Reflections?

For the second year in a row, Mack and I are heading on a roadtrip over Christmas and New Year, so I am rounding out the year with a final blog post before we go.  This trip is not such a huge trip this time, but I think it's going to be great!  There will certainly be no breaking down in Broken Hill or changing the car radiator on the side of the road of Boxing Day, which is definitely not a bad thing - that is a long story for another time :)

As I do every year, I grabbed my goals I made at the start of the year, and went through the goals I achieved, the goals I didn't, and the ones I forgot about completely.  I set 18 goals for 2017, and I managed to achieve 10 of them, which I am pretty proud of!

Most of them were small things, like visit my best friend's new house in Melbourne, and go camping, and see Green Day live with my dad.  Some were slightly bigger, like pay off my credit card debt (which is a fabulous feeling by the way).

Goals I didn't manage to achieve include blog fortnightly (clearly didn't manage this), hoop/spin more (that just didn't happen) and read 1 book per month (I did manage 8!).

After going through the goals for 2017, I also then wrote down the things I did achieve that I hadn't even imagined for this year.

2017, I have found, has either been an amazing year for some people, or a really awful year.  For me, I have to say it has been wonderful.  I have been the busiest I have ever been, and certainly the happiest as well.   There are so many highlights (and of course some lowlights... but I am that annoying person that manages to find the silver lining and create a positive experience).

We made it to Uluru for real (only we could manage to get rain in a desert for 2 weeks... but we saw waterfalls on the rock, which was amazing).
I checked Tetsuya's and Vue de Monde off my restaurant bucket list.
I volunteered at Vivid Sydney for the first time.
I kept up the meal prep system I have going.
My best friend got married (which really wasn't on the cards)
I fell head over heels in love with yoga (and had the honour of practicing with Patrick Beach, who is an amazing Yogi).
I had an amazing whirlwind trip to the UK (not for great reasons, but it was a lot of fun).

There are so many more, but I don't need to bore you with them all.

The final step is, of course, to set the new goals for 2018.  There are 18 of them again for next year, and they are already tucked away, waiting for another 365 days to go by so I can see how much I achieved and how much I have changed in 2018.  This is a tradition I accidentally started without thinking about it back in 2012, and I really do love it.

Christmas this year is going to be spent at a hotel in Bowral; we've never done a hotel Christmas before, so that will be interesting, but I'm excited.  We are then camping from Christmas Day onwards until the 3rd January, in Victoria, which is going to be so much fun.

I love welcoming in the new year in the bush, away from civilisation with a close group of friends.  So special.  I can't wait.

Whatever you are doing over the holiday period - ENJOY!
Have the best time, relax and recharge, and get inspired and get ready for 2018 - it is going to be even more amazing than 2017!

See you on the other side.
Hx

So let's talk about.... blogging.

One of my many goals for 2017 was to start blogging again.  I used to blog all of my recipes, which was a lot of fun (and is coming in handy now when I need to find one of my favourite dessert recipes!), but I haven't really done it since 2014.

Clearly, it is December, and 2017 ran away with me a little bit, and I didn't blog as much as I intended to.  But 4 posts is better than no posts at all!

Now that 2018 is almost upon us (how fast did this year go?!), it's time to revisit this year's goals, and then create new ones. In case you missed it, you can find my post on resolutions and goals here.

I find it fascinating to look back on what 2016 Hannah had planned for 2017 Hannah, and compare it to what actually happened this year, and why.  I haven't actually looked at the goals for this year yet - I plan to do that sometime this week or next week - but I know I have achieved some of them, and not others, and some I can't even remember what they are.  

In the meantime, I am setting my first goal for 2018: blog more!  And I mean it this time.

I think I am going to be a little more specific with this goal this time around - telling myself I want to blog more isn't really working, and certainly isn't a plan.

There will be random posts, with a photo I like, or a quote, or perhaps a roadtrip Mack and I have taken etc. which will be as they come.  I might also do some that are flashbacks to 2017, because it's been a pretty amazing year, and I have lots of things to talk about!

I will then have a fortnightly series, 'so let's talk about...', where I will talk about something specific.  This blog is the first in that series! :)

2018 for me is going to be all about happiness and positivity; it is something I have been working on this year, and I feel so much healthier and happier and confident because of it!  I hope to share some of that here moving forward.

Until next time.

Hx

The cooking days.

For the last year, my best friend and I have been taking a weekend every 4 - 6 weeks to cook up a range of meals, so that we don't have to cook dinner every night.

It started off as just one Saturday and a few meal options, and it has grown into weekends with so much food that I had to buy a chest freezer!

The first few times were definitely trial and error, because we had no idea what we were doing.  We were also randomly picking recipes off google and not all of them worked.  But now we have our system down to a fine art, and have an arsenal of recipes that are tried and tested, and it really is just the best thing ever!

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January

The first cooking day of the year was in January - it turned into our first huge cooking weekend, as we embarked on a quest to make probably the most amount of food we've ever made before!  Let's face it, we cook this way because life is so hectic for both Tara and I... but 7 weeks between cooks is a long time!

