Making Mondays Marvellous

A recipe for stress relief

As UK politics implodes following the EU referendum, I offer you a moment of peace and quiet. Obviously, you could read my book (available via Amazon!) or you could get cooking with avocados. Take out your frustrations on a small, inanimate green object: mash it to smithereens…

Here is this week’s Making Mondays Marvellous recipe: Guacamole

Obviously, this is my version of it rather than a recipe book’s. I know you are supposed to use lime, but I didn’t have any so used lemon. I think the red onion added a nice touch. Fresh coriander would have been good too, but it turns out I had a jar of coriander leaf in the cupboard which made a decent substitute. (No – please don’t ask why I would have a spare jar of coriander leaf. It was probably bought for a purpose a long time ago, and it is probably best that you don’t ask what it’s best-before date is…)

First, the aggression part: mash two ripe avocado pears in a bowl. Finely chop/slice the onion and tomatoes. Add them to the avocado and mix. Squeeze in the juice of the lemon and sprinkle in a decent amount of coriander leaf. Finally, add ground or crushed chillies to give a bit of zing. I think the creamy avocado will tolerate quite a lot, but of course your palate might not!

Verdict? Well, the photo doesn’t do it much credit. It was delicious, and was enjoyed by the Withenay parents with their chicken fajitas / tortilla wraps. The children, as usual, were a lot more skeptical: I couldn’t hide away the healthy ‘green’ of avocados under the veil of chocolate. I think lime would have given it a bit more zip than the lemon juice did, and I’m sure fresh coriander would have added more flavour. But, overall, it was a good ‘store cupboard’ homemade guacamole.

Family verdict: ????
(That’s really to indicate some liked and some disliked, but their reasoning was wrong!)

How do you make guacamole? Give this a try and see what you think!

Don’t forget to buy the book – no recipes included!
Beware the Falling Avocados is available as a paperback in the UK HERE and as a kindle version HERE. In the US the paperback is HERE and the kindle version is HERE.

Beware the Falling Avocados, Making Mondays Marvellous

Reflections on a book launch

A big THANK YOU to everyone who came to my book launch on Saturday. It was lovely to see so many people. I am a little slow-witted at times, so it was only part way through that I remembered I’d delegated the role of ‘official photographer’ to my husband but hadn’t told him. This picture is my sister’s.

Quite intellectual looking, I think… apart from the array of beer barrels as a backdrop.

You may also note the biscuits just to my right hand side. They were supposed to be avocados – well, they did look a bit avocado-ish, though I was worried they looked more like fried eggs (albeit green ones).

My friend Rachael asked for the recipe and, as I am pursuing an avocado-themed recipe series for the next few Mondays (see last week’s post for Chocolate Mousse), I thought I’d share it as they look like avocados, though there is no avocado in the ingredient list.

Making Mondays Marvellous: (Avocado) Chocolate Biscuits

Place 225g softened butter and 140g caster sugar in a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Beat in 1 egg yolk and 2 tsp vanilla extract (I used less, as I was icing the biscuits). Sift together 250g plain flour, 25g cocoa powder and a pinch of salt (I used salted butter so didn’t add extra salt). Mix into the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Then add 100g of finely chopped plain chocolate. Stir well. It should be a stiff dough, which you can roll out on a floured surface and cut into shapes. Put on a baking tray, spaced apart, and back at 190C for 10-15 minutes.

Helpful points to note:

You’ll need a lot of flour for rolling. If you don’t need shapes, it would be much easier to create balls of dough and flatten them.
The chocolate chunks can make cutting shapes awkward! Not all my pears were perfect…
The avocado effect was simply using the same pear shape to cut out green sugar-paste icing, and cutting a hole in the middle (I used the letter ‘O’, though experimented with the number ‘0’ as well!)
Do check your cutters. Some plastics don’t survive even the top level of the dishwasher. (There will be no more regular pear-shaped biscuits in our house now…)

And that was that!

General verdict: ????
(Of the 90 I made, only 5 came back, and 4 of them I’d hidden away!)

Thanks once again for your support. It was a wonderful afternoon and a delight to share the publication of my book with so many lovely people.

Don’t forget to buy the book – no recipes included! Beware the Falling Avocados is available as a paperback in the UK HERE and as a kindle version HERE. In the US the paperback is HERE and the kindle version is HERE.

Beware the Falling Avocados, Making Mondays Marvellous

And we go back to the beginning…

Beware the Falling Avocados is available as an eBook or paperback from Saturday 18 June. Here is the first chapter, in which we return to Zambia after a month’s holiday in the UK and I encounter creepy-crawlies in the dark…

Chapter1

In my last post I promised that I would share some avocado recipes. I do not claim to be a chef, so you will discover a number of my recipes are haphazard, made up of what I can find in the cupboard to substitute for not having x, y or z. (That may also explain some of my children’s comments…)

As we are going ‘back to the beginning’ today, here is the first one I made with all the right ingredients. It was quite some time ago, and more done out of intrigue as a friend had posted it on Facebook. So, in my house, it is quite simply known as Anneliese’s Chocolate Mousse.

Take 1 banana, 1 avocado (recommend ripe fruit, ready to be mashed), 1 tbsp cocoa powder, 2-3 dessert spoons of honey, 1/4 cup water and a splash of vanilla essence. Put all ingredients into a bowl and blend well.

Put into small pots, refrigerate and (a little later) serve!

I like recipes that are this simple. The children liked it too – not leaving any for me to lick out of the bowls. (Their verdict may be swayed by it being chocolate.) It is also both gluten- and dairy-free.

Withenay score: ???

Why not give it a try and let me know what you think?

Don’t forget: Beware the Falling Avocados is available as a paperback and eBook from 18 June 2016.