What I liked about March

I think March has been my favourite month of the year so far- if we ignore the fact that we're now a quarter of the way through 2015, when did that happen? I thought I'd write a little about what's been making life good this month.

• Catching up with old friends in new restaurants; I think one of the best parts of March was that I managed to spend a bit more time with some of my closest friends. What makes it even better is that a lot of that time was spent trying out new places to eat- namely a lovely pizza place, Buca di Pizza, hidden away near Leeds train station and I finally got to try My Thai, which might be my new favourite place to eat in Leeds.

• This American Life: Since finishing Serial in December I'd been wanting to get into more podcasts but I didn't really know where to start with finding a good one. Amy, one of my best friends, told me I had to download the This American Life app immediately and I'm so glad I did. TAL are the group behind Serial and they have been putting out weekly podcasts for years. As the name suggests, they cover different topics of life each week- some more specifically American- and try to give different perspectives of each topic. Some are light-hearted, some more serious. I listen to them every day; on my way to and from work, on the train, getting ready in the morning..it sounds odd but it almost feels educational to me and I'd highly recommend anyone to download the app and get listening

• Baking; I've always loved baking; I have many memories of helping my mum bake butterfly buns as a kid, pretty much since I was old enough to hold a wooden spoon. However for the last few years I've rarely made time to bake so I've really tried to get back into it this past month. My first attempt, raspberry and white chocolate muffins, which I made for mothers day, looked pretty but weren'tmy best tasting work. Then I tried out a lemon drizzle loaf and I think it's fair to say I definitely redeemed myself. Finally, I made healthy avocado chocolate cookies, which turned out so much better than I thought they would- so good in fact that I even posted the recipe here. There's just something about a bake turning out well that makes me really happy.

• Travel bug; As you may know, this month I travelled to Lisbon to celebrate Amy's birthday and I had such a good time. I also briefly mentioned the fact that I've now booked my flight to go travelling; on the 27th of July I'll be heading off to Bogota, Colombia all by myself. At times it is a terrifying thought, but being in Lisbon just for a few days made me so excited for travelling and to have the opportunity to discover so many new places. 

• Blogilates; I realised the other day it's now been about a year since I started doing pilates regularly. I'm hardly a fitness goddess but my body has definitely changed for the better in that year and what seems unbelievable to me is that I still really enjoy pilates. I got a bit demotivated with keeping up being healthy around Christmas-time and continued into a bit of a lazy slump for the first few months of 2015, but for the last month I've been trying to push myself to be better. I still do it from the comfort and solitude of my bedroom with Cassey from Blogilates as my own personal instructor. I'm just really glad I've finally found a form of exercise that works for me, after years of being that girl in P.E. lessons who over-exaggerated her asthma..

So that's March done- April has some pretty big shoes to fill but I've got a few exciting things to look forward to over the next 30 days. As well as copious amounts of easter chocolate, of course.

How was March for you?

Healthy chocolate cookies

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a naturally healthy person. If I could I'd eat out for every meal of the day. When people struggle to finish a meal I find it bizarre- maybe my parents were just really strict with me finishing meals growing up, but even when I'm full I'll continue to eat. The other day I spent a good ten minutes contemplating what I'd do if I had to give up one of either cheese or chocolate, and I still didn't come to any resolution. You get the gist- I like food. For the past couple of years I've made very conscious efforts to improve my in-built bad eating habits and try to make better choices.
That's where these cookies come in; they don't contain any flour or butter, only have a tiny amount of sugar in, and are legitimately pretty healthy coming in at just over 100 calories each. Earlier today I realised we had an avocado which was about to get to the bad side of ripe but I wasn't in the mood for guacamole. Then I remembered I'd once seen a recipe for avocado cookies online so I went on a search to find it. My recipe is very heavily based on this one with minor adjustments. I'm a bit dubious about all these 'healthy' baking recipes doing the rounds at the moment- if you want a brownie surely you want it to taste like a brownie and not a sweet potato. But please, like me, give these cookies a second chance. The texture definitely isn't like a traditional cookie, more like a cross between a brownie and a cookie, but since when has that ever been a bad thing?

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 small-medium banana
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda/baking soda
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder; I used Bournville
• Chocolate chunks; I used about 70g of dark chocolate chunks
• A little sea salt

1.  Preheat your oven to gas mark 4/175 degrees celsius
2. Mash up your avocado flesh and banana in a bowl
3. Add your sugar and use a handheld electric whisk to mix it all up. In all honesty if you want to be extra virtuous you may not need this extra sugar but I wasn't sure if one banana would be enough to substitute what was meant to be half a cup of sugar.
4. Add the egg, give it another mix
5. Add the bicarb & cocoa powder and mix again
6. Using a wooden spoon, incorporate the chocolate chunks
7. Line a baking tray with baking paper, then spoon the mixture in blobs on to the tray- this recipe made 9 decent sized cookies. They hardly spread out at all so flatten them out a little with the spoon. 
8. Sprinkle a tiny bit of the salt over the tray- I like to do this with most cookies nowadays to make them a little less sickly
9. Bake for anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes. I set my timer for 10 minutes, at which point the cookies looked very shiny but weren't quite done. They'll never properly firm up as a traditional cookie would but keep checking them every couple of minutes until they hold their shape and you can lift it off the baking paper easily

That's it! If you can resist the temptation of a warm cookie with still-melted chocolate then you're a better person than I am, but even when cooled they have a very fudge-y lovely texture. Enjoy!