Welcome to my blog. I intend to publish articles on a regular basis, as most people do. I hope to do this blog justice.
I want to get into a regular rhythm, posting food, music and lifestyle posts twice weekly. Look out for posts in the following order: my life; vegan food (update 21/01/24, this deserves to be something separate); self improvement and dating; and music.
At the moment I am based in Sussex and spend my time on various things: photography, baking, teaching, visual arts, fitness and socialising amongst others. I have a lot of things that I would like to be doing but can’t fit them all in.
In 2021 I decided that I needed to focus on fewer things and, hopefully get more done in the longer term. Over the past few years I have been reading quite a few self-help and online marketing ebooks, blogs and the occasional real book. From this I have a plan. I have made goals and have an ongoing list of tasks to complete and do daily activity tracking. A daily activity tracker allows me to tick off the things that I have done that are regular things in order for me to achieve my goals. Ideally for that, you are supposed to do the same things on a daily basis but with a varied timetable during the week, this is difficult, so I do what I can, when I can. There are other tools that I use for tracking: a monthly finance spreadsheet that I have been doing since 2015, Duolingo, which tracks my language learning and MyFitnessPal, which tracks my exercising and calorie intake.
What are my goals? After having many goals and bouncing between them I have cut them right down. Some of them I have made part of my weekly and/or daily routine. The main goals at the moment are to get this blog off the ground with regular posting; to sell some of my photography work, prepare teaching materials and to sort out my dad’s house. It would also be good to find a woman interested in an intimate relationship. Once these are done, I have more goals to follow, all written down and put away until I have the time to work on them (a suggestion from Growing Gills by Jessica Abel). I will expand more in later posts.
My current daily and weekly tasks include learning Russian, walking 10000 steps, reading a certain amount of fiction and non-fiction, exercising, working on my photography business, social aims, art (drawing/video/animation) and aiming for my goals.
Watch this space to see what’s going on.
Sussex Black
6oz/175g margarine
4oz/125g sugar
4oz/125g/5 tablespoons black treacle
4floz/6 tablespoons/100ml tepid soya milk
8oz/225g self raising flour
3 teaspoon vegan egg replacer
1 teaspoon xantham gum
½ teaspoon baking powder
8oz/225g dried mixed fruit
Preheat the oven to 160ºC/325ºF/gas mark 3.
Grease a deep 8 inch round cake tin.
Cream the margarine and sugar.
Beat in the treacle.
Mix in the oil and soya milk.
Add the dry ingredients and the dried fruit and mix well.
Pour the mixture into the tin.
Bake for 2 hours, then slide a skewer into the cake to check whether it is cooked or not.
If the skewer comes out with cake mixture on, cook for another 10 minutes and test again.
When cooked, place the cake on a rack to cool.
Remove from the tin after 20 minutes.
The recipe is subject to change as I sort out the consistency.
