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. 

wednesday weekenders

Tom was at Uni for at least ten hours a day for the whole (long) weekend, so we gave ourselves a mini weekend together yesterday. Just what the doctor ordered.

Tom made banana pancakes for breakfast with homemade butter. I made the butter out of necessity due to our having cream (useless) but no butter (useful) in the house, but it's so much lovelier than the stuff we get at the supermarket. We built a fort in the living room and watched a couple of episodes of David Attenborough's Africa (because he's Tom's idol) and Bee Movie (because kids films are the best). For lunch we made mini burgers & shoestring fries with the mandolin dad sent us as a surprise. It's my new favourite toy. I want to slice things all. the. time. 

It was the perfect day. Full of cuddles and laughter and time out in our silly little fort.

 Tom, I love you so much. I love us so much.

a manifesto for mindful living

I'm tired of being so negative. The image I posted alongside my last outpour of despair was more telling than I even realised at the time. I destroy myself. No one and nothing is trying to destroy me. Life is just happening, and I am choosing to destroy myself with fear and anguish over setbacks and disappointments rather than to thrive in the face of these challenges. The grass is greener where you water it. 

So I wrote a list of things that I only ever find myself doing when the grass is looking a glorious green, things I want to remember to keep doing even when the impulse does not come quite so naturally. It turned into a manifesto for living mindfully, for living fully.

The world looks a whole lot brighter when I remind myself of the influence I have over the way I see things.