Bacon and Egg Pie Recipe

This is my favourite recipe for leftovers. The next few days I am just in heaven scoffing down tomato sauce drenched slices of bacon and egg goodness. So I decided since I felt like whipping one up I would take some photos and share my recipe.

Ingredients:

6 Eggs

4 Slices of bacon

 1 Onion diced

5 Button Mushrooms diced roughly

2 Pieces of Pastry

Salt and Pepper to taste

Milk

(I use soy milk but any milk will do!)

 Method:

1. Oil up your pie dish and turn the oven on to 200

2. Place in your onions

 3. Then your mushrooms

 4. And your Bacon

5. And finally your eggs!

6. Season with salt and pepper and place another sheet of pastry over the top. Poke in some air holes and brush the top with milk.

7. Place in the oven for roughly 40min or until nicely browned.

And there you have it! A lovely bacon and egg pie! My pie dish is actually a little bit bigger then other pie dishes so I have to use half another sheet of pastry to fill in gaps but still works fine!

I will have some more photos of the inside up later (I already had pizza for dinner so no pie tonight XD)

Good Luck

Clare from What Sheep Do

Martha's Pantry High Tea!

Having planned this event for months after I missed Robyn's 21st birthday party we finally headed to Martha's Pantry on Cuba St for our sophisticated 1950s ladies high tea. We booked a table for 3pm just in case, as we know how busy Martha's Pantry can get, but luckily, or unluckily, the weather was awful and we were given a table with plenty of space around us.

 The store itself is adorable. Tucked off the side of Cuba, it's a little hard to find but just look for the cute pink signs and you'll see it. They not only do high tea but also have a selection of cakes and teas for the walk in customer to choose from. On your right hand side as you enter is also a bunch of cute tea goods all very vintage themed so I know where to go next time for gift shopping!

We were presented with a large range of teas to choose from from all over the world and ended up going for the day's special pot, Pomegranate Green Tea, and a South African Honeybush Tea. Most of the teas on the menu are caffeine free so very "mental" friendly ^^

The Pomegranate Green Tea Special

South African Honeybush Tea

After being presented with our knitted tea-cosy covered pots we were presented with our cake tier with savouries at the bottom and sweets at the top. Being "good girls" we worked our way up from the bottom. It was worth the wait when we reached our final sweet, a chocolate peppermint truffle, the perfect end to our meal. The best savoury was, for me at least, the salmon pate which filled my mouth with smoothe and rich flavours and left me salivating when it was all done.

The cafe was perfect for catching up and managed to cover all bases from boys to mental health all while sipping on our sweet teas and munching on the goodies before us. We were totally overcome by the cuteness of the shop and every detail caught us out. Even the honey pot was adorable.

All this and the experience set us back $25 each (though my half was taken care of by the beautiful Robyn who kindly pushed me aside and paid the bill). I would more then gladly go back and experience Martha's high tea again as it is well worth the money for the atmosphere and the food. I would highly reccomend it to anyone in town or coming into town looking for a lady's (or gentleman's) morning or afternoon tea or just a cute place to eat some cake.


Enjoy!
Clare from WhatSheepDo

How did I get to this point?

It's a complicated process to get to the conclusion of suicide. So complicated in fact that it takes me writing this entry to fully comprehend the process myself. As a sufferer of both Generalised Anxiety Disorder and a current episode of Major Depression it may seem obvious to onlookers that mental illness would lead me to self harm and suicide. However, before being diagnosed with these issues I had absolutely no conscious bad thoughts at all. My main symptoms of depression were agoraphobia and lack of confidence. I hadn't even considered myself to be depressed due to my good relationship with positivity and humour.

I am of course aware that depression is not just negativity. In fact, in most cases the people who recover from depression require the strongest sense of willpower and hope for the future as the effort taken to battle a mental disease demands constant attention and strength. I feel I am very much a part of the cliche  that the happiest person in the room is most likely the loneliest and saddest of them all. There is not a moment of every day where I do not attempt to cover my pain with a smile from ear to ear. I even go as far as looking in the mirror in an attempt to convince myself of my happiness. But this kind of strategy will not get you far. Everyone knows that you cannot carry that kind of burden for long without collapsing. And though I may have fallen I did not fall as far as to consider before reaching out for help that hurting or killing myself would make things somehow better.

                Enter the question; how did I get to this point?                 

The most obvious answer to me as the subject is the use of medication. On all anti-depressants there is a risk of increased suicidal thinking in subject under 25 years old. This is a risk I didn't take seriously upon taking my first round of medication, Fluoxetine (Prozac). Much like the curse of the "Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers in Harry Potter unable to remain in their post for longer then a year (too nerdy?) I am now stuck in a circle of taking and discarding anti-depressants. I really could be a pharmacy at the moment with the amount of tablets lying around my bedroom. After taking Citalopram (Celexa) for just over 10 weeks my doctor and I decided that it was only making things worse and have once again switched over to a new drug Sertraline (Zoloft) which supposedly acts differently to the past two drugs in avoiding activating chemicals in the brain which increase anxiety. 

After only a few days of taking Fluoxetine I started to have bad thoughts which increased in intensity each day I was on the medication. Without hesitation I returned to the doctor and was prescribed Citalopram based on the fact that I needed something more then just therapy to get me better and Citalopram is said to have less side effects then Fluoxetine I took a weeks break and then continued on my quest for self improvement by commencing the Citalopram. Since all I had to compare with was the Fluoxetine things seemed up at first. I knew it would take weeks for good effects to come in but as the weeks passed by nothing seemed to be changing and the ongoing flow of suicidal thoughts set off by the Fluoxetine continued. 

In the past few weeks my emotional strength has been dwindling and my resistance to those bad thoughts has been weakening. Lack of sleep combined with ever increasing belief in suicide being the answer could not be settled with the simple increase of meds and prescription of Zopiclone (sleeping pills). With the occurrence of a serious episode which very nearly lead to my death I went to see my doctor and had myself taken off the Citalopram with the intention of refusing to take medication at all. However, I found myself being convinced yet again to go down the path of medical treatment and taking Sertraline at least until the doctor is able to organise a review with the Psychiatrist and/or Wellington Mental Health professionals. 

Today is my first day of the new medication and I found my rest period of 48 hours oddly freeing. Though bad thoughts were still dominant I felt somewhat relaxed in the thought that drugs I no longer trusted and did not fully understand were not coursing through my head trying to attack my brain into submission. Though the Temazepam (another stronger sleeping pill) certainly assisted in shutting down my brain at night. I only hope that, by some miracle, Sertraline has my brains best interests at heart and proves my doubts to be false. My intuition (which should not be confused with negativity) tells me differently...

All of this leaves me thinking; did they get the diagnosis wrong? Are anti-depressants, in fact, simply placebo drugs? Am I somehow resistant to all medication used for mental illness?

As far as I know, no one has the answers to these questions at the moment. There are still many mysteries when it comes to the brain and mental illness which is why I feel it's incredibly important that the people going through these issues such as myself contribute as much as they can to research. So much so that I have dedicated my youtube channel and this blog to exploring the process of mental illness treatment and sharing my experiences with those who want to know how the brain functions under the influences of chemical imbalances in the brain.

Please feel free to join me or just follow my day to day life as I attempt to soldier on through the difficulties in the hopes of one day defeating my illness or at least controlling it enough to be able to function in a semi-respectable way (let's not set our expectations too high ^^ I don't think my personality was ever considered "normal").

Kind regards,
Clare of WhatSheepDo