This website is called ‘Cook at home’, but my blog this week is titled ‘Cooking away from home’ … interesting!

I am travelling.  Again.  But this time I am blessed to be staying with my in-laws and they have graciously allowed me to invade the kitchen when the baking craving hits.  And those of you who know me well, know that I crave to bake when I’m stressed … or just want to eat cookie dough!  So the urge to bake has been around for most of this week, and I’m learning about transferring my recipes and cooking knowledge into other kitchens – it’s just not the same!

Lessons learned this week:

• I miss my food processor (AKA the Wazzer!) – I tried to make my granola slice (recipe here) without processing the fruit and nuts, and the slice turned into a yummy granola to add to my yoghurt for breakfast in the mornings … butnot the hold-in-the-hand slice that I’m used to.
• A tin of caramel does not substitute well for the same quantity of peanut butter.  When I told my husband I tried this, he said it never would – the caramel is basically sugar, peanut butter is basically oil.  When you put it that way, why did I try?
• Quinoa is not an adequate substitute for nuts.  I wanted to use up some quinoa that my in-laws had bought for me (I had made a quinoa/roast vegetable/chickpea salad for my lunches while staying here – also very yummy), and found on the internet that someone had used a recipe similar to the healthy chocolate nut fudge slice (recipe here) that I had made a number of times ago, but used cooked quinoa instead of nuts.  Well, it was an interesting taste, not really a slice, but probably would work ok with either ice cream or cream as a dessert.  At least I used all the quinoa, and a few other superfluous ingredients I had left in my in-laws cupboards from this and a previous stay!!

On the website front, I’ve made a few updates to recipes and photos (where I update the recipe to what I did that time as well) – these were done at home:

 
And … drum-roll please …

For those who have been following my quest for the ultimate chocolate peanut butter slice, you can rest easy now – I have done it.  Yes, I have found a combination of recipes that results in a delicious (high calorie-laden) chocolate peanut butter combination that has seen me reaching for way more than I needed at a time (recipe is here)! 

And as I’m away from home at the moment, I’m going to have to try this again, so my family can sample what I consider to be my ‘ULTIMATE CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER SLICE’ (can you tell I’m a little excited?). 

You may notice that these photos don’t have my little ‘Sarah’s kitchen’ tea-kettle in them … well, I forgot to pack it.  I guess that leaves the opportunity for me to make these recipes again, just so I can take the photos for the website with the kettle, of course!

As always, please feel free to comment here on my blog, on the suggestions page, or on the recipes themselves!  I welcome any and all comments – it shows someone is reading this!  Also, if you like what you read, please share the details of the website with friends and family and convince them to subscribe here too.

Until next time, enjoy cooking at home (or wherever you are)!

Sarah