a little light

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,

warm as my face.

Persimmons by Li-Young Lee

The long and winding pandemic, dragging itself through the hills and valleys of another life saving/life ruining/lifeless lockdown. Gratitude at how light falls on a paper tissue flower one of my children made on a half hearted crafty zoom. The way the sand can suck the stress right out of you if you’re barefoot on the beach. A murmuration of pigeons as I drive to the shops in the low, late afternoon sun. I’ve never felt grateful for a pigeon before. And is that the point? Keep coming back to the gratitude, don’t let it go. We are forced to exist in these little moments, the past has been obliterated and the future is scarcely worth planning for. So savour the way my dog sleeps on her back, dreaming of squirrels. The dance of a prism rainbow on a wall. Friendships. Health. The sun rising each day. But sometimes, often times, I’m tired of relying on these little nuggets of gold. I long for the tacky thrill of a day at Disneyland. The luxury of a planned holiday with friends. The inside of a cinema, sticky with someone else’s spilled soda. A long, uncomfortable plane journey somewhere new. A crowded, too-loud bar. A sweaty, smoky house party. Who knew that we were living the dream all those years?

We are trying to keep upbeat. Christmas has been on hold as we feverishly try and track down the children’s passports, lost in the post by this incompetent government. Will we get to fly back to London? Will museums be open? Can I finally have someone else cut my hair? Meet my new niece? It’s been a year since we have seen any UK family or friends at all. So strange, this year of lost things. Dreams, hopes, jobs and lives. My children are so much bigger, they’re scarcely children at all. I’ve watched them grow more than ever, day in and day out as they valiantly stare at their school screens, but their sudden hugeness has somehow taken me by surprise. My face has many new wrinkles, unearned. 

Whilst we wait on the sidelines for what’s left of normality to spring back into existence, we are doing our best to elevate the monotony of our Groundhog Days with the odd magic breakfast, our speciality. I whipped up this recipe for my friends at Midland, a shop where I am guaranteed to want every item. Especially this… and this…. And also this… It’s a hymn to gratitude and the relentless bounty & beauty of nature that has helped us schlep through these uncertain days. And also a way to jazz up another weekend morning en famille.  Hope it helps to lift you too. The way the sun hits the neon amber glow of a shiny persimmon skin might be enough.

Golden Persimmon Waffles

Persimmons are irresistible to buy because they're so beautiful and so utterly seasonal, like something from an opulent Victorian feast. Find a good excuse to have a few lying around looking sexy in your kitchen in this warm, autumnal breakfast. There are two varieties of persimmon, and for this recipe you'll need the Hachiya persimmon, which is the larger, heart-shaped and deeper orange variety. When ripe they're darkest orange-red and squashy like a very ripe tomato, and for this recipe they need to be at their ripest. This recipe is gluten free and can be grain-free depending on your choice of milk.

makes 12 big waffles

2 cups milk of your choice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp turmeric
pinch black pepper
3/4 cup almond flour
2/3 cup potato starch
2/3 cup coconut flour
3/4 cup tapioca starch/flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup ripest Hachiya persimmon pulp - approx 1.5 persimmons

Prepare your golden milk by warming the milk and spices until hot but not boiling, and then set aside to cool. Whilst it cools, measure all remaining dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and whisk until well combined.

Once the milk has cooled down to room temperature, whisk in the eggs and vanilla. Slice your persimmon in half and scoop out the flesh with a spoon, discarding the skin and pith. Either mash or blend the pulp in a food processor until smooth. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk together until there are no lumps. Fold in the persimmon and stir well. Pour into a hot waffle iron greased with a little coconut oil and cook until deep golden brown. Serve warm and topped with melty butter, sliced ripe persimmon, berries and maple syrup, or cream if you're feeling decadent.

The Haunting of Whidbey Island

photo by magical Morgan Pansing

An invitation to be whisked away to a log cabin on the shores of an unheard of island off Seattle, with a group of ladies I sort of somewhat mostly know. I’m friendly and I can’t refuse an invitation to adventure, and Elizabeth has been a lifeline since moving across the ocean to this big, new land, so of course it was a yes. I forgot I had forgotten how to be cold. “I don’t have any coats!” I complained in a frantic text exchange the day before departure. “Aren’t you English?” comes Elizabeth’s response…to which I remind her that I left England because I loathe wearing a coat. But that won’t stand in the way of a good time.

A 5am cab journey to the airport, a meeting of dames in great coats (+ me), the group immediately splitting into pre-flight boozehounds and need-a-coffee. Before lunchtime was even on the horizon Alaska Air’s ludicrously clean and comfy plane deposited us at the luxurious little fireplace-dotted wood-panelled airport of dreams at Everett Paine Field, Snohomish County, just 40 mins by land and sea from our final destination. The ferry to Whidbey Island was a location scout’s dream of smart retro formica and beige, with gorgeous views of eagles circling the blue blue waters beyond and shorelines lined with rainbow coloured cabins and pine forest.

We headed first for a feeding at the Saltwater Fish House & Oyster Bar in Langley, a delicious nosedive into what would become a weekend of excessive french fry consumption. Some slurped oysters, all cradled midday cocktails. I devoured an entire plate of neon radishes served with perfectly super-salty butter. Then we mounted our giant hire car and headed for our weekend home: The Captain Whidbey Inn.

“It was a boarding house, private residence, post office, general store and girl’s school. There were dances and orchestras and Charles Dickens dinners!” Built in 1907 from local Madrona logs, the original post and beam structure still stands intact on the shores of Penn Cove, a gorgeous russet sight rising from the firs as an early evening rain mist mingled with woodsmoke from the outdoor fire. The big red door read “Welcome” and ushered us into the lobby/living room, all cosy velvet sofas & books about the sea around a huge stone hearth (complete with a secret compartment to hide love notes). Through a small door and up the “Harry Potter” stairs to our creaky corridor of bedrooms, each warm and comfortable and cosy as a ship’s cabin. Our views were of Penn Cove, its mussel beds and colour changing waters.

Dock house and mussel rafts at the Inn, by Morgan Pansing

A potter to the lemon yellow dockhouse to watch the dusk descend pinkish over the cove, not a sound but the water gently lapping and the birds settling for the eve, and perhaps the odd joke cracked by a lady in a fabulous coat. Then inside to the glowy dining room to be treated to supper, the walls boasting romantic old images from a hundred years of parties at this magical place. Champagne boats of delicious pink wine led to a huge bowl of bourbon roasted sprouts sprinkled with salty parmesan, truly impossible to stop eating. Then an excess of perfectly skinny fries dressed in shaved truffle and garlic and their ideal bedfellow - a monstrous pot of steaming mussels fresh from Penn Cove itself. Under normal circumstances I’m not one to choose a mussel, but these were in a league of their own - unfathomably delicious, pillowy and robust. We had all eaten far too much, and possibly drunk a little much too, when our fabulous waiter Sam broke out the ghost stories.

The atmosphere on Whidbey and at the Inn was gloriously spooky - not scary, but haunted in a romantic, mystical way encouraged by the misty, smokey forest setting. Like entering another era. Creaky, low lit, fireside Captain Whidbey feels seeped in history and therefore, inevitably, spirits from the past. Sam regaled us with tales of sightings - an oft-seen girl in a white dress, a ghost with a favourite waitress…the icing on the cake was a video of a glass spontaneously flying off the bar. We left supper in turns haunted and hopeful of a sighting. Or of creating one ourselves.

photo: Morgan Pansing

Saturday morn with not a spooking all night, and a return to the dining room for eggs and bacon and many coffees. We dolled up in pretty dresses and sprawled across the gorgeous Captain’s Suite, with it’s sheepskin-strewn sofa and fairytale four poster, posing for photos and pretending to read books about ancient mariners whilst Louise recited us sea poetry. A journey to Coupeville to explore the pier in the welcome sunshine, watching seagulls dash clams on the rocks, our hair blowing furiously in the February wind and my ragged denim coat finally feeling truly inadequate. We toured sweet shops - one turned up the Springsteen so we could all sing and dance about in full embrace of our middle age. Another lunch of seashells, chips and cocktails and then off under blue skies to Ebey’s landing to move our bodies up a hill.

The beach at Ebey’s Landing stretched flat and empty, dotted with agate and driftwood, as far along the coast as is visible, with emerald hills rising up to forests, prairies and farmland beyond. It’s immediately easy to imagine first landing here by ship 150 years ago; not many places conjure history so easily. We hiked up the hill beside the beach, our views growing ever more spectacular. The reserve is named for early settler Isaac Ebey, Whidbey Island’s first permanent white resident, who was decapitated by Haida Indians on a revenge voyage for their murdered chief. So: more ghosts! Probably. As the rest of the troupe continued up a vertigo-inducing ridge I gazed out at the vastness of Puget Sound, the wind stinging my ears, dreaming of summertime whale sightings as the sun began to droop and twinkle.

Back to the Captain Whidbey, where there is never enough time to indulge in the countless expert lounging options. We cuddled into a corner booth for another snug supper, then out into the cool night to one of the Inn’s gorgeous waterfront cabins. A roaring fire to gossip at like witches, plotting a traipse out onto the Inn lawn in floaty nightdress for our staged haunting. Louise embodied the ghost, gracefully drifting barefoot through the dark grass whilst the rest of us giggled behind, cameras aloft. A few gasps and cheers from upstairs windows, some spooky footage slightly spoiled by our sniggering soundtrack…a rare recapture of innocence and silliness and mystery for a little moment out of time.

Next morning, another vast brekkie at the Inn & we gathered in the sitting room to draw pictures of one another and write love notes. Then a final farewell to the green paned windows, squashy cloud beds and spellbinding cove as we wound off across Whidbey Island in search of Deception Pass. Weaving through fields and cute coloured houses and over a giant bridge we were greeted at a soft, silent beach by a huge cedar mermaid, the suitably eerie Maiden of Deception pass. Through the trees and up the hill to Rosario Head, imagining orcas among views of straits stretching into the blue distance, whirlpooly seas below swirling with the maiden’s kelpy hair. Then on across silent, shell-strewn Bowman Bay, up through Madrona woodland to lounge on lime green moss and lichen overlooking a turquoise lagoon. The nature here is overwhelmingly dense and fulfilling, the air tastes green and bright.

And then sadly back to the airport, as the first famous Pacific North West drizzle began to fall, a short drive broken up by chicken soup and stop at the smokey casino to play slot machines with Elizabeth’s grandma. Arriving at dusk, full of fried potatoes, fresh air and soul-nourishing chat, a quick Facetime check-in with the families we would soon be reunited with. Then flying away from this dreamscape land of phantoms and mermaids, log cabins and fireside nourishment.

☽

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

- Sea Fever BY JOHN MASEFIELD

HELLRAISING IN ARIZONA

So much to see, so little time… What to do with the week of “Spring Break” we traditionally spent at my mum’s gorgeous Spanish hideaway? Recommendations came flooding in from all our new friends, and we almost went with the famous Big Sur road trip before settling on Arizona, figuring it would be too hot to go back there in the summertime. “We can camp!” I threatened, “It will be practically free!” After spending more money on camping equipment than flights to Hawaii would have cost, and grossly overestimating the amount of space in our new car, we hit the open(ish) road, the kids squashed awkwardly between roll up mattresses and mountains of crisps.

Los Angeles to Tempe was a cheerful 6 hour drive, with one stop at Denny’s where the kids begged for birthday cake pancakes for lunch, but eventually settled on revolting corn dogs instead. We had booked into the Graduate hotel by Arizona State University because it looked more friendly than the generic, budget places on the outskirts of town - and had a pool. The kids were straight in as the golden sun went down, and we all enjoyed gawping at dinner as college girls in thong bikinis chatted up the bartenders while we ate. We rose early for pancakes, relieved to have booked a yummy, fun hotel for only slightly more than one of the bigger chains, or a terrifying murder motel.

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Next an hour-ish drive north of Phoenix through the desert and into the magical realm of Arcosanti. Paolo Soleri’s ode on alternative city design bubbles up from the amber landscape ready to inspire. Dripping in bells of burnished bronze and copper, with a rainbow coloured amphitheatres and the neon blue sky offsetting great sand-sculpted archways painted in reds and ochres. As we were given a tour by a nervously giggling barefoot resident I made mental notes to build my imaginary dream house in its image, bells and all.

After a forgettable lunch in the Arcosanti canteen we jetted on to the cowboy folklore town of Prescott, and immediately regretted not holding out for grub in one of its famous old wild west saloons on Whisky Row. Up in the mountains it felt cooler and bluer, filled with piano playing cowboys and beautiful old shops. We blew our brief time there queuing for ice creams and eyeing up walls of glittering children’s cowboy boots, then off again in a panic to pitch our tent in Sedona before nightfall.

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Camp Avalon was to be home for the next three nights, hunted down online as somewhere that seemed on the more beautiful, less terrifying side of remote. The camp is a “spiritual nature retreat” running alongside Oak Creek, in full watch of Sedona’s famous red rock towers. It was quiet, safe and mystical with plenty of space for the kids to scamper about throwing their Aerobie into countless trees and fishing it out again with a long stick. Konch grumpily raised our loyal circus tent, still caked in last Glastonbury’s mud and patched up with gaffa tape galore, and the kids wrapped up in much loved new fleeces and took charge of a camp stove supper.

