New Beginnings

Hello! Sorry for the radio silence, I’ve recently read how annoyed people get by blogs that suddenly stop, so apologies. This blog is very much alive and kicking, I’ve just taken a little hiatus. If you’re ever missing me you can often find me on Facebook here.

Originally this post was meant to be two separate posts, Avocado Toast, originally posted for the Huffington Post here, and something along the lines of Goodbye Kitchen. But so much has happened, and as the Spice Girls sang Two has now become One.

So where to start. I want to start by shouting, OK make that screaming that this is it. Your life. Please make the most of it do what makes you happy. Love and be Kind. When I started this blog I was really only just waking up to how precious life is. It sounds trite but sometimes it can be so easy to be just swept up in the comings and goings of everyday life that we forget what it is we love and who we really are and what’s really important to us and I don’t mean things that we own or want to, I mean the how we live LIFE stuff.

Sometimes change can feel like big scary stuff, a step into the unknown. But life is change, it happens whether we like it or not, a constant evolution of everything. So why not embrace it, and by doing so you make it yours, influence it and own it.

Better still sometimes it’s great to instigate it… leave the job, person, situation or circumstance that makes you unhappy. Go for that dream job, traveling holiday, relocation. However scary it might feel, or worried that you don’t have a plan, trust that you’ll find/make the right one. Do what you feel in your heart.

So lots of things have brought me here, to this minute and post to say this. One of them being that I’m moving. We’re moving to a home that is everything and more we have ever dreamed of. I’m not sharing this to be boastful but to show dreams can happen and in this case the strangest (or not) set of coincidences (or not) and events have led to this change.

So with any big change and transition there is a natural stage of reflection and for me, this has been quite big. Hence the original Goodbye Kitchen, post. This blog was conceived in my kitchen, I’ll soon be leaving. A place that has in an every sense been full of light and I will always be thankful for. So whilst I’m in this reflective mood I’d thought I’d share some of my favourite posts… which are all inspiriting stories of other’s stories…

Lunch To Go: Lunch For Alice – The amazing story of Alice Herz-Sommer, holocaust survivor. Alice’s mother taught her to put something (positive) in her mind every day, so that nobody can take it from you. Alice’s mother and father were both killed by the Nazi’s at Terezin but Alice still talked of her time there as a gift and that bad things happen and we forgive and learn from them.

Gin Chicken with a side of Caitlin Moran With extracts from Caitlin Moran’s ‘posthumous letter to her daughter’. “The main thing is just to try to be nice. You already are – so lovely I burst, darling – and so I want you to hang onto that and never let it go. Keep slowly turning it up, like a dimmer switch, whenever you can. Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly.

Nigella’s Polenta Cake – One of my very first posts and with extracts with an interview with my fantasy sister where she very aptly discusses grief. “There is a process to grief, but it is not linear. “You don’t feel this on a Monday, that on a Tuesday, as though you are making steady progress from A to B while all about you are being supportive. It’s as if people think you are either happy or unhappy, one or the other. As though happiness is like some kind of domestic cleaning product you spray around to get rid of those nasty, dark, dusty corners. I don’t think happiness is a remedy for unhappiness, like there, that was unhappy, now this is happy! What kind of a life is it if you don’t have both?”
And here is Avocado Toast my first post for the Huffington Post. Which I am really excited about and can’t wait to do more of in September.

SWEET POTATO TOAST

INGREDIENTS

1 x sweet potato
½ and avocado mashed
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Feta cheese to crumble
Rashes of cooked bacon
Himalayan or good quality sea salt

TO TOAST

Peel and slice the sweet potato into 25mm slices. I only slice a couple at a time and keep the rest covered in the fridge until I next need it.

Pop your sweet potato toast in your toaster on the highest setting and toast until it is now longer firm, and feels and looks cooked through. See pictures for what it should look like. This process takes x3 toasting sessions in my toaster, and you will need to experiment with yours. Remember to be careful getting your ‘toast’ out, switching off the power at the socket if it gets stuck and you need to use something to guide it out.

Drizzle with extra olive oil, and dress with the avocado, feta, bacon or toppings of your choosing and finish with a light sprinkling of Himalayan or good quality sea salt.

And this is a glimpse of the future……and one of the many reasons we fell in love with our new home….