OK STOP LOOKING I'VE FOUND IT

I have found the best tasting peanut butter in existence. Chantal organic whole peanut butter - crunchy. AMAZING. It's so deeply rich and tasty and I can't get enough! My golly. This stuff is really darkly coloured and has half peanuts in it and it's just divine. I think it retails for about $7 so it's fairly pricey but I think it's totally worth it. Mmmmmmnom!!

GO BUY IT PLEASE!

Two more to add...

Ceres Organics Crunchy Peanut Butter - This was pretty tasty. It is quite rich and very moist, which I like in a peanut butter. Spreads well on toast. Decent oil layer on top and has hearty chunky bits in it. Lighter in colour than other butters. Fairly pricey, at around $6 for a normal sized jar. 3/5.

Macro Natural Almond Spread - This isn't bad, but is not as full in flavour as the Ceres almond butter that I tried. This is a lot cheaper though, so a more affordable almond butter. And almond butter is supposed to be better for you than peanut butter too. I find that the parts that aren't under oil are incredibly dry, and are hard to spread. Darker in colour and costs around $6 for this sized jar. 2.5/5.

I have also moved up in the world and have an iPhone now, so will be able to take my own food product photos from now on, which means you will get to know my hand YAY. 

xx

A definitive ranking of peanut butters

     

I love peanut butter. It's no secret that I'm addicted to the stuff. One of my absolute things to eat is apple with peanut butter, and peanut butter on toast is simpy amazing. So, I have taken it upon myself to test all the peanut butters on the market to find the best one (and I tend to choose the crunchy versions).
Here's my thoughts on the products I have tried thus far:


Pic's really good Peanut Butter (not the smooth version) - This is delicious. It's incredibly tasty and has a darker colour than the really processed ones. It gets a layer of oil on the top but that can be mixed in (I've read that's good because it means there has been less processing). Comes in small, large and extra large jars. 3/5.

Eta awesomely Crunchy Peanut Butter (please disregard the smooth in the picture, cause seriously, what's the point in smooth?!) - This is one you'll see in many kitchen pantries. While it is definitely delicious, it doesn't quite have the same deep, rich flavour as some of the others. No oil layer on the top. Comes in this size and 1kg jars. 2/5.

    

Kraft Whipped Peanut Butter - So this obviously isn't crunchy, but the idea intrigued me so much I just had to try it. The texture of this stuff is AMAZING. The taste is nice, but not as strong as I like. The texture makes this product great though. Only comes in this one size. 3/5.

100% Nutz dark chocolate peanut spread - Because chocolate is one of my favourite things in the world, I enjoyed this immensely. However, because it is sweet, I found that it didn't last very long with me. And I think I prefer my peanut butter as solely that. Only comes in this size. 3/5.

100% Nutz crunchy natural peanut butter - This was really nice. A great flavour and really really crunchy (awesome). A great product, would recommend. Had a layer of oil on top. Only comes in this size. 3/5.

100% Nutz peanut butter with sea salt - Delcious. Currently going through this now and it is so yummy! It's super crunchy and has an intense flavour. The sea salt adds a nice bite too. Had a oil layer. Only comes in this size. 4/5.

Hillary Peanut + nutrient loaded spread - Interesting. This attracted my attention because it had high protein levels in it. When I first tried this spread I thought it was yuck, but it really grew on me and now I love it. It has bran bits and it's fairly light in colour. It's a totally different flavour but it's an excellent source of protein and you feel good eating this stuff. Slight oil layer on top. 3/5.

       

Ceres Organics almond butter - So this is obviously not a peanut butter, but I am going to include it in this list regardless. My sister told me of the deliciousness of this stuff, so I asked for some for my birthday. It's definitely different in flavour to peanut butter, and it's completely smooth. But it is oh so tasty. At about $11 for 200g, it's not something I'll buy often, but taste-wise it is a real treat. 4/5.

