I knew she’d like it as much as I did, even though my phone couldn’t capture how lovely the thick frost looked on the yellow petals:

Unfortunately, owing to my phone’s predictive text, the email with it said “I’m sending you a picture of a frosty croat”.

Nothing wrong with chilly Slavs, of course, but I think it might have surprised her a bit

But moving on from Croats, crocuses and the like, today was of course Pancake Day.

I wasn’t as committed to the cause as I was last year, having considered making some for breakfast last night and deciding I couldn’t be bothered. Such lack of dedication.

I did make some for dinner though:

That ugly-looking pile may not be instantly,  or even at all, recognisable as pancakes but take my word for it. Buckwheat mix, chopped wilted spinach and garlic powder, pancaked and topped with sauted mushroom and leek and a dollop of vegan cheezy sauce.

Given that I love pancakes, spinach and said sauce, it was a fair bet that these would go down well

They were great and I’ve now got loads of ideas for other savoury pancakes. Did you have pancakes today? And are you giving anything up for Lent?

But it was amazing how quickly it all went; there was still about a four-inch layer in some places on Monday evening but by Tuesday evening, all gone

And although I’m not going to mention spring, it was lovely to see this:

This was even better:

It’s been nice to cycle to do the horses in the morning without needing my bike lights, it’s been nice not to have to wear so many clothes it’s hard to move.

It was nice to go out for a few drinks for a friend’s birthday last night and it was nice to have a lie-in this morning.

Warning. More beetroot is coming your way

I gave my mum some of the Valentine’s beetroot cookies and she really liked them – but there’s still a lot of it in the fridge. So as I had pancake-making time this morning, I made these:

Beetroot and apple pancakes

50g Orgran buckwheat pancake mix (or buckwheat flour with baking powder)

20g beetroot, very finely grated

Half an apple, coarsely grated

2tbsp egg white

1tbsp milk/water

1/4tsp ground mixed spice.

Mix all together till very well combined and cook over a low heat. As is standard, I had mine with maple syrup and fresh blueberries:

I have to say I prefer the carrot pancakes but I think the beetroot/apple combination is a good one. I used half an apple because the other half was bruised and horrible but I think using a whole one would be good, as would maybe using a tablespoon of apple puree instead of the water… but my quest to not dislike beetroot with a passion is still on course. Just about

And of course, although I didn’t even thinking about mentioning that it felt like spring at the start of this post, which I wrote this morning, we had howling winds and horizontal rain all afternoon. Nice.

Have you seen any signs of spring yet?

Which is why I posted about not being too keen on Valentine’s Day this time last year. Single or not, I’ve never been too keen.

But yesterday, my mum texted to say she had some “Valentine’s possibilities” for me. I was intrigued… and then I saw she’d bought me these: (thanks Mum!)

Definitely Valentine’s possibilities! But what sort of cookies to make?

Putting the need for roll-out dough together with the surplus of beetroot at my dad’s, (come on, don’t try to pretend beetroot isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you think of making cookies) I made these:

With inspiration from my carrot cake cookies.

60g brown sugar or coconut sugar

2tbsp coconut oil

2tbsp milk

1/2tbsp beetroot juice

75g oat flour (I ground 75g whole oats)

15g cornflour

35g sorghum flour

35g beetroot, very finely grated (use the tiny holes on the grater)

1/4 tsp baking powder

Heaped 1/4 tsp ground mixed spice

1/2 tsp vanilla

Grate the beetroot, then squeeze the juice out into a bowl. I guarantee that while the juice is running through your fingers, either the phone or the doorbell will ring. Have fun explaining

Mix together the oil, sugar, beetroot juice and vanilla till well combined. (Keep the rest of the beetroot juice in the bowl for later). Sieve the flours, spice and baking powder together and mix really well, then fold in the beetroot. Bring together as a ball, wrap and chill for 30-45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 175C. Roll the dough out on a floured surface, and with a floured rolling pin, to about 1/8″ thick, cut out shapes and transfer to a lined baking sheet. Bake for seven minutes and leave to cool and harden on the sheet.

They lose the gorgeous colour once they’re cooked, of course… but they still look good.

Being childish and arranging them in different ways is not optional.

Once they’re cooled, you’ve got a use for the rest of the beetroot juice. It doesn’t take much to colour your icing (I just used sieved icing sugar and enough lemon juice to make a paste, then added a couple of drops of beetroot juice to get different shades).

