A Festive Meal - with ALL the Trimmings!

On Monday the 14th of December, as part of our yearly tradition, my friends and I enjoyed a Christmas feast at a local pub! For years, we've been gathering every December to exchange presents and share in a little holiday spirit with each other (before inevitably stuffing our faces with delicious goodies).

Organising the event this year was a little rocky in places, with some last minute cancellations from friends causing a few issues, but I'm pleased to say that the meal was still great fun anyway!

We went to Table Table (Medina Quay) in Newport for our Christmas meal and we weren't let down! The staff at Table Table were extremely kind and understanding about the last minute changes to table numbers and bent over backwards to make us feel at home.

Em and I—it's not Chrismas without a festive photo of us together!

The portion sizes were incredible and the food was excellent value for the price. I wasn't able to try the set Christmas meal, due to having celiac disease, but the staff worked really hard to offer me a meal which was just as appetising—and looked just as festive!

My celiac-friendly chips, peas and cauliflower cheese!

Table, Table outdid themselves with portion sizes, presenting thick cheesecake slices, which looked like door stop wedges, and large plates filled to the brim with tantalisingly tasty treats. Amazingly, we were able to get three whole courses, with generously-sized portions, for just £15.99! For anyone with smaller appetites, two-course meals were also available for just £12.99. I would definitely consider going there again next year as the staff made the whole process so easy and were so friendly!

Domi with her delicious cheesecake!

For anyone looking to jazz up their Christmas meal, I'd also recommend the use of photobooth props. We were kept entertained for ages with fake beards and elf ears, as you can see from the photos below!

Of course, you need to be a certain level of 'silly' to use the photo props kit...but thankfully, my friends are only happy to pull funny faces in front of the camera in the name of fun!

When all else fails, turn your beard into a beak...

We used the 'Elf Yourself' Photo Props Kit, which was £4 and included elf hats, beards, ears, spectacles, holding sticks, a picture frame and even one bald elf head! It's worth shopping around to see what else is on the market though, as you never know what gems you might find for a bargain!

Whatever you're doing to celebrate Christmas this year, I hope it's magical and fun—with just a hint of 'silly'.

F x

Homemade Gluten and Dairy Free Apple Crumble

It's late afternoon over here and the sun is lost behind a mass of thick charcoal clouds which deliver a menacing promise of more rain. It's on these rainy days that I feel inspired to enter the kitchen to create something warm and homely to line my stomach. There are very few things which I enjoy more than cooking tasty treats with my mum on a damp, blustery day—and I hope you find this recipe just as fun (and tasty) to try!

This recipe is perfect for anyone who has celiac disease and wants a warming treat on a winter's evening. The added benefit is that it's also suitable for vegans.

Ingredients: 

Serves 4

For the topping: 

6oz gluten free plain white flour (I used Dove's Gluten Free Plain White Flour)
1oz ground oats (I ground up Juvela's Gluten Free Rolled Oats but any gluten free oats are good)
1oz ground almonds
3oz dairy free sunflower spread (Pure Sunflower Spread works well)
4oz unrefined muscovado sugar

For the filling:

2 medium/large sized cooking apples
1 tbsp of water
2oz of muscovado sugar or honey


Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Place flour and sugar into a bowl with ground oats and almonds.
3. Rub in the margarine lightly with your fingertips, until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
4. Peel and slice apples into a saucepan, adding water and a little sugar (depending on personal preference—I like my apples tart so I added 1oz).
5. Stew apples on a medium heat before spooning onto the bottom of a baking dish.
6. Place the mixture on top of the stewed apple, spreading across evenly until all of the fruit filling is covered.
7. Put in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until the crumble is crisp and the apple is hot.

The End of Summer

I must apologise to you guys for the delay in updating. There's just been so much going on recently that I've been a little overwhelmed, to be perfectly honest! Unfortunately, this summer—alongside gifting the UK with an abnormally rainy August—has dealt a fair whack of bad news to the household. I've handled the problems but there were a few hairy moments along the way—and I was definitely forced to follow the advice I gave out in these blogs!

The good news is that I should have some fun and interesting blogs coming up! I've got lots of exciting trips planned and I'll update you on those over the next few months, as I embark on a variety of interesting new adventures!

I'm also going to continue posting more self-help articles. I always feel like I'm preaching a little bit with those—but I only post things which have positively helped me or friends. I know there’s always going to be things on my blog that people don’t agree with, for whatever reason, because everyone has their own beliefs and thoughts, but hopefully there will be some helpful tips here.

I see life as an empty book where we can write our beliefs and make our own choices—and sometimes we might find a spark of an idea which resonates so strongly within us that we are compelled to ‘magpie’ it, as we create our own life story. There’s so much potential in all of us and each fresh chapter brings with it exciting new experiences for us to try. It is never too late to scribble out old ideas and start again on a fresh blank page.

Since being diagnosed with coeliac disease, I have been on a mission to find delicious gluten-free food and will be adding a few gluten-free recipes to the blog, too. Truthfully, the first few months felt like a prison sentence had been issued (and anyone who says gluten-free bread tastes nice is definitely lying) but things do get easier as your body adjusts to the different tastes.

Note: If anyone has recently been diagnosed and would like extra support, I'm happy to post up advice and helpful tips. Whether you have coeliac disease or gluten intolerance, you don't have to suffer alone!

I've also been dipping into the gaming world again recently. My days of playing Dota 2 on Steam are few and far between now but I've loved indulging in spending more time on the X-Box 360, especially on RPG games (Mass Effect is my newest love since finishing Dragon Age). I can’t pretend to be amazing at any of the games but I definitely enjoy them.

For a while, I've been toying over whether or not to upload some poetry that I've been working on—but I might leave that for now. I've spent the last few months, in between working lots, editing a novel. I’ll probably never submit it to a publishing house (I'm shy when it comes to sharing prose or poetry work—and struggle even with close friends) but I'm proud of myself for sticking with this story. The demon writer’s block has caused so many face-palming moments that I never dreamed I'd get this far. On the bright side, I can tick this off the bucket list for 2015 now!

Anyway, I hope you're having a wonderful Sunday! I'm off to sit by the bay and watch the last rays of summer glisten over the sloshing salty sea waves. Have a lovely weekend!

If you'd like to, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@Alexagirl07).

F. x

Dreams - Mouth Dreams

As someone who tends to have a fair few strange dreams, I thought I'd write a few blogs which attempt to work out the meanings behind why we dream about certain things.
One thing I've dreamed about a lot recently is vomit. In a few dreams, I've literally been holding sick in my mouth because I've been in a public place. In one dream, I had to get off the bus early and run through a shopping centre until I could find a public toilet to use. The vomit that came out in those dreams was actually bits of food, utterly whole and perfect.
In other dreams, I've pulled endless clumps of orange peel string out of mouth and almost choked on it. Again, I had to rush to the safety of a bathroom before I could do anything.
In my last dream, I was regurgitating milk into a bin whilst being watched by a small child who needed my help.
So, for anyone else experience vomit-filled dreams, what does it all mean?

Vomit
Vomit, in general, often refers to a purging of some sort of emotion. Perhaps there's some part of life - or some aspect happening in your life - that is literally making you feel "sick to your stomach".
Vomiting could also mean that you're unhappy with the way life has turned out or that you feel you've overindulged too much lately.
Since these particular dreams involved trying to avoid public places, the dream was probably signalling that too much has been held back in social settings. Emotions have been suppressed but they're threatening to spiral out of control, as it were.

Pulling String Out of Mouth

Again, the fact that things are literally being pulled from the mouth indicates that you are trying to get rid of an aspect which you don't like from your life. It may even be that you've felt you've had to hold your tongue too much around other people recently. Since the string is being yanked out of the mouth endlessly, it suggests a desperate need to get rid of something unpleasant or upsetting. It may even be that you've felt people have been "stringing you along" and the dream world is reflecting that in some way.

Tips

• Try to look at the exterior factors going on in your life and see if you can spot any similarities
• Think about how you were feeling in the dream. Did you feel helpless? Panicked? Irritated? Hurt? Had you experienced feelings similar to those just before having the dream?
  

Happy dream interpreting! I'll be back to chat about more dreams and random reflections soon, I expect! Feel free to leave a comment if you've experienced similar dreams!