2015 Round Up

For some reason I didn't do a review of 2014 - perhaps because 2014 was absolutely shit - but hey ho. Onwards and upwards. Here's a quick review of my year.

January
Nothing much happened in January, nothing much really ever happens in January. Mainly the month was spent sleeping, drinking and pole dancing. Not knowing if my job would be extended past March, I went for an interview at a 'rival' NHS Trust (but didn't get the job!)

Oooph. Yeah, this pose hurts.

February
In February I drove down to Stone Henge with my ex-boyfriend, an English Heritage site, and visited Ireland with my job for my first international recruitment trip (very exciting, much Guinness was consumed). I also enjoyed the Six Nations with a few good pints.

It was a tad chilly.

March

March saw my first invert in pole dancing, as well as a visit to Harry Potter World (Watford) as a very belated birthday present for my ex. I started to accept that my ex really was leaving in a months time and considered where I wanted to go next - back to uni? Move abroad? Stay in my current role and hope that my contract became permanent? In the end my job was extended to March 2016 and I started to look at work experience and volunteering for whenever I decided to go back to university.

Oh me? Just chilling.

April
Not a great month in some ways, a fantastic month in others. Actually, looking back, it was one of those months that felt like the world was imploding but actually it's a month that has changed me as a person for the better. My ex moved out at the end of the month and I moved back home; but more significantly I applied for a Masters program in Occupational Therapy. Four days before the deadline. Feeling incredibly raw and unloved, I spent the last few days of April licking my wounds and hoping that this might be the change I need. 

May
Well, if April was the worst month of the year, then May was one of the best ones. I went to see Avenue Q (absolutely hilarious, you must go see it!), had a lovely birthday, did my first 10km run (in just a few seconds over an hour) and most of all, got an interview for the Masters course I applied for on the spur of the moment. I started working out more and running more regularly. I also started volunteering with an amazing local charity called Lindengate who work with service users with a history of mental illness and promote health through socio-therapeutic horticulture. 

June

Throughout June I got the chance to spend time with my family, as my Mum, sister and I banded together to surprise my Dad with a day trip to a local lake and beauty spot for Fathers Day. Unfortunately my tickets for the Foo Fighters at Wembley were cancelled as Dave Grohl broke his leg in an earlier show and I took a trip up North to visit two universities with a view to studying next September. One was massively unsuccessful and had me questioning my new career choice but the other was significantly more positive. 

July
Where to start with July? Busy busy month. But an amazing one! Firstly, the annual Summer Ball happened and as always, it was a fantastic night out with lots of laughter and fun. We had another family outing, this time to Waddesdon Manor, a local National Trust estate home. I got tickets for the rescheduled Foo Fighters gig and picked up a couple more for Of Monsters and Men and Bullet for My Valentine. More pole dancing happened but most importantly I received a very important letter telling me I'd been accepted to study on the Masters I interviewed for back in May. 

August
August started with a bang as I attended one of my best friend's hen dos, comprising of a high ropes obstacle course and then a lot of drinking! Her wedding came in August as well and I had a wonderful time with old friends celebrating the marriage of a fantastic couple. Far too much champagne was consumed! As well as celebrating with old friends, I spent time celebrating the unique fun of pole dancing with new friends. I made a decent start on baking my way through the Great British Bake Off 2015, but ultimately would succumb to the evil of 'no time to bake' 5 weeks in. (N.B. no photos of August because apparently... I spent nearly all of it drunk).

September

I performed my first ever pole routine in my school's competition and had a whale of a time watching everyone else dance, Saw the Foo Fighters perform at the MK Bowl (one to tick off the music bucket list!). Made an awful, awful cheesecake and an even worse beetroot cake. But I did make a pretty special fox cake - see below - and saw The Great British Bake Off; An Extra Slice being filmed - and got to meet Mat, the baker who left that week after the filming! Lets not talk about the main event of September too much, eh? Even though the English performance in the Rugby World Cup was horrendously disappointing, I did have a great evening seeing Fiji vs Uruguay and I will never forget the Japan vs South Africa game. Exciting stuff. I had a wonderful weekend with the annual Pluck family gathering, this time complete with extended family in attendance.

Francois - He's a sophisticated French victorian gent, thank you very much

October

October bought with it the wind and the rain, as well as my one year pole-anniversary! I ran my first 10k race, finishing 34th out of 87 women, and clocked a time of 56 minutes 15 seconds, on a largely grassy track, which is definitely going to add minutes if you normally run on the road like I do (yeah... that's what I keep telling myself anyway). 2016s 10km aim has therefore become a sub 56 minute 10k. My parents left me to watch house for two weeks, so naturally I responded by having an awesome house party with some old friends. Hallowe'en came and went in a blur of zombie cheerleader makeup and tequila shots.

Foot grab Gemini hold

November

Even though it was only November, our pole studio's Christmas party was an excellent way to start the month and Christmas festivities (!) as well as an opportunity for some crazy drunken pole dancing. The day after was filled with more friends and board games as we all tried to recover... Later on in the month I travelled to Sheffield to sort out paperwork for my course and got a chance to meet some of the people I'll be working and studying with for the next two and a half years. I rounded off the month with the Of Monsters and Men gig in Lincoln, which was fantastic. 

December

As it should be, December has been filled with friends, family and lots of festive cheer. By and large I have been making my way around saying goodbye to all the wonderful people I know and love here in my little town in Buckinghamshire whilst trying to remember that Sheffield isn't that far away! A beer festival happened... which was filled with lots of lovely beer and listening to some amazing live bands and ended up in me home by 10pm. My Dad took me and my mum to see the Cambridge vs Oxford varsity rugby match at Twickenham for a great day out. I finished my job with the recruitment team a couple of weeks ago and am now in full swing of getting everything sorted out for the big move next weekend. I went ice skating for the first time in a good few years with my family as a Boxing Day outing and welcomed in the New Year with friends old and new. 

All I can say is... I hope 2016 carries on in the same manner, with lots of great new friends, keeping in contact with the old ones and many more exciting adventures, whether they're drunk, sober or in between! I'm off to university next week to study Occupational Therapy and relive my student years (for about two weeks, until the hard work starts again!). I don't think I'd have believed you this time last year if you'd said it was going to be this good. But it was. It was better than I could ever have hoped for. Most of all, I've learnt this year that happiness doesn't come from others, it comes from yourself. 

My brief goals for 2016: 

- Carry on pole dancing

- Come out of my first year of my Masters with good grades and placement feedback

- Carry on running (2 x 5k races, 1 x 10k race, start training for a half marathon in 2017) 

- Enjoy myself along the way!

- Find a volunteering project similar to Lindengate up in Sheffield in my free time
- Get this blog and my other blog sorted out!
- Lose fat and gain muscle to become mega fit.

I hope you've also had a great year and I would love to hear what your goals are!

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 3; Quick Bread

Apologies for the late entry for this post; my laptop mouse pad has had a bit of a senior moment so I've had to hunt down a mouse in order to use it. As such, week 4 will be coming up tomorrow...

I'll preface this entry with a simple fact; I hate baking bread. I hate baking bread with a passion. I hate having to knead it because it makes my hands sticky, I hate waiting for it to prove because I'm impatient and most of all I hate that 9 times out of 10 when I attempt to bake bread it doesn't work. I hate it I hate it I HATE IT! So needless to say bread week is not my favourite and was indeed the episode I was looking least forward to creating something from.

That is, until I discovered Alvin's Prosciutto, Manchego and Balsamic Red Onion Soda Bread recipe. This stuff is amazing. I've made three loaves of it since the episode aired two weeks ago and I will be making it again without a shadow of a doubt. It's a hearty, stout bread that is just as fantastic on it's own as it is with a soup. I'm very much looking forward to making loaves of this in the depths of winter to go with stew, goulash, pies and other 'stick to your ribs' meals. You can eat this plain or smother it with butter. Either way, it's a definite treat and one that's sure to go down well with anyone who enjoys a good filling bread.

I can't get over how easy this bread really is to make. It's so simple - there's no prooving, no kneading, no yeast that needs to be alive and smells like a brewery. It's just like a cake really with a some unconventional mixing methods! Well, apart from the fact that you get a wonderful loaf of bread at the end rather than a yummy cake snack. And compared to how long it took me to make the Arlettes of week 2, this was a walk in the park!

You could adapt the ingredients in this fairly easily. Instead of Manchego cheese (impossible to find in my semi-rural local Tesco) I plumped for Comte cheese, on the basis that it looked like a hard cheese and Manchego is hard, right? Well, not really the same thing as Manchego is a sheeps cheese and Comte is an unpasteurised cows cheese; but having never eaten either before I was sure that they'd swap easily enough. Comte is a fairly nutty flavoured cheese compared to Manchego's 'buttery texture' (thanks Google) but it is certainly a good accompaniment to the acid-y sweetness of the onions and the salty ham. I swapped prosciutto and parma ham for similar reasons in my original bake but went back to prosciutto for the second and third loaves and honestly can't tell the difference. I also left out the extra salt as I found that my first loaf was fairly salty from the ham.

The final adaptation I made was to not put the ham on top of my second and third loaves - I found on the first loaf it just burnt and turned into extremely crispy bacon. Putting the foil on top after it's had chance to brown stops this from happening to the onions that are placed on top.

Don't forget to score it into quarters, as this helps the bread to grow and bake properly.

Recipe
You can find the original recipe here; I would urge you to go there straight away and bake this little beauty for yourself. I adapted it slightly as per the below:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large red onions, finely sliced
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar

450g plain white flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (double check it's in date as it's the only raising agent in this bread!)
Pinch of dried herbs - I used basil, parsley, a small amount of coriander and rosemary
30g cold salted butter, diced
200g Comte cheese, diced irregularly
80g Prosciutto or other finely sliced ham, roughly torn
300ml buttermilk with 25ml cold water stirred through

Oven temp: 200C/180C Fan oven. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Warm the oil in a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Add the sliced red onions and stir, reducing the heat slightly. Cover and cook for 15 minutes stirring occasionally so they don't stick. Turn the heat down low and add the sugar and vinegar; stir and increase the heat and cook for a further 5 to 8 minutes, until sticky and the vinegar has almost all evaporated. Set aside to cool.

Combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda and herbs in a bowl. Using your fingertips rub the butter in until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. I find it easier to keep going until you think it's done and then shake the bowl vigorously to bring any further butter chunks to the top of the bowl.

Keeping back 1 tablespoon of the cooked onions and a small amount of cheese for the topping, add the remaining cheese, onions and all of the proscuitto/ham. Toss to incorporate - at first the onions and ham will clump together but eventually the flour will dry them enough to allow all three ingredients to disperse evenly in the mixture. Just have faith and keep going!

Make a well in the middle of the flour mix and pour in roughly three quarters of the buttermilk and water mixture. Using a clawed hand mix the flour into the buttermilk well until a sticky dough is formed. Add further buttermilk if you feel like the mixture is too dry (I ended up adding all the buttermilk all three times I've made this). It should be fairly sticky and no flour should be left in the bowl.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and shape roughly. You can work it a little bit here but you don't need to. You do need to try and shape the dough though so if you are finding it's falling all over the place you may want to give it a bit of a light battering. Once shaped, transfer onto the greaseproof paper and score the top quite deeply with a cross.

Throw the rest of the cheese and onions on top. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes and then cover so that the onions don't burn. Bake for a further 20 - 25 minutes or until it comes away cleanly from the greaseproof paper and sounds hollow when tapped.

Cool on a wire rack; at least until lukewarm as this is truly a bread that needs a little time to sit and chill. The runny cheese inside though is quite a treat if you can't wait that long!