    

                     

Eta roasted peanut butter wickedly crunchy - This is thus far my favourite. It is absolutely fantastic. So full of flavour and packed full of crunch. I am a HUGE fan. Has a massive oil layer on top and isn't in the biggest jar but oh boy it's worth it. 5/5.

I still have a few to try, including another Ceres Organics one and a Reeses one so I shall update this post. My favourite super processed one would be Pam's extra crunchy (which comes in a 1kg jar - bonus) but I couldn't find a picture of it. That would be a 4/5 though. 

This post may seem excessive, but I just love the ol' PB.

xx

Two of my favourite things: Food and lists = a food list!!

Food items I couldn't live without:

Chocolate
Peanut Butter
Apples
Carrots
Spinach
Capsicums
Tuna
Chicken
Cheese

Food items I could easily live without:

Ice Cream
Bread
Pasta
Red Meat
Coffee
Lollies

...sounds like I'm a health nut. Definitely not the case.
What foods can't/can you live without?

xx

Those moments you're just like YES

I love those days and moments when you're just like YES cause things are going well. I had a day like that on Sunday. I was back in Hastings for the 22nd birthday of my best friend. I love going back to Hastings, especially in summer. It's where a lot of my favourite people reside and in summer the weather is beautiful and they have the best summer fruit and there's lots of lovely things to do outside whilst soaking up the sun.

So anyway, I had a lovely lunch surrounded by lovely people, then bought some deliciously juicy strawberries from the strawberry patch and chilled back with friends before driving back to Palmy. Even the drive there and back was good because I had new music on my ipod and a new car that is super smooth to drive. Ahhhh bliss.

I got to spend time with this gorgeous birthday girl, which is always a pleasure:

xx

Breakfast

I’ve had breakfast everyday for the past 5 weeks.

Now, this may seem like something completely ordinary for most people, but for me it’s quite a big deal. I’ve struggled with disordered eating in the past and ever since it started back in high school I’ve had irregular eating patterns, which hasn’t included breakfast.

I’ve written eating plans and told myself numerous times to get back into eating regularly, and there have been times when I’ve stuck to it for a couple of days at a time. But it would never last beyond that. 

But for some reason, 5 weeks ago I started and have finally been able to maintain the breakfast habit. And now I love Breakfast and can’t leave home without it! I know this may sound incredibly trivial to some, but eating disorders are completely psychological, and don’t just go away (try as hard as you might). So this is a small victory for me :)

xx

Last weekend

After being relatively unsocial and nanna-ish of late, I had a fabulously social weekend last weekend. A very dear friend who lives in Hamilton came down to visit from Friday to Sunday which was outstanding. On Friday night a group of 6 of us went out for dinner at The Brewer’s Apprentice (if you’re ever in Palmy, stop here, it’s the place to be on Friday nights) which was delicious. After dinner and a cheeky walk to get dessert, we went home to get changed and then went back into town for a bit with another of my lovely friends who was visiting from Wellington. Saturday morning we hit the gym for two hours then saw Johnny Depp’s latest flick The Lone Ranger, which was very amusing. That night we had a few friends over for drinks and hit town (the first time in agesssss for me, considering my town appearance history). It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately my Hamiltonian friend had to leave on Sunday which was sad – a weekend visit just isn’t long enough. But regardless, it was a fantastic weekend.

My friends are just fabulous.

xx

Wellness Challenge

I saw on Here Comes the Sun, my all-time favourite blog, that she is engaging in a 30 day wellness challenge thingy majig. And I desperately need a detox myself so I'm going to give it a go! I figure that if I blog about my progress it will (hopefully) keep me motivated and accountable!!

