It all started with an avocado

As you may have guessed this story starts with an avocado, one solitary avocado sat on my worktop just pleading to be used. Thus came my great idea of using it in a brownie recipe, this is where it all went wrong. 

After some googling and Pinterest time I found a Tanya Burr brownie recipe that looks pretty easy. I figured a little trip to Holland and Barrett would sort me out for the ingredients I needed (this being all of them). £24 later and a new loyalty card, now with £4 worth of points on and I still needed to stop at Sainsbury's for the eggs and chocolate. My plans never involved paying £15.99 for coconut oil another £7 for coconut sugar, something I'd never even heard of! I was now fully committed to making the most expensive brownies ever...

So I got cracking, my first stumble was trying to convert american cups to english measurements, after a few google attempts it seemed everything had a slightly different weight in gram. So onto checking them all individually and found out I didn't quite have enough sugar. Just a measly 100g short which I made up with extra ground almond, whilst thinking in my head seven pounds, seven pounds, seven pounds!!!

I stand corrected it's coconut blossom nectar...

The chocolate and coconut oil melting was pretty easy, looked pretty yummy.

It had an interesting taste and as we're talking about interested lets just review the final mixture once the egg and avocado was added.

I'm at a loss what to say to make this look any better than the scrambled egg concoction I'm seeing, by this point I was almost willing to give up. I persevered and ended up with a lumpy chocolate looking mixture, if i was being fully honest looked like a bowl of something a lot less appealing. In to the baking tray it went and quickly hidden into the oven.

Anyone with a fan oven will know the joys of guessing timing on cooking anything, and my guessing this time around did not go well. Yes after all this flapping and hassle I managed to add a nice black crust to the top of my brownie. I will have you know this is special skill that not many can achieve.

The final test, the tasting. Well what I can say? They're better eaten at about 5.40pm when it's just getting dark as the green bits of avocado and burnt edges are less visible.  But are they worthy of the 50p per a bite price tag? Honestly no. A pretty standard brownie but I have most definitely baked better. 

On the plus side I now have a gigantic jar of coconut oil to use so if anyone has any ideas that won't have me dipping into my house deposit money, send them over!

*An apology for the dancing avocado at the top, I'm about ready to chop that fella to pieces!!

40 days

So lent is soon approaching, the time of year where people mostly give up chocolate. Which I can see a point to as you have a massive choco fest pay off at the end, most people call Easter. This year I figured I’d give it a go, not with chocolate as that would be too easy, no I’m giving myself a challenge and giving up my words. Now by words I don’t mean I’m not going to be talking, more specifically I’m giving up my mean words, or has my mum calls it my acid tongue. It’s well known that I’m not one to hold back when any kind of thought comes into my head and about 90% of them I’ll say it out loud regardless of who it might affect. Some say they like my honestly, others have been known to call me a little mean. It’s not something that normally bothers me as it’s who I am, but I figured how hard can it be to give up and be sunshine and rainbows for a while.

I did make the mistake of telling my work team of my plan and they decided the only way to see if I was achieving this was to start logging all negative comments on a spreadsheet to be able to compare and see my progress once lent starts.  Needless to say this has possibly produced a few more harsh words when debating what warrants being on this spreadsheet. (I seem to work with some very glass full type people). I fear reading this spreadsheet might be a bit of a shock to the system when I see my words written down but hopefully that will inspire me to last the full term.

 

Now I'm off to have a food induced nap, due to all those flipin' epic pancakes I made.

Life's for the living

So a friend recently blogged about that ‘one song’ that always gives you a kick up the backside in life. It got me thinking about what song I’ve got for this purpose, it wasn’t a long thought process as my go to song since hearing it has always been Life’s for the living by Passenger. It’s a real wake-up call when I hear those lyrics telling me “life’s for the living so live it, or you’re better off dead.

I’ve always been the type of person who is constantly thinking when will my life begin? when will something exciting start happening? With hindsight the last year of my life has been nothing short of epic, I travelled the world and did things most people can only dream off, although jumping out of a plane could be considered some peoples nightmare! So it’s not that I’m not living my life to the full it’s just I need a little nudge in the right direction that I am sometimes. This is where ‘my song’ comes in it’s a gigantic reminder that I am living my live, maybe not always to its fullest, but living it with no regrets all the same.

