Chocolate and what??

Chocolate avocado mousse. It is a thing, apparently. And not just a thing as in weird recipes you find on wacky websites - no, this was in a genuine published cookery book. Entitled, since you ask, River Cottage Light & Easy by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Although I'm sure you can find it on any number of wacky websites too.

So I had a couple of avocados that had been sitting in the fridge for ages, and I was convinced they were about to dissolve into slushy puddles if I didn't use them soon. Of course, one of them turned out to be rock hard. Another root in the fridge produced about 100ml of pureed tinned pears, left from an experiment in making pear and elderflower ice lollies. So, into the food processor went the one ripe avocado, 3 tbsp of cocoa powder, the pear mush and a couple of teaspoons of honey. One good whizz later, it had amalgamated into a pretty good mousse-like mixture that tasted much more like chocolate than avocado. Success!

Come dessert time, each of us got a little cupful. Each of us? Uh-huh. You can see where this is going, can't you? Want to see what a baby can do with two spoonfuls of chocolate mousse?

This.

And this.

How about this?

Man, this is good.

Don't forget about me!

Um... success?

Comments

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Compromise

Wearing trousers to church. Carving pumpkins for Hallowe'en. Dancing. Popping to Aldi on a Sunday. Believing that you can be LGBTQ+ and a Christian. Owning multiple electronic devices. Playing cards. Supporting women in church leadership. Drinking alcohol. Paying tax. Thinking that there isn't a "Biblical view of marriage". Eating meat during Lent. Washing clothes on a Sunday. Buying non-Fairtrade chocolate. Not wearing a hat or headscarf to pray. Driving a car. Wearing clothes that were probably produced in a sweatshop. All of these are things that I do. So, which ones do you think suggest that I am compromising my faith by adapting to the culture around me? And, if your answer is not "All of them" or "None of them": how do I tell the difference? We have had a series of sermons at church, from the beginning of the book of Revelation. This is before John gets to all the dragons and horses and lakes of fire. There are seven letters to seven differe...

California: Beside the Sea

What comes to mind when you think of California? Surfing! So we strapped Toby to a surfboard and pushed him out to sea... Actually, it's pretty difficult to engage in watersports when holidaying with a toddler. Sometimes it feels like it's pretty difficult to do anything when holidaying with a toddler! But one thing they do tend to enjoy is getting lovely and wet and sandy. So a beach is a good place to be. Toby was delighted to discover an apparently endless sandbox, and amused us by running in circles, rolling around and even acquiring a sand goatee! His favourite game was for Graham to bury a small ball in the sand so that he could dig it up again. One of the most relaxing afternoons we had was at Goleta Beach Park, just north of Santa Barbara, where we were staying. The air was cool but the sand was pleasantly warm, and the sky was partly cloudy, helping to mitigate the panicked impulse to slather on as much sunscreen as possi...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog