Ask questions.

This is a speech that I gave to my class last week. We had to come up with 7 minutes of persuasive language… you can guess what I chose to talk about. I’m not sure if if works as well on paper as it does outloud, but I’m sleepy and this is as good as it gets right now. Cuddles.

Before I say anything else, I want you to imagine walking into your favourite bookstore – or music store if that’s more your thing – and picture yourself meandering up and down each aisle, looking for something perfect to buy. You’ve been stressed out, but you’re not in a hurry now; you just want to select something perfect to cheer you up, make you feel a bit better about your day and forget anything that may have gone wrong before. You find something that looks good. It’s by one of your favourite authors – or musicians – but you’ve never seen it before. You turn it over; the blurb on the back tells you that it’s exactly what you need in your life right now, and you agree with it. You take it to the counter, spend your hard-earned money on it, and feel really good about your purchase. It only takes you a few minutes after walking through your front door to settle down in your favourite chair and to open the first page, or play the first song, and at first, you’re happy. The worries of your day start to disappear; everything is alright again.

Forehead burning is a serious problem y'know.

But then it starts to go wrong. The pages are all in the wrong order, the main character gets killed off after the first chapter or your favourite band decides to take a completely misguided change in musical direction, and the offending noise being omitted from your speakers starts to physically hurt your ears.

What if you paid thousands for a luxury holiday, but when you arrived, there was little more than a shed to sleep in? What if a new pair of shoes broke the second you stepped out of the front door?

It’s not what you signed up for. You’d demand a refund, never listen to the album again or pass the book off as a thoughtful Christmas present to a distant relative.

We don’t put up with things not being what we expect in any other area – so my question is this: why do we continue to do it with food?

This. Is. Chicken. Click it, I don't make this shit up.

Everyone’s heard fast food horror stories, like tasty fingernails being found in McDonalds burgers. But did you know that a key thickening agent called cellolose, used in everything from salad dressings to muffins, is made from wood pulp? And their innocent-sounding strawberry milkshake was revealed to contain more than 50 ingredients.

Let’s strip it right back, because it’s not just the usual suspects that are serving you up far more than you ordered. The things you thought were doing your body good may actually contain things you never would have imagined as well.

Instead of buying orange juice (a simple, one-ingredient product, by any reasonable assumption) you’re actually spending your money on oranges combined with a special flavour pack, and the juice itself may have left its orange up to a year ago, as the oxygen is stripped from the liquid as soon as it’s extracted, giving it a longer life. And just so you know, I’m not talking about the cheap stuff. Tropicana uses this method.

Happy happy happy.

Scary, right?

Of course, there are rules and regulations in place to make sure that you don’t put anything in your mouth that might cause you significant harm. Every processed ingredient or chemical used on or around food products has to meet go through a series of rigorous safety tests to ensure that it’s not going to make your head explode or simply give you too much of a stomach ache when you consume it. And food labelling laws are there to make sure that you are not misled in any way about what’s in your food.

Aren’t they?

Did you know that there’s no requirement for a minimum percentage of an ingredient in processed foods? As long as a product contains some measurable percentage of something, a company can still put it in the name. That orange juice, for example, could only be 12% oranges, which you wouldn’t know until you read the small print. Which sounds a lot scarier when you apply the concept to something like chicken burgers. And about those safety measures – do you think that someone has tested the safety of a combination of additives or chemicals in the same way? There is not enough time in the world to establish whether it is safe for a child to eat butylated hydroxytoluene in his breakfast cereal, consume E102 (tartrazine) in his midmorning snack of crisps, choke down aspartame after lunch in a yogurt and then E249  Potassium nitrite (meat preservative) as part of his tea when he gets home from school. Now apply that logic to the endless combination of foods he could consume, and add on the smoke and car fumes he inhales walking down the street and the chemicals that soak into his skin after having a bath. These are all perfectly safe levels of exposure when looked at individually, but what are we doing to ourselves when we zoom out, look at the bigger picture?

Like this big.

I believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world when you cannot simply walk into a shop and browse a food store like you might do a book shop (or a website, because who actually buys books or music in real life now, anyway?!). When it requires a two hour time slot and a basic understanding of science in order to navigate your way through the weekly shop, we have made some fairly enormous errors in the way we treat food.

