I am making fig and walnut biscotti!

from this recipe by deb over at smitten kitchen. again. i am in love with her.

for five days over new year I had five teenage girls staying in my teeny flat. three from poland and two from croatia. they were here for the taize conference.

they were sweet. but very teenager.

i forgot how messy i was as a teenager. and how long i took to get ready every morning.

and there were five of them. in my teeny tiny flat.

it was chaos.

it took about four hours of solid tidying and cleaning after they left to make the place look habitable again. and did i mention how small my flat is?

and they had somehow managed to delete all my itunes playlists. those playlists had taken years to perfect. the roadtrip mix for next time jen and i go driving, gone. the seduction mix, begun as a wedding gift for hannah and philipp and nearly perfected is gone. the tunes perfect for turning up to top volume to drown out my thoughts, gone.

i’m so sad.

but they made up for all their chaos by buying me gifts.

the polish girls bought me gold tea cups, a lace table cloth and… a large painting of a grumpy looking virgin mary with strangely proportioned baby jesus on her lap. “how thoughtful” as J commented. “just what you’ve always wanted” said R.

yep, no idea where that is going to go.

that didn’t make up for the chaos.

but those two wonderful, beautiful, perfect croatian girls who will forever have my love and affection.

because they brought me two ENORMOUS bags of dried figs from their sunny croatian island.

I am in heaven!

so hence (yes, I realise how long this explanation has been) the fig and walnut biscotti in the oven, currently on it’s first bake.

i procrastinated at work today looking up fig recipes and this one came top of the list because apart from the orange zest which i just left out, i had all the ingredients and didn’t have to go out and risk breaking my neck on the icy snowy hill down to the delhaize shop and go.

i’ll let you know how they turn out. although my camera lens decided to break this week and my personal sony customer service provider says it probably is fatal. so sad. so no pictures…

and while i’m waiting for my temperamental oven to finish baking them, here’s the list of fig recipes i am planning on attempting next once i force myself out to the shops:

p.s. please send me your fig recipes… thank you kindly.

p.p.s. update – biscotti is cooling, will cut it up and put it back in for its second bake and it will be ready in about half an hour if you fancy popping round for a late evening cup of tea??