Life: Autumn Food 2018

There's something very comforting about Autumn, pulling on a jumper to go for a walk or starting to put the little lamps on a bit earlier in the evening. I've been lighting more candles too - the apple candle from IKEA has just the right scent for the time of year.

Granola before baking

And on the subject of apples, I have been given my usual haul of cooking apples from my Dad's orchard and I'm trying to do some different things with them this year. Today I made some apple and cinnamon granola using Nigella's Andy's Fairfield Granola recipe but omitting the raisins, and adjusting the seeds to the few I had left in my storecupboard. The warm spicy smell whilst it was cooking was amazing and it tastes great too. The recipe makes a huge batch - enough to fill one of those plastic cereal containers. I will eat it with some sugar free fruit compote aka stewed fruit and Greek yoghurt for breakfast, as I'm still trying to incorporate at least one portion of fruit or veg at breakfast (see my post here).

I booked a last minute place on a Thai cooking course which I attended this morning at the organiser, Fon's house. Unlike the other cookery demo I have been to, this one was hands on. Fon runs through all the ingredients and the difference between buying supermarket Thai produce and that from an authentic source. The taste is so superior, and the texture of the coconut milk was much creamier, almost yoghurt like. We sampled the raw ingredients before cooking so that we could use this to flavour our food - believe me, it's not easy to taste authentic Thai fish sauce at 9:30 in the morning!. I cooked a Green Thai Chicken Curry, Tom Yum Goong and some kind of Thai shredded salad (Som Tam Thai) with a dressing. Each dish involved a lot of tasting and adjustment for preferences in spiciness, saltiness or sourness. The best part is bringing it all home to eat! Delicious!

Love Mrs Jones x