Halloween Spooktacular Part 1: Pumpkin Spice Syrup

This is Halloween

Everybody make a scene

It's nearly Halloween, and I cannot move for pumpkins - be they lining the walls in the supermarkets, appearing in our coffees or peering ghoulishly out of windows, they're everywhere. Using pumpkins for decoration is big in the UK, but once we're done with our pumpkin lanterns we tend to just throw them out.

Our US counterparts have a different idea - pumpkin and pumpkin flavoured things are huge in America. They blend it, they bake it, they roast it and they worship it. Being on a student budget I kind of didn't want to waste any of the pumpkin I got for the house, so I bought a cooking pumpkin - they're smaller and a lot sweeter than regular carving pumpkins, and they look so darn cute when carved.

In Part One of my Halloween Spooktacular Blog Posts I'll be using the chunks of pumpkin I removed when carving, and in Part Two I'll be using up the rest of the leftover pumpkin.

This year, I finally decided to try something everyone's been talking about: the Pumpkin Spiced Latte.

The hype surrounding this one drink is just insane - it has its own hashtag on Twitter and Instagram (#psl) and the walls of my local Starbucks are decorated with writing encouraging me to come in and try one.

Don't get me wrong, now that I've tried them I love them, but I couldn't drink them everyday: mainly because my budget doesn't stretch that far, and their high sugar content doesn't exactly fit in with my healthy lifestyle. So I decided that I would instead make my own syrup - one that would be healthier, cheaper, and Vegan too.

Pumpkin Spice Syrup (makes 20+ portions)

Time to make: 30-40 minutes
Cost per portion: £0.08
Portion of your 5 a day: 0 (fresh pumpkin counts but not in this quantity)
Calories per portion: 20kcal

You will need:

• 1 culinary pumpkin
• 250ml water
• 100g granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 Tbsp Ground Ginger
• 1/2 Tbsp Ground Nutmeg
• 1 Tsp Ground Allspice
• 1/2 Tsp Cloves
• Roasting Tin
• Tin Foil
• Blender
• Bottle, for the syrup

Preheat your oven to 200c. Carve the pumpkin as you normally would, removing the seeds and flesh and putting to the side the bits of pumpkin removed when carving. These are the bits you're going to use for the syrup.

  Place your pumpkin chunks skin side up on a roasting tray and sprinkle over 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and the rest of the spices. Unfortunately here in the UK we don't have what's called Pumpkin Spice, which is a mix of all these ingredients, and I was not going to fork out £8 just for the only little jar of Pumpkin Spice I could find. Add 50ml of water to the tray and cover in foil. Roast for 20-30 minutes, or until the pumpkin is soft and tender.

Bring to the boil the rest of the water and the sugar, stirring occasionally to make sure all the sugar dissolves. Remove and discard the skin and add the pumpkin and the leftover water in the bottom of the tray, and allow to simmer for 5 minutes before blending until smooth. Sieve the mixture before allowing to cool and bottling.

I'm drinking a pumpkin spice hot chocolate as I write this and it tastes delicious - I think the best part of this syrup is the fact it's so versatile, and it's so much cheaper than buying a single pumpkin spice latte, especially as it can be stored for up to a month in an airtight container. A perfect autumnal drink.

Soup for Sick Students

This week I've felt like Patient Zero for some previously unknown influenza, transmitted via students and causing widespread headaches and sniffly noses.

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration - I've got Freshers' Flu, and it's been going from person to person in my house and making us all feel a bit ill and groggy and generally sorry for ourselves. If I was at home I know exactly what I would do: steal all the tissue boxes from around the house, build myself a little fort with them while vegging out on the sofa or in bed and whine at my mum to make me magic soup to cure my many ailments.

But part of going to university is about growing up and learning to take care of yourself, so amongst the numerous trips I've made to the shops to stock up on tissues I bought myself a massive butternut squash (googly eyes not included).

Whenever I'm ill my mum always offers me something with squash in it, and this oddly-shaped vegetable works miracles, so I decided rather than wait for my mum to hand-deliver a bowl-full of soup - I'd probably be waiting a while to be honest - I would make my own.

Red Pepper and Squash Soup

Time to make: 45 minutes
Calories per portion: 119
Portions of you 5 a day: 2+
Cost per portion: £2.60

You will need:

• 1/2 a butternut squash, peeled and chopped into chunks
• 1 red pepper, chopped into chunks
• 2 sticks of celery, diced
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 250ml vegetable stock
• 1 1/2 Tbsp smoked Paprika
• Oil, for frying
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste
• Blender

Preheat the oven to 200c. Place the squash chunks, pepper and celery onto a baking tray and drizzle with oil and a tablespoon of paprika. You can also add cumin seeds, or teaspoon of cayenne pepper or crushed chilli flakes if you like a little extra kick. Roast the veggies in the oven for 30 minutes, or until soft.