Some people are constantly wishing for the summer,  their holidays, something in the future and seem to forget to live the now. This day, yes this actual day right now will only happen once, so what are you going to do so start living it?

Fiji

So it's been a while, maybe more than a while but it's finally Fiji's time to shine. In our two weeks there we island hopped all over, slept, ate, slept, ate some more and laid on many beaches (with some possible napping included whilst on the beach). As you can see it was a very non productive time, so there isn't going to be a day by day blog as even I think the beach and sun shots would grow old. Instead I'm sharing my favorite pictures of my time in Fiji, which as silly as it sounds was a perfect holiday to end our epic traveling stint. You many notice a few additions to the travel crew as we were joined by Nik's brothers Ryan and Craig with their plus one Sam, and then Brian (her dad) also came out to join us for some of the time. So let the pictures commence...

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fiji Fiji Fiji, think I left a little of my heart there when I left. Beautiful islands and the nicest locals, if you ever get a chance go, don't even second think it. I'm getting holiday blues just looking at these pics, leaving was such a struggle and we had LA as our next destination. 

Bula!

 

 

Be right back

Most of you will realise I'm currently home and have been for almost 2 weeks. Which also means I have a little updating of the blog to do. I'm currently floating between a nasty cold and lots of allergies due to my delightful Sir Charles so fully using that excuse at the moment not to get organised and up to date. But no fear I'm getting there slowly... So stay turned for my Fiji and L.A adventures.

Everybody needs good neighbours.

Next stop was Melbourne and first on the list of things to do was the neighbours tour. So we booked it in ASAP and were soon waiting one morning for the van to pick us up.

No going incognito of this tour, it was soon packed and we headed off on the 30 min drive to the set, had a running commentary all the way. Neighbours facts, tit bits and just general chit chat about all things neighbours related. (A lot of Dr Karl the super doctor was mentioned here). We rocked up at the studio and got to looking around. The house were closed as filming was taking place but got to see lots of more places. Some of it was ruined a tad, we'd go past a plain door in the studio and that would be 'the school', the car park for the studio is what's filmed for the lassiters car park. I guess it makes sense but makes it seem less real. (I am aware it isn't real just to clarify)

Neat little fact for you, erinsborough is an anagram of neighbours!

Now this is where I own up and say it's been a while since actually watched neighbours. I tried to pick it up whilst in brisbane so I had a general idea what was happening. But some of the set I just didn't recognise, hopefully you guys do more?!

Now onto a part we all will recognise the street!! It's only a 5 minute drive from the studio and down such a non discript looking road. Once you drive up the cul-de-sac you know exactly where you are.

It's not actually called Ramsay street btw, that's just a gimmick to keep us tourist happy for pictures.

So one thing about the street, it was tiny! The tricks they use on camera to make it look bigger are seriously well done.

The last part of the tour was to meet and greet a current or past cast mate. Fingers were crossed that it would be someone I'd know, luck was in and it ended up being 'Stingray'. Pretty sure I stopped watching after he died, although whether those were correlated who knows? We got to meet him have some really awkward conversations and q&a's. Pictures and autographs later we were done for the day. Was a really good tour 100% recommend just to say you've done it!

 

 

Jucy campervan time

The great ocean road, is yes you guessed it a road that runs from melbourne to Adelaide. We wanted to do it properly so hired a campervan for 5 days. Another first for me but I had the feeling it be a little easier than tent camping and I wasn't too wrong.

This was our van/home for the duration, being that it's for 4 people we just about squeezed in with all our bags..

Being a tad crippled at this time definitely had it's advantages. You'll be please to know I'm now fully mended (fingers crossed) 

We made lots of stops on our way so see all the sights.

Weather was a bit English a lot of the time, we were running between the rain spots and being blown to pieces.

We did all love our van, although a few issues with the converting into a bed at night for me and Nik. It took both our weight and a lot of falling off to get sorted. Lucy also had a few issues with the rear view mirror on our last day. Thank you for masking tape!!

After the great ocean road we headed north to a national park called the grampians. A lot luckily with the weather here and spent a lovely sunny day climbing down and back up 200+ steps to see the waterfall.

Had a pretty cool 5 days, and I managed to survive just about. Still not keen on this old camping trick but I've officially ticked that all off the list.