BRAIN FOOD PORRIDGE - COOKING WITH ISLAY

Banana, Honey, Almond and Cinnamon Porridge

Since starting university and getting into the swing of uni life, I have already quickly found myself fitting the lazy stereotype and often find myself skipping breakfast to have an extra ten minutes in bed (especially important for that 9am I have on my timetable on a Monday morning...) I have a couple of exams coming up in the next two weeks before we break up for Christmas and I know that before those I will definitely need a good breakfast and a big mug of coffee so that I'm not sat there falling asleep!

The ingredients for this are all reasonably affordable, and they're mostly the type of thing that once you have them, you can keep them in your cupboard and use them time and time again. As well as that, it tastes delicious! I've been having it for brunch quite a lot recently and it's really kept me full for the rest of the day.

You will need:

- A banana

- Oats 

- Your choice of milk (I use lactose free but you can use normal/soya/almond or whatever you prefer)

- Almonds

- Honey

- Cinnamon

- If you happen to have any other fresh fruit,seeds or nuts hanging around they will pretty much all taste great on it! I sometimes add flaxseeds/ chia seeds/ pumpkin seeds / sunflower seeds/ blueberries to mine

Simply make the porridge as you would normally; I cook it in the microwave for three minutes with a break half way through to stir it but you can do it in a pan or by using one of the individual serving packets if you find that easier

While the porridge is in the microwave, chop up your almonds and banana (plus anything else you've chosen to use) 

After the three minutes are up just assemble it all together with a drizzle of honey and a sprinkling of cinnamon!

This literally takes five minutes to make and there is only a small amount of washing up to do afterwards. This, as well as there being so many brain food ingredients in it makes it the perfect breakfast! From now on I am going to try my hardest to snooze my alarm one less time in the mornings so that I have time to get up and make this before lectures!

INTERRAILING PHOTO DIARY

If you follow me on social media, you will of probably seen that for five weeks during the summer I went Interrailing, you can find out more about it on their website but summarised, they enable you to purchase one train ticket that is valid on near enough any train within Europe for the length of time that you have chosen. I chose the one month global pass, and for two weeks I was with my parents; mostly staying in apartments, and then for the next three weeks I was 100% on my own, doing my own thing and staying in hostels! Pretty much anybody that I met during the trip, or that I spoke to before or after it was so surprised that I did it alone, however it is probably one of the best things I have ever chosen to do! I could stick to my own schedule, do my own thing, meet so many new and exciting people and just have things completely my own way for three whole weeks.

If you would like a much more detailed post with more information on how the actual trip was, my experiences, packing tips, advice on trains or anything along those lines, please do let me know! But for now, here are some of my favourite photos from my trip! I wanted to split it up into separate posts for each county but seeing as I visited 12 countries it would take much too long!

In case you were wondering, I would have to say that my favourite cities were Berlin, Ljubljana and Budapest, however I loved them all for a different reasons!

Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Berlin (Germany)

Warsaw (Poland)

Prague (Czech Republic)

 Bratislava (Slovakia)

Vienna (Austria)

 Budapest (Hungary)

Ljubljana (Slovenia)

Lake Bled (Slovenia)

Zagreb (Croatia)

Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Belgrade (Serbia)

Sofia (Bulgaria)

Again, please let me know if there was anything you would like to know about in a more detailed post, or feel free to tweet me. If you wanted to see any more photos, have a look on my Instagram account.

UPDATES

I realise I have highly neglected my blog with the fact that I haven't posted since March... oops... the only excuse I can give is the same one that everybody else seems to give, in that I was extremely busy and hadn't had the time to fit blogging into my schedule. I took a year out of education before going to university; where I am now, and I squeezed a lot into that year! I was working full time in Russell and Bromley, as well as working nine hours a week in Waitrose, doing a marketing internship which took up another eight hours a week, doing a qualification in marketing and trying to have somewhat of a social life! I was literally often going for a month at a time without having a single day off and often being having 16 hour days by the time I had left for work, finished one shift and then started at my other job and arrived back home. 

This all lead to me becoming stressed and ill and having to be referred to multiple specialists after visiting the doctors and having multiple blood tests done it was noticed that I had levels of stress hormones in my blood that were way above anything the specialist had ever seen before!

If you follow me on social media, you will of seen that I also went travelling for five weeks during the summer (three of those weeks I was completely alone - blog posts to follow!) and you'll also of seen that I have recently move 300 miles away from home to start studying Marketing at Lancaster University, which so far I am loving!

I really missed blogging and being able to have my little portion of the Internet to just be able to share whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I feel like this is somewhat achievable on just social media, however it couldn't do it for me in the way that blogging could, so, I'm back! I'm not going to stress myself out with trying to stick to a schedule, or focus on the comments or page views or anything like I used to, I will be using islaay.com as more of a creative outlet that I can post on and share my opinions!