Camp Avalon first night supper

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I had visions of waking at dawn for vortex yoga then spending the days hiking the Arizona wilds, my crew enchanted by the crimson rock castles and condors galore, but the reality was long mornings at the tent with grumpy tired husband and wildling frisbee-obsessed kids, washing up pancake breakfasts in icy water and begging everyone to get a move on. By late morning on day one I had managed to drag them on a hike to Devil’s Bridge, which I promised was quick and easy and would be punctuated by numerous snack stops. We immediately took a wrong turn onto the “advanced” trail, following some people who disingenuously looked to be at a similar level of frailty as us. We wove through pines and over boulders, scratched our heads at arrowed signposts and secretly hoped for a rattlesnake viewing. The kids veered between agony at the extreme boringness of it all and glee as they clambered over streams and slid down neon stone. A couple of hours and many snack bars later we hit the base of the last climb to Devil’s Bridge, the largest natural sandstone arch in Sedona, and gazed up at tourists nonchalantly jumping from rock to rock hundreds of feet in the air. This was the end of the road for me and my vertigo (and my children, thanks to my vertigo) though Konch went up for the full hike payoff view whilst we slid about on rocks and ate sandwiches. Despite not making it to the cliff edge I loved this whole jaunt, whingeing soundtrack and all, the sweeping orange views and the sagebrush scented air. We took the “easy” trail back which was essentially a twenty minute shuffle down a dirt road, through clouds of dust in the midday sun, so I’m smug about our wrong turn at the start and accidentally experiencing the best of it.

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Determined to get the most out of the day we zipped over to Slide Rock State Park , a self professed “natural water park”, where Oak Creek weaves through sandstone chutes. We all had an awkward car change into swimsuits and the kids ran urgently to the water. There were tiers of emerald and turquoise pools connected by slippery rock slides rushing with icy snow melt. My fear of being even slightly cold prevented my joining the fun as the boys leapt and slid and shrieked at the temperature. Indy gave it twenty minutes before returning to laze with me: lizards in the sun. I imagine that in the summer it’s both warmer and more crowded. We emerged happy and sun kissed, the day felt full and we were tired in the best kind of way.

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That night we snuggled in the dark listening to the coyotes sing, waking to a grey morning. The forecast was for rain, which I immediately claimed to be a conspiracy, and we made worried eye contact over the fate of the patchwork tent. We sacrificed another hike for a trip to Montezuma Castle, the ruins of a 600 year old Sinagua pueblo built into the towering limestone cliffs. We arrived as a ranger was racing out to catch a rattlesnake that had been sighted crossing the path, so the kids shot after him whilst we shivered around the information boards, and then shivered around them again as Indy eagerly filled in her ranger’s handbook. The ruins were fascinating but the true highlight of this visit was discovering that Pablo, as a 4th grader, earned us a special pass making all National Park entry free to us for the rest of the school year! This proved to save us a fair wad of cash.

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A miserable late afternoon followed, strolling around characterless Sedona town under threateningly dark skies. An endless strip mall of exactly the same tourist shop again and again, glancing nervously at the clouds and shivering, we decided to treat ourselves to a hot dinner out. As we bundled into one restaurant, then another, we were horrified to discover that everywhere had table wait times of at least two hours. We eventually settled on one and managed to somehow kill the time chatting to kindly strangers and taking turns sitting on the only chair, grumpily sipping cocktails, but take note and if ever planning supper in Sedona: book.

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Next morning the sun was back but the tent was soggy. We fled to town for acai bowls whilst it dried, then packed the car in slow motion whilst it dried some more. Our plans for an early getaway to the Grand Canyon had been kicked to the curb by the weather, and we set off late for Flagstaff where we had been told good burritos waited - stopping en route to buy Navajo opal jewellery and gawp and incredible viewpoints. Flagstaff was crisp and blue and pretty streets, Route 66 retro and ghost stories, with a backdrop of magical snowy peaks. We felt instant remorse at not plotting more time here, and made a whistle stop tour of cute vintage shops and sweet smelling bakeries before landing at MartAnne’s Burrito Palace for an obscenely large lunch and panicky chats about how to squash the Grand Canyon back into the schedule without resorting to a National Lampoon’s drive by photo op alone.

It was my turn to drive, and the unplanned two hour journey from Flagstaff to Marble Canyon, bypassing the Grand Canyon, was a favourite bit of the whole trip. Fantastic vintage motels I still regret not photographing sped past as we left Flagstaff on Route 66, before the long, straight road opened to miles of virtually empty Hopi and Navajo reservation lands. It was the golden late afternoon and the landscape changed from hills to plains to rainbows rock formations, with never more than a derelict gas station or tiny three-house village to break the sci-fi view.

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As the sun began to set we arrived at our airbnb in Marble Canyon, truly the most middle of nowhere place I’ve ever stayed. The address was un-mappable so Aaron, our host, told us to look out for three white houses and walked to the end of the drive to flag us down. We were welcomed to the traditional Navajo hogan he had built in the yard of his home from local sandstone, a beautiful roundhouse thoughtfully furnished and decorated. Lovely old wooden beds and Navajo blankets awaited, beautiful books and artefacts lined the walls. Beyond was a paddock of horses backed by an amber wall of canyon. Aaron built us a campfire outside and we grilled chicken and sat on sunwarmed stone benches to watch the moon rise over the canyon in silence. The kids were in bliss with space to explore and frolic once more, and the entire setting was an incredible, peaceful dreamscape. Once the sky was dark the stars surrounded us in a twinkling dome. I curled up with a beautiful book on Adam Clark Vroman and read it cover to cover before descent into a long sleep.

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The door to our hogan opened to the East, Aaron’s Navajo mother in law explained to us that this was traditional, to wake with the rising sun. The morning’s sunrise was magnificent over the looming amber cliffs, and we fried up some blueberry buckwheat pancakes on the little hogan camping stove and ate outside under the glow. Pablo lazed on the bed reading “Death in Grand Canyon”, plucked from the shelves of the hut, in preparation for the day ahead. Our lovely hosts dropped by with their grandson’s favourite board game to distract the kids whilst we repacked the car and plotted a backtrack route to the Grand Canyon’s east entrance. A drearily long car-packing job later we left, late for the touristy day ahead and reluctant to depart this magical land.

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After much bickering over our lateness we had to forfeit the planned hike down into the canyon and settle for a plod around the rim, heavily populated by loudly farting elderly tourists and the occasional terrifyingly neglectful family posing for cliff-edge selfies with unattended toddlers. I was the shrieking mother twelve feet from the edge with the eye rolling, rather bored children. The views are so magnificently vast they almost appear flat. Highlights were soaring condor and the endless stream of fairytale elk who sloped out of the forest in front of our car, and the plotting of future adventures into the canyon’s depths, perhaps by boat perhaps by horse perhaps by foot. Our two hour plod around the edge felt like a tease of the escapade that could have been, but we ticked it off the list Griswold-style and leapt into the car to attempt to reach Page by sundown.