We headed out on the Friday afternoon to do the shopping - we go to the Pendle Hill Meat Market, which is in Western Sydney.  Obviously this won't be convenient for everyone, but if you can find something similar near you, it is just sensational!  We get all of our meats here, as well as some of the fruits and veggies, some cheeses and deli meats, and the dry goods (mostly tinned tomatoes!).
We always get some crazy looks when we go there, because we literally buy 20+kg of meats at a time!  On this particular visit, we bought:

• 2 x pork scotch fillets (~2kg each)
• 2kg chuck steak
• 3kg beef mince
• 8 double chicken breasts (weight I have no clue... it's a LOT of chicken)
• 4kg point end beef brisket
• 4 large rump steaks (probably about 1.5 - 2kg)

And the result looked like this:

This is just my half of the weekend cook, and is 42 days worth of food for 2 people.

That's 84 portions of food.

That means we made 168 portions of food, to feed 4 people for 7 weeks (6 days of meals + 1 day of eating out/takeaway per week).

So insane!

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March

Our March cooking session was at my house for the first time, because Tara had already packed up her kitchen, since they were moving house in a couple of weeks. Exactly the same deal as before - this is just Tara's half!  We did a lot of snack foods this time, like spinach and cheese triangles, empanadas and pizza pockets.  These were a huge hit - so good for a quick dinner or light snack.

This was the first time we had done a cook with no definite idea of when the next cook would be.  Tara moved to Melbourne in April, and so if we were going to keep this up, it would now be an interstate adventure...

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June

And an interstate adventure it was!

I took the long weekend in June, and I spent all day Saturday driving down to Melbourne from Sydney (for those playing at home, it's about 10 hours).  I got there just in time for dinner on Saturday night (and wine... so much wine haha).

We then cooked all day Sunday - and I mean all day, all the way until 1am when we finished all of the dishes.  This time was less about quantity and more about variety, and also more veggies.  We noticed that it had become really easy to make slow cooked meats or stews or pasta dishes, but we were not getting enough veggies, and the dishes were very tomato based haha.

Something we made last time that was wildly popular this time was marinated chicken.  I'll post a separate blog outlining the marinades soon, but the idea of freezing marinaded chicken breasts, and then just defrosting and cooking as required was just so excellent.

June's cook looked like this - a huge variety of different meals, and still about 6 weeks worth of meals!

Until next time.

H x

This whole blogging thing...

It has been a good 2 years (or so) since I last I shared my thoughts in a blog... and by that I mean I used that blog to upload my recipes so that I could easily find them again later!

You can still find those old dessert recipes here: http://hannahsfoodobsession.blogspot.com.au/

Moving into 2017, I had intended to blog once a fortnight... or at least regularly...

I decided that I would actually love the platform to document all of the things that make me happy, and not just a place to store recipes.  I do so many things with my time that I enjoy, and, if nothing else, would love to be able to come back to them myself... something like Elizabeth Gilbert's happiness jar (http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/lets-talk-about-those-happiness-jars-shall-we-dear-lovelies-about-a-y/), but a little more involved, I guess.

These blogs could be a recipe (or six!), they could be a photograph I recently took that I love, they could document an adventure that I go on... anything at all that I would like to share.
If you have gotten this far, welcome!  This page is for my own enjoyment, but if other people draw inspiration or happiness or motivation from it too, then that is just a bonus.  If nothing else, go out and do one thing that makes you smile!

But now it's June and that clearly hasn't happened haha.

I am trying to pick it back up now, so we will see how we go from here - 2017 has shaped up to be an insanely busy year!!

Until next time.
H x

Resolutions?

**Below is the blog post I wrote back in January but never published... here it is now.  2017 has been great so far - I can guarantee that i haven't achieved all of those 18 things mentioned at the end of the post, but I do know that there are lots of additional things I have achieved that I hadn't dreamed possible!**

When you type 'top 10 most common new year's resolutions' into Google, you get a plethora of articles listing an assortment of resolutions, along with the reasons why we fail to keep them, and ways to succeed.

Some of the most common resolutions include:

• Lose weight
• Save more money
• Be more organised
• Read more
• Go to the gym more/eat healthier
• Spend more time with friends and family
• Quit smoking
• Get a new job

The list goes on...

To me, this doesn't really make sense or hold any value.  After all, most people fail to keep them anyway!  I do, however, find it important to have some sort of idea of what I want to achieve in the coming year.

I have a little notebook, and ever since 2012, I have been writing a list of things I think I would like to achieve.  I then pop that book away, and don't look at it again until the following year.  I can then see which goals I reached, and which I didn't.  It's not about reaching a goal or 'failing at a resolution'; it is about watching how I changed over the year, and seeing how my priorities shifted and my world changed as the year progressed.  I find it utterly fascinating actually.

Back then, in 2012, they were things like 'lose 5kg' and 'save all of my $5 notes' and 'go to the gym 5 times a week'... the normal stuff that people want to achieve.  (FYI that year I did save all of my $5 notes and deposited about $1200 into my bank account.)

When I look back over each year, you can see how I have become much more relaxed about life, and how happy I am with the small things.  It has become less about losing weight, or getting a new job, or going to the gym a thousand times, or saving money.  Instead, it's more 'learn how to hoop' or 'make dreamcatchers' or 'go bushwalking' or 'learn how to garden'.  Really random stuff that I do that makes me happy.
I can't write what the random goals are for 2017... that would defeat the point.  There are 18 of them this year, which I may or may not achieve.  Either way, 2017 is going to be great :).

Until next time.
Hx