I’m not even going to mention the c-word, or give you statistics about how many cases of diseases have increased in number since we started living the way we do now. I don’t think I have to. I am not a doctor, and it is not up to me to paint you a picture of your insides under all the stress of what we put into our bodies.

What I do want to do is take you back to that simple feeling of contentment. That basic human emotion that means “hey, everything is okay right now”. Shouldn’t you demand that feeling from food, as well as everything else? Just to know that what you asked for is what you’re getting, that you are not being lied to, or misled by anyone in any way. We need food to live, we wouldn’t get very far without it, but we can live so much better and it can be so much more than what you’re getting, if only you demand respect from it. What I’m asking you to do is simply ask questions, search for something better. It is your body, your home, your life. Take control.

That’s all folks.

Buuuuuullshit.

There is a whole lot of bullshit in the world.

I mean, we’re talking unimaginable amounts of bullshit floating around us, clogging up the air and making it so damn hard for all the regular shit to get through.

You’ve seen it, right?

It’s coming from your TV screen, your newspapers, your teachers, that guy/girl you like, your friends. It’ll drive you crazy if you let it.

You may have already noticed, but I’m pretty straight talking. I’m way too honest for my own good and sometimes it gets me into trouble. My good friends know that I’ll tell them (out of love, you understand) when their outfit looks less-than-perfect, or some guy they’re into is not “just busy” – he’s just a douche. Or… probably more accurately, he’s actually just some regular guy who’s into some other perfectly nice girl. Only she’s a bitch, naturally.

Anyway. I’ll also tell you (out of the same love, I have a ton of it to go around) that this isn’t always easy. Making changes in your life, whatever those changes may be, is never easy. When I first started this blog, I said I’d tell you some of the challenges that come along with an anti-cancer lifestyle, and I don’t think I’ve done enough of that. It’s tough to admit when things are hard, isn’t it? You want the outside world to think that you’re rocking it the whole time. Indestructible. The most important things are the hardest to say.

Truth is, some weeks it is a lot harder than others. You might totally forget what you’re doing this for and drunkenly eat a ton of crap all weekend.

Ton of love going around here.

Just because it doesn’t have milk in it does not mean that it’s good for you.

Some weeks you might realise that you actually can’t remember the last time you went to the gym.

As far from me as is possible right now.

Some weeks you might curse Nestle to hell for constantly advertising Peanut Butter Kit Kats all over the place.

I WANT ONE.

[source (as much as I hate linking to Nestle)]

Sometimes (usually following those weeks) your arse totally doesn’t fit in your jeans the way it’s supposed to.

I need this T.

[source]

Sometimes you lose sight of why you made any of these changes, because your Mum still isn’t here to feed you soup when you’re ill, so what the heck does it matter?

It still matters.

No bullshit: I will hunt down the one flavour of Doritos that doesn’t have milk in it every now and again (Lightly Salted is not a flavour. Chilli Heatwave all the way please). I will ignore the fact that 30 minutes of physical activity every day will reduce my risk of developing cancer. I will live in leggings instead of jeans.

I will make my own damn soup.

Old picture. Same soup.

We all mess up and feel like crap and want to smash things sometimes. I certainly do. The trick is in sifting through the bullshit and finding what really matters to you. If what matters to you is eating Doritos and laying on the couch, fair dos, carry on as you were. But if you’ve realised that there’s more to it than that, then focus on that. The bullshit is always going to be there, it’s up to you to not be the kind of person who spreads it.

I’m off for a run.

Would you rather…?

I don’t know about you, but I am 100% starving right now. A little piece of my conscience gets upset with me saying that, because of course I’m not. I am healthy, and I have access to food and money, so I am technically perfectly capable of not remaining starving for very much longer.