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Sundown came and went, but we punctuated the pitch black drive with crispy, doughy Navajo fry bread for supper and arrived at our next wild west home fed and ready for bed. This next stop was more rustic but comfy, four to a tipi on camp beds under fleecy blankets, almost spookily remote but for some neighbours in the tipi next door and the twinkling lights of the Navajo generating station towers in the distance. We managed an early start and were greeted by our hosts RoseAnn and Lester hitching up a huge covered wagon to their truck and inviting us on a tour of their own private slot canyon. We had already booked onto the much hyped, much recommended, heavily Instagrammed tour of very famous Lower Antelope Canyon later that morning, and so had to decline. As I watched Lester’s wagon rattle off down the dirt track towards the horizon, two tour guests on board, I wondered if we had made a terrible mistake.

In the middle of nowhere somewhere outside Page

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As we pulled up at “Ken’s Tours” my regret began to further swell. I had expected the tour to be busy, and in my imagination that meant maybe 20 of us clambering down into the canyon at once, but the scale was beyond anything I could have imagined. Fifty people descend into the canyon every thirty minutes, shuffling single file through the beauty and angling for endless extra-orange-filtered selfies. Our tour guide was insistent I not take pictures when I wanted to because he knew where the best shots were, and persisted to endlessly offer to just take all my pictures for me - as he did for the rest of the group - because he was “great at this”. My polite rebuffs rapidly became impatient. It was a far cry from the adventure I promised the kids, and the sheer numbers - 6,000 people a day in high season - made us all feel a bit depressed. The landscape itself is from another galaxy, magic shafts of sunlight filtering copper dust and polished layers of salmon, peach, coral stone, curved underground archways and tangerine sand, indigo shadows and maroon meringue swirls of sculpted stone. Hard to get lost in the glory of it all when you’re in a swamp of screaming babies, shouting tour guides and selfie sticks, but also hard not to get some incredible captures and be awed by the otherworldliness. An expensive casualty of Instagram; with any extra time and money we would have returned to take our host up on a private slot canyon tour instead to fulfil our Indiana Jonesy longings. Here follow some deceptively gorgeous photos of lower Antelope Canyon…

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We recovered from the swarming of Antelope Canyon with amazing baskets of fries, ribs and slaw at Big John’s Texas BBQ, kind of a revamped petrol station with huge smoking BBQ drums and fun retro vibes. Delicious pulled chicken and house made sauces, friendly smiling waitress of dreams, and big cold drinks to prep us for the afternoon’s boat trip on Lake Powell. Not truly a lake but a reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border, a giant flooded canyon named for a one-armed 19th century explorer, it weaves big blue veins through the electric land. A surreal approach down a broad concrete drive led to a sweet little boat with captain and guide and a gaggle of co-tourists. As we pulled away from the dock we passed row upon row of resting double decker houseboats of varying luxury, most with winding slides on the sides; the lake is a mega summer vacation destination and they cost from $10,000 a week to hire and pootle about exploring on, necessary extended family and beers and speedboats not included. The lake was a serene contrast to Antelope Canyon and just as beautiful, our journey interrupted only by the odd kayak or paddle board rounding the canyon’s curves, and the water a perfect mirror for the sky. The colours of the golden, pink and yellow rust-topped cliffs rising from and diving into the completely clear water, all indigo and turquoise, felt hypnotic. We all decided to come back and spend a week houseboating from cove to cove, camping under the sparkly skies, when we are good and rich.

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Returning to our tipi we found we were alone on site for the night, just in time for golden hour and a big family frisbee session as the fire heated up. These evenings in the middle of nowhere as the sun set and everything became neon and surreal were my favourite bits of the trip, the timelessness they conjured and the connection to the soul of land and sky. Then we tucked into campfire macaroni cheese and sweet potato flatbreads, watched the moon rise and the stars appear and the fire crackle and the marshmallows turn black.

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We bid farewell to the Wild West over sun soaked bacon the next morn and hit the endless highway to Las Vegas, depressingly the natural halfway point home to LA. We swung by Horseshoe Bend, another famous traveller’s snap ravaged by overtourism - until recently somewhere you could stumble across on a hike, but social media fame means there is now a paid car park and half built visitor’s centre, plus a few coaches to compete for space with. I guiltily joined the masses in snapping my iPhone picture of the incomprehensible natural glory, jostling for space with a flock of noisy French teenagers and Japanese couples in extreme UV protective outfits. Stunning to spend a few moments gazing down at the boats and campers on the emerald Colorado river below, another experience to add to our fantasy future caper wishlist.

Horseshoe Bend - like Mars, but wetter

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A last minute room at the apparently 5 star Mirage failed to be the “Paradise of 24 Hour Action!” it promised. We zoomed to the pool to find it temporarily closed due to a “biohazard incident” (yikes) and couldn’t drum up enthusiasm for the giant souvenir glassed frozen daiquiris among endless rows of sweaty beige plastic sun loungers, or the dosh for the Beatles Cirque du Soleil cash cow at $200+ per seat. Dinner was a dispiriting buffet in a low lit canteen that reeked of the sickly combo of cigarettes, air freshener and regret wafting in from the casino. Large, sad people sat alone with their enormous souvenir cocktails and platters of congealed spring rolls. Our room was caked in dust and splatters and fingerprint smears on the headboard, but a getaway to plod the strip was dull and exhausting, all aggressive adverts and shopping mall mazes among crowds mulling over Gucci handbags and cheeseburgers. Back to the grotty hotel for a restless night, then a reluctant splurge on ludicrously pricey Easter brunch at the nearby & nicer Wynn to cheer ourselves before a squeeze into the dusty car for one last leg.

I queued for this photograph…

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The day-glow photo op of dreams, Seven Magic Mountains lies just outside Las Vegas and eases the misery of being in its aura. Seven towers of neon painted rock backdropped by desert and dry lake, lots of fun to force your children to pose for photos in front of, if you can get there early enough to avoid (or be patient enough to wait out…ahem) your fellow photo-op fiends. This whimsical take on the paradox between the natural and artificial landscape of Las Vegas and the desert beyond seemed an appropriate end to our magical week through Arizona’s mystical Star Wars architecture, water, land and sky. Farewell to coyote lullabies and Martian dust. As ever, dreaming of a return.

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A month of new adventure

Rainbow sunset view from my bedroom is none too shabby…

It is one month and one week ago we realised we weren’t going to fly to our new life in California on time, because the kids’ visas had been inexplicably denied. And a week of camping in our dusty, empty Walthamstow home, a week of cursing the Christmas closure of all the best takeaway pizza places, later that we finally took to the skies to begin a new chapter in Los Angeles.

A month we have now been here, camping in another hilltop home, slowly accruing furniture and new ways of life. This weekend our shipment of things arrives from its eight week ocean odyssey. I can’t think of what I have missed beyond EVERYTHING in my kitchen. I can’t wait to bake and make and fill my jars with flours and luxuriate in the use of more than one saucepan. Can’t wait to invite people for lunches and suppers. It’s been weeks we’ve had no television, and I’ve read so many books, but I am looking forward to vegetating in front of it again…if we ever buy a sofa.

