brown rice pancakes

Perhaps tonight you will cook rice for dinner. The leftovers (there always seems to be a bit of rice left over!) will go into the fridge. Then tomorrow morning you have a craving for pancakes for breakfast. Well, you have hit the jackpot with this recipe! It uses cooked rice to make a very satisfying breakfast.

My Life from Scratch by Gesine Bullock-Prado--and whole wheat cream scones

April's Kitchen Reader selection is My Life from Scratch: A Sweet Journey of Starting Over, One Cake at a Time by Gesine Bullock-Prado, chosen by Shelley of My Little Chickadees. Although I ordered this book in the first few days of the month, delays meant that it arrived on the 28th. Fortunately, it's a slip of a book, and very easy and enjoyable reading. A few epic bus journeys later and it was finished off. My Life from Scratch is a memoir by the sister of Sandra Bullock, who found herself hating her Hollywood job in the Bullock sisters' production company. She finally decided (with her sister's blessing) to leave the glitz for small town Vermont, where she set up a pastry shop. This fascinating book had some magical portions, but also left me unsettled.

hot cross buns (whole grain baking)

While cleaning through my stored boxes in my parents' basement a couple of years ago I found this little book. My mother had found it at a thrift store and then tucked it into my boxes for me. It's a treasure. It has a selection of Easter breads from around the world, accompanied by charming line drawings, and background stories.

Broccoli Cornbread Muffins

I do love making muffins--those little bite-sized morsels. Sweet ones are good as snacks or breakfast, and savoury ones are great with soup or salad for dinner. These beautiful muffins are golden cornbread on the outside and bright green broccoli on the inside. They would be a great side dish for a luncheon; I can imagine a bit of a surprise when friends bite into them!

five ways to become a no-excuses runner

This is a picture of me after my morning run yesterday--still red-faced and wind swept. I have been inspired to begin running over the last few months and I've really been helped by other bloggers, including Tina, the food and fitness blogger at Carrots 'N' Cake. Over on my personal blog, I've written about five ways to become a no excuses runner. Please hop over and see what I've learned so far.

hasselback potatoes

Say hello to the easiest potato dish ever! Yet somehow so impressive, with the fanned out slices of roast potato. These tiny taters are perfect party food, ready to be nestled in the corner of your plate piled with pot luck goodies. They are from my new-to-me Nigella Lawson cookbook, Forever Summer. Nigella's recipe is simple and unfussy, but contains a gem-like tip for slicing the potatoes for this recipe.

weekend links #14

food reading links:
--Bagel cutting for the mathematician (from George Hart).
--A review of the book Home Dairy, which I now want to buy (from Eat Make Read). I wish to make my own cheese. Mmm, cheese.
--Are plastic food containers too toxic to reuse? Mr Green replies (from Hey Mr Green).
--How many ways can you combine five ingredients into pairs? Indexed shows the diagram for cinnamon, sugar, salt, pepper, and mint (from Indexed).

recipe links:
--Limoncello is easy to make at home, with only two ingredients (from Sugarlaws).
--Cake baked inside (real) egg shells (from Delicious Days), reminds me of those chocolate-filled egg shells you can buy at Maison du Chocolat.
--A cake that may be the royal wedding cake (from Baking Banter at King Arthur Flour).

off-topic links:
--Making your own photo collage in Picasa (from petit elefant).
--A review of an Indonesian restaurant in Hong Kong that makes me want to visit (from Mochachocolata Rita).
--A place to get inspired--Pinterest. Here's the food and drink front page.

ingredient spotlight: kumquats

Please welcome the fruit with arguably the strangest name: the kumquat. I bought them by the bag-full in the Chinese wet market nearby. I get my weekly fruit and vegetables from a wrinkly lady who knows her produce but can't communicate with me at all besides showing me numbers on her calculator. I make it a policy to try something new to me each time I go there, and I'm usually pleasantly surprised with the results.

red cabbage with carrot curls

A friend from work is going to Singapore in a couple of weeks for a girls' spa weekend. This makes me a bit jealous, I have to be honest. They are going to a snazzy hotel and she was telling me about the treatments they have lined up: the massages, the pedicures, the body wrap. How relaxing does that sound? And then they will shop and chat... and eat great food. When I think of spa food I imagine it to be healthy, colourful stuff, packed full of nutrients. It's the kind of food that you want to put in your body after the exfoliating wrap and the cleansing facial, the kind that rejuvenates you from the inside out.

beetroot brownies

I brought these beetroot brownies in to work to test them out on my colleagues. I'm experimenting with beetroot as an ingredient in baked goods. (It's analagous to carrot in cake. Or parsnip in cookies.) I asked the other maths teachers for constructive feedback on my new recipe idea. What did they say?