Cobnuts to you all

I've been banging on about spring for a while, but thanks to a bit of stuff I forgot on my camera, we're going to get a little bit up in autumn's grill.

Last autumn, I bought a bag full of cobnuts and promptly stuck them in the fridge. For months. Seriously, months. I'd never cooked with them before, they sort of looked a bit alien, so I put them in the vegetable crisper and forget about them.

It was only after a bit of fridge archaeology that I found the stray paper bag and the sorry looking cobnuts within. And then I made these cookies with the cobnuts:

I really am a dumbass. Did you know how good cobnuts were? You did? Why didn't you all tell me?! They're so sweet, like little blocks of caramel. They're well and truly delicious. My mind was truly blown.

So, lesson learnt. Next time autumn rolls around, I'm going to get shedloads of cobnuts in and believe you and me, I'll not be abandoning them for half a year.

OK, after a spot of praising autumn, we're back to spring and all that. Salads are back in fashion while asparagus season lasts.

I read somewhere that pumpkin seeds contain something that's good for memory so with exams coming up (not long now!) and all that revision going on, I'm pretty much putting them on everything right now - salads, dinners, oatmeal in the morning!

(Then again, I can't remember what it was the pumpkin seeds were meant to contain, where I read it, or based on what evidence the memory link was there, so clearly I should be more skeptical when I read pseudoscientific nutrition articles. Still, eating more pumpkin seeds is no bad thing.)

I wasn't kidding about asparagus either. I've been putting it in everything. Including potato farls.

Yep, I made some normal potato farls, and then stuck a load of asparagus, wild garlic and spring onions in there for good measure. You can't really go wrong with that holy trinity.

Began vegan, leafy greens are like mother's milk, so I was proper chuffed to see chard coming back in at the markets. I love chard when it's really tiny, so you don't have to bother with all the chopping the stalks first then messing around with the leaves later.

I got this recipe after some high level research - I put 'chick peas and chard' into Google and found this. It's apparently from the River Cafe cookbook, and there's the proper recipe on Google Books preview. It's not too hard to make, but it's really tasty. And you can't say fairer than that.

For the sweet fix this week, I've been making sultana oatmeal cookies. I think they're an American thing maybe, because you don't see them over here. A friend of mine was going back to San Francisco, where's she's from, and she brought me back some oatmeal raisin cookies from Trader Joe's and ever since I've been craving them little devils.

For a first attempt, they were darn tasty. Admittedly, they looked a bit like something that you'd find on the side of a volcano when the lava cools, but that didn't stop me enjoying them.

And after I'd made may way through those cookies (not all in one go, I'd like to make clear), there was still this little beauty waiting for me from last month's Vegan Kind box:

It's a sea salt peanut butter cup from Eat Chic, an artisan East London chocolatier (so the internet tells me). As someone who happily eats peanut butter from the jar with a spoon, and sometimes with my hand if I'm too lazy to get a spoon involved, I was completely smitten. I love Go Max Go's peanut butter cups, but these are something else. They're very grown up with the sea salt and dark chocolate, with a little sweet filling. I am officially in love.