A month’s worth of observations on our new home town. The biggest is how much there is of everything. There is often too much. I feel guilty at the supermarket, as though I’m condoning the colossal waste implicit in shopping there. Enormous fish and meat counters boasting multiple octopus and massive crab legs, twenty different kinds of bacon, every cut of meat known to man, salmon marinated and smoked twenty different ways. A sushi bar, a taco bar, a deli. But these shops are never very full, so much must go to waste. Is it a sort of entitlement just having it there to gawp at?

Homeward bound on a January beach day

Nowhere is full and there are never crowds or queues, which is relaxing and disconcerting all at once. I’m so used to being in a rush and a line and jostling for space. The traffic hasn’t ruined our lives yet, as we have the luxury of mostly travelling outside rush hour. The nightmarish parking panic that riddles driving in London with anxiety for me is gone here, there’s always space and it’s often free. Although I can potter to a few local places on foot, I miss having a neighbourhood where everyone walks everywhere and you therefore see and know each other. I miss the corner shop where I could grab a forgotten bulb of garlic on the school run. We are walking the 15 minutes to school and back here, but barely seeing a soul beyond gardeners and bees. So many magical and sweet smelling trees though!

School has been the most amazing change, having spent years unhappy with their London school and watching especially Pablo come out miserable and crushed each day. They are very in love with their new school. There seems a much greater appreciation of the experience of childhood. School wants the children to enjoy learning, and there are so many wonderful resources. We have already had, despite a week-long teacher’s strike, an amazing school play by Pablo’s class about Harriet Tubman, with brilliant costumes and a set made of freedom quilt squares the children designed themselves. Indy and Pablo both starting after school Rock Band club living out their School of Rock dreams, and culminating in a performance in Hollywood next term. The club is sponsored by actual Slash. Glowing reports of doing real experiments in a dedicated science lab once a week, as well as weekly art and music, which was so depressingly missing in the UK. No uniform and so much time outdoors is another upside, whereas nightly homework for Pablo is a big downer. Parents are much more involved in school and their children generally, with constant fund raisers and volunteering, as well as so many incredible sounding camps involving nature hikes, art… School starts and finishes an hour earlier so it doesn’t feel like I never see them anymore, which is another dream come true.

One thousandth ice cream…

Of course we miss London very much, especially our lovely family and friends, Friday after school whines over wine and pizza whilst the kids go wild. Feeling grateful so far that so many have already booked to come and visit. We have space and will soon have the crockery to be able to feed you! Our new community has been so very welcoming, friends both new and old, and we have been invited to parties and suppers and fed and introduced to so many great people and places. When our bed was inexplicably delivered to the wrong street by a dopey FedEx driver, the elderly couple upon whose lawn it was dumped drove it over and insisted I not help at all as they lugged it into the house. We took them flowers the next afternoon and were greeted at the door by Mary with a parrot sat on her shoulder, which made the children very happy. A week later during a torrential downpour Mary appeared on our doorstep in a big glistening mac with flashlights and a radio as the power had gone out. So very sweet and thoughtful.

Weather has been half dreamy and half nightmarish, with a couple of weeks so far of absolutely torrential rain. Rain so hard it runs like rivers down the streets, filling our boots as we run for the car, and thunder so violent the house shook. A few spectacular rainbows glimpsed have been a treat but we are secretly hoping for more dry days. Of course we know the rain is desperately needed here so we can’t be too vocal in complaint, though “this NEVER happens here” does prompt an eye roll or a hard stare. Warm days we can spend sledding down sand dunes or gazing at the sunset over the ocean. Lovely beach parties into the evening, big new parks to explore. Secretly can’t wait for it to be “too hot” for a bit.

A few of our new favourite things so far…

Pinches Tacos

most delicious fish tacos yet

Solar Return

the most magical little shop with delicious raw vegan lollies and cakes I’ve wanted to try since the dawn of instagram when I first discovered @stephenmccarty. Plus lovely ceramic treasures and psychedelic rainbow dresses from @prismofthreads.

The Broad

FREE art collection downtown, so very much to see. Our favourite was the hauntingly beautiful The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson, I want to go back and experience it all again…

Malibu Pier

For lunch with a view of the surfers…

Gjusta

This image is of the lustworthy shop but the real treats are nextdoor where I want to eat EVERYTHING. Extremely good pastries, salads, pizza and the rest… Plus my first LA celeb encounter when Lauren Hutton angrily asked me if a suitcase blocking her way was mine (it wasn’t, phew).

Eames House

We booked a little external tour en route to Malibu. So inspirational, inside and out. And the views… I would like to move in please.

General Store

For everything I want for my house but can’t really afford…but sometimes have to buy anyway

Venice Beach

For the dune sledding, gazing at the incredible skateboarders, and general sunset beach hangs

cheese in paradise

Indiana & Quinto pruning trees at Harmony Farm, 2015

We are abundantly lucky to have an especially magical holiday each year, to my mama's tiny farm in the hills of Andalusia. It's amazing how content the most basic living standards can be as long as the sun is reliably shining. We sleep in a tiny, sloping hut my mama and her partner Quinto built themselves from old bedsprings (!), share a remarkably pleasant outdoor composting toilet (also built by them) and bathe in river water, when we remember to bathe. The power is only solar, and it goes without saying that there is no television. The air is filled with the scent of orange blossoms and song of bees in the springtime, you have to dodge falling pomegranates in late summer and wintertime is for the olive harvest. There is such an abundance of food from the land, and everything tastes at least a hundred times more delicious than anything shop-bought. Fresh OJ for brekkie, almonds to collect and shell then toast or turn to milk or cheese, salads and fruit trees, broad beans to shell in the sunshine as a happy team. And if we need eggs then every little homestead a short walk away has chickens. 

Every afternoon I steal some time to lie on the flat roof and let the sunshine throb through me, soaking up a book, whilst the kids climb trees or hike hills or scrub the big empty swimming pool ready to fill from the river for an icy frog-ridden swim. There's no sound beyond the lazy carpenter bees and the occasional breeze rustling the sage bushes, until the distant sound of goat bells begins, and they all slowly plod up the hillside to graze, the air filling with their hypnotic tune. This last trip my mama offered to show us how to make our own cheese, so we went off down the riverbed to visit Davide the goat herder, and collect some milk from my sunbathing companions.

