Banana flapjack, golden plover & chicken pie

Banana flapjack

Snow was forecast to fall overnight again, but there was barely an inch this morning. Rain first thing, followed by sunshine meant that what little snow there had been was mostly gone by 10:30.
In the meantime I took the opportunity to chuck together some flapjacks to eat while out running later that morning. The basic recipe was deliberately less buttery than a typical flapjack to make it easier to eat when running. I turned out to be short of oats so had to eke out the posh big organic oats with some dusty looking oats from a mystery bag tucked away in a corner of the cupboard and of uncertain vintage. They smelled OK, so in they went. Still not quite enough oats, so a handful of rye flakes to make up the oats to 8oz.

I added half a banana to stop the flapjacks being too hard or too chewy, again to make them easier to eat when running, especially on a cold day. The banana makes the flapjack a bit cakey and probably not quite as flapjacky as I might like, and more banana flavoured than a flapjack should ideally be, but today I was more interested in eatability and digestibility, so the banana had to go in.

Recipe

8oz oats, crushed a little by hand if very coarse (to make a denser flapjack)
3oz butter
1.5oz sugar
3tbs golden syrup
1/2 a banana

Melt butter with sugar and syrup, but don't overcook. Mix in oats and mashed banana. Press into baking tray and bake for about 25 minutes at 180C, until golden.

Golden Plover

We ran up the riverside path to Allendale and then up towards the moor. There were large numbers of lapwing and curlew calling in the rough fields below the moorland edge. The weather was surprisingly good; the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the valley seemed to be sheltered from the wind making it fell almost warm.

Once on the moor proper there seemed to be golden plover calling from all directions, but no visible sign of them. Red grouse, by contrast, whirred about, noisily proclaiming their presence.

There was almost no snow on the ground here, and the rapid thaw had produced streams of water. The ground was wet, but strangely seemed to be too wet to be properly muddy. The tops across the valley were still covered in snow; probably simply down to the greater altitude.

We did about 6 miles across the moor, mostly on good tracks, plus a couple of miles at each end to get to and from home, making a fairly easy 10 miles or so. And one stop to sample the banana flapjack, which wasn't bad at all...

Chicken pie

Home to chicken pie for a late lunch, and chicken soup to make for supper from the bones of the chicken.