Here are my goals:

• Severely cut down my sugar intake (sugar is my weakness, it's truely terrible)
• Drink more water
• Gym 4-5x per week
• Severely up my fruit and vege intake!
• Eat breakfast everyday

^^ YUM!!

xx

Oruawharo

Today I attended my Grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary luncheon. 13 members of my family met at the beautiful Oruawharo Homestead in Takapau, a place that is a bit off the beaten track but well worth a visit. It is an absolutely spectacular building, with so much character. It kind of reminds me of a Jane Austen era type home. My favourite room of them all (and there are many, many rooms) was the library which featured a wall of floor to ceiling bookcases and comfy chairs for reading. We had a lovely luncheon consisting of tea, devonshire scones, club sandwiches, ginger gems, mini savouries, strawberry tarts and fruit juice. All served on gorgeous tiered plate stands. After lunch we took some photos in the gardens and then played a bit of petanque (which I'm useless at btw). Unfortunately I didn't get very many photos. I forgot my proper camera, silly me. It was all so instragram-worthy too :(

I discovered a wooden swing suspended to a big old tree and quite enjoyed that for a while:

Visit Oruawharo if you ever get the chance.

xx

The new resolutions

I know it's kinda cliched to write out resolutions these days but I don't really care, imma do it anyway:

1) Keep up an excellent exercise routine.
2) Get into good eating habits! 3 meals a day, lots of fruit and veges and less sugar :)
3) Find a good career-relevant job!
4) Read more!! Only read 6 books for leisure in 2012. Disgusting.
5) Keep up the blog.

That's all I can think of at the moment but five is a good number I think. 2012 was a roller-coaster year, but I definitely look back at it fondly, as there were many many great moments :)
I'm looking forward to the challenges that 2013 brings!!

xx

One magical night

On the 8th of December it was the 21st of one of my nearest and dearest friends. A group of about 20 of us went out for a meal at Lonestar in Napier and then went back to her place for dessert and drinks. My amazing friend had completely decked out the backyard with a gazebo, fairy lights, candles and other lovely things so that the effect was a magical wonderland of sorts. It was just beautiful. The dessert was fantastic too - cream puffs, jelly slice, cheesecake, strawberries, whoopie pies, mini pavlovas...!! It was the most wonderful night. Great food, great music and great company. Unfortunately I didn't get too many photos of the setup but here are some that give you a rough idea (though they don't really do it justice):

^^and one of the cool kids couch ;)

I believe that Jess got a few ideas for decorations from pinterest. Definitely a source of inspiration if you have any events coming up!!

xx

Food

I love having a camera on my phone. The ability to snap something you see while out and about is excellent.
Another thing I love is food. And therefore, I will often combine these two loves. I have been eating out quite a bit over summer (as you do) and so my phone has a fair amount of pictures of what I've been putting in my mouth....

YUM. 

xx

1 down, 1 to go :)

Had my first and second to last exam today!! Woop!! It went pretty well, wasn't rushed for time or anything as we were only required to write 2 essays in 3 hours which is plenty of time. Next one is next Tuesday so got a bit of time before the freak-out begins again lol.

When I came home the first thing I did was put a t-shirt on as its freakin' hot here today! Then when the lovely Jac got home we proceeded to make chocolate whoopie pies! OMG they are the most delicious thing everr!! So lite and fluffy!!

Hitting up Body Combat tonight, dinner is all ready and Gilmore Girls will be watched! Life is goooood :)

xx

Sweeties

So I love trying new foods right, and about a month ago my friend and I were having a movie night and on our trip to the supermarket we discovered some interesting looking American sweets in the international section. So, being the adventurous souls that we are, we decided to give some a go. Here's what we tried: 

Reese's Pieces - ok so I'd actually tried these before but I LOVE THEM.

Pretzel m&m's - really yum! Kinda like crispy m&m's but saltier. They are pretty big though so this packet only had like 15 of them (which is probably a good thing..!)

Whoppers - these I was very excited to try. They are like maltesers but instead of being covered in chocolate they are covered in peanut butter! So yum! I still like maltesers better but these were still rather delish, very addictive though.

We also had Wonka Sweet Tarts (like sherberts) and my friend bought me a twinkie cause I was saying how I'd heard of them heaps but never tried them. They are also very yummy.