It takes quite a lot of milk to make a decent sized cheese - we collected 3 litres which was plenty. It goes without saying that this milk is totally unpasteurised - if you are buying milk and you can't find raw, unpasteurised milk then make sure you get full fat, organic, non homogenised milk - the kind with the layer of cream sat at the top, ideally. Once home we poured it through a muslin to remove any dirt and hair. We then heated the milk in a big saucepan with a thermometer to sterilisation point - 38C - which is the same point at which the milk begins to rise in the pan. Immediately remove from the heat. Leave to cool slightly until milk is warm. Stir in lemon juice. The amount of lemon juice you add varies totally from batch to batch. Begin to stir it in half lemon by half lemon and stop once the milk begins to form curds. Now leave the milk to cool completely. 

Once cooled, strain the cheese through a fresh muslin and squeeze out as much liquid as possible - make sure you keep this liquid as it is essentially buttermilk and great for making pancakes with! Tie the muslin at the top and hang it, over a bowl to collect any liquid, for a few hours, then you can either transfer it to keep straining in the fridge or transfer it to a cheese mould or press which does the same job - removing as much liquid as possible. Be sure not to have the cheese in anything airtight though - air needs to circulate and moisture needs to drain. 

Separating the curds and whey

After a day or so in the fridge your cheese will be set. The longer you leave it the more solid but also more tangy it will be come. The less time you leave it the sweeter it is - more like ricotta. We ate ours asap with peaches and pancakes made with the buttermilk, but any left longer can be rubbed in salt to prevent mould. Or you can form it into creamy little balls, rub in herbs and drop it into jars of oil, a technique we learned earlier in the summer whilst doing a little cheese making workshop at Fforest Gather. Either way, delicious, and fun, easy and magic for kids to join in with. As well as much better for you than anything you could buy in a shop...  

Indy showing off our yummy goat's whey pancakes

Drowning in Apples

When we bought our house it was almost entirely for the big, green garden. A lovely wild garden is unusual in London, and someone had spent years carefully filling it with beautiful bushes and trees, so that it's filled with birds and foxes and twinkly sunlight and a sense of magic. Dominating the garden is a sprawling apple tree, its branches hanging so heavy with fruit this late summer that they trail to the ground. The kids love to scale its trunk and hide in the dense branches a la Each Peach Pear Plum, and I have fantasies of all the wonderful apple recipes I'll whip up. 

On the banks of the river apple

Except I don't whip them up. And the huge apples plop to the ground and gather, too sour to munch raw, giving the kids a tedious chore of loading buckets with half rotten apples lest some poor folk tread on one, and chucking them into the bushes where they slowly decay, filling the air with the stench of cider. Next year we must try harder. 

When we did finally get our act together to do some appley cooking, we hurried outside to collect the very last apples of the season. We had decided on some apple after school snack bars, and adapted a recipe from The Chickpea Flour Cookbook, since I always have way too much gram flour that needs using up. 

After School Apple Cake

3 medium to large apples
3 tbsp coconut palm sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
160g gram flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
85g unsalted butter
200g coconut palm sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup unsweetened rice milk
 

Heat the oven to 170C and grease a 9in square pan with coconut oil, then line with parchment. Peel, core and slice the apples into thin wedges. Indiana insisted on doing all the apple peeling and chopping herself. Place in a bowl with 2tbsp coconut sugar and the cinnamon. Sift your dry ingredients together, mix and set aside. Using a stand mixer (ideally, or a hand mixer... or big muscles) beat the butter with the 200g coconut sugar until fluffy. Beat the remaining wet ingredients together in a jug, then alternate adding the dry and wet ingredients to the butter and sugar until you have a creamy, golden batter. 

Spread the batter in your tin and top with the slices of apple, finishing with a sprinkling of the remaining 1 tbsp coconut sugar. Bake until golden, approx one hour, and leave to cool completely before cutting. You can absolutely substitute brown sugar for coconut sugar in this recipe if you like things even sweeter. Check the cake after 45 mins and keep a close eye after that, ours went from not golden to slightly burned in about 5 minutes, though it was thankfully still delicious. And our oven is awful, so let's blame that... 

The cake was perfect - really creamy caramel taste and sweet, but not sickly. Pretty cool that chickpea flour can make such  great base for a cake. And it cut into easy, solid bars for lugging about. Might be fun to try as cupcakes or with another fruit, I'm sure peaches or plums or blueberries (or all three) would be delicious. Even strawberries would work well. Or we could wait until next year's apple apocalypse.

Golden milk buns

One of our favourite discoveries of the past year has been golden milk for breakfast. Especially in the winter this is a lovely alternative to tea for the small ones, and they love grinding the cardamom up in the mortar & pestle and adding the neon turmeric (200ml milk, 1/4 tsp turmeric, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp raw honey, 3 cardamom pods ground/crushed. warm through, strain and serve). Ever since the kids were teeny I've made a point of telling them about the different powers carried by the food they eat, it helps to add both wonder and reason to meals - avocados make your hair sparkle and shine, tomatoes help to keep your skin safe from the sun, lentils make your brain and muscles strong, bananas help you to have sweet dreams... etc. Turmeric is worshipped as a superfood, coming into your body to help fight off bugs and keep you at your sharpest. We incorporated our golden milk and all its powers into a yummy twisted bun, after being inspired by a pre Christmas post from Twigg Studios. These are another easy one for kids to prepare, delicious for breakfast if you can get out of bed on time, or as a handy snack. We were all off to the women's march in London the next morning and needed something to set us up and to pack for snacks through the day.  I've also adapted them to make a gluten free golden muffin. Both are sugar & dairy free (substitute coconut oil if you don't have butter). 

Golden Milk Buns

300ml almond milk (or other unsweetened milk of your choosing)
1 tbsp ground turmeric
6 pods cardamom, crushed in mortar and pestle or with the back of a spoon
360g strong white bread flour (preferably organic)
1 sachet/7g fast action yeast
1 tsp salt
115g coconut sugar

to fill:
230g coconut sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp melted butter

Warm the milk, turmeric and cardamom in a pan until hot but not bubbling. Strain into a jug and top up to 350ml with cold water.  Add the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix, then add your golden milk little by little whilst mixing. This is a fun pouring/mixing one for kids, but be careful as turmeric definitely stains anything and everything a lovely fluoro yellow!  The dough needs to be mixed and kneaded until it isn't too sticky, without adding more than a sprinkle more flour. Let the kids loose to pummel it for a good five minutes, then pop it in the fridge in an oiled tupperware/covered bowl overnight. If you don't want the buns for breakfast you can just leave it to rise for an hour or two somewhere warm until doubled in size. I like how this is easily split into two parts as it helps with short attention spans. We made the dough as a group after school, then split it in half and each family tackled the bun prep the next morning separately. 

Next morning, remove the dough from the fridge. Because it is cold it will be easier to work with. lightly flour a surface and roll your dough out into a large rectangle(ish) shape - my kids are competitive roller-outers so we made two smaller rectangles, which is also fine. Mix together your coconut sugar and cinnamon, and pop the melted butter/coconut oil into a little dish. Use a pastry brush to coat the pastry with melted butter, then sprinkle the cinnamon mix over the dough rectangle (or one of them, if you've made two). Fold your rectangle in half and press the edges together. If you have made the two smaller rectangles, simply place one on top of the other and seal the edges. 

