Saturday 17 October 2009

Farmers' Market haul and new chocolate


Today's oatmeal was wonderfully simple - golden syrup and a dash of cinnamon. I usually like my oatmeal quite sweet and dessert-like, but I've been thinking about branching out. Interestingly enough, today I saw this thread on the PPK. I might try some savoury oatmeal for lunch sometime next week.

I finally managed to make it to the Farmers' Market with more than 20 minutes to spare before they packed up. Unfortunately, I didn't really get much - spinach, potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms. I normally wouldn't buy mushrooms, since Mike won't eat them, but I'm thinking about cooking a couple to throw in my calzone tomorrow.

Yesterday, I went to Real Foods and found this -

an Organica Swiss Chocolate Couverture bar - in the discount bin, at what I thought was half price, because it was broken. Mike really liked it, so he asked me to get another bar. Unfortunately, it turned out to have been much less than half price, because an undamaged bar was £2.39. That, to me, is a lot to pay for chocolate. Regardless, I bought that and a new (to me) flavour of Divine Chocolate -


Oh yes, chocolate makers are finally jumping on the chocolate and raspberry train. I saw a chocolate raspberry bar in Tesco a few months ago, but it wasn't vegan. But this is! The raspberry lends a slight tartness to a lovely, smooth dark chocolate, with a little bit of crunch due to the raspberry being freeze-dried. It's quite nice - something you eat one wee square at a time, very slowly, rather than scoffing it.

Next week's cookbook challenge is How It All Vegan, which I don't have. I went to look at a copy at Waterstone's today. I flipped through the whole thing, and there were a few recipes I would like to try, but I didn't buy it because it's in UK measures. I just can't get my head around weighing my ingredients. I might have to see if I can find a copy with US measures. I actually borrowed this book from a friend many years ago, but this was pregan and when I still didn't eat many vegetables, so I didn't get out of it what I could have. Now, though, it's a very basic book, very much meant for newbies, so I'm torn on whether or not I should buy it. I'll see what everyone else says about the recipes, and maybe try to get someone to send me a recipe in US measures to try out something new.

On a non-food related note, Mike was looking for things to watch on BBC.co.uk, and they had a show called 'Synth Britannia', looking at the history of synth-pop and early industrial music. It was as if someone at the BBC had said, 'What can we do to get Rachel to watch?' So we're trying to watch that now. It's making me happy.

1 comment:

  1. you want the book with the picture of Sarah and Tanya on the front, that's the one with the US measurements in it. The ugly green one with just writing on the cover is the one where they converted the recipes to English measurements. I much prefer US books to English ones too as I can't stand weighing things, I find it much easier to cook with my cup measures!

    ReplyDelete