Below is the first offering. If you have a recipe to offer, please let me know via the Comments section:

SPELT NUT & SEED BREAD with AVOCADO SPREAD

The bread
Because I make all my own bread in a busy life, I usually use a breadmaker, though the proportions are pretty much the same if you make it by hand (you might need to experiment with the quantity of water).

3 cups wholemeal organic spelt* flour (I use Dove’s Farm, from the UK)
1 cup white ditto
1 teaspoon apple concentrate, maple syrup, date syrup or unrefined sugar
1 tablespoon fine seasalt
1 1/3 cups lukewarm water (blood heat; see below)
2/3 tablespoons unrefined olive oil
Handful walnuts
Handful pumpkin or sunflower seeds (or ground flax)
(You can vary the additions: try raw chopped onion with herbs – dill’s good with onion, or sage; sprouted seeds, but not too many as they’ll dampen the loaf; olives, sundried tomatoes etc)

Oil tin with all of the olive oil. Dissolve your sweetener and the salt in less than a quarter cup boiling water. Add cold to top the cup up; pour into tin.

Add the flour (if using breadmaker), and I use the 3 hour 40 minute setting, adding the nuts and seeds when the machine beeps (if working dough by hand add them with the flour).

* I use spelt because, like many people in the UK, I find I do better on it than on our modern wheat (spelt is ‘the neolithic wheat’)

The spread
Take a quarter avocado (for food miles I try and buy from Europe) for one piece bread/toast, and mash it with a splash of olive oil, some nutritional yeast flakes (from a wholefood shop; the vegan’s big friend), a pinch of salt, black pepper and if you like some Tabasco or lemon juice. You won’t miss butter, and it’s a lot healthier than the processed spreads. If you’re feeling really virtuous, sprinkle with sprouted seeds – about as healthful as you can get.

Accompany it with red grape juice – delicious and healthful (and if you happen to live in, or travel to, France, also surprisingly cheap, even as organic, ‘bio’. Much as I love wine, this is worth importing).

Tip
Instead of butter or margarine, I simply put a little olive oil in a jar in the fridge, so that it solidifies, then use it like butter. (You don’t need this in addition to the avo spread.)

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