Once you have a single rectangle of dough filled with cinnamony goodness, use a sharp knife to slice the dough into strips lengthways, approx a thumb-width. My kids are allowed to use certain kitchen knives and the dough should be easy to safely slice with supervision. Take a strip and twist it at either end to make it spiral, then wrap it into a little bun shape. The shape you end up with isn't important, as they all taste delicious regardless. Just make sure the edges are tucked in and it's nice and plump. Place the buns on a tray lined with parchment. 

Place your bun tray somewhere warm for 30-60 mins whilst the buns prove. In the meantime heat the oven to 180C. The buns will be ready to go in when they have plumped up. A good way to test is to poke them gently with a finger - if the indentation slowly fills back out they are good to go. A quick bounce-back or no bounce back at all indicate over or under proved dough. Brush the buns with some beaten egg or double cream (or a mix of the two!) and sprinkle with some more coconut sugar and/or fennel seeds before putting into the oven. For vegan egg wash use 2 parts nut milk to one part agave syrup. 

the gluten free muffin version on the left, original golden milk bun on the right

Bake the buns for 20 mins, until they are golden brown. Whilst mine baked I made a gluten free variation, since having regular wheat flour makes me swell up like a super unsexy balloon... recipe below. 

Gluten Free Golden Cinnamon Muffins

170ml almond milk
1 tsp turmeric
3 cardamom pods
1 tbsp butter/coconut oil
7g yeast
50g coconut sugar
220g gluten free self raising flour (I use Dove's Farm)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/4 cup coconut oil (melted)
1/2 tsp vanilla
for the filling:
125g butter
100g coconut sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon

In a large bowl, combine yeast and sugar. Warm the milk with the cardamom pods and turmeric, then strain and return to the pan, adding the butter and warming through to melt it. Add the golden milk/butter combo to the yeast/sugar mix. Leave to get a bit bubbly. Whisk dry ingredients together, then add the remaining wet ingredients (including the egg) to the milk/butter combo. Whisk together then add to the dry ingredients. Beat or mix together until it becomes a coherent dough and is no longer insanely sticky. Try to avoid adding more flour. At this stage I placed my dough in the fridge overnight with the golden bun dough. The dough is much easier to deal with once it's cold. If you prefer you can use it immediately. 

gluten free roll out... 

Roll out your dough into a large rectangle - if it feels very sticky you may want to do this with some parchment above and below. We just about coped without. Brush the dough with melted butter and sprinkle on the cinnamon/sugar mixture, as with the buns. Fold over to make one lovely filled rectangle. Cut into strips as with the buns, but slightly thicker strips this time and bear in mind they will be fragile. Roll them up into a swirl, as pictured above, and place in a cupcake case in a muffin tin. Leave to prove for 20 mins. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with fennel seeds if desired. Bake for 15 -20 minutes at 180C, until golden. These are seriously delicious... 

We ate about three buns each (!) for breakfast with butter and bacon (!) and packed the rest into a little rucksack to take on the march. Such a yummy all day long treat. Feeling proud of the small folk for both their baking and sign-making skills...

The Dough Nuts Rainbow Gnocchi mayhem

It's been a hundred years since the last recipe post, sort of because winter, sort of because cakes... and much bigger children whose days are spent at school and whose evenings are mostly for sluggishly dragging themselves about looking exhausted and shovelling snacks into their mouths before passing out. No more golden mid-morning hours spent recipe testing with bright eyed assistants. But I miss it and it's important and once they get going they love it, so I'm taking a stand and bringing it back. My stand has been encouraged by magical Hattie Garlick, equally keen to come up with recipes and ways to engage children with food and meals, and encourage some genuine healthy meal enjoyment without being a total pain in the ass, resorting to bribery, ending up in tears etc. We don't want to buy expensive, aggressively marketed soulless snacks. We don't want to spend our evenings silently weeping as we scrape uneaten dishes into the compost. Back in the day children were a valuable extra pair of hands in the kitchen, and food preparation would be something they inevitably helped with and earned respect for. It encourages a connection to what's on the plate, an understanding of what ingredients do and why they're involved, and gives children the power to experiment and exert some control over their own supper. Glistening with all these grand ideas, we decided to drag five slightly-tired children together on a rainy afternoon in the midst of dry January and order them to whip us up some supper. On the menu...

Rainbow Gnocchi

this amount makes enough for 4 small servings of the red (beetroot), yellow (saffron) and green (spinach) gnocchi. You can either multiply the amounts to make different colours/flavours (it freezes well and cooks easily from frozen, so making lots is a good idea) or divide your dough before adding the flavours/colours. Recipe for the orange (sweet potato) gnocchi is below.

150g ricotta
85g organic pasta flour
2 eggs
100g parmesan
for the flavours:
powdered beetroot
garlic paste
100g spinach (per 150 ricotta)
saffron
butter and parmesan to serve

for the sweet potato gnocchi (serves 4):
500g sweet potato - baked, skin on, in the oven until soft. Scrape out flesh and discard skins.
50g ricotta cheese
80g pasta flour
dash of cinnamon

For both the regular and sweet potato gnocchi, mix your ingredients together in a big bowl to make a dough. This is why gnocchi is so great for kids - it couldn't be much simpler. Bigger kids can flex their maths muscles and help with weighing out the ingredients, and smaller ones can add and mix and mash. Kids are great at breaking eggs (accurately, for the most part...kind of) and love to measure things. Once you have your dough vaguely mixed, split it into portions for adding flavour (set the sweet potato dough aside - it's done for now). We gave each child a bowl of dough, with the smallest two on a team, and a dough colour each. Pre-wilt the spinach by placing it in a colander and pouring over boiling water, then squeeze out as much liquid as possible and chop - or have a small person chop. Add to one portion of dough with a little squeezy garlic and a pinch of salt and pepper. Mix well and form into a ball. For the beetroot powder we added approx a tablespoon (kids in charge!) and for the saffron we dissolved a pinch in a little warm water and mixed it in. 

The dough should be not too sticky, and lovely to squash. Add more flour a bit at a time until it feels right. You need a liberal dusting of flour (and tolerance for some fairly epic mess) before asking the kids to roll their balls of dough into long dough snakes. Then dole out some lovely sharp knives for them to cut thumb-sized dough nuggets. With supervision and appropriate sizes, knife wielding children needn't be an issue, and they love being given the responsibility. 

