lifestyle
food, recipes, exercise - all of it is here!
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2018 favourites | LIFESTYLE
We’re nearing the end of 2018, and the time has come for me to take a look back over the past year and remember the good, the bad and the ugly. Given that there is no shortage of options for the latter two in the news alone, today I’m focusing on the good parts in my first ever “favourites” post: my favourite books from 2018, my favourite music discoveries, and my favourite places. Best books of 2018 I can’t promise to have read very widely over the year – until June, my reading consisted of university set texts and very little else – but I certainly feel like I have…
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Why we need to denormalise student drinking culture | OPINION
For October’s guest blog over at Unidays, I thought about why and how we normalise a certain drinking culture at university among students, and why I think we need to rethink the narrative around getting drunk. There is no easy solution. It is something we must work on together, as a society. But what I do know is this: nothing will change anytime soon if we continue to normalise unhealthy drinking habits as simply “part of being a student”.
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MENTAL HEALTH | A guide to ‘boring’ self-care
Self-care does not have to be – and in fact should not be limited to – extravagant treats and pampering trips out. It is also not just for when you’re feeling sad and things are already too much. Self-care, as shown in Instagram user makedaisychains’ colourful page which celebrates some of the smaller, basic achievements in everyday adult life, is sometimes a little ‘boring’. It is all too easy to get caught up in the Cambridge bubble, both a blessing and a curse. I love keeping busy, and when the holidays finally roll around and I feel like I’ve just run a very library-intensive marathon, it’s quite exhilarating (in an…
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RECIPE | 5 easy student weekday lunch ideas
Recently I’ve got really into simple yet exciting lunches which are easy to make yet incredibly customisable, meaning I don’t have to have exactly the same thing every day if I don’t want to and I don’t have to spend ages prepping in the kitchen either. Having experimented a fair amount over the past couple of years at uni, I figured I’d share my very favourite easy weekday lunch ideas for student life. All of the recipes below are vegetarian, but can be adapted to include meat if you feel that’s necessary. What’s more, almost all of these can be adapted into packed lunches, which can be prepped in the…
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RECIPE | Halloumi Scrambled Egg
Looking for things to do with halloumi beyond the usual ideas? Want something delicious and so very comforting, but which is super quick to make and also doesn’t break the bank? Of course you do. That’s what I was thinking when I came up with this quick and easy recipe last term. I was tired and stressed and very much in need of comfort food, but I was also trying to save money and avoid eating out as much as possible. I often treat myself to halloumi when I’m doing the weekly shop, often just to fry and put on toast or in basic pasta dishes, but I decided to…
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RECIPE | Easy Creamy Avocado Pasta
This avocado pasta is super easy to make and delicious to eat. Perfect for when you want to fall back on a quick pasta dish after a busy day but you also want something less boring than a jar of tomato sauce. Avocados are rich in healthy fats, and the recipe can easily be made vegan by substituting the milk/cheese for vegan equivalents (or even by changing the milk for oil, and excluding the cheese altogether). What’s more, it’s extremely flexible and can be made to suit whatever you’ve got in the fridge, and doesn’t require any specialist equipment such as a blender or oven, which many student kitchens will…
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3 ways to use social media to make a difference
This is an article I wrote for Unidays. By clicking the link, you will be taken to another website. Social media has, no-one can deny, no shortage of disadvantages – and with recent scandals over Cambridge Analytica, being conscious of what the long-term implications will be is only about to get more difficult. We are playing a whole new ball game – there are no precedents in history for what to do when big companies have access to your data and can use it to tailor certain information to you based on your beliefs, your friends, your hobbies. The rules have to be created as the new technology emerges… and…
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SELF-CARE | Take yourself on a date!
It’s about half past twelve on a Wednesday at the start of term. The sky is a miserable January-grey with an ominous threat of rain to come, the streets are lined with brisk, stern-faced shoppers trying to get all their chores done before the weather gets worse, and I’m tucked away in a warm café with a steaming cup of ginger and lemon tea. Alone. I get kind of anxious about walking into cafés. I never know the etiquette – am I supposed to just take a seat, any seat at all, or is there someone to direct me to a specific one? Do I order at the counter, or…
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STUDYING | Tomorrow: the deadly siren song of procrastination
I have had my fair share of run-ins with that illusionary siren we call ‘tomorrow’. They are a somewhat fishy character, very good at shape-shifting (eight hours passing in the blink of an eye, anyone?), and very rarely a keeper of their promises. Usually composed of Tall Tails, they can be found sitting on Procrastination Rock singing Netflix series theme tunes or brandishing social media logos. Symptoms of encountering a ‘tomorrow siren’ include last minute panic, long library all-nighters and pleading, apologetic emails to supervisors for an extended deadline. A sufferer usually follows this episode by proclaiming ‘never again’ and vowing to tie themselves to the mast of the HMS…
