Lime and Avocado Ice Cream with Chocolate Covered Pistachio Pieces

I actually managed to slit my finger open while making this, I know, ice cream of all things. I was obviously not paying any attention to cutting open avocados and probably more attention to the music I was listening to or the commonwealth games that were on in the background or the humongous mess I had previously made in the kitchen which was slowly getting bigger and messier by itself. The mess in the kitchen grows right? have you noticed? it's like the opposite of having elves come and tidy your workshop and finish your jobs at night; I guarantee you dirty crockery multiplies in daylight when your back is turned.

It was one of those days where I was really excited to get in the kitchen but I kept losing things, and knocking things over and being ridiculously clumsy; it's almost like my eyes have stopped working, over the past few days things are literally sitting in front of my face and I can't seem to find them. And can I just mention it was boiling in the kitchen, I got the chocolate covered pistachios out of the fridge to cut up and add to the mixture and in about 20 seconds the chocolate was melting.

If you're even slightly apprehensive about making this because there's avocado in it just throw those apprehensions out the window and do it anyway you will not regret it. This actually reminds me of a lime cheesecake I make all the time and if your ice cream tastes a bit like cheesecake and it's healthier because it has avocado in, you're doing it right.

Blue Cheese, Roasted tomato and Coleslaw Burgers with Sweet Potato Chips

I will just apologise now for the raw meat picture, I made these while a friend was over and she was adamant that I take a picture of the burgers before we cooked them and now I really like the picture so I can't not put it in. I've become a little bit of a loaded burger fanatic recently, I was one of those children that liked food very plain, we didn't really eat out much and the only place I had ever seen burgers with lots of stuff in was at a fast food restaurant and I never eat fast food burgers. I don't actually know if that was because they didn't really do jam packed burgers here back then or I just never saw them, so I was quite slow on the bulky burger bandwagon. I have always been a lover of fat sandwiches, there's a weird story of how that came about but I won't delve into that now, and when I say fat I'm not being over dramatic, they're usually borderline too big for your mouth and now I'm pretty much the same with burgers.

The trick to this burger is not to cut the blue cheese too thick because you don't want to over power the other flavours, don't skimp on the tomatoes and heavy on the coleslaw.

Grilled Nectarine, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad with a Cranberry Vinaigrette

I kind of went off salads this summer, I got into the mind set of them being boring and a little mundane and unless there were sausages involved I probably wasn't feeling it. So to spice the salad up abit I racked my brains and came up with this. The original salad was actually going to have sliced roasted tomatoes in it but the idea of using the oven as well as the hob seemed like too many pans to get dirty for me to make this everyday so I scratched that idea and actually think it was probably for the best. This might also be the strangest looking vinaigrette I've ever made, I'm not even sure if most people would even class this as a vinaigrette but it tastes pretty vinaigrette-esk to me.

Sun-Dried Tomato and Roasted Garlic Houmous with Roasted Garlic Flat Bread

My first houmous experience was far from pleasant. I must have been about 12, we were on a family holiday there were over 15 of us all sitting round in a circle under the starry night sky in middle of our patch of tents and caravans, bundled up in big jumpers and blankets, surrounded by candles on tables and stuck in the ground. I was sitting next to one of my aunts and she was sitting eating a pot of houmous with probably pitta bread, I don't really remember but for the story's sake let's just say it was, and somehow I ended up trying it. She scooped as much as she possibly could on to this lone tiny piece of pitta bread and long story short there was choking, coughing and a lot of laughing involved. It's safe to say I did not enjoy the houmous.

A few years ago my sister bought some caramelised onion houmous in a supermarket which I tried, I'd say I was a convert but it's pretty much the only houmous I've tried, so of course I figured I'd make my own. I wanted to make sun-dried tomatoes and roasted garlic houmous because I couldn't really go far wrong. Unfortunately my houmous is not as smooth as it could be because the food processor is on it's last leg, but it still tasted just as good and some people actually said they liked it not being really smooth . So I wouldn't worry about your poor old food processor, they might not work afterwards but you'll get some tasty houmous out of it.

