Peanut butter and jam is something I’ve come to later in life. I grew up on butter and Marmite for breakfast, melted and scraped over slightly burnt toast or mashed together and spread on bread (which will sound delicious or disgusting depending on your love/hate stance). My Dad would mix peanut butter into his Marmite (which definitely sounds disgusting, regardless of your stance) but combining it with jam just isn’t something that happened in our household. Continue reading
Tag Archives: breakfast
Buckwheat Galettes with Leeks, Romesco + Brown Butter Fried Eggs
When I was growing up, Pancake Day in the Little Loaf household involved crêpes. Not the fluffy stacks of American-style pancakes which have become so popular, but good-old fashioned, lacy thin crêpes with all the added fun of flipping involved. Of course one would always stick to the pan, another to the ceiling and nobody could eat at the same time as we flipped and rolled and trailed spoons of batter all over the hob and floor, but that was all part of the chaotic fun that was Shrove Tuesday.
Quick Courgette + Rosemary Bread
‘The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight…
[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world’s sweetest smells… there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.’
M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating Continue reading
Pumpkin Muffins with Maple Crunch
I always know autumn is on its way from the number of pumpkin recipes that start appearing in in my inbox. This year the reminder has been more necessary than most as you couldn’t tell the season from the weather we’ve been having. On Saturday night some friends and I ate after-dinner ice creams outside in the street as if it was summer and yesterday we went for a walk in short-sleeved tops and sunglasses. While I’m secretly hoping that this warmer weather will last a little longer, I’m also aware that colder climes around the corner are an inevitable part of living in England. And when that moment comes, there will be warming autumnal muffins.
Top With Cinnamon’s Courgette Cornbread Pancakes with Yoghurt, Honey, Walnuts & Thyme
When I was fifteen I got my first mobile phone. Not your standard smart phone with fancy apps, a camera or even a colour screen; just a pink-cased Nokia brick which I used as a sort of portable telephone box to call my parents. Friends were contacted using our good old-fashioned landline and the internet (including the joy of MSN Messenger) accessed by via our clunky home PC. I didn’t spend much time online and any baking we did was inspired by my Mum’s extensive collection of recipe books, magazine cuttings and a little bit of imagination. Continue reading
Grain-Free Fruit, Nut & Seed Breakfast Bowls
If there’s a meat-eating man in your life, you’ll likely have heard of the Paleo diet. My carnivorous husband is a fitness fanatic, always looking for new ways to incorporate protein into every meal and the Paleo approach of eating enormous quantities of meat, eggs, nuts and seeds is endlessly appealing to his inner caveman.
In theory there are benefits to eating in this ancient, natural way. In practice, there’s so much I’d miss – pulses, whole grains and dairy, not to mention flour, chocolate and all sorts of sweet things which, while less immediately nourishing for your body, are one of the pleasures in life and, arguably, good for your soul. Continue reading
(The Best) Avocado on Toast
After last week’s cookbook announcement, I wasn’t sure what to post today. Saturday morning was spent perfecting a recipe for fruit pastilles and eating one too many scones (for quality control purposes, of course), so come lunchtime all I wanted was something really simple and savoury. As I sat down to avocado on toast, I realised I’d never posted my version of it in on this blog. A few minutes of photos later and this post was ready to roll. Job done. Continue reading
Roasted Cashew Nut Butter
This weekend just gone, we had a mini-heatwave in London. The sun shone, we ate a lot of ice cream and I turned on the oven just long enough to make this buttery milk loaf and roast a tray of cashews for nut butter. Continue reading
Pomegranate Parfaits with Popped Amaranth, Pistachios & Almond Cream
Today we’re talking breakfast (again). Breakfast and whole-grains to be more precise: the subject of a beautiful new book which hasn’t left my kitchen counter since it arrived last week.
Wholegrain Mornings is, at face value, a book of breakfast recipes from food blogger, Megan Gordon. But it’s also so much more than that. Like her blog, A Sweet Spoonful, the book is understated yet compelling, an honest insight into Megan’s life: from the way she thinks her way around a kitchen to running a granola business to a long-distance love story with a wonderfully romantic ending. Continue reading
Spicy Black Bean Breakfast Tostadas
‘Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast’.
I’m hoping Oscar Wilde was referencing the conversation not the cooking because I, for one, love a little bit of brilliance at breakfast time. Continue reading