for our allotment, just a serious lack of time. Allotments, as any gardener will know, are time consuming places, especially when they’re not on your doorstep. We love gardening (sowing seeds, watching our food grow and then cooking with homegrown produce is awesome) and we’ve not lost that passion, we’ve just gained another – orienteering! And we love this too. That’s all of us, three children, two adults and one dog.
Oh what a night! It started with every girls dilemma of what to put on the feet. I possess very few shoes – flip flops, sheepskin boots, blunnies, trainers, wellies and an old pair of (broken!) heels. I would have loved to wear my favoured wellies, but alas my daughter said “no way!” and found me a suitable pair from the fancy dress box. No joke!
Billy’s on the Road was the last finalist to be judged for the Best Family Dining category in the Celebration of Sussex Life Awards 2017. And what a surprise! Housed in an old Little Chef building on the A29, it’s been transformed into a busy cafe with the feel of an American Diner – bright colours, big portions, great prices, happy customers.
We went for a Saturday brunch and were welcomed by Billy herself as chef for the day and an army of really delightful staff. It’s no wonder they were winners of the Outstanding Customer Service category at last years Sussex Life Awards!
We recently had the great pleasure of eating out at this fabulous cafe, the second of three finalists in the Best Family Dining category for the Celebration of Sussex Life Awards. As the judge, my job has just got a whole lot harder!
Not only was the food fantastic (home-cooked and locally sourced with plenty of options for the whole family) the service was second to none. And food tastes so much better when it’s served by genuinely happy, friendly staff!
I’m thrilled to have been asked to judge the Best Family Dining category at this years Celebration of Sussex Life Awards and have the incredibly onerous task of eating out at three of the best family restaurants in Sussex before deciding on a winner! This year it’s going to be particularly tough as the finalists all sound amazing – The Loft at Sparks Yard in Arundel, Billy’s on the Road in Billingshurst and The Cowdray Farm Shop Cafe in Easebourne, near Midhurst.
We’re just back from a fantastic lunch at The Loft in Arundel, where our youngest son, the grandparents and our dog gave us a proper sense of how family friendly this restaurant really is. Thumbs up all round!
Will and I (and the children, chickens and dog) are delighted to be featured in this months issue of The Simple Things magazine. We’ve written an article about the joys of allotmenteering, growing organic & biodynamic fruit and veg and the tasty pleasures of cooking up a feast with our own homegrown produce.
There’s a moon gardening & biodynamic factsheet on The Simple Things website for your perusal, or better still, get yourself a copy of the magazine, read the whole article and take a peek at some luscious pictures of our patch!
Leafy green veg like kale and chard are some of our favourite winter crops – incredibly easy to grow and brilliantly versatile in the kitchen. There’s a great thrill in gathering an armful of kale on a frosty morning or heading down to the allotment with a torch to find some chard for dinner! Big armfuls of curly kale and black ‘nero di toscana’ are destined for a batch of kale crisps and a very tasty green juice, our so-called ‘Green Goddess’. Full of homegrown green goodness and a real kickstart to the day….
We’ve been winkling out the last of the blackberries from the hedgerows around our home and turning them into jam! Ah jam… swirled into porridge, spread on toast, dolloped on scones. So delicious, but usually loaded with sugar. Enter chia jam… just as tasty, just as pretty and no refined sugar in sight, so it’s a whole load better for you, plus all those tiny chia seeds are packed with protein for extra oomph. Hooray for healthier jam!
If you’ve ever fancied keeping hens and need some fluffy-bottomed inspiration, then you might like to take a peek at an article I wrote for one of my favourite magazines, The Simple Things. I was delighted to be asked to share my experience and our adventures with our quirky little flock of allotment garden hens – Dotty, Bean, Sweetpea, Bluebell & Squash. There are lots of tips about choosing chickens, coops, fencing & food and some very tasty recipes for cooking with their amazing eggs.
To read the article in full and for a copy of the recipes you can still buy the June issue of the magazine or have a look at my hen keeping factsheet on The Simple Things website. Keeping chickens is such a joy, surprisingly simple and great fun…
Packed with protein and rich in omega-3 oils, we absolutely love this alternative to our regular loaf! The recipe was a ‘eureka’ moment in the early hours of the morning, when I’d been up developing and testing recipes for our new book ‘Superfood Breakfasts‘. It’s full of seeds for depth of flavour and lots of crunch, as well as being gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free & yeast free AND it’s a doddle to make (no kneading or rising required!) Perfect…
Delicious just as it is with squished avocado & tomatoes or toasted and spread with homemade brazil nut butter & chia jam. We’ve been munching on it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hope you enjoy it too!
Big congratulations to one of our FB friends Alethea Mifsud! Your name was first out of the woolly hat and you’ve bagged yourself a copy of our new cookbook, ‘Superfood Breakfasts’. Yay!
Thanks to everyone for your lovely comments and don’t fret if you didn’t win – the book is now available in bookshops and online, plus I’ll be sharing a few sneaky-peek recipes on my blog over the next few weeks, like these Avocado, Nori & Nut Cream Toasts on homemade Quinoa Superseed Loaf! I hope you find some breakfast inspiration to kickstart your days… xx
Very excited indeed to announce that this time next week you’ll be able to buy a copy of our new cookbook, Superfood Breakfasts! Yay… It was a fantastic project to work on with DK and we’re massively proud of of all the tasty recipes and gorgeous pictures.
