A recipe shared + a give-away winner

Tags

coconut biscuit recipe, Evil Chest-Suppressing Lurgy, give away winner, Melbourne, poached eggs, Recipes

Greetings from mid-Wintery Melbourne with its gasp-inducing freezey mornings and evenings.

I was gonna write to y’all last week but instead I succumbed to the Evil Chest-Suppressing Lurgy that 80% of Melbourne seems to have, and spent three days lying on my excellently long couch with the cosy cushions, with multiple pots of tea, Buffy DVDs, poached eggs and… cravings. For baked goods.

Specifically, my own variation of my grandma’s coconut biscuit recipe. So, once I’d had enough of the horizontal resting and the snoozing I pulled a stick of organic butter out of the fridge to soften it up and got to it.

Baking while all fluey means two things:

1. You have to eat ALL the cookies (omnom nom). Coz it’s unsanitary to pass on your baked-in germs.
2. Much of the prep work – like creaming the butter – can be done sitting down. There’s always a work-around when you REALLY want a cookie!

So this I offer to everyone in honour of my recently departed and highly complicated grandmother (her recipe, adapted by me):

(Gluten/sugar free) Coconut biscuits

• 100g organic butter (room temperature)
• ½ cup rice malt syrup
• 1 egg
• 1½ cups of gluten free self-raising flour (or normal flour + baking powder)
• ½ cup of almond meal
• 1 tea spoon vanilla essence
• 1 cup organic desiccated coconut
• Optional: 2x teaspoons organic raw cacao powder (for chocolatey cookies)

Pre-heat oven to 220 Celsius.

Cream butter, then stir in rice malt syrup until smooth and blended. Mix in the egg.

Sift flour and combine with almond meal, stir in to butter/sugar/egg combo.

Add vanilla essence and coconut, plus (optional) cacao powder.

Make sure the mixture is on the dry side, instead of wet and sloppy. Add a little more flour if needed.

Grease baking tray, and drop small teaspoon-sized pieces of the mixture.

Bake for around 20 minutes only. Don’t over-cook or they’ll lose their coconutty flavour.

DONE! In no time at all, you have some very tasty and easy to make cookies that are delightful with endless pots of tea. 😉

 ~~~

On to the next order of business…

Give-away winner

Yep, I’ve been a little distracted so almost forgot to draw the winner of the Yoga Nidra give-away.

Being that I’m all fluey, forgive me for not doing a video to prove the integrity of my winning entry drawing process.

AND. The winner is…

***La Gitane***

Congrats! I’ll be in touch via email to get your postal address. 😀

And…a few lil updates from me

• This year has involved massive amounts of change for the good. This is still going on, but harder to write about because I’m still in it.
• My grandmother’s passing has brought others changes. Some that have already happened; others yet to come. Things I’d rather not talk about here but they are in the end, good things, too.
• I wrote an article for Nadine’s blog on how to heal PTSD. I was overwhelmed by some of the positive comments both on the blog post and in Nadine’s Facebook feed.
• I AM going to write an ebook on healing from PTSD. It’s coming. 😀
• I am no longer in trauma. I’m. No. Longer. In. Trauma. There’s a post coming on that one really soon…

A happy mid-Winter/Summer to you all, wherever you are.

And if you make my grandma’s coconut biscuits, please let me know!!

~Svasti

Hummus recipe

Tags

Angst, Hummus, Mongol, recipe, Recipes, The Astor, The Wrestler, Yoga In Daily Life

Here’s a little break from the angst, folks. I’m getting just a tad sick of myself (so I’m sure others might be, too)!

Okay, so Anthroyogini requested I post the hummus recipe from my Fun with food & Twitter post… here ’tis!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ingredients

• 1½ cups chickpeas (soaked overnight in cold water)
• Juice of two large lemons
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• ½ teaspoon asafoetida powder (from your Indian grocery store)
• 2/3 cup tahini
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 2-3 cloves garlic (optional – depends how you like your hummus)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil for garnish (optional)

How to make it

Drain the chickpeas and put them in a large pot with lots of water. Boil for approximately an hour until the chickpeas are very soft.

Fry the cumin seeds over a medium heat on a dry frying pan til aromatic. Don’t over-cook them (seeds get black and smell burnt).

Drain the cooked chickpeas and reserve the water they were cooked in.

Place the chickpeas and all other ingredients (except oil) in a food processor or blender (note: I only have a stick blender and that works fine). Process until smooth (or smooth-ish, I like mine a little textured). Add a little of the reserved cooking water if required to reach desired consistency.

Transfer to a serving bowl and enjoy!

c/o Yoga In Daily Life (I did a cooking workshop with them and came away with a lovely little booklet full of recipes).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I should say though, this recipe makes a whole bunch of hummus, so I’d suggest halving the ingredients, giving some away to friends or freezing most of it. Unless you’re having a party or two!

If you make it, let me know how it goes, okay? Hope you like it as much as I do.

Right, now I’m off to the Thursday night double feature at the lovely old art deco theatre up the road from me, The Astor. I’m gonna see The Wrestler & Mongol, both movies for $13.

~Svasti