Ricotta fritters

This is the recipe from the side of the ricotta pottle.  Ricotta is delicious, and I am hooked. This stuff tastes ever so slightly sweet out of the container so there will definitely be some ricotta desserts in my future.
I'm on the fence about these fritters. First taste they were a bit bland but lemon juice squeezed over the top and some avocado perked them up a bit.
Again another way to use up stuff in the fridge.

500gms of ricotta (or for me what was left in the tub)
Small handful of basil chopped fine
Handful of cherry tomatoes quartered
Two handfuls of spinach chopped fine
Clove of garlic chopped fine
Shallot (so fancy) chopped
1/2 cup of flour
2 eggs
Seasoning


Pop all the ingredients bar the flour in a bowl and mix well.  Add the flour and mix till combined. Drop in spoonfuls in an oiled pan. Once they were brown I left them on the side of the pan away from the heat for a bit, just to help cook through.
Serve with lots of lemon juice and avocado slices.


Hint when making fritters, pancakes or similar always do a test one first, this will help ensure your pan is the right heat and you get the hang of how the mixture will react in the pan. Plus it's always the first taste test too  :)

Below some more questionable mobile phone photography.

Make your chocolate treat - and eat it

Chocolate treat which contains no sugar and no butter? Impossible you may think, or if possible must certainly taste like cardboard.
Well I've found a recipe which not only contains no naughty ingredients but also tastes the exact opposite of woody pulp.
Plus it's also vegan and has a surprise ingredient in the icing.This slice is so many things.
I found it through fellow blogger Laura at Hungry and Frozen, and she found on another blog here.

Literal goodness.

1 cup walnuts (or any nuts or mixture of nuts you have)
1 cup dates, pitted
2/3 cup cocoa powder 
1 avocado
40ml honey, maple syrup or whatever syrupy deliciousness you have
2 tsp vanilla extract
dash salt
dash cinnamon

In a food processor grind up the nuts, dates and 1/2 the quantity of cocoa powder.  Will look a bit like soil, quite crumbly.  Press into a tin, and pack down tightly.


Clean the food processor. Pop in your avocado, rest of cocoa powder, salt, syrup, vanilla, cinnamon (I actually left this out - but could be delicious so do it). Mix it all up and spread over your base.


Freeze for at least an hour. Slice up, and leave to defrost for maybe 10mins before eating.

This is really good, and I will use this icing on other treats as well.  The base does crumble more as it thaws, so I may research what I can use here to better hold together, perhaps more dates.

Scary bbq

You would think 10 days of meditation would be easy. Lolling about thinking happy thoughts and seeing if you can touch your inner self.  Not quite.  10 days of extreme training more like.  Up at 4am with solid meditation all day practically till 9 at night.  Tiring and far too intense for me.  

What did I learn? - well I did meditate for the first time, which is quite an awesome feeling, but one I'd rather do when I am ready and willing to do it.  And...... I have decided to become a vegetarian. All the food there was vegetarian, and delicious.  What? you might think - meat too is delicious, which it is (although I have almost forgotten...) but one of the rules you abide by while you are on the course, and to take away with you into everyday life is - you shouldn't kill anything.  So whilst on the course you must let those freaky spiders and pesky ants roam free, and eat good vegetarian fare.  I guess it struck me the final day, that no, I did not want to kill any other creature who happens to be going about its life on the planet with us.  It too deserves to get on with living much as we try and do.  

And thats the way I see it.  So far I have been eating delicious straight forward food - no freaky ingredients insight.  And Ill see how I go.  Although I am almost fearful of my next bbq....