Strange but good: chocolate porridge

It a great irony that one of winter's worst features - the horrible cold - directly leads to one of winter's best things - waking up in a warm doona cocoon while the air outside your bed is disgustingly chilly. This morning's bedtime experience was particularly delightful because it involved a purring cat (the best type of cat) so I was incredibly cross to have to get up and do grown-up things like meet deadlines and earn a living.  Because apparently I have the reasoning skills of a toddler, I decided that if I was going to get up and do things I needed a treat. I wanted chocolate for breakfast and chocolate for breakfast I was going to have!

However, despite my lack of impulse control I am still an adult so I decided to make a healthy(ish) chocolate breakfast treat: Chocolate Mudslide Oatmeal from the weird and strange food blog Chocolate-Covered Katie.

Yes, I know that is a terrible photo! I'm not a food photographer but, even if I was I don't think it's possible to make a pile of cocoa-flavoured oats look in any way appealing. I also think that based on her blog Chocolate-Covered Katie has a severely disordered relationship with food and some of the stuff on that website is crazy! (like this, these and this ... um no. Never). Disclaimers aside, this turned out to be a bizarrely yummy way to start the day that kept me full for hours while making me just that little bit less resentful for being out of bed on a cold winter's day. I put it in my strange but good file and I recommend it for the next time that your inner toddler really really wants to stay in bed.

Recipe for Chocolate-Covered Katie's Chocolate Mudslide Oatmeal

Ingredients
1/4 cup traditional oats
1/4 cup milk
1/4 water
Pinch salt
1 Tbsp dutch-processed cocoa
2 Tbsp raw sugar (this is a lot of sugar for me to add to my cereal but it's only 24 grams, which is less than the sugar in a bowl of All Bran. Processed cereal is really really bad for you.)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method
1. Cook porridge as per package directions (I cooked the oats with the salt, milk and water on a medium heat for about eight minutes). I'd never cooked oats with salt before and I think it does improve the flavour.
2. Take oats off heat. Add cocoa, sugar and vanilla essence and stir well.
3. Put in bowl, top with milk and eat. Enjoy the surprising and weird deliciousness.

Baking bread and an update on the koala socks

Having a cold is seriously the worst. You aren't really sick enough to lie in bed with a crappy novel, lemon and honey tea and a hot water bottle (although you really, really want to) so you end up doing everything you would normally do except you feel really shitty at the same time and, if you're me and ridiculously concerned about spreading germs, spend so much time washing your hands and applying hand sanitiser that you start to see the benefits of an OCD lifestyle. If my hand-washing retains its current over-energetic level, send me to a doctor. Friends don't let friends become crazy people (if they can help it).

Bleurgh to you, cold germs! However, there are things that can be done to improve mood. Inspired by last night's Masterchef episode (is anyone else really bored with this current season? I can't watch it for longer than three minutes without rolling my eyes at the excessive hyperbole and changing channels), I decided to make some bread. Fresh bread smeared with real butter makes everything better (at least for a little while).

I was feeling shitty enough that I knew I didn't have the energy or willpower for the traditional mix-knead-rise-punch-rise-bake, so I looked for recipes that would rise if I left the dough in the fridge overnight. This one seemed to fit all my criteria, so I dutifully measured out the flour and popped it into the oven on 100 degrees Celcius for 10 minutes (the recipe says 'your oven at its lowest setting'. Honestly, Delia, you can do better than that. Give a temperature range, please).

I then added 220ml of warm water to the flour along with 1/2 teaspoon each of active dried yeast, caster sugar and salt. I mixed it till blended, then put the dough on my largest cutting board to be kneaded (I find it much easier to clean a cutting board than a benchtop and, as a lazy cook, easy is very important to me.).

The recipe says that after kneading I should 'feel the magic' - the dough literally 'springing to life as you push it away and it defiantly springs back to challenge you'. My dough sprung nowhere - I just kneaded until my arms got sore, a paltry, uneneregetic and slightly embarrassing 11 minutes. I covered it in olive oil and cling wrap and put it in the fridge for 12 hours or so while I sniffled, sooked and complained to anyone who would listen.

When I pulled it out in the morning it had risen but was really really cold (quel surprise!). I popped it into my loaf tray, which was lined with baking paper, covered it with cling wrap and left it to warm up and prove.

After two hours it had risen a little bit but not doubled in size. I'm attributing that to the cold in my house making it hard for the dough to wake up after the cold in the fridge. I decided it was risen enough for my purposes and popped it in the oven on 210 decrees.

Voila - 30 minutes later a loaf of bread emerged! It's a bit lopsided because I didn't shape the loaf properly but it looks like a proper white sandwich loaf. It's quite dense, which could be a) the recipe b) because I didn't knead it until it sprung to life and punched me or c) because my house was too cold for the second rise but it tastes delicious! I've never added caster sugar to a loaf before but the teeny tiny little bit of sweetness contrasts divinely with the saltiness of the butter and I'm afraid there isn't much left for sandwiches tomorrow BUT (and this is a big deal) I feel much better. Bread-baking = an untapped cure for many ailments.

Koala Sock Update

The socks are coming along well. I've got another day to finish the rest of the foot and the toe if I want them blocked and dry before Thursday - I think I'm going to make it. Yay!

Homemade toasted muesli with blueberries and natural yoghurt

When I woke up today, the sunshine of the last few days had been replaced by grey, overcast, heavy skies and steady, constant downpour. Combined with an overall feeling of general shitiness caused by not enough sleep, too many late nights, too much socialising and a lack of spinach (Spinach, where have you gone? I've not been able to find out at either of my supermarkets for the last four days and I miss you! Please come back soon.), I felt the need for some comfort food. So, hobbling a recipe together from various online sources, I made my own toasted muesli.

The process was pretty easy. I melted one tablespoon of honey with one teaspoon of olive oil in a saucepan and then mixed the runny liquid with one cup of rolled oats, 1/2 a cup of bran flakes and two tablespoons of sunflower seeds. I spread the mix out quite thickly in a Pyrex baking dish, sprinkled with raw sugar and cinnamon and cooked it in the oven at 210 degrees for 10 minutes. I did a few things wrong - for starters my oven was much too hot. 180 would have been much better, but I was hungry and wanted my muesli right away! You're supposed to stir the mix a few times while it's cooking, which I didn't do because a) I'm lazy and b) I forgot, so the layer on the top was super crunchy and the underneath not toasty at all. I also should have used double the amounts of honey and oil to make it sweeter and more toasty. However, when combined with natural yoghurt and some defrosted frozen blueberries it made a healthy, delicious breakfast which is guaranteed to chase the rainy day blahs far, far away.