Firstly, please excuse my absence over the last few weeks. My family have been over from New Zealand and we have been too busy exploring and adventuring for me to be blogging. Now I know some people shudder at the thought of family holidays, all that time, all that family. I happen to rather like them. We have always enjoyed holidaying together so when I left home and then when my sister left home, somehow the holidays didn’t. We continue to meet up somewhere new every year, and this year it was the U.S. of A.

We spent some time eating and exploring in San Francisco, and then went down to Monterey and Carmel for a bit of a beach holiday. Known as the fruit bowl of America, the fresh produce was incredible. So many berries, nectarines, cherries, peaches and artichokes! As well as the food, the seals and otters were pretty awesome- look at them all!

To make things even better, while they were here my work visa came through. This means I have started the arduous process of trolling through job websites and sending my CV to anyone I think could be interested. But before I started that, we celebrated with the family all together at Bar Tartine- an absolutely incredible evening, by watching Dangerous Minds- to get me in sorted for teaching in America, and by celebrating our first Fourth of July eating pancakes- before spending the day in Dolores Park with friends.

My sister is actually the pancake queen in our family, but seeing as she had just got on a plane, I decided I would give them a go.

Raspberry and Coconut Pancakes

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp brown sugar
30 g butter or oil
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/2 cup frozen raspberries, broken up into smaller pieces
2 Tbsp shredded coconut

This is so easy! Simply mix your dry ingredients and then add your wet. If you are using butter, melt it first. This mixture will make four small pancakes, perfect for two people. I served them with some natural yoghurt and some of my kind of strawberry jam.

Happy Fourth of July, and here’s to family x