Roasted Garlic

I am a through and through garlic fanatic How many cloves should I use? Why not all of them! Is there enough garlic? Is there ever enough! Do we need more? Yes, always yes! And if in doubt...just use more!

My friend and I made a giant pesto, garlic bread loaf it must have been last year? Obviously when she asked if we needed more garlic my response was yes and due to impatience and hunger we got the loaf out while the garlic was still raw unbeknown to us so we ended up eating raw garlic bread and ill be honest I didn't hate it. I actually kind of liked the itchy mouth it gave me, like itchy mouth cheese, do you know what I'm talking about? cheese that's so strong it makes your mouth itch, it makes me want to ferociously chew food but it's surprisingly not an annoyance. Although I enjoyed it, she's kind of sworn off eating anything with garlic in it with me because she can taste it in her mouth days after.

Anyway about a year ago someone sent me a link to roasted garlic, obviously it is more than perfect for me roasted, check, garlic CHECK what else do you need other than a napkin for the aftermath. I finally, finally got round to making it and ohh boy! I would say if you have a cold this is 100% the best thing to eat. People say garlic is good to fight off a cold but what they don't tell you is how to chock it down; this you could eat by the bulb.

I will stand by the notion that Garlic is good for you, then everything else is just a blur to me because that's more than enough for me to harbour pre-baked garlic bread around the house in case of a global catastrophe or a power cut - the power actually tripped while I was writing this post but from me walking downstairs to flick it back on there wasn't quite enough time for me to go into a panic frenzy about the existential existence of garlic bread.

This recipe is so simple, you'll be kicking yourself that you haven't made this before now and it makes the garlic taste buttery and sweet. If you're someone who doesn't like being able to taste the garlic hours after you've eaten it this is perfect for you and you can use it in recipes like my sun dried tomato and roasted garlic houmous and roasted garlic flat bread.

Coleslaw three ways; Apple, Mustard and Spicy Sultana

When you don't know what to write about, I guess we can call that bloggers blog, which in my case is a rather frequent problem, you have to find inspiration from somewhere. Eventually I will get better at finding that inspiration but today I resorted too "mum....hypothetically...if you were to write about coleslaw....".

I always feel like anecdotes are the best thing to write about on here but believe you me sometimes there is no entertainment, mishap or amusing situation that comes from making something, and this coleslaw was one of those things. So mentioning in passing to anecdotes and coleslaw my mum told me about the great coleslaw debacle of 199?; okay don't get your hopes this tale is neither thrilling, humorous or plagued with drama and it's almost 83% speculation and only 17% fact.

I assume I was quite young because I have no recollection of this happening, we were living in our old house, it was new years eve; cue the memories of brisk cold walks home at 1 am where you can see your breath as it exist your mouth and the dull sound of thumping music coming from peoples houses. I imagine the tale of events went as follows; someone, more likely multiple someone's, were walking along the street with coleslaw and obviously decided my dads car would ultimately be the perfect place to put this coleslaw, whether they proceeded to eat it off the car after dumping it there I'm not sure, maybe it was bad coleslaw. The more likely tale of events being drunken people with a possible distaste for coleslaw finding it hilarious to throw around. According to my sources coleslaw does not do wonders for your paint, I guess the moral of the story is that you should probably stand a least a foot away from your vehicle while consuming this and if you do manage to fling it the way of your car maybe try and clean it up straight away.

White Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino

I have been obsessed with reading for the last two weeks, in true extremist style; literally eat, drink, sleep, read. It's been pretty hot in England the past few weeks so I've been sitting in the garden under our enormous parasol that makes everyone look slightly sunburnt, frappé in one hand book in the other. This is the what I've been making, I am pretty obsessed with my own blended coffee and it was only until my friend brought me a white mocha cookie crumble that I was determined to adapt my recipe to make one. If I could live off of these I would.

This is one of those recipes where I don't really have exact measurements for it, I know roughly how much I need of everything how big of a splash of milk to put in etc. this is pretty close though. Also, it might be worth a mention that you might want to add more condensed milk if you like it sweeter or some extra coffee for a bit more of a kick.