The problem is, I am also currently on a train and have exactly 77p in my purse. That is likely to leave me with a very limited choice of crisps or chocolate from the food trolley… neither of which fit nicely into this whole healthy lifestyle thing I try to advocate. I’ve told you before that I am by no means perfect; I drink, I have a persistent sweet tooth and a full-blown addiction to caffeine, but I try and avoid snacking on crappy stuff just because they are all that’s available. It’s too easy to convince yourself that a packet of crisps every day is totally fine just because everybody eats them, right? Even I’ve used that excuse on myself. But the fact that ‘everybody does it’ is exactly why we have such a such a problem with diet-based diseases like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Some have referred to cancer in the Western world as an ‘epidemic’; it’s out of control. The choices that you make day-by-day, meal-by-meal (train ride-by-train ride) have the power to change that.

Let’s snap back to right now. I’m on my way to London to visit my gorgeous friend Gill for her birthday.

One of her favourite games is to ask multiple, and increasingly farfetched, would you rather questions. Like… would you rather live with a head made of lead or arms full of helium?

Picture it:

OR

ALL THE TIME.

Personally, I’d go with the helium, and take great pleasure in accidentally smacking people around the head all the time.

But this game and my current situation lead me on to a few would you rather questions of my own.

• Would you rather go hungry or grab something you know isn’t good for you?

I can’t be the only one out there who’d rather skip a meal than get a McDonalds, or sit on a train with my stomach rumbling to an almost embarrassing level instead of spending the only change I have on junk food. I am definitely not someone who will advise you to skip meals, but it is not going to kill me to stay hungry for a few hours. I wouldn’t drop dead if I ate a packet of crisps either, but I guess it’s just a matter of preference. I’d opt for dulling the hunger with a coffee, but even a standard black coffee is £2.20 on this train – hello crazy profit margins.

• Would you rather eat something just to be polite or make a fuss about it?

I have become the expert at being an awkward customer in restaurants. I try and be super nice about it because I’ve done the waitress thing and it’s not fun, but when I’m going out and paying for food, I believe I have the right to get something that I actually can/want to eat. However, when regular people are cooking for me, it’s slightly different. I’m so appreciative to anyone that even tries that I really don’t mind what actually turns up on my plate – as long as there’s no meat or dairy products, we’re all good to go. I’m not some food Nazi who’s going to throw it all back in your face if there aren’t 300 different types of vegetables in front of me. I’ve even overcome my childhood-projectile-vomiting-induced fear of baked beans, I’m easy.

If all else fails, just give me a cute spoon to play with.

• Leave early enough to casually walk to the station and pick up your tickets with plenty of time to spare, or float around your flat for hours and then frantically sprint to the train station, rendering your make up and shower utterly redundant?

("We're not going in the foam.")

I reckon you can guess which option I took today. FYI, dry shampoo totally works if you don’t have any body spray in your bag. You didn’t need to know that.

I’m almost there now.  Thanks for entertaining me on my journey. If it wasn’t for you I might actually have had to do some of the work I brought with me to do on the train. Procrastination is an art form.

I cannot WAIT for dinner.

(The train has no internet, so all timings in this post are no longer relevant. Think of yourself as transported back into a slice of my Saturday night, from wherever you are right now. Hi there.)

Simple hints and tips.

This is how good I am at remembering to take photos of stuff I’ve cooked recently…

Impressive, huh? Really helps to whet the appetite.

(Yeah, I think that ‘h’ looks weird there too. But who am I to question the English language.)

It’s a shame, because what I actually cooked was really tasty. It was the Aubergine Stew from the Zest for Life cookbook, which is a really great book if you feel like purchasing something to give you a ton of great information and recipes. While you’re waiting for my book to come out… obviously. I shifted about a few of the ingredients, mostly because my kitchen is embarrassingly poorly stocked, but it still tasted amazing.

So while I’m struggling to figure out a schedule for myself that fits in blogging, I thought I’d give you a few resources and ideas to help you out with all of this stuff.

Anticancer: A New Way of Life

I think I’ve told you about this book before, so go and check it out or I’ll keep repeating myself. I think there’s a newer version out now as well, but I can’t afford to get it, so let me know if it’s any good.

