Between work, singing and this allegedly-healthy global walking challenge, I seem to be in a constant state of exhaustion at present, which is not conducive to blog posts. It doesn’t help that I’m so tired I’m actually following recipes at the moment… However, I have a big excursion planned tomorrow for my walking team – we’re going to leave work at 3:30 and walk 13 kms to Williamstown, and then go on a Ghost Tour after dinner. My team is, in fact, the slowest of the three teams at work, but we are also the coolest, because we do outings! And surely that’s what really counts?
I’ve planned this outing in ridiculous detail – 8 weeks into the challenge, a lot of us are flagging or have minor injuries, so not only have I planned a very precise route, I have arranged it so that every kilometre or two, we get within shouting distance of a railway station or a bus stop, to allow anyone who needs it to ride the rest of the way.
And, of course, I am providing snacks – healthy, energy-giving snacks, to speed us on our way. I recently made Almost Vegan’s Five Minute Blondies with Hannah’s Raw Chocolate Icing (with avocado!), which were awesome, but a bit messy for my purposes, so I turned the blondies into truffles, and added a bit of ginger and cinnamon to suit their caramel goodness. But I couldn’t stop at one recipe, and I had leftover dried figs and dried apricots from a pilaf yesterday, and hazelnuts and pistachios also hanging around the house, and raw cacao, and before I knew it, I had two recipes on my hand.
Herewith, before I fall asleep on my keyboard, Nearly Raw Chocolate, Hazelnut and Fig Truffles and Raw Apricot, Orange and Pistachio Truffles. The chocolatey ones are kind of amazing – I didn’t think they tasted very chocolatey, but the chocolate sort of creeps up on you – you taste it for several minutes after you have one. The apricot truffles are a lot like those little apricot delight squares they used to sell at the canteen at my primary school, but with pistachios and orange-flower water giving them a lovely, perfumed flavour. And they are so healthy! Ish…
Your Shopping List for Hazelnut, Chocolate and Fig Truffles
150 g raw hazelnuts
2 tbsp (40 ml) raw cacao, or good cocoa powder
200 g soft dried figs
50 ml maple syrup
50 g goooood dark chocolate, chopped
Your Shopping List for Apricot and Pistachio Truffles
300 g dried apricots (the soft kind work better)
zest of 1 orange
50 g pistachios
1/2 teaspoon of orange flower water
Optional Extras
You could roll the hazelnut and chocolate truffles in cocoa powder, if you liked. And, while it seems a pity to spoil the middle-eastern nature of the apricot ones, by doing this, you could roll them in coconut. Or dip them in white chocolate and the others in dark chocolate, which point you’ve pretty much admitted that you aren’t trying to be health-foody any more.
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Today was such a good market day! It was the 5th Sunday of the month, and it’s late July, so I wasn’t expecting great things – this tends to be a combination that leads to a smaller number of stalls and fewer interesting vegetables, but the market organisers have done and excellent job of finding different people to fill the gaps, and I didn’t feel as though I was missing out at all. 5th Sunday also means that we are about to swap weeks and lose all those 1st and 3rd Sunday stallholders (including the lovely Rita and her husband), which is always sad, especially as I can never remember who is on in the 2nd and 4th weeks. We’ll find out soon enough…