And just FYI, we didn't get through all this in the one night, just tried a couple of everything. I'm not that bad! hahaha (actually, that's debatable).

xx

New fave

When things in life aren't going so well, something that cheers me up is chocolate. I know, terrible right?! In my defence, I haven't had chocolate in aaaaages (like weeks, which is quite a feat for me) so I figure a small packet of m&m's in order to make me feel slightly better is worth it. Anyway, I've just discovered peanut butter m&m's. OH GOLLY. They are actually amazing. I'm very glad they don't come in share size packs!! I urge you to go out and buy a packet to try. They were in the international section of New World supermarket where I live so hopefully you can find some! I noticed they also had pretzel m&m's too! They will be my next adventure I think.

p.s. Please excuse all the cameroid pics.I don't have my camera at the moment so am using the online equivalent instead.

xx

A blissful day

I had such a lovely day yesterday. It started off in the best way possible, with a sleep-in, then comprised an hour long pump class, trolling the internet, a small amount of uni work, a lovely chat with the parentals and then, the best part of all, leisure reading! My golly I have missed reading things that I want to read. My weeks have been filled with academic readings such as Diachronic studies of linguistic landscapes in Ukraine and Gendered and Racialized discourses of national identity that take so much brainpower to internally translate into understandable English in order to understand what the heck it is the author is actually saying. So reading a book that I actually wanted to read was just fabulous. This book was Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, which I had started at the beginning of the year but had to put down on account of the aforementioned readings.

 I finished the book off in the evening and didn't really think much of it. It was just ok, but nevertheless it was delightful to be reading again and I plan on doing  much more of this during the mid-year break :) I have since begun a book that my flatmate lent me, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain which is so far proving hard to put down.

A snack I made for myself during yesterday's blissful period of reading..

Cheese and tomato with basil pesto, capsicum and cracked pepper on meal mates....Yum.

And this is what I made myself for dinner...

Toasted turkish bread topped with herbed cream cheese, spinach, tomato, cheese, baked garlic field mushroom, capsicum and cracked pepper. Delish. 

Hope you are all having a fab weekend :)

xx

Outpour

So much on my mind lately, am going to vent some on here but will try not be too complain-y as I know it's not fun reading girls complain heaps.

Firstly, Facebook.
It's safe to say for me that I'm pretty addicted to it as I tend to check it multiple times each day. In saying that though, I have gone days and even weeks without it before and haven't really missed it because I've been otherwise occupied. I guess I just go on to keep up with the haps, coz I'm really nosy and coz I'm bored/procrastinating. HAH just went on again. But more often than not I really despise it. It gets frikn depressing when those rich, Havelock North girls constantly post pics of their oh-so-glamorous lives (eating at flash restaurants all the time, drinking fancy cocktails, casually hopping over to oz, partying at their richie rich Auckland/Wellington flats, always being suh fashionable etc etc). And those people who are always partying and seem to have the most amazing social lives and look good in every single photo. And those people who are always becoming friends with new people, when you haven't had a friend request in weeks/months. Then there's those annoying people who update their status' like 20x per day, and those people who put 'meaningful' quotes as their status, that really bugs me, like they're trying to be all deeeeeeeeep.
Don't get me wrong, there are those blessed souls who actually make the visit worthwhile, those who put crack up status' up and share interesting links and who you actually want to keep in contact with etc etc. But generally speaking, Facebook sucks. So tempted to delete my account, or at least have a massive purge and get rid of all the people I don't actually care about, which would leave me with maybe 50 friends. And that's another thing, Facebook can be cruel fuel for one's insecurities, when you don't have as many friends as other people, when no one writes on your wall etc etc. And I know you may be thinking that if I feel this way it's my own fault, and yes I know that's the case. But this is my blog and I can write what I want and you can hate if you want, whatever.
First rant over.

Secondly, Food.
Body image/exercise/eating/comparing oneself to all other living beings on earth/failing constantly at goals you set yourself/trying to eat healthily....constantly plagues my mind. What I think about most. Sad eh? I have this one friend who has got the whole 'healthy lifestyle' thing down pat, and that's something I'm insanely jealous of, I just can't seem to get into it. Don't wanna rant about that too much as I will just sound like a sad loser.
Second rant over.

