Ah Summer
Summer is lovely, warm evenings, the sun doesn't set until 10pm, sunshine all day long, *sneeze*... oh yeah and hayfever.
With summer in full swing now; though it may not quite be what I described, this is only England, hayfever has exerted it's death like grip on me. I say death like because sometimes I do honestly feel like it is trying to kill me by making me scratch my eyes out or drown in snot. I know quite a few people suffer from hayfever so I thought I'd share some of my lifesaving techniques and medications.
Tablets - Taking one of these is the first thing I do every morning. There's several brands but I find the Boots own brand stuff works just as good as anything branded. Do make sure to get non-drowsy though or you'll be asleep mid afternoon! There are two different active ingredients - Cetirizine Hydrochloride and Loratadine. I take Cetirizine Hydrochloride as it is the only one that works for me.
Eye Drops - I keep these on me at all times, when my eyes start to itch the desire to scratch is intense. These help reduce and relieve the itching. They also add moisture to my eyes, which can get very dry when in contact with pollen. Again, branded is often no better than non branded, Opticrom is good brand though. Remember, never share eyedrops, and throw away the eyedrop bottle after 4 weeks of being open - practice safe eye care.
Nasal Spray - I have this in my bag for when my nose is very itching and frustrating me. I find it gives little relief though and doesn't work when my nose is running loads. In truth I haven't even opened my bottle for this year yet, but some people find it useful!
Liquid Medication - Some people prefer liquid medication over tablets. I've never seen the attraction and find tablets very easy to take and carry.
On top of medication I carry around a packet of balsam tissues - needed to pretend sniffles and sore noses. Minimizing my exposure to pollen reduces the symptoms I get. Obviously its summer and I want to go outside and enjoy it. When I come back in I try to change my clothes and have a summer to wash the pollen off. Even just washing my face and arms makes a big difference. There are days when my medication and face washing don't manage to beat my hayfever, generally my eyes will start itching loads and become sore and painful. I find laying down with a cold wet flannel over my face the best and easiest thing to beat really sore itchy eyes.
So that is how I get through my hayfever season, which thankfully only has one month left!
At home my parents have a rhubarb plant which grows massive in early summer, we always end up with 3ft long sticks of rhubarb. With so much growing there is only so much crumble and stewed rhubarb one can take, last night I tried a rhubarb up-side-down cake. Now I haven't made an upside-down cake since I was 11, but the principle of fruit with sugar with cake mix on top baked and then turned out upside-down (get where the name comes from??) seems simple.
I followed a recipe I'd found on Pinterest and it was in American cups and sticks which was confusing to convert into grams - I don't get why they didn't just put it in grams to start with, cups is much more confusing!! Anyway, I won't post the link to the recipe I used but I have found some similar ones on BBC Food.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/upsidedownrhubarbpud_83763
http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/146997/Rhubarb-upside-down-cake
Mine didn't look this lovely, I'd used dark brown sugar as I didn't have any light so the cake mixture was a lot darker. I also used Gluten Free flour as one of my housemates is GF. Safe to say the cake still went down a treat, we couldn't wait for it to cool before eating.
A couple of weekends ago my boyfriend and I went strawberry picking in Kent - how British. It was the first day of the season and my god the strawberries were wonderful, nothing will ever beat an English strawberry! We were lucky and thankfully the sun was shining, in fact it was blistering hot, but I can't complain it rained yesterday! Between us we picked 1.5kg of fruit, we were only aiming for one kilo so a little bit over (probably because of me going 'Oh but this one looks really tasty we must have it'. With our bumper crop of strawberries I decided to make a strawberry cheesecake; again something I haven't made for many years and it kind of showed in the final product. It still tasted nice and didn't last long so it can't have been too bad.
I followed this recipe from BBC Good Food. I would say you needed a tiny bit more butter to hold the biscuit base together. I was tempted to try a different recipe but it required more ingredients that I didn't have, and I'm on a tight student budget. All in all though the cheesecake was delicious, I mean how far wrong can you go with fresh fruit, cream, marscapone, biscuits and butter??