While the veggies are roasting, fry the onion in a saucepan until golden (you can of course fry it in a frying pan, but to save on washing up I fried mine in a saucepan) and make up your vegetable stock.

When the veggies are done take them out of the oven and place them in a saucepan with the onions, stock and the rest of the paprika. Bring it to the boil and then allow to simmer for 10 minutes.

Add everything to a blender or blend with a hand blender in the saucepan until smooth - if it's too thick add a little more water. You can blend hot foods in a blender as long as you remove the stopper, as the steam can cause a mini-explosion in the blender if you try to blend it with the stopper still on. Just cover the hole with a kitchen towl first! Add salt and pepper to taste, then you're ready to serve.

This recipe makes enough for one big bowl if you're feeling particularly sniffly, or some to put in the fridge for the next day. I planned to save some, and then I ate it all. Whoops.

The paprika adds a little kick that helps clear out your sinuses and I ate mine topped with black pepper and a spoonful of sour cream. If you've never tried squash before, it's so worth buying on just to try this soup - I may even head back to the store later on to get another squash for more.

Does This Make Me Look Fat?

When I pick up a jumper, a pair of jeans or a jacket, I don't think about the patterns, or whether the colour will compliment my skin tone: the one thought that goes through my mind is will it make me look fat - and it can influence when and where I go shopping, and who I go with.

This week was the Churchill Square Student Lock-In, and I was both excited and terrified about going - I love the feeling of finding new clothes as I enjoy looking good and keeping up with the latest fashion trends but sometimes I have this mean little voice in the back of my head whispering that everyone, including the friends I go with, are looking and judging me because I won't fit; because I'm bigger than them; because I don't belong here. It's probably why I have so much makeup and so many shoes - they don't discriminate.

Last year I went with my flatmates, who I'd really only just met and who were a lot skinnier than me, and I didn't buy anything because I couldn't bring myself to try on a size 3 times larger in front of them and risk humiliation. This time I went back with one of the girls I went with last year, and I was able to try things on, but it got me thinking - was it because I was more comfortable with her, or because I'm a good 20lbs lighter and able to shop more easily in the same kind of stores?

Issues with size and weight affect almost all of us, especially those who are larger than the perfectly poised mannequins I was confronted with in store windows - I'm definitely not trying to skinny-shame, as that just passes the humiliation associated with being a certain size from one person to another, but when surrounded by plastic thighs the size of toothpicks it's hard to not feel like I was huge and should be directed to the plus-size clothes.

The Google definition of plus size is something that is 'outsize' or outside of the norm, and the current average size of women in the UK is a Size 16. So if that is normal, then why did I feel so huge at a 16 and continue to feel overweight now at a 14?

I wanted to find out what the students I was shopping with felt like, so my friend and I asked our fellow shoppers their opinions on what a plus size is and would they consider themselves, or myself, to be plus-sized.

Of the shoppers we asked, half believed that they were plus-sized - which just astounded us, as we had asked people of different body shapes and personally, I felt barely a quarter were technically 'plus-sized'. We also asked the students what they thought the average size of UK woman was, and the answers ranged from size 8 to size 16, with the average being a size 14.

A quarter indicated that they felt that I would be plus-sized too - I was wearing the outfit above, so nothing too tight and clingy and nothing that drowned my frame. This feeling of being outside of the norm was just exacerbated when we went into Zara. I asked what size the XL equated to and was told that it was a size 14. I didn't feel extra large, so why was I being labelled as such?

I asked my friends their opinions on plus sizes and they all said similar things - that they found it frustrating at the lack of diversity in clothes for them and their friends, and that some struggled to shop with others because they felt self-conscious and worried they would be judged. As one put it succinctly: 'we define ourselves as plus size because that's what the stores tell us'.

It's unfair that so many of us struggle with issues over the way we look, and part of it is down to shops in our local shopping centres and the term 'plus-size' - we're not out of the norm just because we have curves, and when stores like Topshop, Zara, Miss Selfridge and Pull and Bear (which were the busiest stores all evening) only stock up to a 14-16 it doesn't support a healthy body image - I'd been happy with my progress on my weight loss journey, but to know that I would still be considered large in the shops I frequent really dragged me down, and that is not okay. I am eating correctly, I am healthy, and I'm more than just a plus-size label, nor should I let it get to me in the way that it has.

Nobody puts Baby in the plus-size corner.

Skin That's Just 'Lush'

Looking after your face and your skin is the most important thing in any makeup and skincare regime. It's one of the first things you notice about another person and bad skin is a source of a lack of self-confidence in so many people.

