I hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas/Hanukkah etc with your family. We certainly are.
Not only is this time a relaxing part of the year for me, being my ‘down tools’ time, but I also get to do some pottering about the house, baking and playing about with ideas from my design books. One design I have been longing to make (which will all be revealed soon) I made the other day, as well as these little ceramic houses you see here under my cloche.
There will be more shapes to the houses to follow, but this one I though was sweet enough to sit under glass…and it is my first one I made. Each one is hand molded and carved, which I loved doing. Can’t wait to show you some more.
While I have this time off, I have changed the living room around a little bit, re-arranged displays and enjoyed filling our ‘Old Lady’ with the gorgeous white hydrangeas from our masses in the front yard. We also took the boys on a 8km bike ride today on their new bikes. Mason, our 6 year old done so well too seeing he was stung by a bee (allergic) and had a swollen calf muscle! Poor little guy. I have never seen his legs peddle so fast.
After all of the festive food we have had, it’s time to get back on track with our eating too and I made these ‘clean’ breakfast bars, which I posted on Instagram (my user name is @marleyandlockyer) and I was asked to post the recipe, so here it is…
****CLEAN BREAKFAST BARS****
INGREDIENTS- I substitute depending on whats on hand
*1 cup of chopped, raw pecans (or other raw nuts)
*1 cup of chopped, raw almonds (or other raw nuts)
*1/2 cup of unsweetened apricots, chopped
*1 cup of unsweetened figs (or prunes)
*1 1/2 cups rolled oats
*1 1/2 cups of brown puffed rice, unsweetened
*1/2 cup unsweetened raisins
*3 egg whites
*1/4 cup pure maple syrup, or organic honey
*1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
*pinch sea salt
*1 tsp pure vanilla extract
METHOD
Pre heat oven to 180C or 350F. Lightly spray a square baking dish with olive oil spray. Combine the dry ingredients and mix. In another bowl combine wet ingredients and mix, then pour into the dry mix. Spread into baking dish and flaten with the back of a spoon or spatula and bake for 20-25 mins until golden brown. Allow to cool down for about 30 minutes, then cut into bars and store in an airtight container for 2 weeks or freeze for two months.
–recipe from Clean Eating Magazine–
It is so simple, although, I have found that the smaller you can cut up the nuts and fruit, the better the bars will hold together. If you cut them chunky you can roll the cooked mix into balls or leave it clumpy as a muesli mix.
Hope you like it 😀 Ness xx