Green Kitchen Stories

Again, I’ve mentioned it before, but this blog is amazing. The pictures and the way they live their life make me want to buy a log cabin and grow vegetables and have goats that have little goat babies. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Nigel Slater

[source]

My love for cookery programmes is pretty ridiculous. I can watch them for hours, even if I can’t eat 90% of the stuff they make (*cough*Nigella*cough*). I have a few favourites, but I really love the way Nigel Slater cooks, and the way he thinks about food. I will have a garden like his one day.. I may even start trying to recreate it on the diddy little deck outside my flat. He doesn’t cook without meat or dairy, but a lot of his recipes are easily adaptable, and it’s mostly the attitude towards food that I like the most. That’s the hardest thing to change.

Foodgawker (food porn)

If you’ve never looked at this site before, go check it out now. You’ll be instantly starving (sorry), but it’s such a good way to find new recipes and inspiration. A lot of the stuff on there is high-fat high-calorie because, lets face it, that stuff generally photographs better, but if you search for an ingredient – something good for you, people. Think lentils, or kale – you can find a ton of yummy-looking stuff. Healthy food is fit too.

YogaDownload

Need I say more.

[source]

If you do one new thing this week, try yoga. I didn’t for a long time because I thought it was lame and it wasn’t going to help me. What the hell does stretching have to do with anything? But, although I can’t explain why, it’s awesome and it will help your brain. The feel-good part. Or, it will just make you more bendy. Either is a plus.

Disease Proof

I only discovered this a little while ago, so I feel a bit like a fraud giving to you as a ‘resource’, but it does have a load of helpful stuff on there. Plus, everything is referenced so you can see where the info comes from. Useful for those sceptics out there.

Vegetarian Living

I am such a geek about this magazine. Scrap that, I am such a geek in general, but the fact that I buy this magazine every month really proves it.

I definitely do not ever read it in bed.

And no, I rarely make my bed. That’s fine.

There’s so much in there that isn’t just about food and the recipes are great, with vegan options for a lot of them. I love the ‘places to eat’ section and have a [not so] secret plan to try out every place they feature. Especially this one. Join me in my geek status and start buying it too. You can still leave Vogue and ELLE out on the coffee table, no one will know.

Supermarkets

Supermarkets are designed to make you spend money on stuff that you don’t really want to buy. Even worse, it’s generally the crap that isn’t going to do you any good either. Yes, you might save money buying two giant multipacks of crisps, but it’s not really going to do you any good in the long run. Instead, play them at their own game and hunt down the fresh stuff that’s discounted or on offer. Take it home, type in your ingredients to foodgawker or lovefoodhatewaste and see the most you can make with what you’ve got. The more leftovers, the better. Bet it’ll be tastier than 24 packets of crisps (and you know you’ll only leave half the flavours anyway).

Okies, I’m out for today.

Stay safe, eat well and have fun.

Oh, and don’t accidentally lose an entire clove of raw garlic in a salad…

You will regret it.

Hugs! x

Resolutions.

Happy New Year!

Okay, so it’s the 9th January already. That’s definitely too late to be wishing you a happy new year, and its absolutely too late for me to get the Christmas photos out for you…

Please accept my sincere apologies, and understand that I hope you had a fabulous holiday and I wish you lots of hugs and happiness for 2012. Does that make it any better?

I could give you a lot of excuses about how busy I was over the break, or how much work I’ve had to do since New Year… but that’s all immaterial now. What really counts is that 2012 is here, right up in our faces, so now is all about making it count. Inspiration is floating around January like the smell of suncream in summer; it belongs here, it excites you… and it masks the smell of all the other regular crap.

A lot of people don’t make resolutions, claiming that they prefer to treat every day as a chance to change or improve their life. Fair enough, but do they really?

Are they not just making a lovely statement about how they choose to live every day to its fullest… and then carry on the exact same way they were before? Is it not just taking the easy way out?

Maybe that’s too cynical of me. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who really do live every day that way. I’d love to be one of them. But it’s okay if you’re not. It’s okay to run with the crowd and jump on the resolution bandwagon; while January’s here, ride it. Once February comes we’ll all be complaining about how there aren’t any bank holidays until Easter and the weather makes you want to stay in bed all day. And then Valentines Day will come around and bite you in the ass.

Yeah, February sucks.

But it’s okay! We’re not there yet! Let cocktails bring you love instead.

