The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy, so I'm looking forward to bringing in the New Year with a nice, quiet beer at home with Tom. 

I hope you all had a wonderful festive season, watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special (unlike a certain Doctor-hating boyfriend who will remain nameless) and are gearing up for a brilliant 2014. 

I'll be back soon (tomorrow?) with a recap of our Christmas celebrations and the brief roadtrip we took to Melbourne & back this week. The picture above was taken a couple of days ago; the sun was setting just as we crossed the border back into South Australia, so we stopped and enjoyed it from two places at once. 

Christmas came early this year. Two days ago, to be exact. We had a great night celebrating with Tom's family on Saturday night with great food, great company and lots of laughter. I love these people and am so grateful that they welcomed me into their family Christmas celebrations two years ago.

Salted caramels with real ingredients

I wrote this post yesterday (as promised to anyone following me on instagram) but couldn't put it up for reasons unknown to sensible human beings. 

For Christmas this year, my two best friends and I decided to skip gifts and instead exchange delicious treats. This came in response to the incredible fudge Josh made last year that Claire and I desperately wanted to see feature again this Christmas.

I decided to make salted caramels because I'm crazy for anything with that flavour combination at the moment. An obsessive salty caramely lust has crept upon me in the last few months, so it felt necessary, nay, essential, that these flavours comprise my contribution to Orphan's Christmas celebrations. 

There are tons of salted caramel recipes on the internet; Pinterest overflows with delectable photos of the stuff (unlike the quick phone shot that I took). But candy is full of refined sugars and a myriad of other unholy ingredients and I wanted to try to find an alternative. I also wanted Tom to be able to enjoy a couple, and I may or may not have mentioned on here before that he has Type 1 Diabetes, so that added an extra challenge. Most artificial sweeteners have a metallic aftertaste and other natural alternatives such as stevia were not going to caramelise to the rich flavour that I wanted in my candies. Eventually I settled on organic coconut sugar, but since it is hard to find and exorbitantly  priced when you do, I wouldn't suggest the substitution to those who aren't concerned about a blood sugar spike. Stick with organic rapadura, which has a natural caramel hint to begin with and don't undergo the excessive processing of it's refined counterparts.

I used this recipe from Holistic Squid; apart from the coconut sugar, I made no changes and it turned out beautifully so I'll send you over there rather than steal the recipe and slap it up here.

Anyway, since in not a food blogger and I failed to take pictures of a quality better than my phone, I'll stop pretending I know anything about this. The caramels turned out really well. I had no idea it was this easy, but if I had I might have tried these much earlier. Twisting them into individual papers was painfully repetitive and monotonous work, but once Tom came to help me it was much more fun. I'd suggest you Shanghai someone into helping you simply because you'll have someone to chat with as you go.  

And for my next trick? Tomorrow I'll be nicking some rosemary from the hedge down the street and adapting the recipe from this lemon tart for the early Christmas celebrations with Tom's family that evening. Yet again I'm hoping to create something sweet without all of the crap that often goes into these types of foods. I make a great lemon curd, but with all the butter and sugar involved in it I thought I'd risk trying something a little bit different to my usual bent on the classic. Fingers crossed I don't have to make a last minute mad dash to a bakery to fix my mistake if it all goes south. 

Right now, however, I'm going to go and drink some cold beer in honour of a friend's birthday and forget all about the kitchen. His celebrations are supposed to involve watching the Test, but I strongly believe that cricket is as much a spectator sport as poker. Not. Even. Remotely. That said, we met some guys from the Barmy Army at the pub last week when the Test was here and causing me a headache induced by overproduction of coffee. They sang us a song and I developed an iota of love for cricket in that moment simply because these men would travel across the globe to follow the Test and sing roudy songs, so perhaps there's more to it than I know. 

26 things I love about you

Your 26th birthday just passed. We spent this week consumed with birthday dates and anniversary celebrations, and I missed the moment to write you something lovely. I wrote you a long card, but I owe you more so now I'm writing you a list. Perhaps if you were turning 260000 I might be able to create a more comprehensive list, but for now I'll settle with 26 of the big and little things that make life with you such a blessing.

1. I love how you dream big and aim high, you never give up on your goals
2. I love the cheeky smile on your face when you attempt to be sneaky
3. I love your sense of humour and your lacking sense of direction
4. I love the delicious and overly complex dinners that you make for me
5. I love your signature dance
6. I love that you don't believe you have a signature dance
7. I love how I always feel at home with you
8. I love your weird and unnatural love for inspirational sports movies
9. I love that you believe in me when I don't believe in myself
10. I love that you always know how to calm me down in a crisis
11. I love how astute you are about people and their true natures
12. I love how impossible it is for you to hide your glee
13. I love the sound of your heart beating when you hold me tight
14. I love your evenhandedness - and how you can use this to make me see reason
15. I love your inexplicable love for spreadsheets
16. I love your drunken, but very serious, speeches about the honour of taking a knee
17. I love that when I ask you to come over and give me seven kisses, you always give me nine. One for luck and one because you say I deserve more than I think.
18. I love that you are like a kid at Christmas when you talk about fish or groundwater hydrology or your Honours project or Rocky Balboa
19. I love your big blue eyes
20. I love how you are the only person I can be sure won't tune out when I go on a nonsense rant about nothing in particular
21. I love your chivalry
22. I love your kind and gentle heart
23. I love how you make Harry Potter references just to humour me
24. I love the quiet, perfect nights we spend together simply enjoying one another's company
25. I love your pirate mojitos
26. I love waking up to your beautiful face every morning
27. I love the plans we make together
28. I love that you are always growing, but always, always, you

(plus one for luck and one because you always deserve more)

You turned twenty-six yesterday.

Two years ago you called me your birthday present and today we celebrate our second anniversary.

I have never been a Type A personality, and despite all of the stress and pressure these types put upon themselves, I've always felt a bit jipped that I haven't naturally been able to fit that wholly unnatural level of productivity into my own life. My Type A friends may or may not be on the path to a meltdown, but they do get a ridiculous amount of impressive work done in seemingly no time at all. I have never had the competitive drive typical of A's and have always been a fan of the afternoon siesta. My best friend feels antsy when she's not getting something done, and frequently I find her multitasking, or at the very least planning the remainder of her day, when I'm sitting across from her happily sipping away at my coffee without even a thought for my ever-expanding to-do list.

For me, a lot of this attempted care-free attitude has to do with the anxiety disorder that I am trying to keep at bay. I don't know if I've really mentioned that on here; it's not something I want to define me. But my fear of spiralling out of control has in fact defined how I go about my life. I have become extremely lenient on myself for fear of overwhelm. I am terrified that I might slip back into that neo-agoraphobia of a few years past and so I allow myself to step back at the first sign of stress. The result is that I no longer know if I can handle a regular person's level of pressure or if I'll crumble under the weight; I simply haven't wished to test myself to find out.

So it occurred to me recently in a moment of crushing self-awareness that I have managed to turn myself into the antithesis of a Type A personality. I am quick to quit, easily distracted and extraordinarily forgiving of my own laziness. And whilst I have developed those habits have of self-preservation and they have perhaps served me well in times where I might otherwise sink into a bedridden depressive puddle of a person, I'm not sure that is who I want to be. I'm not sure I want to keep letting myself off the hook so easily.

For the last week I've been pushing myself to behave like a real person.