Cooking My Way Back

The sun streamed into the kitchen yesterday evening lighting up these gorgeous creamy roses, a gift from a friend last week. 

Today it was so gloomy in the kitchen I had to put the lights on..

and the heating on to dry the washing as it rained all day.

Robin keeps asking me if we can make 'sweet nuts' like the ones he bought in Honiton market from the nut and olive man. I've no idea what the coating was around the cashews so I just google 'sugar coated pecans' and come up with this recipe. It's simply nuts stirred into beaten egg white and then tossed in cinnamon sugar and salt and baked in the oven. I use a mixture of almonds and cashews.

It's an American recipe. I read the oven temperatures the wrong way round....mix up Centigrade and Fahrenheit. You are supposed to cook them on the lowest setting  for an hour. I do the opposite and  put the oven up to its highest setting so the nuts start to burn and the sugary mixture sticks to the non-stick paper. 

I rescue them in time and once they are cool Robin can't stop eating them. Luckily I'm not tempted. We make brown sugar meringues and flapjacks before he has to leave to drive off up the A38 in the rain with his walking group.

The rain scuppers my gardening/allotment plans and instead of returning to my indoor to-do list I slip out of my life...... disappear into my snuggle chair....... start reading a novel set in modern day Japan.

The trouble with escaping in the afternoons is that I don't want to come back from the story of someone else's life in another world...much more interesting .....and face the truth of mine.

In the end the best way for me is to open the fridge.... and start chopping something ...... start making supper.....cooking my way back into what's left of my day.