I went a bit flapjack crazy this week – more of this in an upcoming post. I was frustrated with a peanut butter flapjack recipe that didn’t turn out quite right, so I went on a bit of a quest, and baked four different recipes on Tuesday morning. Most of them went to work – never underestimate office workers’ appetite for baked goods! The other food theme this week was pork. I cooked some pork shoulder with black beans in the slow cooker on Sunday, and it reappeared in various forms all week. That and a tub of bolognese sauce made weeknight dinners very easy this week. Tonight it’s going to be pizza, before a car journey to Somerset this evening to celebrate my Dad’s birthday this weekend.

Recipes:

• Treacle flapjacks – from Poires au chocolat
• Peanut butter flapjacks – recipe from my mum
• Date and banana flapjacks – from Mumsnet – a baby-friendly one.
• ‘The Perfect’ flapjacks from Felicity Cloake in the Guardian

Without a recipe:

• Friday night pizza (last week) with feta, and courgettes and cherry tomatoes from the garden.
• A very random dinner of beetroot greens, gnocchi and pulled pork. Tastier than it sounds, although with a slightly disturbing hint of pink from the beetroot stalks.
• Using up wilting spinach and parsley for a green sauce to freeze (Amanda Cohen-style, but playing fast and loose with the ingredients)
• Breaded haddock, with corn on the cob and sugar snap peas
• Bolognese sauce – mostly following the Marcella Hazan approach (milk, wine, tomatoes and a long simmer). I also added some roasted mushroom base

Reading:

• The Evening Standard picks 10 cookbooks ‘to inspire you’ – a good selection of recent hits
• One of these is Olia Hercules’ book ‘Mamushka’. In this interview she says ‘everything you (think) you know about eastern European food is wrong’.
• The Little Loaf’s new book ‘Homemade Memories’ looks good. Read more about some of the recipes here (caramels), here (peanut butter cups) and here.
• A MadLibs (fill-in-the-blanks) guide to food blog comments
• Ruby Tandoh baked a couple of Portuguese pastry recipes for her column last weekend – and not a custard tart in sight.
• This is an interesting article about the science behind tasting fizzy drinks. The Food Programme this week was also about sodas, especially the new,’artisanal’ flavours that some companies are developing. Hop-flavoured tonic sounded very interesting.
• This recipe for chocolate, rose and raspberry baked doughnuts from London Bakes may persuade me to dust off my doughnut tin.
• I just can’t get enough of Shauna’s writing (a.k.a. The Gluten Free Girl). This post of hers, about health, and summer, and living in the imperfect, messy moments, is a perfect example.