Blueberry Pancakes

One of the most delicious aspects of running a bed and breakfast is breakfast. When we serve pancakes for breakfast, sometimes they look and smell so wonderful it's hard to pass up the opportunity to cook the rest of the batch for ourselves.

On this particular day, we happened to have some blueberries. It is so much fun to pelt the pancake with plump juicy berries before flipping it over.

Of course, if you get too carried away you can burst them and the cooked side of the pancake displays the bombardment bleeding through. It does add a little something when the blueberry sugars slightly caramelise.

The best way to serve pancakes is with a perfect spiral of butter (now slightly melted (and may not have quite fit the mathematical definition to start with (but that's what you are aiming for))), smokey bacon and really real(tm) maple syrup. I can't stress the maple syrup enough. I'm not $#@%ing kidding.

The first time I made blueberry pancakes was for Jodie. We only had one couple in the house, so Jodie was able to have a rare sleep in. After finishing their breakfast, I wanted to take Jodie breakfast in bed. Even though pancakes in bed would be freakin' awesome, I wanted to make it something special. Not just the best pancakes I've ever tasted special... something extra. I consulted with Nigella who gave us the pancake recipe we use, and right there on that very page was the suggestion for peppering the partly cooked pancake with blueberries. I got chills. For real. We had a fresh punnet of blueberries in the fridge. So I got to work, made fresh french pressed coffee and serenaded my wife with not song, but food.

Needless to say that was a great start to a very pleasant day.

Chicken

Lemon grilled chicken with roast tomato salad

I'm back. I've missed blogging about things outside World of Warcraft, where I've been spending most of my creative wordsmithing. I've missed sharing my adventures and photography. I got held up in an endless spiral of perfectionism and procrastination. I'm 33, an adult by even Hobbit standards, enough. So in an effort to get back into the swing of things, I'm starting off with something from today, Chicken.

Since the begining of our peak season, we've been eating better. By which, for me, I mean eating less. I've dropped 6kg since the start of the year, and Jodie and I had a great time corresponding with my cousin Frances and friends in Scotland who are supporting each other through the loss of 10kg or 10lb in 10 weeks.

I've been making my curries, which generally use 2kg of meat, fish or vegetables as the main ingredient. Smaller serving sizes are fantastic, but we are going to start freezing portions for later, because there's only so many days in a row you can eat the same curry. The only reason this is true, is food safety rather than getting sick of them. They are that awesome.

Jodie is an avid cook, who makes my head spin when I'm tasked with choosing a special dish for my Birthday. Firstly, there's too many favourites to choose from. Secondly, Jodie likes a challenge and so many of my favourites fall into the 'lazy' meal category. Perfect simplicity is perfect, and absolutely nothing beats her mushroom risotto. Having said that, there's probably over one hundred dishes that rival it, so it's still a tough choice. If you have suggestions for my birthday meal, please leave them in the comments... but don't be upset if I can't resist an old favourite. I don't know why, but right this moment, I'm leaning toward Steak and Guiness Pie.

Jodie has been collecting recipes that are of the healthy persuasion recently, and we've just discovered a couple of new favourites. Today, Jodie made Lemon grilled chicken with roast tomato salad, which is pictured above. The lemon and oregano is nicely offset by rocket, pepper and a sliced red chilli. My mouth started watering as I took photos of the roast tomoato salad (below).

Roast tomato salad