Articulate is SUCH a good game.

Even though it’s the 9th and you’re meant to have already made your resolutions, you can still jump on it. No one will know. They’re all too busy worrying about whether there’ll be any treadmills free at the gym, or hiding the evidence of the wine they said they’d “never drink again”. We’re all in it together.

What are my resolutions?

1) Keep in touch with people better.

It doesn’t mean I don’t love you if I forget to call. But I will work on calling more often.

2) Buy coffee less often.

Note that I didn’t say never. One of my favourite things is popping that little bubble that forms in the lid with my tongue.

3) Be more organised. I bought a diary! That’s an improvement.

I definitely didn’t almost oversleep on a double deadline day this morning. Or leave all my clothes in a suitcase for almost a week after I moved back here.

Step by step.

4) Blog more.

Hi.

They’re not groundbreaking by any means -  I have to wait a few years to put my real change-the-world plans into action – but they’re working so far.

So maybe this is the year that you lean on January a little bit. Change isn’t easy. It shouldn’t be, or it’s pretty unlikely to stick, but that’s what resolutions are there to help you with. Maybe this is the year that you choose to try out some new foods. Colourful foods. Or choose organic milk. Or stop looking for all of those low-fat labels that you think are doing wonders for your post-Christmas diet.

2012 is all yours, it’s still all to come. That’s a nice thought.

Don’t take the easy way out.

P.S Remember when I broke my camera lead? And then I got a new SD card reader? Well now I’ve broken the card reader slot… so this blog is currently sponsored by my HTC, until I find a way to fix the situation. Resolution 5: Break Less Stuff.

My Christmas Menu…

Okay, shoot me, I totally didn’t have this down yesterday like I said I would.

In fact, I don’t even really have it down today. I’m posting hoping that I will be hit by a sudden bolt of decisiveness… or that the Christmas fairy will just plant a perfect menu in front of me, no questions asked.

I’m definitely one for believing in Christmas miracles but, unfortunately, I doubt that option is going to happen anytime soon. So it looks like it’s down to me to make all of the decisions. Ooff.

First things first: Christmas will not be an overly healthy affair. I’m obviously not going to be drinking duck fat or smothering my vegetables in half a ton of butter

[ew, I just grossed myself out with the duck fat comment. I apologise for that.]

but I’m not going to be stressing myself out trying to anti-cancerise the whole thing. Some things just don’t need to be messed with, after all. Plus, I have a whole family to feed – a few with particularly fussy tastes…

So I can’t make too many changes.

There will be a turkey, wrapped in bacon, rubbed with some kind of dairy-free herby butter (I even do that thing you see chefs do when they shove it underneath the skin. I had to practice on a chicken last year before the real deal. It is not a pleasant experience) and stuffed with some onion and orange halves.

There will also be a roast fillet of beef, which my sister will be 100% in charge of. We’ve always had two meat choices (indecisiveness apparently runs in the family) but she’s incredibly protective over her favourite thing in the world.

In terms of the centre of my own plate (for all of you wondering, turkey is totally fine. There aren’t any negatives associated with eating lean white meat, I’ve just drifted naturally towards the veggie side of things), I’m either going to make something like these Spinach and Mushroom tartlets, or adapt this Parsnip, Cranberry an Chestnut loaf. Both are 100 times prettier than my version will be.

There’ll be a [soya] creamy brussels sprouts dish, a big pile of roasted veggies, and a ton of spiced-up red cabbage, ‘cos I can’t get enough of the stuff. I’m also thinking about doing something fancy with mashed sweet potato or butternut squash. And rather than the stuffings made from processed meat, I’ll probably be trying one of these.

Basically, I’m going to cook so much that the table breaks.

Or I do.

You did not hear that from me.

It’s like anyone else’s Christmas, with a few small changes.

1) Avoid the processed meats. I’ll provide the pigs in blankets for my family, but I won’t be eating them.

2) Don’t think you have to go crazy on the fat to provide flavour. At this time of year, the world seems to go insane for butter and other fats. If you’re using it on veggies/meat/whatever, please choose organic, just because of the hormones and stuff you’ll find lurking in the normal variety. Or go for more health-friendly alternatives. I use olive oil on roast potatoes, for example.

