New fabrics and a recipe...

You may remember that I'm one of fifteen Lecien "Flower Sugar" World Ambassadors and every so often I receive a parcel from Japan, overflowing with not-yet-released Flower Sugar pretties to play with.

This week not one, but two bundles of floral and fancy came to bless me...

Flower Sugar 'Holiday' will be waiting at your local quilt shop in June, in plenty of time for Christmas sewing!

Before then I'll share a free festive pattern with a list of materials required which you can print up and take with you to the shop. There's a design wafting around my creative space you see, and it could be the perfect choice for a Christmas project.

For now though, let me show you the two prints I love the most from the FS "Holiday" bundle. Do they make you giddy with delight too?

The other bundle is just as delicious! 

Flower Sugar "Sweet Carnival" will debut at Spring Quilt Market in Salt Lake City, USA, and will arrive at local quilt shops by October.

I have ideas for these too...so many ideas, but which one to choose????

I may even host a little giveaway...stay tuned for that one. 

Every week, Monday to Friday at 7am, without exception, Mr E and I have breakfast together.

It's a special time of the day to chat, share a healthy meal, and pray.

Saturdays are different though, because he starts work 30 minutes later. 

On those mornings I pack a 'finger food' breakfast I've baked the day before, some cheese squares for our Merri-dog, and after picking up coffee from our favourite drive through cafe (Zarraffas) we head down to the beach, sit back under the palm trees and enjoy the morning view across the water.

It's a very special start to the last day of what has become a rather long working week for Mr E.

This little detour from the weekly routine helps make each Saturday quite bearable for my beloved, so I like to give extra time to planning and preparing our 'picnic' brekky.

This week I've played around with an old recipe to make it dairy free, wheat free, and sugar free.

Seriously, it was delicious!

In fact, we taste tested so much that it disappeared rather fast, so I'm glad he has a 4-day Easter break and no work on Saturday.  

(Although, I will make more cause we'll still go down to the beach - some routines are too good to miss...)

Would you like to try it?

I've shared the recipe over HERE on my 'cooked simply with love' blog where there's a link for you to download and print the recipe for your own files.

Do you eat fish on Good Friday? There's nothing yummier than macadamia crumbed coral trout in my personal seafood menu so I'm off now to buy the fish and some salad trimmings. Then I'll work on that Flower Sugar "Holiday" design...

 May you have a blessed and faith filled Easter!

hugs

 

A recipe and a new blog...

Mr E and I both have an auto-immune disease and for slightly different reasons cannot tolerate wheat without paying a digestive price for a day or two afterwards. That's not to say we avoid it entirely, but when we occasionally indulge it comes at a physical cost. 

I fell off the wagon big time the past couple of months and can honestly say I've never felt worse. After my nasty fall and a prolonged head cold during August/September I didn't put in the effort required to stay on top of our health and thus began to feel the consequences. The worst thing was seeing my beloved struggle as well. Sure, there were days when I got it right, but there were more days when I didn't.

November 1st.

New day, new month, fresh focus. 

 I spent time last weekend pulling my best healthy cookbooks off the shelf for inspiration, as well as making notes on reworking some old family favourites to suit a wheat-free and mostly gluten-free diet.

And that's where today's recipe came into play!

Mr E enjoys a treat with his cuppa, but he doesn't like it too sweet. Over a year ago we ditched sugar for about six months and that helped us break the sweet tooth addiction so now we use it occasionally, but it's in much smaller quantities and we're fussy about what kind of sugar we use. 

My re-make of Matrimony Slice is delicious so I thought you might like the recipe?

We have a NutriBullet and apart from making delicious smoothies and nutri-blasts, it also mills grain or nuts and seeds to flour. 

For this recipe you'll need oat flour (which you can purchase at the health food store) but if you have the right kitchen appliance why not make it yourself? 

 I mill a few cups of non-contaminated gluten-free oats at a time and after using what I need for a recipe the rest is stored in the freezer for my next baking day...

 MATRIMONY SLICE (wheat-free)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup milled rolled oats, or purchased oat flour

3/4 cup almond meal (almond flour)

1/4 cup rolled oats

grated zest of one lemon

1 cup dessicated coconut

75g melted butter

75g coconut oil

1/2 cup rapadura sugar

1/4 cup raw honey

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

1 heaped teaspoon aluminium-free/gluten-free baking powder

1/2 cup jam (100% fruit, no added sugar)

almond flakes

Method:

 Preheat oven to 180C (375F)

Grease and line a slice tray.

In a large bowl mix together the oat flour, almond meal, rolled oats, lemon zest, coconut, sugar, spice and baking powder.

In a large jug gently stir the melted butter, coconut oil, honey and egg until blended.

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and mix well.

Press a little over half of the mix into the base of your slice tray.

Spread the jam across the top (if you warm the jam a little in your microwave it spreads very easily).

Crumble the rest of your slice mix over the jam.

Scatter the almond flakes across the top.

Bake for 25-30 minutes.

The top should be risen and golden brown. 

When cool, cut into 16 slices. This keeps well in the fridge for a week.

Enjoy!

 

I used to have a foodie blog, but it's been two years since I've done anything with it. One of my hopes this year was to revive it and share a lot more of what happens in my kitchen, but time ran away from me and here we are almost face to face to 2016 and nothing has eventuated.

So there I sat a little while back, up to my chin in recipes and health books and pages of ideas, wondering whether it was too late to grab that hope and follow my heart?

I decided to move all my old healthy-living/recipe posts from that forgotten blog over to a new blog. The original blog had a wealth of good things shared over a few years about life in my kitchen and I didn't want to lose them, in fact I want to revisit them myself for inspiration during the next year or so! 

Building a kitchen lovin' blog to be what I envisioned at the start of my Year of Gentle Domesticity will take time, but for now it's got a door and you're welcome to visit whenever you like. 

I've called it Cooked Simply With Love because that's the best recipe you can follow, right?

I'll still share occasional recipes on Elefantz but mostly they'll be over HERE, along with chit chat about living a simpler healthy life.

Actually, I'll let you in on a secret.
If I wasn't designing I'd be experimenting in my kitchen every day, totally immersed in healthy goodness beside a stack of notes smeared with coconut oil and sour cherries and almond flour and flaxseed...and I'd double (triple!) the number of homemade aprons that hang from my pantry cupboard.

A girl can dream.

Have a wonderful Friday,
hugs