Not really popcorn, but let's pretend

I admitted last week that I love a sweet snack. One time when a sweet snack is practically a requirement for me is when I’m watching a movie. I love popcorn. I always buy popcorn at the cinema even if it’s expensive and if we’re having a movie night a bag of popcorn with be found in my shopping trolley. Again popcorn isn’t the healthiest snack in the world so I’ve created another little healthy alternative for a few occasions when I want to munch on something when watching a movie but don’t want caramel drizzled popcorn. These are also a lot more filling so you really don’t need many of them, and the recipe is super simple.

We’re making our healthy caramel again. Put 6tbsp of your sugar substitute and 6tbsp of water into a pan and bring them to the boil. Remember not to stir the caramel but let it go a brown, caramel colour before taking the pan of the heat.

Combine ¾ cup of oats and 1/3 cup of shredded coconut in a bowl before adding the caramel to the bowl and combining the two mixtures until the oaty mixture is sticking together. Add 1 tbsp of organic apple sauce and combine again for added sweetness.

Take teaspoon size pieces of the mixture and make them into balls before placing them on a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Bake the little popcorn balls into the oven at 180C for 8-10 minutes. 

And there we have it. Super easy, super quick, super sweet and super filling.

These are great for a movie night in the middle of the week alongside a big bowl of fruit. I’ll be honest on a Friday or Saturday movie night you’ll still find a bag of sweet popcorn in the shopping trolley. 

Lemonpea's healthy 'coconutties'

You’ve probably gathered by now that I enjoy being a healthy eater, but I’m human and I also like sweet treats every now and again. However, chocolate, biscuits and sweets aren’t a health option (although it is easy to grab them out of the cupboard). To fix this little issue I’ve created a couple of sweet treats that are far healthier than those easy to grab options, which I thought I’d share with you over the next couple of weeks so you can try out the recipes to help to try and avoid those naughty treats.

This week I’m going to share my ‘coconuties’ with you. I always thought these were girl scout cookies from America but after A LOT of Googling I couldn’t find any recipes to adapt anywhere so I decided to create my own recipe from scratch using the name as an idea for ingredients. Yes that would be coconut and nuts.

So what do you need for this recipe?

Ingredients:

*½ cup almond butter

*¾ cup organic porridge oats

*¼ tsp salt

*¾ tsp baking soda

*¾ cup sugar substitute

*2tbsp coconut oil

*2tbsp organic apple sauce

*1tbsp shredded coconut

And how do you create the scrummy healthy little cookies?

Prepare a baking tray with greaseproof paper and preheat the over to 180C. 

Begin by blitzing the porridge oats until they are a fine powder (so it looks like flour). Put the oats in a mixing bowl and add the almond butter, baking soda and salt and mix the ingredients together until they are combined.

Make a caramel with ½ cup of the sugar substitute and coconut oil by heating them in a pan until they boil. Don’t stir the mixture but allow them to boil until it turns a caramel colour. Once you’ve got the colour you want take the mixture off the heat and leave it to the side. 

Add the remaining ½ cup of sugar substitute to the bowl and mix it into the oats and almond butter mixture. Add the caramel you  made and mix again making sure all the sweetness is combined well. Do the same with the apple sauce before adding your shredded coconut you can add as much or little of the coconut as you like. It adds a good texture to the cookies an

d gives them a lovely subtle, coconutty, sweet taste.

Take tablespoons of the mixture and put them onto your prepared baking tray. Flatten to the balls of mixture with a fork before putting them in the preheated over for 8-10 minutes. 

And voila! 

You should now have little, crumbly cookies, sweet and delicious to hit that sweet craving without all the naughtiness of those easy to grab treats.

N.B I test all my recipes on Jack before I post them on here. I loved this recipe as it was but Jack thought they could be sweeter. To do this I would advise sprinkling the tops of cookies with a sugar substitute before baking. 

What's in my bag?

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a bag person. I love handbags, you could say I’m an addict but I personally wouldn’t go that far though my mum probably would. So of course, having not brought a handbag to Australia with me, I had to buy one. Yes had to. I made Jack stop at the Meyer in Mackay for that exact purpose before we went and met Robin to check into the motel she’d booked us for the night. They both said they didn’t mind, I think they probably lied.

Anyway, I bought my lovely little black handbag in the Miss Shop department of Meyer and I love it. It’s the perfect size, it fits all my essentials in it without Jack being justified in calling it a ‘suitcase’. Black bags are great as they go with everything which is perfect for travelling as the bag goes with whatever I‘m wearing. The gold detailing give it a little bit extra zing and class as well faux leather material. The zip and twist lock on it make it great for security when walking around the cities as well which is again, great for travelling. 

I tend to overstuff my bags but out here I’m trying to keep it to the bare minimal. You’ll always find my Golunski purse tucked inside which I bought in T.K Maxx about two years ago and love. I love the bright colours and it has ample pockets and card slots for everything I need in my purse. Another staple is obviously my iPhone 5, now donning a little crack with a red Belkin case to match my purse, as well as at least one of my camera’s - either the Canon 1100D or the Canon Ixus (some numbers I can’t remember here) but normally they’ll both be in there.

