11.07

Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-bircher-5 Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-bircher-1 Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-bircher-3 Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-bircher-6 Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-bircher-8 Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-bircher-4 Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-bircher-7

Bircher muesli is never going to win any ‘most beautiful breakfast’ awards. It’s not got the kerb appeal of a tall stack of pancakes dripping with syrup, or a perfectly poached egg set on a bed of smashed avocado, or even an artfully arranged, multi-coloured fruit platter. But, despite it being perhaps less Instagram-friendly than we’d like, for ease and health and taste and so many other things besides, I find I’m hard pressed to do better than a bowl of Bircher in the morning.

There are countless ways to make it (apple juice, or milk? A short ten minute soak, or overnight?), but this is how I like mine…

I N G R E D I E N T S  +  I N S T R U C T I O N S ::
200g rolled oats
100g dried fruits + nuts (I used shredded coconut, chopped dates + almonds)
1tbsp chia seeds
1 whole apple
Milk

- Combine the oats, nuts, chia seeds and dried fruits, and store in an airtight jar for future breakfasting.

- Put a few tablespoons of the oat mixture into a bowl, and cover over with milk (cow’s, almond, coconut- any will do!). Set aside for at least ten minutes (the perfect time to brew a coffee), or cover and place in the fridge overnight if you’re prepping in advance.

- Coarsely grate the apple and stir through the oat mixture, with a little extra milk if you’ve left the oats to soak for a while. Enjoy at leisure, or eat at breakneck speed before dashing out of the door to catch a train. It’ll be just as delicious either way.

~

More morning inspiration ::
The best American pancakes
Eggs + avocado

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26.05

Cider-with-Rosie-adventures-in-yorkshire-breakfasting-outside

 

The drive north, from Surrey to Yorkshire, took well over six hours. Two and a half hours longer than we’d expected, thanks to the mass Bank Holiday exodus we’d forgotten entirely would be happening this weekend when we planned our trip away. In those six plus hours, we between us worked our way through far too many jelly sweets, a couple of coffees (thank you service stations), popcorn by the messy handful, and a few rounds of ‘would you rather’. The landscape got greener and greener as we drove, the skies got wider, and eventually we turned down a tiny country lane marked with a tinier sign that said, simply, ‘JollyDays’. We even had to stop to let some hares pass as we drove down the lane, and realised there and then that the trip was set to be a magical one.

Our first night under canvas was lovelier even than we’d anticipated. The wood burning stove kept the tent toasty throughout the evening, and the charm of whistling stovetop kettles and reading by candlelight and being totally screen-free was a novelty to us both. We woke early the following morning, to soft bright light pouring in through the white canvas tent walls. Jason stoked the fire and set about lighting the barbecue outside, and I got to work on the coffee.

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We’d arrived the previous day to a kitchen (a kitchen, in a tent! Complete with gas hob, a teeny tiny Welsh dresser, and hot running water!) stocked full of breakfast ingredients, all wrapped up in the sweetest (and most Instagrammable!) brown paper bags. The menu included a couple of eggs, sausages, a couple of rashers of bacon, tomatoes and a handful of mushrooms, not to mention the loaf of perfectly crusty bread and little pat of butter. In true man-make-fire style Jason took charge of all the cooking this weekend, and lived up to his reputation within our family as Barbecue King. It left me free to tinker about taking photos of milk swirling through black coffee and listening to the bird song and watching the deer bound through the fields out back from our tent, which, it turns out, is my very favourite way to spend a morning in the forest.

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We settled down to eat at the little picnic table right outside our tent (just next to the barbecue, and under the cover of an awning), slicing and toasting bread right on the grill until our supply of butter ran out, and making endless pots of fresh coffee. I’m not sure if it was the smoke from the charcoal, the flavour imparted by a well-seasoned grill, or just the novelty of cooking and eating our breakfast in a little clearing of birch trees outside our tent, but it was easily the tastiest breakfast I’ve had in a long time.

And since I haven’t stopped daydreaming about the experience since, I think I’ve caught the camping (or rather, ‘glamping’) bug…

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More from our adventures in Yorkshire to come…

* Thanks to JollyDays for having us to stay in one of their beautiful tents. A total dream weekend!

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Posted in BREAKFAST, COUNTRYSIDE LIFE, DAY TRIPS, TRAVEL, WEEKEND BREAK

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12.05

Banana-and-honey=pancakes Thick-and-fluffy-pancake-stack Drizzling-honey--Cider-with-Rosie Banana-pancake-recipe Best-American-pancake-recipe Thick-pancakes-with-banana-and-honey-Cider-with-Rosie

As weekend breakfasts go, I think you’d be hard pushed to find a finer one than that of pancakes. It’s the ritual of whisking batter and melting butter and watching them puff up as they cook, as much as the eating, that makes them such a treat. I’ve been fiddling with my recipe for thick American-style pancakes for years now, and have, if I do say so myself, absolutely cracked it. It’s the extra egg white that makes these a total light-as-air dream. Top them off with some sliced banana and a drizzle of a light, floral honey (I bought this jar of Acacia honey in France last month, and am desperately trying to eke it out!), and then eat whilst dreaming up ways to make the most out of your weekend…

I N G R E D I E N T S  +  I N S T R U C T I O N S  ::

1 cup plain flour
1 cup semi-skimmed milk
1 whole egg, plus 1 egg white
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch salt
2 tbsp butter, for cooking
~
1 banana
Honey  {Acacia is my absolute favourite}

- Put the flour, milk, bicarb, pinch of salt, and the whole egg into a large bowl, and whisk until just combined. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg white until it forms soft peaks (about 2 mins of whisking, by hand), and then gently fold into the batter, taking care not to knock out any air.

- Melt the butter in a large non-stick frying pan, then pour it out into a small bowl for greasing the pan as you cook.

- To cook the pancakes, grease the frying pan then get it good and hot before pouring in three small puddles of batter. Wait until you begin to see bubbles forming on the top, uncooked side, before flipping and cooking for 20 seconds or so longer. Repeat until all the batter’s used up {I get about 10 pancakes from a batch of this size}.

~

More morning inspiration ::
BREAKFAST INGREDIENTS :: eggs + avocado.

** I meant to say earlier, breakfast tray is c/o The White Company, & I adore it! 

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Posted in BREAKFAST, RECIPE, SWEET

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30.03

Avocado-toast-poached-eggs-Cider-with-Rosie Smashed-avocado Cider-with-Rosie-mornings Cider-with-Rosie-breakfast-mornings Breakfast-tea-Cider-with-Rosie Cider-with-Rosie-morning-routine Newspapers-and-eggs-Cider-with-Rosie-breakfasts  

I N G R E D I E N T S  +  I N S T R U C T I O N S ::

Avocado
Eggs
Rye bread
Salt
Chilli
Lemon juice
Twinings English Breakfast tea

Smash up 1 avocado with lemon juice, chilli flakes, & salt, and load onto rye bread. Poach the freshest eggs you can find (in water that’s about to come to the boil, with a splash of vinegar to help the whites bind), then place onto the avocado & top with an extra sprinkling of chilli flakes.

Make tea in a teapot (it always tastes a hundred times better), add a dash of whole milk (perhaps instead of skimmed milk + sugar, for a more fancy weekend tea) and enjoy at leisure over a stack of newspapers and magazines.

Dreamy.

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