To blog or not to blog…

I’ve had this conversation with my good friend, sexy blogger and peppy designer ‘A’ lately: Should you or should you not blog on your crappy days ?… these days when you feel bad and ugly and gloomy and you feel that maybe you shouldn’t just spill your guts on your readers who most probably have nothing to do with it???

I can’t or at least rarely. Not really out of noble consideration for you guys I must admit, but mostly ’cause on those crappy days, I do not feel like anything and certainly not like writing and if I try, it feels all I get out of me is so sad and bad and depressing and boooring. ‘A’ thinks it’s ok to share a couple of bad days and out your gloom on the web once in a while… It’s not as if only the good days make who you are, after all. Maybe ‘A’ is right… Maybe it’s only fair not to be happily cheesy all the time.

What do you think… Is a little gloomy prose OK once in a while? If you won’t handle it, that’s ok too: you could skip the sad boring part and head straight down for the recipe and I can assure you, these sweet bites have cheered me up on many crappy days (at least those when the fridge was not empty!).

So… Yep. I’ve had a lot of bad-and-ugly-and-gloomy days lately. I have felt like crap. I managed to cook a little. I couldn’t get myself to blog… One of the better days I tried but capitulated long before pressing “publish”. I left it at that last draft (by far the most enthusiastic and the most edulcorated)…

It’s one of these sundays when you wake up with puffy eyes, muscle pain and a slight headache, very lazy, so grumpy. It’s grey and chilly outside when you open the windows. You pick a fight with your dutchie for some insignificant detail. The laundry bag is exploding and there’s nothing but cycling on TV… Maybe something sweet, not too demanding will cheer you up a bit… a bit of rhubarb and hazelnuts maybe, like the mini bites you improvised for some friends a couple of weeks ago… And then you open the fridge and unlike the laundry basket, it’s empty! The idea of getting out in the street for a quick fix at the supermarket is more than you can handle. Back to bed with a strong cup of coffee, the rests of a pack of chips and the kinder chocolate bars you were saving for your nephews, tomorrow might be a better day…

‘pfeww’, You know what… It feels kinda good to have it of my chest. Thanks ‘A’.

Mini rhubarb/hazelnuts bites
Bouchees rhubarbe et noisettes

yields ~35 mini bites.
prep. 10 min; cooking: 20min;
Oven temp: 180 deg C/350 deg F

Ingredients:
~ for the rhubarb topping:
250 g rhubarb, peeled and diced;
3 Tsp sugar;
1 pinch cinnamon;
~ for the dough:
100g mixed hazelnuts and almonds, finely ground;
50g all purpose flour;
100g sugar;
seeds of 1/2 a vanilla pod;
1 pinch cinnamon;
3 egg whites + 1 whole egg;
80g butter;
a pinch of salt;

~ Preheat your oven at 180 degC. Melt the butter.
~Prepare a rhubarb “compote”: In a pan on medium heat, add sugar, cinnamon and diced rhubarb. Cook for about 10min, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb has sweated its juices and the fruits start to caramelise but are not completely “pureed”! Set aside and leave to cool.
~ Prepare the dough: Mix the ground almonds/hazelnuts, the flour, the sugar, the seeds from the vanilla pod, the cinnamon and the pinch of salt. Then add the eggs and mix until incorporated. Finally, add the melted butter and mix until smooth.
~ Pour into buttered mini (silicon) molds. Top each bite with a piece/tea spoon of rhubarb and bake for 20 min. Set to cool on a rack.

Bon appétit!