I also always carry a moisturising cream of some kind for my hands and face if we’re on a long trip in the van - air conditioning dehydrates the skin like nothing else. At the moment the little pot of Nivea soft is still serving me well but once it’s empty I’ll probably just re-fill the little pot with whatever moisturiser I’ve got on the go at the time. I also carry my Blistex and Burts Bee’s lip balms with me as my lips seriously crack in the head so it’s good to keep them hydrated. You can’t get the English girl out of me that easy though and of course there’s a packet of tissues in there for any emergency that may occur. 

Yes that is a pair of socks you spy. They’re not always in there but if we’re on a long journey my feet tend to get cold so they’re in there just in case. I also tend to carry my diary and notebook with me just in case I get any ideas for blog posts or something whilst out and about or in the van. 

If we’re out wandering around I’d also have a bottle of water and sun cream in there, probably instead of the notebooks, as they’re an essential out here.

So that’s it, decide to thief my bag and that’s what you’ll have. 

In the outback

In the five months I've been in Australia I've seen a lot of Queensland and most of that has been outback Queensland. When I left the UK I didn't think we’d be spending too much time away from the coast, that’s what everyone pictures when they picture Australia right? But being out in the outback for roughly four of my five months has been the best Australian experience I could have had. 

Jack and I quickly realised, after my arrival, that we wanted to stay in the country for longer than we’d planned and to do that Jack would need to get himself a second year visa. To get this elusive entity the Australia government requires you to do three months work within certain industries within Australia, one of those is rural industries. Luckily for me and Jack we fell into rural work quickly and haven’t really left it alone yet, save a week or so on the coast. 

Back in May we put an advert on Gumtree essentially selling ourselves as ‘young enthusiastic backpackers seeking rural work’. Yes those are the exact words we used to grab potential employers. We weren’t really expecting a response as there are thousands of ‘young enthusiastic backpackers seeking rural work’ out here for the exact reason we were. To our surprise we got an e-mail from a man called Steve offering us three weeks of work in return for board and wages. Three weeks was a good start and would give us some cash to get us going. So off we trundled to a little village called Toobeah in south Queensland not far from Goondiwindi (you should find that on a map a bit easier if you’re interested).

We spent three weeks in Toobeah on Steve and Yo’s farm, Alamagordo. We had the best time, we got on really well with Steve and Yo and were so grateful for the experience they gave us. To top it all of they found us our next batch of work, north west of them, on a friends farm in Augathella. So after three weeks of fencing, general farm maintenance, stair building, veranda renovating and a bit of cattle work, oh and tractor driving not forgetting un-dioreah-ing a horses bum, we left Steve and Yo to head north. 

We’d heard rumours that the more west and more north you go the more wild it all gets, so I was little nervous heading north west (how many times will I get that baby’s name in this post I wonder?). Driving to Augathella the roads got dustier, the land more barren and greenery more sparse. We were in outback Australia and there was no going back.

After I got over my initial Wolf Creek-esque fears, we had an amazing time. We spent three months at Newcome with Robin and Bash (Ian, everyone’s got a nickname out here) and we did so many things we’d never have got the opportunity to do otherwise. We mustered hundreds of cattle, went through two lots of weeners (calves that have been taken of their mum and are being trained to go through the yards) learned to weld, drove tractors, graders, quad-bikes and had over all, a generally great experience and again met some lovely people. 

We headed back to Steve and Yo’s after three months, yes three months, out in Augathella at Newcome. We did some house sitting for Steve and Yo for a week before heading just twenty minutes down the road, a very short trip compared to all other trips we’ve done, to work for Steve’s cousin and his wife, Ian and Rae on their farm, Kondar. 

Again we were so lucky with the people we were working for. They were so lovely and kind and despite the fact they were paying us  and we were doing jobs for them we didn’t really feel like we working at any point. We were knackered at the end of the day but the days are so fun and relaxed and easy going that a days work isn’t a struggle. I got to do a bit of horse riding at Kondar, we looked after a potty calf christened Lucky and we got to watch some camp drafting as well as going along to a couple of social events with Ian and Rae alongside the work obviously. 

We’ve been so lucky with our outback experience so far and all the people we’ve worked for have been kind, generous and so easy to get on with and we’re keeping in touch with all of them which is so nice for us. From our point of view, as backpackers, we probably wouldn’t have come out to any of these places unless it was a requirement for our second year visa and do and see all the things we’ve seen and done so we both think it’s a great idea as it gives us a chance to do those things we wouldn’t otherwise. I know the people we’ve worked for love the idea too as it can be difficult for them to get the people in to do some of the jobs that us backpackers do so it’s a two way thing.

Obviously not everyone out there is as lovely, kind and normal as the people we were lucky enough to work for so it’s important to be careful when you’re going out to the outback as it’s unlikely you’ll have phone signal out there. If you find work from a site like Gumtree, try and check the people out first if you can. Most people are on Facebook now a days so it doesn’t hurt to take a look, but don’t panic if you can’t find them just make sure you let people know where you’re going and ask your employers if you can give someone their details for contact purposes. Also be sure to give your employer a next of kin just in case something goes wrong. We’re lucky that there’s two of us and we have a vehicle. I’m really not sure if I’d have done these things on my own without a car but that’s just me. 

Oh, and don’t watch Wolf Creek before you go out there.