I’m really hoping you love what we’ve created – 25 healthy and balanced breakfast ideas to kick-start your day, from smoothie bowls & overnight oats to pancakes and breakfast bars to go. Vegetarian, gluten-free and free of refined sugars, the recipes are quick and easy to prepare and very delicious, even if I do say so myself! I loved coming up with the recipes and my family have really enjoyed testing them all… Yum.
To celebrate the launch we’re giving away a copy of the book on Monday 2nd May 2016 to the first person I pull out of my woolly hat (I know it’s April, but it’s still very cold!). All you need to do is leave a comment on this post. Over the coming weeks I’ll post a few recipes to tempt you, so stay tuned and best of luck to you all…
You can pre-order ‘Superfood Breakfasts’ on Amazon or on the DK website. Published by DK on 2 May 2016, £6.99. DK.com with gorgeous photos by Will Heap Photography.
A very tasty and simple fish pie with a difference! We’ve swapped traditional potato mash for a healthier and infinitely more colourful combination of celeriac, sweet potato and carrots. Adding chickpeas ups the protein and gives you the chance to make a gluten-free béchamel sauce! For a speedy meal, you could prepare the pie in advance and simply bung it in the oven when you get home. Perfect…
Fish is such a simple way to load up on essential nutrients and omega oils, but make sure it’s responsibly sourced. We use our local fishmonger and completely trust that everything they sell is top-notch in taste, freshness and ethics, which means we enjoy our fish pie even more. Yum!
We love garlic and use it pretty much every day in the kitchen, so ‘G’ just had to be garlic in our ‘Allotment A-Z’. Last year we had great success with some very tasty garlic called Spanish Roja (an over-winter hardneck variety that packs a huge flavour punch), so we decided to grow it again this year!
We saved some bulbs and planted out the biggest cloves last autumn and now, here we are in spring, and the garlic is looking good. I’m loving the great circle of life…
I love beetroots! They’re so easy to grow and are a totally gorgeous colour. We’ve been experimenting with beetroot in our breakfast porridge and this is the result. ‘Ta da’… delicious pink porridge!
I used organic beetroot powder for this one, but have also made it with fresh beetroot juice and both work really well. We all skipped out the door this morning. Yum…
Not only do they taste great, French Beans also make a brilliant fruit & veg ‘creature’ for the local village show! They were one of the first things we grew on our allotment and remain one of our superstar favourites – there really was no competition when it came to choosing ‘F’ for our ‘Allotment A-Z’. We love French Beans!
There are loads of fabulous ways to use these beans in your kitchen – delicious raw in a salad or dipped in houmous, lightly steamed on the side, baked in a slow-cooked stew or juiced for breakfast, the versatile french bean is also a doddle to grow. We’ve grown green ones, yellow ones, mottled ones and a gorgeous purple one that looks amazing, tastes great and stores well. Can’t ask for more than that!
‘F’ is for the fantastically flavoursome French Bean…
A friend asked me to create a banana-free ‘cheesecake’ for those that don’t do bananas… so here it is! Just as yummy and just as good for you with a little tropical twist and not a banana in sight. Dairy free, gluten free and with no refined sugars, this is the perfect guilt-free pud that won’t give you or the children a sugar-rush before bed. Yay!
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Jean Mottershead
I hope you don’t think I’m cheating by including something in our ‘Allotment A-Z’ that doesn’t actually grow on our allotment, although it does grow just beside our allotment fence! I thought about ‘eggplant’ (aubergine here in the UK) and endive, but I honestly find our elder tree more useful than both those crops, so here we are…
The elder tree or shrub is one of my absolute foraging favourites and can be found growing pretty much anywhere in the UK. It has distinctive frothy ‘sprays’ of creamy-white flowerheads in spring and bunches of dark purple-black berries in autumn. Both the flowers and the berries are brilliantly useful in the kitchen.
‘E’ is most definitely for Elder…
A homemade and healthier version of an old homegrown favourite! We’re just finishing off the runner bean chutney that we made last summer and are really going to miss it. Especially good with cheese or ham, our chutney is free of refined sugars, very tasty and a fantastic way to make the most of your bountiful runner bean harvests.
I love making chutney in a slow cooker, but this recipe also works brilliantly on the hob. You’ll be dreaming of summer whilst eating your runner bean chutney in the depths of winter. Yay!
This breakfast certainly put an extra spring in our step this morning! A little bowl of creamy yumminess with a big nutrient boost – oats will keep you feeling fuller for longer, blueberries are packed with antioxidants, banana has loads of potassium, cashews and nut milk for protein and cacao nibs for extra crunch and ‘zing’! Yay…
This was a tricky one! We don’t grow damsons, daikon or dragonfruit on our allotment. We grow lots of daisies, docks and dandelions and seriously considered ‘D for dandelion’ (so tasty in spring salads), but in the end it was the dainty and delicious dill that got the honour of being included in our A-Z of favourite allotment fruit and veg. Hooray!
We grow dill as a companion plant and edible herb – its fresh, zesty flavour and versatile seeds make it a brilliant addition to salads, soups and chutneys and an excellent defence against caterpillars! It’s well worth saving a space in your garden for a lovely little patch of dill…
Last week was school half-term and an opportunity to get stuck into some really fun projects with the children, like making this smoke-box for our cheese! I’ve always loved the taste of a good smoked cheese, so it was exciting to see how this turned out.
We got some beautiful cheeses from our local organic farm shop – a mild cheddar, a vintage cheddar and an amazing halloumi cheese, all made with raw milk from the farms own herd. They’re already delicious, but we were interested to see what the smoke-box would do!
Homegrown Kate 