Actual real life ragamuffins

Place your gnocchi nuggets on a plate and keep them in the fridge until ready to cook. I found it helpful to dust them in a little polenta flour to help prevent sticking, as there were so many! With kids in charge they do look a bit bonkers and are not uniform, but this only adds to their charm. Probably. When you are ready to cook, boil a big pot of salted water and pop the gnocchi in ten-ish at a time - don't overcrowd. They are ready when they float to the top, and must be removed with a slotted spoon and placed on a muslin/paper towel for the liquid to drain off. They only take about 2 minutes to cook so you do have to stay close by. As mentioned they cook well straight from the freezer too. To serve melt some butter in a frying pan - for extra yum add some sage leaves or torn pieces of cavolo nero (or both) and fry them briefly. Then add the gnocchi, shake it all about and place in bowls. Top with grated parmesan or pecorino. This was a hit with all our ages, with the absolute top fave flavour being...SPINACH! It is still discussed for its deliciousness. 

During the ensuing dinner party we asked the kids what they would like to call their new little cooking club. Although there was huge support for "Wee Wee Bum Bum Poo Poo" they settled on the Dough Nuts, probably hoping that this meant they would get to eat some. And maybe they will... We will be back hopefully fairly regularly with more yummy kid-cook friendly recipes they will actually want to eat, and you will want them to eat. Now I'm off to try and scrape dried gnocchi dough from my table...

Cloudy cloudy cakes

We made these ages and ages ago, before it was even properly summer. But then the sunshine swept us up and we were so busy barrelling about watching our skin turn golden and eating way too many ice creams...this little recipe was all but forgotten. Today the radio is warning of heavy showers and cold northwesterly winds and the return of the cloudy days, and I remembered. 

this boy is pure gold

This was a last minute panic bake in a wild attempt to lift us all out of the dumps the last time the weather had us low. I am really mean about buying snacks in, as I resent how much they cost and how little goodness they ever contain, and loathe the sneaky marketing to (my poor, desperate to eat them all) children. I always have the best intentions to make a larder full of snacks instead but hardly ever manage, and we mostly exist on fruit and toast between meals.  With zero prep allowed we had to come up with a recipe based on what we had in the house. I scraped together the basics for a gluten free cake and let the kids improvise the rest. The resulting muffins were completely delicious, totally moist and sweet despite being gluten and sugar free. You could make them dairy free by substituting the butter for coconut oil, I imagine. Please let me know if you give it a try. The sun broke through as soon as we had these baked, just like it always does eventually... but Pablo's name stuck, partly because of their cloudy texture.

Pablo's Special Cloudy Cloudy Cakes (named by Pablo)

315g gluten free plain flour (we use Dove's Farm)
1 tsp xanthan gum
135g almond flour or ground almonds
1.5 tsp baking powder
.75 tsp baking soda
.75 tsp salt
168g unsalted butter
3/4 cup maple syrup
2 tbsp rice malt syrup
1 egg
75g egg whites
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup rice milk
1.5 bananas (or one large banana, we used frozen ones but you don't need to)
1 cup berries (we used a mix of strawberries and blueberries, again we used frozen but no need)
2 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp beetroot powder (optional - to make them pink!)

Heat the oven to 170C. In a large bowl whisk together all the dry ingredients. In the bowl of a stand mixer whip up the butter until it's fluffy, then add the syrups, then the egg. Mix until well incorporated. In a blender or food processor whizz together your fruit and rice milk (any milk would work) with your vanilla & chia seeds, plus the beetroot powder if you want your muffins pink. In a further bowl whisk the egg whites until stiff. 

Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milky fruitshake mix to the butter/syrup combo. Once all is well mixed in, fold in the whipped egg whites. Pop the mix into muffin cases and bake for 15 mins in preheated oven. Leave to cool on a wire rack. We were still eating these two days later and they were still moist and yummy, but you could definitely pop some in the freezer and add to lunch boxes. We didn't make any icing, just topped with some sheep's yogurt and cherries or raspberries. They are especially yummy for breakfast, and filling too. I imagine this recipe would also be fab for a gluten/sugar free birthday cake though we are yet to try it. Would love to try some flavour variations also, I bet they would be lovely with banana and cacao... or apricots and blackberries.... 

Purple hail

The days seem suddenly longer and lighter, and we had already taken for granted that after school would once more mean lolling in the park, skateboarding down hills and demanding ice creams that we would never EVER finish (ahem...), working on our chasing and catching skills, and casually topping up our suntans. But today there was hail. HAIL. In late April. So we had a little family cooking & music session... 

In light of Prince sadly popping up to the stars on Friday/because it was a rad excuse to dig out my Purple Rain vinyl & inflict it on the kids/because our Abel & Cole veggie box delivered us a big bag of them that urgently needed eating, we settled on using our purple potatoes. My kids are strange, in that they will happily devour mountains of raw greens or pull apart big scary prawns, but aren't very happy about eating potatoes in any form other than deep fried. Blue chips seemed like a cop out, so we thought we would experiment with a purple gnocchi supper. 

Gluten Free Purple Gnocchi

700g purple potatoes
1/3 cup flour (we used Doves Farm plain gluten free flour blend)
1 small egg

In an ideal world, your first step would be to bake your purple potatoes for 45ish mins, then scoop out the flesh into a bowl. This retains maximum purpleness and keeps everything nice and dry. We were nowhere near as organised, and only had 30 mins before tummies were going to start demanding to be filled, so we peeled, boiled and drained ours extremely well. Both kids are very into peeling veg at the moment, because they are mad, so loved labouring over each potato whilst I silently panicked over how long it was taking them. Once your potato is skin free, cooked and in a bowl, whatever the method, mash well and add 1/3 cup of flour - we went gluten free with Doves Farm's plain gf blend, but I reckon rice flour would work well or you can use regular plain flour if you're not fussed about gluten content. Also add one small egg - cracking the eggs is easy and fun for kids so I always let them do this bit and they rarely get egg everywhere or any shell in the bowl. Add a couple of pinches of salt (& pepper if you like). 

Indy peeling spuds... 

The mashing of the ingredients is another bit the kids can totally take over on. Basically with this meal they are doing the lot, so you can sit back and relax (unless you are too busy taking pictures, like me....) The mixture quickly comes together into a lovely satisfying dough which Indy very accurately compared to play doh. Separate into 4 separate pieces and roll each one out into a long snake - another job for the kids - then cut each snake into bite size nuggets. The texture makes this a really easy job for the kids to practice using a proper knife, and much was their glee at being trusted with something sharp and grown-up. 

Once the nuggets are chopped, roll a fork over them to make them look lovely and authentic and gnocchiesque. Or, if you are doing this with kids, give up on that and accept that they will all be totally different shapes and sizes and degrees of squashedness, but will nevertheless taste the same. 

Add your beautiful misshapen purple nuggets to boiling salted water and wait for them to float to the surface and tell you they're done, which takes approximately a minute, so don't wander off. Drain immediately and serve with something buttery, or we made a quick pesto from fresh basil, toasted pine nuts, olive oil & some goat's cheese. Devoured. Prince would totally not approve, because he was a vegan, but I'm sure there's an easy vegan version of this...