3) Cream is yummy, but think about trying the soya variety, which you can get in all supermarkets now. My family are super fussy, and they don’t even mind that particular substitution.

4) I use this meal as an excuse to load my family up with nutrients. Most of them aren’t particularly good at eating vegetables the rest of the year, but making it part of a Christmas meal somehow makes it 10 times more appealing. Roast them, cover them in Christmassy spices or hide them inside stuffing, the sneakier the better.

5) Of course one meal isn’t going to kill you, and Christmas food definitely isn’t something you should stress about. I really hate those magazine articles that try and tell you to stick to the correct portion sizes and treat it like any other meal. It isn’t like any other meal and you should totally ignore anyone who tries to tell you not to have seconds. Or thirds. Buuut there’s ways that you can enjoy just the same deliciousness, and not screw your body over.

This wasn’t really a menu plan at all.. was it?

My bad.

While I make up an actual minute-by-minute cooking itinerary for the day itself, you can take a peek at last years ‘time plan’, courtesy of my fabulous sister…

No, I have no clue how we pulled it off either.

Christmas Countdown.

Oh God. We’re talking T-minus 5 days.

How has this happened? I’m sure it was Summer a week ago. I know it was only really hot for a few days… but my flip flops still fall out of my wardrobe every time I open the door. That’s proof, right? It’s nothing at all to do with my poor level of organisation.

But somehow, here we are. With Christmas less than a week away and a less-than-adequate list of Stuff To Do.

And of course, every item on the list can be split down into at least 17 sub-items… of which can then be further broken down into the Stuff I’ll Do If I Ever Have A Spare Second list. Remembering to breathe comes before those things.

One thing got half ticked off today: Christmas Shopping.

It was horrific. Milton Keynes is not the most inspiring of places at the best of times, let alone when it’s raining and you’re forced to park in the expensive spots because everyone in the South East of England has decided to descend on The Big Glass Box of Hell at once. And then you can’t find anything you’re looking for and you and your sister both get tired and stroppy. And then you remember that this crazy version of shopping, when you buy something for every single person you care about in one mental excursion, was never something you had to do before last Christmas. And then you have to take a little sit-down. These times are for growing up, my friends.

7 hours later, you made it home. You’re okay. The kettle’s on. That beats last year, when you got stranded in the snow and didn’t make it home for 24 hours.

Time to get cracking on the rest of the list.

Sending cards? Yeah… that probably is not going to happen. Will everybody I’ve ever met/known/seenwritteninmyMum’saddressbook please forgive me if I tell you that I was writing an essay until 5am on Friday… and then I was working until 2.30am on Saturday… and then I was dancing until 2am on Sunday?

Food is more important right now.

Cooking Christmas dinner last year was pretty daunting. But this year, it seems worse. I don’t have the same excuse that I’ve never done it before, I’m not [quite] the same emotional wreck, and last year turned out surprisingly amazing.

I’m almost wishing I’d burnt the roasties, undercooked the turkey and wrecked the Christmas pud last year. That’d make the second time around so much easier.

No worries, we’ll get through it. Tomorrow (hopefully) I’ll be sharing exactly what I’ll be cooking on the big day itself… mainly because I haven’t decided yet. I’m gradually working through a ton of tabs open in my browser, but this will definitely be making an appearance:

I miss Baileys a lot. I’m getting through the stress of the next few days by thinking about creating my own – sans dairy products. Don’t ruin the dream for me, it’s going to be amazing.

So until tomorrow… here’s some muffins I made to take to Jo’s house when I drove her home for Christmas. They almost didn’t last the journey home.

Pumpkin Apple Muffins (with Raisins and Brazil Nuts, just ‘cos it’s Christmas)

adapted from this cake recipe

1 cup canned pumpkin

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 cup wholewheat self raising flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1/2 chopped apple

1/4 cup chopped brazil nuts

1/4 cup mixed raisins/sultanas

Combine the pumpkin, eggs and maple syrup in a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix together. Plop into 12 muffin cases and bake at 165C for 15 minutes  (ish… Just until they’re not all wibbly-wobbly anymore).