For a sugar-free topping on some, I used coconut butter, a bit of lemon juice with it would be great too, I reckon!

Sad though it is to admit, I’m quite pleased with them they taste great too; I love the way the very slight earthy beetroot flavour actually works really well with the spice, I like the way you can taste the oat flour – and I  love the lemon icing on the soft cookies.

(I’m also quite pleased that it went from -7C this morning to 2C by 5pm… I can see patches of grass instead of evil whiteness, I even cycled to the yard for the first time in a fortnight AND got too hot… not long now!)

Before I go, I’ve mentioned a lot about my congenital lateness and this recipe proves it again. I saw Fork and Beans’ Valentine’s bake-off competition a couple of weeks ago, for baked goods that were vegan, gluten-free, etc and as this one’s also egg-free, soya-free and just about everything else-free, I thought I’d enter it – but of course, submissions closed last week

Keep an eye on Cara’s blog though, because it looks like some delicious treats have been entered, in time for February 14!

EDIT: I’m linking this to brilliant Ricki’s Wellness Weekend; check out the other great vegan, GF goodies on offer

What’s your take on Valentine’s Day?

It’s quite entertaining in hindsight because Monday was so much milder than is usual the day after a snowfall, I thought we’d have a mild week. I even planned to cycle to do the horses on Tuesday morning but a noselength out of the back door was enough to put the brakes on that plan, as demonstrated by my dashboard a couple of minutes later.

Dear lord above, -12C?! And the external thermometer at the yard made it -13 – and it was MINUS SIXTEEN last night. Seriously, not a happy bunny

So please appreciate my courageousness for taking my gloves off to take these pictures:

I quite liked that line of footprints

Sadly, my phone couldn’t quite capture the low mist. -13C or not, it was stunning.

I’m going to blame the cold weather for the fact I’ve been eating for England this week. Conveniently forgetting that I always do, of course.

Because it’s barely been struggling above freezing (even at 6pm today, my car said -6C) I’ve wanted warming, filling meals. Like this:

It takes a while to make but that lentil loaf is so filling, great for a cold evening. What I also find entertaining is the fact that recipe’s on a post called “I’m (not) dreaming of a white Christmas”. At least I’m consistent.

And although I can blame the cold for wanting to eat a lot, I’m not sure I can blame it for my current cravings for ice cream. Consistent I may be, but surely that’s just weird

What’s your favourite comfort winter dinner?

The forecast dumpload had been dumped. I closed the curtains pretty smartish.

And made pancakes – again.

And when I opened the curtains – again – it was still there

I walked up to the yard, which was ok on the road, but then I cut across some fields… when I got to this bit, which led to open fields and a slight upwards slope, it was MUCH harder going.

Despite the ridiculous number of layers I had on, I was roasting by the time I got up there.

Then there was much heaving around of hay and full buckets of water (the tap has been frozen for days) which at least gives you a great all round workout

When I got back home,I realised that as it’s likely to be freezing solid as we speak, I’d better get the car dug out if I’ve got any chance of getting to work tomorrow. It took a LONG time.

I made more cookies to cheer myself up.

It’s not as if I’ve been making copious numbers of cookies every Sunday recently or anything… it’s all just because of the snow

My friend said she’d heard it was all going to have gone by tomorrow night… everything crossed! Everything. Hope you’re keeping warm!

Actually, that’s not strictly true. A) because I’d stayed at a friend’s 20-odd miles away so that wasn’t the view and B) it wasn’t that much

But it was a couple of inches; enough to A) make me swear a lot and B) make an interesting first half of the journey home  – where not a flake had fallen. There’s no room for complacency though, as every forecast is predicting a dumpload of the evil stuff tonight. That’s the technological meteorological term, I believe.

And snow or no snow, it wasn’t pleasant to see this on my car dashboard at 7am yesterday:

That’ll teach me for trumpeting about how it felt like spring the other weekend

I’ve been making slightly more of an effort with cooking this week, like this:

I hadn’t cooked meat for ages but thanks to some Asda offers on diced turkey breast and a howge box of mushrooms, plus a sudden compulsion, I made a massive stir-fry on Thursday night. I included onions, real garlic (I’ve been lazily relying on the granules for ages but the real McCoy is so much better!) peppers, mushrooms and vegetable stock powder and it was delicious. It made four helpings too, which is always a result.