Thirdly, Nek year.
So many people have been asking me what I'm gonna do next year and it makes me feel so lost and worried when I'm always answering with "I have no idea". I've tossed around a few ideas...move to Hamilton and work up there for a bit (way more opportunities there and I have friends and family there, but where would I live? Don't think I'd be able to live at home again, I'm too used to flatting now, but wouldn't really want to live with randoms), live and work wherever I can in Hastings for a year, but would I really want to live with the grandparents for a year (and they probably wouldn't want me there for a whole year) or in a flat with randoms?, move to Wellington and flat with my friend there (lots of media opportunities there and a pretty cool city but so ridiculously expensive - I can't fathom spending $180 a week on rent alone, esp without student loan!), flat with the sister and work in Hawke's Bay? But don't know if I would like to flat with my sister tbh!, stay in Palmy? Have a great flat here, but don't really want to stay here after finishing my studies!, move down South and flat with my friends in Dunedin? Very tempting, and lots of opportunities for work there, but then I'd pretty much have to start from scratch and sell all my furniture etc etc. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. This is becoming quite a source of worry/stress for me. All I know for sure is that I want to work full-time for a year and then head overseas. So insanely keen to travel. But then I'd have to have someone to travel with and none of the people I'd want to travel with seem to be keen or able to when I want to. Sigh.
Third rant over.

Wow. This is one heck of a depressing blog post. Guess you can tell I'm not in a great mood tonight.
Hope you're feeling happier than me.
xx

A sisterly visit

I had a lovely weekend this weekend, and I hope you did too. My sister came up for a visit on Saturday, and we spent the entire day shopping up a storm (her more than me) then went to the movies and watched The 5 year engagement which was brilliant, really funny. Jason Segal is awesome. Theeeeen today we did a spot of op-shopping, had Pita Pit for lunch (arrrrrrgh so yummy) and chilled for a bit before she had to leave again :(

I love having visitors, its so fun (hint HINT).

^^ This is the tattoo my friend and I are getting. You like?

(I was totally going to do a ponderous blog post tonight but then couldn't be bothered. sorry).

xx

Simple Sunday

Yo.
So today I spent time with a good friend. We went to lunch, at Aqaba, then went for a wee shop. I didn't want to spend much (as I usually tend to do) and managed not to! I did get a really cool pastel purple shade of nail polish && some super cute $10 red sneakers. Pretty happy with that. The rest of my day was spent on an assignment...oh the joys of being a university student...!

Hopefully this week coming will be a goodie :)

xx

South Island Trip (part 2)

Sunday...

Got home 5am, got up 9am. Walked into the city with Jess, Jo, Rose and Jac for brunch (well, lunch really as it was midday by this point) at a little cafe called Capers. I had the most amazing field mushrooms on toasted herb foccacia. Delish! After a quick trip to the mall, we headed back to the flat, packed up and sat out in the sun (another beaut day!) eating Jaffas. Our ride then came, we said our goodbyes and hit the road back to Christchurch. That night we drove around the city to try and see the earthquake damage. We saw the Cashel Street container mall which was really cool, and some damaged buildings but couldn't see too much coz it was dark. Back at the mates place we watched a movie then crashed in the lounge.....dead to the world.

Monday...


Said half asleep goodbyes to the mate we were staying with then got up, packed and sat outside in the glorious sunshine. Were picked up by my Auntie and Cousin (who I've been writing to for over ten years) who took us back to their place. We then saw the other cousins, took the dog for a walk to the local park, then went back for lunch. After lunch we played Dutch Blitz, the best card game everrrr. Then headed to airport and flew back to Welly, where our flatmate picked us up and drove us back to Palmy.

Done. Haha. This is quite skimmed but you can get the gist of the fabulous weekend that it was :)
Dunedin, Thanks so much for turning out great weather and great times during our weekend with you. Am now seriously contemplating moving down next year.

Back into uni now so should be blogging more regularly from this point onwards.

xx