Cadiz Pastries

When in Cadiz the liberterian city of Andalucia, I strongly recommend that you have an empty stomach and don't plan to diet. The pastries here are up there with some of the best around Spain I have found. Well priced too!

yes, it is a crazy baked marshmallow!

Maybe take your running shoes too so you can burn off some calories after the food!

Get in my Belly

Here is a question: What has 19 ingredients yet is still good for you?

Answer: My muesli. Well, I say mine, but I stole the idea from my wife, who incidentally makes a much better muesli than me, but she doesn't write this blog!

I am always banging on to anyone that will listen to "know what is in your food", which is relatively easy for me as I tend to do the cooking in our house. Also most of our things come from "base form" even when we buy chocolate, which is quite often, we try to limit the ingredients it has in it to as few as possible. As an example, my most recent purchase of chocolate contained 72% cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter and ground vanilla pod! Now, that is a simple block of chocolate, and damn tasty too.

Muesli was my scourge as a child, it tasted like cardboard and smelt like a dog's bed. But now there are lots of healthy ones out there but many do contain excessive sugar and fats. By making muesli myself I know exactly what is added and can tailor it to my taste. It is ridiculously simple and seriously takes about 20minutes (to use a very Australian saying) from go to whoa, or should that be wow....

Here is the muesli family. As I can't eat nuts, this is great for me as most mueslis now contain them in some form but I am sure you can add them to this recipe.

 Four types of rolled grains: Rye, Wheat, Oat and Barley along with wheat bran

 Pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, linseeds, and coconut

 Dried cranberries, sultanas, apricots, plus cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg powders

 What is this? Well, it is honey, treacle and canola oil. Cool pattern, no?

 Mix it all up and spread it on a tray

 Bake away until it is brown and crunchy

And there you have it!

Full recipe here:

150ml of each of the rolled products Oats, Rye, Barley and Wheat also the same of bran.
150ml of pumpkin, lin and sunflower seeds
100ml of coconut
1.5 handfuls of each (or as much or little as you want realistically) of dried fruits here is sultanas, apricots and cranberries
5ml of both cinnamon and salt
1ml of ginger and nutmeg
25g of canola oil
10g treacle
70g honey

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, then heat the liquids together till they blend well.
Add the liquid to the dry and mix thoroughly, making sure that all the "dry pockets" change colour with moisture. This ensures an even bake.
Spread this on baking paper on a tray to an even thickness
Put into an oven, it can be preheated or not. I tend to use a not preheated one, it just saves on electricity (at 100C).
After about 5 mins when the colour starts to change open up the oven and quickly stir the contents around especially moving the edges into the middle and vice versa. Close and keep an eye on it as the fruit can burn really quickly. When the fruit starts to change colour, pull out the tray closing the oven not to lose heat and mix the contents again. If the fruit is still some way from getting really dark and the rest of the ingredients appear a little light in colour, add it back to the oven only for a few minutes.

Take out and cool. Then store in a sealable container.
Add milk or yoghurt for a great breakfast, I also love to add in some fresh berries too because they are in season now.
It will be nice and crunchy but not to sweet and sickly, and never boring with all the fun things in it.
Bon App
etite.

Little Belgium, Veurne

So the town of Veurne is to be found just inland from the South coast of Belgium, not too far from the French border. To be honest it really is a little jewel in the countryside. We just went here on our way back from running our fingers through sand and shells at the seaside. We are certainly glad that we did. Marta loved to be thought of as a local by a French car passing by as they failed to see her camera, guidebook and bewildered look, they continued to ask her the way to... well, somewhere, and she just smiled and said sorry, it was a cute scene.
The town has a rather imposing clocktower overlooking the main square.
It stands proud amidst the beautiful buildings which were luckily not destroyed in WWI in this part of the lowlands.
Around the square you can see some Renaissance buildings and the town hall. It really is a very pretty central square, to my mind, the prettiest in Belgium.
This is the town hall, it has a nice tower that you can climb I think, but we never got the chance.
I did like the ornate building tops and the small differences that you can see in each building due to its different uses and owners.
We were there when there was some lovely low afternoon sun and it let us play in the sun and shadows.
Of course being a nice and old town, it allowed me a good door fix to feed my addiction.
There were many interesting doors. After some of the towns I didn't think I would see such old ones. As many of the towns in the region were so devastated by WWI that it seems they just used more modern doors and materials and didn't seem to put the craftsmanship into them. So I was very happy to come here and see some nice doors.
The town also had a lovely bakery, the blurry blonde was an added free extra.
They had some delicious looking desserts to scoff down.
Apples appear to pop up a lot in this region too.
See I told you so.
The Raspberries looked too nice to be real! Unfortunately Marty and I had already eaten so we didn't lavish each other with icing sugar covered treats.
But my biggest question is are the pink things here a Belgian copy of the Adelaide classic,
Frog cakes? They look similar but of course the Adelaide Balfours treat is just a distant memory now..... Luckily if I need a fix of home, here in Poland two metro stops away I can buy a decent Lamington.