Said box of mushrooms also meant I had enough to make more of this soup:

If ever there were such a thing as soup weather, this is it – and I love that one, even if I do say so myself. I did mean to enter it for Covent Garden’s soup of the month competition too – about which they emailed me a while ago but I forgot! – but then saw that this month’s theme is flavours of the world coming together in London. I’m not entirely sure leek and mushroom qualifies

But the competition looks great and as it doesn’t seem as if it’s going to warm up around here any time soon, I’ll just have to get creative.

Have you had any snow?

It isn’t very rock ‘n’ roll to say that to celebrate on Friday, I went to the mad lengths of…. going to bed at just gone 10pm. Pathetic though it sounds, I’d not had much sleep on Thursday night :-)

I had a lovely lie-in on Saturday and, despite the huge amounts of food downed on Friday, was well up for breakfast straight away.

On that note, although it might sound completely irrelevant, my dad dug up the rest of his root vegetables last weekend and among them was one of these:

More than one, to be honest; a lot more.

It’s also honest to say that beetroots and I have a love-hate relationship. And by that, I mean a love-hate relationship without the love part. It’s not my fault either, the beetroots just don’t want to compromise.

But there were so many, they needed eating, they’re being widely touted as having the most amazing health benefits - and they were free.

I took a deep breath - and the offending beetroot- and made breakfast:

I grated the beetroot really finely and cooked it in the microwave, then stirred it into porridge, made on the hob with ground flaxseed and ground mixed spice. I added some maple syrup, braced myself – and dug in.

I was impressed by the colour, although it’s fair to say my white sink didn’t look quite as impressed, and it was actually ok. The things I don’t like about beetroot are its “earthy” flavour and its texture but the texture wasn’t relevant because it was grated and although I could still taste the earthiness, the spice and maple syrup actually worked with it. I don’t think I could exactly be classified as a beetroot lover yet, but still. One step at a time

I went out for a few drinks on Saturday night, which was great, then made pancakes on Sunday morning, back with the safety of carrot cake for breakfast:

These are definitely my (current) favourite-ever pancakes. With maple syrup on top, it’s just like eating hot, crisp-edged carrot cakes for breakfast and the juicy blueberries on top just take them to new extremes of breakfast bliss

And of course, no Sunday is complete at the moment without making cookies. Or a version of these cookies, to be precise. This week’s attempt (and I don’t know how I didn’t think of this before) involved chocolate hazelnut butter:

Chewy, crispy and chocolatey – need I say any more?!

Cookes: soft and chewy or crispy?

Beetroot: love it or hate it??

But before that, as a snippet of the weirdness that is my life, there was yesterday.

I had a council meeting after work. Not a good start, especially as I’d been working till 10pm on Tuesday but I knew it would make a good story. I left work, went to get Inka in, then drove back towards work for the meeting.

On the way, in the dark and in the middle of nowhere, I saw first a car with its hazard lights on, then a horse standing by the side of the road. I stopped, put my own hazards on and went to catch it… but then what? There I was, in my high-heeled work shoes, standing on a muddy grass verge holding a horse I couldn’t lead anywhere because its headcollar was just a dirty bit of plastic tape twisted round its nose.

Eventually, the man in the other car drove off and tracked down its owners. And apart from a very hairy moment when an approaching car decided to ignore my huge “slow down” arm movements, braking at the last minute and so, so nearly taking out horse and owner (serious heart-in-mouth moment) it was all fine.

I got to the meeting, lat but in time for the item I wanted to cover, only to find when they got there that for various legal reasons, more than half of the councillors had to leave the room and the number left was inquorate, ie they were too few legally to be able to discuss it… so I didn’t even get a story out of it! Not impressed

But today… much better. Not only was it Friday but it was only half a Friday, to do with this lot:

That T-shirt and those beers were in a goodie bag given out to everyone at the Kent Journalist of the Year awards lunch this afternoon. It’s sponsored by brewers Shepherd Neame, held at their factory and involves a free lunch and free beer… so it really is a piss-up in a brewery

All the reporters from work had entered, as we always do. It’s the only Kent journalism awards and it covers TV, radio and all the local newspapers so everyone in the local industry enters, pretty much.

But…….

I couldn’t believe it!

