Juice 3 Ways (Pear, kiwi, spinach & lime, Carrot, orange & apple and Beetroot, apple & carrot)

I know there’s all this talk about juices not being good for you, the sugar rush blah blah blah, but it can't be as bad for you as a bar of chocolate...so we good? I will be the first to make that uurrrgghhh noise when someone says they want to make juice and tell them we’re making a smoothie instead; I am not a fan, purely because washing the juicer? “Ain’t nobody got time for that” also, wasting food makes me sad...and roughage makes me happy.....anyway. I do have an idea of what to do with the leftover pulp so I am 100% okay with making these; that post will be up tomorrow.

Sun Dried Tomato, Onion & Courgette Ribbon Salad

Are you a fan of raw vegetables? There's usually two types of people, the ones who are all up for the raw veggies and the ones that are pretty apprehensive, courgette is definitely a good one to start with.
This is one of those recipes that proves that the simple things can be just as tasty as the complicated. It's super quick and easy to whip up and if you're anything like us these ingredients will most likely already be in the fridge if you want a quick dinner idea.

Almond Biscotti

Take me to a coffee shop, offer me a cake and I will hands down bypass the cake offer and have biscotti. I actually have a very vivid memory of this. In the middle of a wedding in October going to a costa with my family (it’s a long story), they all sat down with a muffin or piece of cake and there was me with my biscotti.

Biscuits aren’t my favourite thing which is a little odd because I’m all about that crunchy food but they’re always a little too sweet or too hard or bland or get stuck in your teeth, and I am in no way a dunker, I DO NOT GET THAT! Is that just an English thing? A world wide thing? If you do that I don't think I'm living in the same universe as you.

Can I also mention THIS WAS NOT PLANNED!
Okay so I knew it was biscuit week on the great British bake off but it was a crazy coincidence that they were baking the same thing, although now mine seems awfully plain and boring. I’ve never made biscotti before and I do love the classic flavour and what’s a little ridiculous is I went through all my cook books and not one of them had a basic almond biscotti recipe. Now that I’ve finally made it, which might I say I found the process rather enjoyable, now I just want to make all the biscotti in all the flavours. I apologise now if that follows.

Quinoa, Pea & Cress Salad with Honey, Soy & Mustard Glazed Salmon

This is one of those recipes that sort of came out of nowhere, I didn’t really think about it and the ingredients were determined by things I was craving at the time i.e. glazed salmon and cress and laziness, yes I did just say laziness.
Let me explain; I was in John Lewis with my mum having our free cake and coffee for the month and the only other food I’d eaten that day was muffin pie (that’s a whole other story that maybe I’ll tell one day), I was drinking my coffee and eating a scone, how English of me, and just started craving a “salad with salmon” which is a little ambiguous to say the least. After trips around two different supermarkets due to the fact that I FORGOT TO BUY SALMON, what an idiot, although maybe it was worth it because the lovely guy at the fish counter gave me half a side of salmon half price so I ended up making this salad twice because it was just so tasty. By the time we got home is was about 6, knowing I had to cook quinoa and salmon I didn’t want to cook or prep anything else. Peas replaced pulses and the rest was mostly dressing and seasoning, the most work I had to do was chop up a spring onion and go out in the garden to cut the herbs. I can’t tell you how amazing this tastes though, all the flavours combine perfectly, at the time I was going through one of those phases where even the tastiest food seemed a little bland to me and it got me out of my food funk so this is definitely a winner and will probably become my go to healthy nutritious salad.

Lemon, Lime & Almond Loaf Cake and The Great British Bake Off

I took a mini mental health day yesterday, although it turned into me making lists, trying to sort out birthday presents and going shopping to try find some things I needed which was extremely unsuccessful. Actually I'm not sure you could really call that a mental health day, but the thought was there.

Yesterday was week 1 of The Great British Bake Off, it just snuck up on me this year. I saw an advert for it a few weeks ago and completely forgot about it until 2 minutes before the program, I saw a tweet and pretty much legged it down the stairs with a blanket and bottle of water in hand screaming mum! I was entirely unprepared with no cake and no time to make coffee and in the first episode they don't do the whole "history of baking" which is usually when I sneak out if need be. But the first week is usually always cake so I did a little post bake off baking because watching the bake off pretty much just means I'll be craving baked goods for an hour + every Wednesday night, although I'm not sure if that's any different than usual.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (FMP Cookies)

Frustration hits and the best thing to do is get in the kitchen. I sort of forgot that this is what I love to do, over the past couple of months I’ve been so busy and preoccupied with other things, which I will explain some other time, and now all the stress is over but when I’ve not done something like this for a while I start to think everything has to be perfect. I mentally plan what post would be the best post to come back and that the redesign has to be finished and exactly the way I want it, I get so caught up in the details and end up putting everything off because of it.

I have a frustrating problem with my site that I can’t solve right now because my headache is making it difficult to stare at the screen so the perfect thing to do now? Put on an apron, some music and just bake!

So on to the important stuff; FMP cookies, otherwise known as oatmeal chocolate chip. Being an art student they have these things called final major projects (FMP) which involves a couple of months of being lost and not knowing what to, about a month of finally deciding what to do, getting inspired and a lot of procrastinating and about 2 solid weeks of late nights, messy bedrooms, film marathons, very little sleep and in my case excessive amount of hand cramp from hand sewing words. I actually watched and first 3 x-men films (this was back when only 3 films were out) on repeat for about a week. But when all night art sessions are involved, snacks must always be involved, no one has time to stop and worry about eating cue an abundance of FMP cookies. A friend and I used to make these cookies enough to have a constant stream of them, although with slight variations probably involving different sugars and she added glacé cherries but I can only imagine how many we got through in the space of those few weeks.