I'm just going to leave you with this treat of a video
With summer in full swing now; though it may not quite be what I described, this is only England, hayfever has exerted it's death like grip on me. I say death like because sometimes I do honestly feel like it is trying to kill me by making me scratch my eyes out or drown in snot. I know quite a few people suffer from hayfever so I thought I'd share some of my lifesaving techniques and medications.
Tablets - Taking one of these is the first thing I do every morning. There's several brands but I find the Boots own brand stuff works just as good as anything branded. Do make sure to get non-drowsy though or you'll be asleep mid afternoon! There are two different active ingredients - Cetirizine Hydrochloride and Loratadine. I take Cetirizine Hydrochloride as it is the only one that works for me.Eye Drops - I keep these on me at all times, when my eyes start to itch the desire to scratch is intense. These help reduce and relieve the itching. They also add moisture to my eyes, which can get very dry when in contact with pollen. Again, branded is often no better than non branded, Opticrom is good brand though. Remember, never share eyedrops, and throw away the eyedrop bottle after 4 weeks of being open - practice safe eye care.
Nasal Spray - I have this in my bag for when my nose is very itching and frustrating me. I find it gives little relief though and doesn't work when my nose is running loads. In truth I haven't even opened my bottle for this year yet, but some people find it useful!Liquid Medication - Some people prefer liquid medication over tablets. I've never seen the attraction and find tablets very easy to take and carry.
On top of medication I carry around a packet of balsam tissues - needed to pretend sniffles and sore noses. Minimizing my exposure to pollen reduces the symptoms I get. Obviously its summer and I want to go outside and enjoy it. When I come back in I try to change my clothes and have a summer to wash the pollen off. Even just washing my face and arms makes a big difference. There are days when my medication and face washing don't manage to beat my hayfever, generally my eyes will start itching loads and become sore and painful. I find laying down with a cold wet flannel over my face the best and easiest thing to beat really sore itchy eyes.
So that is how I get through my hayfever season, which thankfully only has one month left!
At home my parents have a rhubarb plant which grows massive in early summer, we always end up with 3ft long sticks of rhubarb. With so much growing there is only so much crumble and stewed rhubarb one can take, last night I tried a rhubarb up-side-down cake. Now I haven't made an upside-down cake since I was 11, but the principle of fruit with sugar with cake mix on top baked and then turned out upside-down (get where the name comes from??) seems simple.
I followed a recipe I'd found on Pinterest and it was in American cups and sticks which was confusing to convert into grams - I don't get why they didn't just put it in grams to start with, cups is much more confusing!! Anyway, I won't post the link to the recipe I used but I have found some similar ones on BBC Food.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/upsidedownrhubarbpud_83763
http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/146997/Rhubarb-upside-down-cake
A couple of weekends ago my boyfriend and I went strawberry picking in Kent - how British. It was the first day of the season and my god the strawberries were wonderful, nothing will ever beat an English strawberry! We were lucky and thankfully the sun was shining, in fact it was blistering hot, but I can't complain it rained yesterday! Between us we picked 1.5kg of fruit, we were only aiming for one kilo so a little bit over (probably because of me going 'Oh but this one looks really tasty we must have it'. With our bumper crop of strawberries I decided to make a strawberry cheesecake; again something I haven't made for many years and it kind of showed in the final product. It still tasted nice and didn't last long so it can't have been too bad.
I followed this recipe from BBC Good Food. I would say you needed a tiny bit more butter to hold the biscuit base together. I was tempted to try a different recipe but it required more ingredients that I didn't have, and I'm on a tight student budget. All in all though the cheesecake was delicious, I mean how far wrong can you go with fresh fruit, cream, marscapone, biscuits and butter??I'm just going to leave you with this treat of a video
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