January Update

In my Christmas Vanilla Roll Cake + New Year Gingerbread post, I mentioned that I was thinking of doing a monthly post on here, a round-up of the month. So here's the first one for January! :)

Note: I started this during January but have finished it today. :)


January is a bit of a hard month for me because all the excitement of Christmas is over and the weather is dreary and cold! I get more depressed at this time of year, I think I have SAD (Seasonal affective disorder). If you do too you might find this link helpful:

https://www.kitchenstewardship.com/15-tips-combat-seasonal-affective-disorder/

I take a while to adjust to the new year and last year I didn't feel really settled in till about May! It helps when the weather gets warmer. At the end of January it went colder and we've had some snow, although not much in Sussex so far. It does make a change when we get snow though, since we don't get it that often in my area.

In early January I went to the beach and took some pictures. It was a beautiful sunset that evening. Here are a couple of the photos:

Sunset on Shoreham Beach.

                          

The first one was taken on my phone and the second on my camera, and the colours look quite different!

I also did some baking. I made these peanut butter and chocolate chip muffins from Don't Waste The Crumbs: https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/2017/11/peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-muffins/

They're quite a healthy recipe and fairly easy to make. Here's a pic:

And I  baked some Scottish tablet for Burns Night (25th January), using a recipe from the Co-op magazine. Burns Night is actually the anniversary of when my grandparents met (my mum's parents) at a Burns Night supper in Scotland! My grandad was in the army at the time and staying there. :)

It tasted quite nice but I think should have come out a bit harder! I won't share a picture because I think it could have been better, but might have a go making it again another time.  Here's the recipe:
https://www.coop.co.uk/recipes/tablet

And you can find more here: 

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/scottish-tablet

https://bakingwithgranny.co.uk/recipe/scottish-tablet/


Read: The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby (re-reading). This is one of my favourite books and inspired the title of my other blog Falling Petals.

Played: Re-played Heavy Rain, my fave PS3 game. (You can get this for PS4 as well but I don't have one, so maybe I'll play it in future!



Links I found useful in Jan:

Healthy mindsets to adopt this year: https://helloadamsfamily.com/2019/01/17/5-healthy-mindsets-to-adopt-this-year/

Post about surviving the January blues: https://www.eternallyelle.com/2019/01/how-to-survive-the-january-blues-in-style/


So that's it for now! Hope you liked the first update post. :) I celebrated Imbolg yesterday so will be doing a post about that too. If you feel in need of some winter inspiration you might like this post (since we still have more winter to go yet!):  https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2018/12/winter-round-up-inspiration.html