Just the title should be enough to tell you it’s been One of Those Weeks.
Oat groats?
So this happened:
Does anyone want to come to Lewes with me?
Why?
I need oat groats, like, right now.
Obviously.
If you’re from round here, you’ll know why in this scenario, Lewes is always the solution. Hemp sandals? Knitted yoghurt? Kombucha scoby? Oat groats? Get ye to Lewes, forthwith - and don’t forget your wicker basket, harem trousers and exotic scarf *. Lewes has more health food shops than you can shake a stick at. It’s famous for its artisan bakery and their rosemary and sea salt focaccia, as well as being infamous for fireworks, effigy burning and general rabble rousing. It’s where 70s darling Clothkits was born, and Protestant martyrs were burned at the stake in the sixteenth century. It’s so fiercely independent it even has its own currency.
*Lewes Woman spotter’s guide - 10 points per, 5 extra points for Birkenstock sandals and a bicycle.
Oat groats thus procured, it was time to get home and read more on my latest obsession.
Ultrarunning.
Yep, I know. Shuffling around the playing field as fast as a brisk walk isn’t really ultra-anything, other than ultra-slow, but I can keep it up for as long as I like. That’s definite progress, as for the past few months, I’ve been trying to get back into running - she says, as if it was ever a thing - which it was but only briefly back in 2018. I successfully completed Cto5K aka running three miles three times a week, and I kept it up for about 10 months. Regretted stopping, can’t really remember why, think it was genuinely because I ran out of road…this is a small town with limited or repetitive options when you need to find three plus miles of pavement, and it was getting into winter so off-road was a no-go and going in circles around the park kinda gets old. Anyhoo, it’s taken a while to find a way to start again that doesn’t result in sore knees and I think I’ve cracked it. The running, that is, not the knees.
Conclusion: it’s not the running, it’s how I was running. Solving this one has led me deep down the rabbit hole that is ultrarunning, starting with barefoot shoes and progressing to tales of the legendary Tarahumara tribe in the Copper Canyons of Mexico as described in the classic book Born to Run by Chris McDougall.
Coincidentally, my daughter recently read Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson and became obsessed with everything Appalachian and mentioned a book she’d really like to read next: North by Scott Jurek. Aha, said I - I know who he is, he’s an ultrarunner who was one of the first to race with the Tarahumara. So I bought her the book, as well as his other book Eat & Run which I’m reading now.
It’s a really great book whether you’re into running or not. Unlike Born to Run, which I found jumped maddeningly all over the shop, Scott’s book is an easy, enjoyable and fascinating read, and inspiring too if you’d like a bit of a push to learn how to do hard things, and perhaps tidy up your diet while you’re at it. His whole ethos around food, what he eats and why, makes a whole lot of sense to me and is written in a very open, honest way - no holier-than-thou food preaching at all. Usefully, he’s included recipes at the end of each chapter. Hence the oat groats!
NB this is not a fast recipe, and it makes a lot. This is around half the quantity of ingredients he uses. Perhaps Americans have bigger baking sheets and bigger ovens? I think we know the answer to that.
2 cups whole oat groats, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed.
1 apple (I used a Granny Smith) cored and chopped.
1/4 cup coconut flakes
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup chopped almonds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup raisins
Process oats, apple, coconut, seasonings and syrup for a minute or so, stopping to scrape down the bowl several times. Mix in the almonds and pumpkin seeds, then spread the mix out on two baking sheets (with non-stick liners, or very lightly greased with coconut oil). Bake at 120°C for 2 to 4 hours, breaking up and turning the mix every 30 minutes or so, so it dries out and toasts evenly. As the trays weren’t too hot, after a while I just used my hands to crumble and turn the mix. I think my batch took around 2 hours, but I can’t remember precisely because I was multitasking and cooked dinner at the same time. Mix in the raisins at the end of cooking, and when it’s all cool, store in an airtight container.
Not sure whether it’ll turn me into an ultrarunner, but it is tasty stuff, if a little crunchy…
Best meal this week that wasn’t granola?
Brown rice and greens. Seriously. Found a recipe in a 50p charity shop book, tweaked it to use rice not giant couscous (didn’t have any of the latter, couldn’t be bothered with another trip to Lewes).
Lightly sauté shredded spring greens and spring onion in a splash of water and a tiny smidge of butter, add cooked brown rice, big squeeze of lemon juice, sprinkle of S&P, toasted flaked almonds, diced avocado, job done. Upgrade with a dollop of hummus if it’s in the fridge (which it was). I added a teaspoon of my other obsession, ketjap manis, which I add to almost everything at the moment (apart from granola). Might seem a bit weird, but I don’t care. It was serious yum.
Latest TV obsession?
Masterchef, of course! I’d ace it, for sure.
And the octopus?
I blame my total lack of focus on the fact that it’s school holidays. No, I don’t have a school age child, but my offspring does work in a school. Does that count? Anyhoo, there’s an extra person in the house during the day which is seriously distracting. I mean, it probably wouldn’t be distracting for a normal person, but it is for me because as we all know, anything is fair game in that department.
As is usual when we’re both kicking around the house, mutterings start about trips to the place of the Blue Water - and perhaps a jaunt to the land of Blue and Yellow. Not sure why the place of Blue Water is so named, as most of the people there seem to be varying degrees of orange*.
*Spotter’s guide to the shoppers of Bluewater shopping centre**: orange (principle feature), very shiny (not just the PVC leggings), eyelashes like some sort of venomous hairy arachnid has taken up residence in each eye socket, eyebrows like caterpillars, either too few clothes (female of the species) or some variety of oversized sportswear and slip-on trainers (male). 10 points for everything you can tick.
**apart from us, obviously. We flew under the radar as Middle-Aged Woman with Lewes-worthy basket and Ninja normal person.
Bluewater Shopping Centre in Dartford is everything that Lewes isn’t, but it is useful for big shops and big browsing. If I have to go clothes shopping, may as well get it over with in one swoop. Daughter’s summer work wardrobe duly purchased, and gluttons for punishment that we are, the next day saw us merrily tripping up to the land of Blue and Yellow for goodness-knows-what as well as a quantity of little wooden storage boxes and some outdoor cushions. As I’ve mentioned before, my favourite part of the whole experience is the children’s toys and the underwater lighting and sound effects. And look who I found!!
I also found confirmation that 31 years ago, I did indeed marry the right person.
And what about the art…and the 100 day project…and all the things..?
Sshhhh. I promise there’ll be some art and maybe even an update on #the100dayproject next time…
Until next time, what have you been up to?!
Links to things mentioned
Ikea octopus (exhibit A)
Haha, good fun read as always Izzy! If you want some nice shopping Tunbridge Wells is a good bet - I'm just about to move there and am excited although I rarely go shopping, but it's just kind of, well, nice!! I think there's even an art shop. If you fancy meeting for a coffee or whatever one day, do shout!
The oat groat stuff doesn’t sound entirely dissimilar to Nigella’s olive oil granola which is quicker to make and uses regular oats… available at all major supermarkets 😉
Only downside is I want to eat it by the handful all the time! Zilch going on in the art department in this part of the world but the allotment is looking good.