So simple and so yummy. Festively flavoured.

Catch you tomorrow, sleep well lovelies.

Midnight ramblings.

I had my next few posts planned out for you. There was going to be one fairly pointless one about the recent google searches on my phone, because I realised that they are particularly ridiculous at the moment… and then we were going to plough straight into Christmas planning.

It’s less than two weeks away, y’know. We should really get on that.

Mince Pies, circa 2009. I'm making better ones this year.

But sometimes my mind works in different ways. Sometimes it’s the middle of the night and my mind gets racing and my fingers start itching to write something more important. I can babble away at you forever about the random thoughts that punctuate my day…

But sometimes this is my space.This space deserves something a bit deeper than that tonight.

I am at my most “self” at the times when I let myself shut down. Once I’ve said goodnight to the day and everyone in it. Once I’ve switched off from essay writing and mindless television and pointless websites. Once the world actually becomes what it is, and stops being a distraction.

I’ve had to grow comfortable with myself over the last year and a half. I’ve spent a lot of time physically by myself and feeling emotionally cut off from most of the people around me – no matter how much they reach out to me – so I have no problem with being on my own now. Don’t get me wrong; underneath the front I’m an incredibly tactile person who pretty much just wants a cuddle all the time – but I’ll be fine without it.

I know who I am. That’s a good thing.

At those moments, when I let all of the distractions go for a while, I can feel who I am again.

A book that I owe a lot to says that ‘a diagnosis of cancer can restore life’s true flavour’. Standing on the edge of death can make you see life with more clarity than you ever have before. I think that’s true for me too. My Mum’s illness shifted something in me.

Sometimes I forget that… and I’ve been forgetting a lot recently. Not about her, of course, just about what it means. I don’t want to stay distracted by the world until a point when I realise that I haven’t actually lived in it. I just want to remind you not to let things pass you by either. Don’t let something really crap happen to make you realise it.

Cancer’s a full on bitch. Life’s not. Life’s full of good music and friends that make you smile and experiences that are just waiting for you to go on and grab them. Don’t be the kind of person that looks back and says… “Well, what the fuck have I got to show for that, then?”

Lets go on holiday and make promises to each other that we’ll meet up next year with some stories to tell.

2012 is coming.

Own it.

And you know you should be wearing sparkly nail varnish on one of your finger tips 90% of the time.

Did someone say Chocolate Muffins?

I did.

I do repeatedly, in fact, in my head.

“What do you want for dinner, Alex?”

Chocolate muffins.

That’s my secret whispering voice. It’s the same voice that convinces you that sweets are always a better alternative to actual food when you’re a kid. Only now I’m a grown-up and I do all of this healthy stuff, so what actually comes out of my mouth generally sounds something more like, “Salmon, please.”

I know, the whispering voice is way more fun. Don’t worry, it still wins in any debate about whether it’s a good idea to go out and dance around like a crazy person instead of working.

But chocolate muffins still aren’t generally a good substitute for dinner. I wish I could lie to you. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if the cure for cancer was hidden deep within the fluffy, comforting combination of flour and cocoa powder? Bet I wouldn’t sound so weird then, would I? You’d be following every word I said, without question.

But unfortunately, most of the stuff I have to tell you about revolves around boring things like fruit and vegetables.

You have my sincerest apologies.

To make up for it, I made some muffins that are pretty good for you. Is that okay?

They don’t taste like they’re good for you. I promise your secret voice won’t hate you for trying to fob it off with “healthy” substitutes that really just taste like cardboard.

I adapted this recipe quite a lot from these brownies. Here’s what you need (this makes 9…that’s an odd number I know. Why are muffin trays always in 12s anyway though?):

1/2 cup wholemeal self-raising flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/4 tsp baking powder

Lil pinch o’ salt

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup canned pumpkin

2 tbsp non-dairy milk

2 tbsp mashed banana

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tsp vanilla essence

Mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Then add all the wet ingredients (you’ll need to warm the coconut oil for a few seconds in the microwave first, as it’s solid at room temperature) and stir until combined. Plop into muffin cases and bake at 160C for….