Everyday we're confronted with images of smooth-skinned women in the media, with barely a blackhead or blemish in sight, and for me and a lot of people I know having glowing, spot-free skin like Cate Blanchett's is something I dream about. Honestly, I don't even think my skin was that smooth when I was born!

I've struggled with acne since I was about 14 and, like many teenagers, I had this idea that it was something that only teenagers dealt with and as soon as I hit 18 they would disappear overnight.

That didn't happen.

It's now becoming clear that I will be dealing with spots my whole life, and I really am not enjoying this. I have combination skin - which means that I have patches of dry, flaky skin and other areas that are particularly oily - and then on top of that I get blackheads and hormone-related spots. Essentially, I never have clear skin, and I have tried everything to combat this. I've tried face masks; I've tried scrubs; I've tried harsh cleansers; I've tried going completely makeup-free: big-name brands or high street products - you name it, I've tried it.

So when a friend recommended I start using Lush products, I was intrigued - they use natural ingredients to create a multitude of cleansers, moisturizer, bath bombs and other items, and they make sure to use only ingredients that haven't been tested on animals, which is something that really spoke to me.

It was a little overwhelming, standing in front of 15 different moisturizers not knowing which one to try, but the staff at my local Brighton store were so helpful when I asked for advice and it's something I've noticed in other Lush stores too; they know their products and ask the right kind of questions to narrow down the products that will work best for you.

It was suggested I try Angels on Bare Skin as an everyday cleanser, with the mild Ultrabland to use when taking my makeup off in the evenings; the sweet-smelling Eau Roma Water toner to calm redness and hydrate the skin; the zesty Ocean Salt face scrub to help clear my pores; and the mattifying Enzymion moisturizer to combat my combination skin.

I've been using the products for just over a month and almost immediately after I started using them I saw such a visible increase in my skin. Excuse the pout but this was the difference in a week and a half: 

My pores are smaller, my skin is more balanced, and the products smell so divine it's a joy to use them everyday. The only downside is the price, which are a little student unfriendly and just seem to be going up and up - when I first found the Enzymion moisturizer it was £11.95 and last week when I checked online it had gone up to £14.50, which is a tad frustrating.

There's no denying the products work though, and it's refreshing to know what exactly I'm putting on my face - they also offer free samples of the products so you can ensure before buying that they won't cause a reaction. I'll never have supermodel skin, but I feel a lot more comfortable without my makeup on. Thankyou Lush!

#TOPSHOPBrightonRock

Last week marked the end of the refurbishment of Brighton's Churchill Square with the opening of a brand new Topshop store, and for some ridiculous reason I decided to get up at 7am to attend the launch. Boy was it busy.

Yes, that guy was giving out free Starbucks, and no, I didn't end up getting any. I regretted that for the hour and a half I queued. Now you might think I'm crazy for queuing that long just for a store opening, but there were free goody bags for the first 250 customers. We students will do anything for a freebie.

I also wanted to check out Topshop's AW14 Collection - I've never been able to shop at Topshop easily before as their largest size is a 16, which always end up running about 2 sizes smaller, but having almost hit the 20lbs mark on my weight loss journey I was eager to find out if this was about to change.

The store is huge, and filled to the brim with this year's A/W fashion must-haves: one of the first things I spotted was this blanket scarf, which is so similar to the Burberry poncho, and an entire section of Topshop's own makeup products. There were so many super-soft coats in pastel blues and creams, and jeans galore.  Even better, the store was well-stocked and I even found a few tops that fit me, but the life of a student sometimes means choosing between the essentials in life. If I didn't have an empty fridge I probably would have bought one of everything.

As it was the store opening we were given goody bags, listened to a live dj, could be photographed in a pop-up photo booth and - for the quickest customers - were given free makeovers on the makeup counter. I wasn't a quick customer unfortunately, but I did manage to get my hands on a goody bag filled with Topshop treats. Those lollies tasted so good.

 The lipsticks I got were in two shades - Hazard and, fittingly for the Brighton opening, Brighton Rock - and I also treated myself to a brow pencil. It's not something I currently own as I really am not a fan of the unruly brow look but I wanted to try something new.
The Topshop lipsticks are also a new product to me, as I usually use Sleek or No. 7 lipsticks, but I've heard great things about them and so far haven't had any problems with them. They're long lasting, they don't dry my lips out as some mattes have a tendency to do, and they feel almost satin-y when you apply them. In the first photo below I'm wearing Hazard, in the second I'm wearing Brighton Rock, and I've used my brow pencil in both.

 

My only issue with them is how easily they transferred onto my coffee cup, but even then it wasn't that bad.

The free makeup was, of course, a great incentive for me to attend the launch but honestly the best part was trying on a clothes that I could fit into, when 3 months ago I would have just looked at it wistfully. It's a great place to be right now.