Chewy Chocolate Flapjacks (Oat Bars)

These oat bars are so delicious and more-ish!! These chocolate-covered and honey-sweetened flapjacks are  quick and easy to make, too! Gluten-free.

When we went to England last November, we enjoyed so many yummy food that we don't often get here in the US. That included delicious British sausages, Christmas pudding, clotted cream or simply any food from Marks and Spencers! We enjoyed lots of Victoria sandwich cakes, scones, shortbread and certainly some yummy chewy flapjacks. Thankfully, flapjacks are easy to make and the ingredients are readily available anywhere in the world unless you don't have oats where you are! In the Philippines we can buy oats so I guess, if our little country has it, I can imagine it is pretty easy to find anywhere else.

Filipino Coconut Chicken Curry

The other night we had dinner over at our friend's house. A missionary visiting from France who spoke at our church last Sunday stayed with them. For his last night we decided to have dinner together, sort of a pot luck. I didn't have time to prepare a main dish as we toured him around the area during the day (though I made some French clafoutis for dessert in his honor). Hubby and I just decided to get a couple of rotisserie chicken as our contribution. 

Slow Cooker Coconut Curry Beef Stew

Fall is the time to make delicious comfort food that will help us cope with freezing cold winter nights. I often experiment on different types and flavors of beef stew so all throughout the season we don't get tired of the same old, same old recipe. This time, I fancied something with a bit of an Asian kick. For convenience I used the slow cooker so it's just a matter of dumping all the ingredients in and then it's ready when we are.

Coconut Lemon Bars

Of late I have been having some Coconut obsession of some sort. That means I crave anything coconut and love to incorporate coconut in any recipe I think it may be suitable. Of course, there are a gazillion recipes for Lemon bars and using coconut in it is probably not a novel idea but it just popped into my mind last week when I was contemplating on what to do with the bag of lemons I bought from the grocery. This was when the brilliant idea of adding coconut to the mix came into my mind.

Green Curry Laksa

Laksa, a very popular dish in South East Asia and am pretty certain in other parts of the world, is essentially a coconut curry soup with noodles often with chicken or shrimp, bean curd puffs, fish sticks and sometimes bean sprouts for extra crunch! The flavor is amazing and complex - a little sweet, tangy, savory, creamy and definitely spicy-licious from all the wonderful spices added to it. It's the kind of food that hubby and I love - multi-dimensional in taste and truly satisfying.

Spicy Coconut Pumpkin Soup

Nowadays, I am in-love with anything that has coconut in it. Perhaps because I do miss my lovely island of Marinduque where we are surrounded by towering coconut trees. I have so many lovely memories of my childhood that involves this amazing tree and of course, it's delicious fruit. My parents own some piece of land in the barrio (small village in the outskirts of our town). Most of the land is devoted to rice fields but the mountainous areas are all covered with coconut trees. My parents have tenants who stay in the land either for free or for a very low rent and in return cultivate the rice crops among other things. Occasionally, we visited and to see how things were going, if the harvest would be plentiful as the rice that we ate then really came from these fields (well, when I was young I really didn't care for that but my parents did, of course.) For me, I was more concerned if we would either be able to ride the carabao (our beast of burden and really the farmer's best friend in the Philippines) during the visit and if they would be willing to give us some fresh coconuts straight from the tree. 

Coconut Rice

This coconut-flavored rice is deliciously healthy and a great and versatile side dish!!

You already know by this time that we eat rice at least 3 times a day - breakfast, lunch and dinner though that would not necessarily stop us from having rice (cold rice even) as a snack and definitely as dessert, too. Yes, we do love rice. However, though we are surrounded by coconut  trees all over our country, I have never tried cooking rice with coconut milk except when it's cooked as dessert but not as a side dish. We often associate the coconut and rice combo with dessert and not so much as a side dish for a savory viand. Ha, I realized after cooking this dish that I have been missing a lot (I thought I had pretty much tried all types of rice dishes and realized I was wrong) so this week I corrected my mistake and made this delicious and flavorful Coconut Rice.

Coconut Cherry and Chocolate Bars

Once a month we have a Fellowship Dinner at our church. That means we are requested to bring a salad or appetizer, a main dish and some dessert. Oftentimes, I focus more on doing the main dish as I often try to make a Filipino dish which depending on the recipe can require some prep time. It is during this time when I wish to make a simple dessert that won't compete for attention with the main dish. So I did some google search and looked for a dessert that uses a cake mix, after all I already had one on hand, it was just a case of what do I do with it.

Overnight Steel Cut Oats (with Coconut and Cranberries)

Who doesn't like to wake up in the morning to a breakfast that's all set and ready to go? That would be so ideal, right? Well, it's not impossible anymore when you try this amazing Overnight Steel Cut Oats that cook all night in the slow cooker so when you wake up, it's ready for eating. It doesn't take much effort to prepare it either. It takes less than 5 minutes for prep time and then all the work is done in the crock pot...and then 8 hours later, voila --- a yummy oatmeal treat!

Coconut Chicken Curry

Having grown up surrounded by coconut trees in our little island, called Marinduque, in the Philippines I love anything with coconut flavors. And we do use coconuts (tree and fruit) for everything that you can imagine. I don't know how our country will survive without this towering plant from the Palm family. We use its logs to build houses, leaves for roofing, oil for cooking and making our hair shiny, coconut husks for charcoal and of course it's meat for snacking, baking and plain eating. In the midst of a heatwave in the Philippines, nothing can be more refreshing than fresh coconut juice from a freshly opened young coconut! The possibilities are truly endless and I haven't even mentioned coconut milk!

Coconut Chicken Strips

In a previous post, I mentioned that a friend of mine invited me to her house for a Demarle food demonstration. There she showcased the lovely products from Demarle and prepared for us some really delicious meals from appetizers to desserts. Not only was I impressed with the Demarle products but with the food that she made.