The girls went out yesterday leaving Esteban & I wondering what to do. He suggested making a chocolate boat which sounded a little strange to me but I went with the flow and it quickly became clear that he is in fact a master chocolatier! The end result looked & tasted divine.

These kind of projects always seem to begin with hazelnuts, purely because we foraged so many last year.

So, the ingredients were as follows:

• Loads of crushed hazelnuts
• Less crushed cashews
• Finely cut dried Reine Claude plums (instead of raisins)
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon cacao powder
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated creamed coconut
• A few pieces of dark chocolate, just because Esteban insisted ;)

Everything was melted up together for five minutes and poured into a container with tin foil underneath (to help us remove it later). Before the chocolate set we added the following things on top:

• Small salt crystals
• Ginger
• Lemon zest

Into the freezer it went and five mins later the girls arrived home at the perfect moment. Esteban was feeling very proud and wanted to photograph it.

No doubt he will be posting in his own account @esteban-luna soon enough!

Luna still bases the things she eats on the way they look and she didn't like the look of this, so didn't eat it!

No problem. More for us and anyone who happens to join us here this weekend ;)

The other thing I wanted to mention was the sand which blew in from Africa a few days ago. Sounds weird I know but when we look at the map we can see that the deserts of Algeria are in fact not all that far from the East coast of France's boarder with Spain, which is where we are.

The wind here is quite often extremely strong and in this situation it blew the sand right across the Mediterranean Sea.

The sand is slightly red, not at all the same colour as the sand from our local beaches.

It covered absolutely everything.

I wonder if it will add nutritional benefits to the herbs?

Certainly the soil they grow in will be enriched by this little gift from the desert.

Love the way this region never fails to surprise me and better still it is even able to remind me of my past and the greater vision for my future, which may just lead me back into Africa.

Zambia, 2011

🌱