I’m not sure.

I’m a terrible food blogger. I have a scatty brain that runs at a million miles an hour and forgets to look at the clock when I’m baking. I’d suggest checking them after 12-15 minutes and if they’re still really wobbly, pop them back in. You can also stick a knife in one to see if they’re cooked all the way through. Leave them sliiiiiightly gooey though, because that’s always better.

You can lick the bowl while you wait.

I have some things to tell you about these ingredients.

Pumpkin is one of those american obsessions that we haven’t quite caught on to over here yet. You can find canned pumpkin in Waitrose (and maybe some other larger supermarkets) around this time of year, because Americans love their pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. You can also puree a regular pumpkin… but c’mon. That’s effort.

I really like using it in baking because it doesn’t have an overly strong flavour, but its texture works similarly to butter, so it makes dairy-free baking easier. [edit: haha, pumpkin isn't a fat...that was my typo...] At first I also thought it was a way of sneaking in extra vegetables to desserts, but it turns out that pumpkin is technically a fruit. But it’s still got a load more nutrients than butter. Try it out.

Coconut oil is amazing.

It smells like holidays. If that isn’t enough to convince you…

It’s a really great oil to use in cooking because it has a high smoking point. Unlike olive oil, which is really good for you in salad dressings or at low heats, but it breaks down into unhealthy fats at high temperatures (literally, that point when the pan starts smoking). So while you’ve got good intentions using it in your stir fries, it’s actually not a great idea. Try coconut oil instead. It’s a saturated fat, but one of the good kinds; don’t be scared of it. [edit: there we go. Let's get our sentences in the right order, Alex]

Lecture over. Eat up.

Bake them asap. And make sure you eat one hot from the oven.

Secret voice satisfied.

Now go eat something green for dinner.

Pistachi-Ohhh Yum.

I would like to say a massive THANK YOU to whoever organised the strike today. I won’t pretend to be socially aware enough to know the details about why it’s going on (don’t tell my lecturers, I’m meant to be constantly clued up on the state of the world)… all I know is that they gave me a day to breathe a little bit.

I had a lie in! Like a full-on, lazy, in-and-out-of-dreaming lie in. It was fabulous. Then I poured my Apple Pie Porridge into a peanut butter jar with just the scrapings left, and proceeded to fall into a food happy coma. I stayed there for a little while, watching Gilmore Girls on +1 in my dressing gown, because that’s what happens on nice mornings. Then I kicked my butt with a workout containing my most hated move in the world: burpees.

This may not sound like a good thing, but my butt misses these workouts.

Then I got to sort out my life a little bit, and specifically sort out what’s going on with a charity event that a group of us are holding tomorrow night. It was an impromptu part of our course that our lecturer threw on us about 2 weeks ago, so we’ve been going crazy trying to pull something together. If ANYONE reading this is from Bournemouth then pur-lease come along to our Pyjama Party tomorrow night at The Old Fire Station and help us raise some cash for a good cause. Tickets are £3.20 (that’s the same price as it costs to buy someone in Africa a bed net to stop them getting Malaria, don’t you know) and you can buy them right here. Go on, you’ll make my day.

Then I got slightly stressed out again.

Stress has no place in my strike day. To combat this annoyance, I deshelled an entire packet of pistachio nuts.

Repetitive actions soothe my brain.

And then I turned them into Pistachio Nut Butter!

Have you ever tried this? Probably not, because I’m not sure that it exists outside of my crazy kitchen, but you should. It’s got the salty addictiveness of peanut butter, with a little extra yum as well. Just whizz them up in a food processor until they butterize – just like this.

Pistachios are one of those super-good-for-you nuts. Pack full of healthy fats and some of those handy antioxidants that I keep talking about. Leave the skins on, they’ll whizz up just fine, and studies have shown the skins contain even more good nutrients.

I know that it’s green. Like, a serious swamp green. I can’t do much about that… but I can tell you that it’s really yummy anyway. Peanut butter isn’t the be-all and end-all, y’know.

In other news, this came in the post today:

I have the best.friends.ever. Roll on Christmas.

(P.S. Don’t forget to come to my event. I’ll owe you cuddles.)