I’d entered a winter appeal I’d done last year for a local charity which works with homeless and vulnerable people. I asked people to donated food, clothes and toiletries and our readers responded in droves. It was so humbling, especially as I heard people had been walking in off the street and giving the centre money. I helped at their soup kitchen one night to write a piece, went to their winter homeless centre and convinced a new Sainsbury’s in the town to donate all their unsellable but within-date food to them too…

Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, the judges don’t give highly commended awards out lightly; there isn’t always one in every category, so I was really pleased – so nerve-wracking when the head judge read my name out and I had to get up in front of everyone – but at least I didn’t fall up the stairs to the stage… always a bonus

It makes working a silly number of evenings lately much more worth it… even if I couldn’t take the crate of beer I won, as it’s got barley in it – at least the boys at work gave it a good home!

The other bonus was a great lunch, of salmon, new potatoes, coleslaw, salad and fruit, followed by the most delicious chocolate ganache on cheesecake base mini slices… I took no prisoners but I’ve still got these, which my mum gave me this week:

It’s never too late for Christmas chocolates, and I’m never so full I can’t fit in some more, especially when it’s Linden Lady fudge deliciousness

Apart from an hour I spent standing outside taking the full brunt of a howling freezing wind on a job today, (always nice to have to work on a Sunday) I’ve been amazed, not just at the mildness but how soft and springlike it feels. If that makes any sense whatsoever

I had a lie-in yesterday (although not for as long as I’d have liked – thanks, neighbours, for deciding to get the hoover out at 8.30am) and time in the morning to make breakfast:

Carrot cake pancakes but without the blueberries mixed into the batter. I much prefer them crisp and juicy on top than soft and cooked inside.

I then went out on my bike to pay the mechanics who serviced my car last week. I was very grateful for their making it no longer feel like it’s going to fall apart – even if the driver’s door won’t lock or unlock and the passenger side window won’t open… details

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten how hilly the way is and hadn’t realised how windy it was. I cheated and came back a less hilly way but it’s always good to feel really exercised… and all I can say is that if 10 minutes on the Flabelos machine is more than equivalent to that then I’m a cauliflower….

As a reward (although if I’m being honest, I’d have done it anyway) I made some more of these coconut cookies:

This was a new jar of coconut butter so it was much more liquid and the cookies came out much thinner and crisper. Both delicious though, as were these:

A cashew butter version… this is seriously the recipe that just keeps giving

And as I only had about five hours’ sleep last night and I can’t handle that like I used to, I think I might just have to scarf down a few (more) of the delectable cookies and take myself to bed. Have a great week!

Yes, I did

I found out through extensive research (looked on the BBC weather website) that at the moment, the days are lengthening by about three minutes every day. Tomorrow, sunrise will be at 7.49am and sunset at 4.28pm, by Wednesday, it’ll be 7.44am and 4.34pm. And that makes me happy.

It won’t be too long before I can stop using this:

It’s a Phillips wake-up light; a Christmas present which arrived late so I’ve only been using it a couple of weeks. I’m sure you’ve seen them but basically, the light starts coming on, gradually increasing in brightness, from about 20 minutes before you’ve set the alarm. You can choose the sound too, which also gets gradually louder.

The first morning I used it, I actually thought something along the lines of: “I think I’ll wake up now” and did, peacefully to the sound of birds singing and a nice glowing light. It beats being forcibly extracted from sleep by a normal alarm and I’ve definitely felt more energetic in the mornings.

Another (kind of)  lack-of-time related thing I’ve tried this week is this:

I did a business story on a salon that’s just bought one of these Flabelos machines and the owner let me try it out. If says that a 10-minute session on it is equivalent to an hour’s workout and it claims to get you firmed and toned, increase your circulation, improve cellulite and help with back pain.

It’s also very entertaining. You stand on the plate while it vibrates, gradually getting faster and faster so by about eight minutes in, you’re shaking your booty enough to make Beyonce jealous. Believe me, you don’t want anyone behind you while you’re on one of these.

Something tells me it’s not quite the “equivalent” of an hour’s exercise though. I can’t see that there are cardiovascular or strength-building benefits – but I’ve spoken to two people who have used it regularly and said they’ve really noticed a difference and maybe it does help with toning…. not entirely convinced myself!

I haven’t been back. I’ve been saving time with quick dinners instead, like these Vegideli mini bites:

They’re delicious, quick and with not too bad an ingredients list. It’s rare to find something like that that’s gluten-free too. Also, my current favourite:

Goats’ cheese and spinach omelette, cooked in about three minutes, perfect

And also, nothing to do with anything else except my own stupidity but entertaining anyway, here’s what was on my kitchen floor a couple of hours ago:

I really should have done something about that loose handle