Sickly positive

What does it take for a good day? Any day can be good if you only decide so. The nausea before my French presentation got a whole new dimension when I started turning it into an opportunity for self-developement. I had spent the previous night and the whole morning trying to convince myself that it´s no biggie. It can go well or bad. But for the love of god, don´t let it affect your positive spirits!

That´s when I remembered a story about believing in yourself. The bottom line was that if you think you´re going to succeed, you´re right. And if you think you´re gonna fail, you´re right again! (Sometimes even this ain´t enough but that´s a differend story...) 

I had to channel all my energy in absorbing positivity and good vibes from all around. People are actually really nice. The sun shines damn bright today. My hair is looks and smells good. The Easter holiday starts tomorrow...

The presentation went well after all. Actually it went great! Or that is what I think due to all that revolting positivity... But the best thing is that it doesn´t matter. Even if it went crappily I wouldn´t let it get me down.

Here´s the rest of my day for essential parts.

Think colours, people ! It was a perfect weather for my favourite yellow wellies. Don´t they just cheer you up instantly?

Frying gorgeous vegetables and herbes after a long day with no lunch. For dessert some beeaauutiful chocolate with caramelized almonds...

Yayyy, my favourite chore ever! Put your make-up pens in a freezer overnight and sharpen them. Makes me feel life is worth living after all... ;) This positivity is exhausting.

Veggie-eating saints and sinful carnivores ?

I know I´ve written about this before but...

 

As a vegetarian (or "lacto-ovo-pescatarian" to be specific...) I come across with the weirdest attitudes and questions. I don´t know why everyone seems to get so sensitive when it comes to dietary habits. I never meet people who say e.g. that they admire me or wish they could do the same. Most people simply ask me the Question Why with a suspicious look on their face.

Don´t get me wrong: I don´t mind talking about it. It´s just pointless because I know that nothing I say back is new to anyone. It has to do with ethics and ecology. And health aswell. For me vegetarianism is mostly an ethical choice but it´s also a mere habit. And that´s what seems to be too hard to understand! People who follow the usual diet, meat being an important part of it, tend to talk to me like I was a member of a religious sect...

"What if you ate meat, like accidentally? For how long are you going to be a vegetarian? Could you eat organic chicken?? Don´t you ever feel like eating, say, a sausage???" Behind all these questions there seems to be the idea of meat being something unreplaceable and precious. And that vegetarians are unconformists, hippies and surely part of some underground culture. Luckily it´s becoming more and more popular and even a middle-aged man can be a vegetarian without the stigma of a tree-hugger. It´s also a well-known fact that a balanced diet doesn´t require meat.

I´m not worried about my image though. What bothers me more is the false idea carnivores have about my conceptions of them! "Those ignorant meat-eaters! I´m so much better than them!" Cause it really isn´t so. It might be hard to believe but I don´t care what other people do. I know people have differend priorities, tastes, lifestyles... People eat meat because they like it, they always have and everyone does it anyway. I´d say that very few people would change the content of their fridge just for the sake of the Earth. The change should always start from the person himself and his values. Who am I to convert anyone? I don´t even want to though I do it secretly by making good veggie foods to friends and family...

I could say the same thing to carnivores: who are you to convert me back to your side? There´s no reason to feel I´m threatening you with my "nobility" because I don´t think any less of you. I´m not a nun either and if I sometime become a carnivore again I´m not a "failure". It´s not like stop being a good person. An ethical choice can also be not to gossip about other people...!

I have enough facts to know that this is a good way. I don´t suffer. I don´t feel like eating meat even if it was organic. I like vegetarian food and it´s a part of my lifestyle just like writing lists or having a tea in the morning.

A cooking-kind of post

Don´t worry. This blog is not turning into a cooking blog but I still want to share my recent passion for cupcakes. It´s one of those simple pleasures in life and making them is really easy. My favourite part of the process is ofcourse decorating. Even in my former job I most enjoyed drawing lines on cheesecakes with raspberry sauce. But when I really set my creativity free and made differend decorations on every cake, boss sourly returned me back to the line...

This is the outcome of past two weeks. And there´s more to come because I finally bought that beautiful recipe book I´ve been yearning for atleast two years. Don´t ask me why I didn´t buy it before. It´s Gorgeous cakes by Annie Bell and next I´m going to try every recipe in the book..!

All started on a weekend home. With my sister I made chocolate-orange cupcakes with a wrong icing... We were out of normal icing sugar so we had to use the strawberry-one. No evidence from that session I´m afraid!

These cupcakes à la pear and chocolate (recipe from Marie´s blog which is in Finnish) I made at my place. I did improvise a lot and made an icing with the same principle as in orange cupcakes; meaning cream cheese, melted chocolate, whipped cream and icing sugar. These cuties were slightly dry but delicious altogether...

Next I wanted to make cupcakes without eggs because an allergic friend of my was coming over. A suitable recipe was found in Krisse´s blog. I modified this too and made it more chocolatey and added some coffee aswell. I used the same icing for this because they´re not cupcakes without it! The texture was quite heavy but don´t you just love those chocolate hearts!

This next one I made merely because I had to get rid of left-over icing I had in the fridge. It tasted so good that I thought it would make a good dough... So without any recipe I added water, flour, sugar, melted butter and baking powder. The result was way better I expected with random mesures and ingredients...! They´re not pretty but oh how soft and sweet they were!

Let´s see what I come up with for Easter...