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Hi everyone, happy Wednesday hope your week has been good so far!

These are my eats from last Friday. I had the day off work for a ‘me’ day. I like to have these days when I can as at the moment between work, the business, studying and the blog I work pretty much every day – although most of it I enjoy too much to call work! However taking some time out for myself is really important to me and I think helps me stay sane.  I also made it a ‘rest’ day – well I say rest day, as you will see shortly I ended up getting plenty of physical activity!

I had my warm water and lemon as usual and then tried to decide what I fancied for breakfast. Most of the time I like to have a meal plan to be organised but on Friday I just went with the flow which was great :-) I ended up making myself a stout little socca (I used 1/3 cup of gram flour with half a cup of water, cinnamon and a couple of drops of vanilla stevia) cooked in my mini frying pan topped with cashew butter and a sliced honey crunch apple:

Super tasty, the socca was so bread like it was amazing! I also had a chai mate green tea.

It was a pretty chilly day so I wrapped up warm, OOTD:

Hooded leather jacket: Topshop, stripy scarf: Accessorize, denim shift dress: Mango, plaited tan leather belt: from a Miss Selfridge dress, yellow bag: H&M, black leggings: H&M, brown boots: New Look

I got to Newcastle early and made a bee line for Starbucks:

I got a Gingerbread latte in a red cup, how could I resist? I drank that as I wondered around the farmers market eyeing up the goods:

I got lots of goodies and snacked on a few samples of fudge (yum) and then went to Waitrose where I saw this:

Hell yes! I also picked up a few more random things, headed back through to the Grainger Market for veggies and lastly to Holland and Barrat for vitamins and things in the penny sale. Then it was back to the car and off to IKEA:

I probably should have known better than going to IKEA on the last day of half term, the place was packed!

Quite liking this little desk for my at home work area

It was more of a scoping mission for project re-decorate but I did get a couple of things for home and quite a lot of things for the office. I can’t wait to get that all done!

I had been planning on having a look around the Metro Centre (a big shopping mall) but the car park was packed so I decided to leave that and go and see my Auntie and then my best friend instead :-) Much better than shopping! I had some baby cuddles with my best friends little girl – she is so utterly adorable - and came home via Sainsbury’s for weekend pizza’s for James and something for lunch for me:

I was mega hungry by the time I got home – I made a massive salad with romaine lettuce, cucumber, a full pot of four bean salad from Sainsbury’s and half an avocado.

Then I assessed the haul…

lettuce, kale, celery, beetroot, swede, onions, cooked ham

organic cottage cheese (found that in Waitrose), four bean salad pot, gluten and additive free pork sausages from farmers market, broccoli, potatoes, cauliflower

carrots, puffed brown rice cereal, vitamins, tahini x 2, figs, russet apples, white chocolate (which James has already scoffed), maca powder, sweet chai tea, naturally sweetened mince pie filling (NOM Mince Pie oats), salted caramel milk chocolate from farmers market, Reeces pb cups

KABOCHA!!! Yep I found a stall at the farmers market selling locally grown organic Kabocha – carrying 5 of them plus all the shopping bags certainly gave me a workout! I also got those two jars of tahini as my local Sainsbury’s has stopped selling it :-(

After that I had just enough time for a cup of green tea before I went to the hairdressers for a trim:

Please excuse the dodgy look on my face ;-) I had dyed it myself the night before, definitely still loving the red!

For dinner I thought I would use up some of the things I had bought during the day. While I had been getting my veggies at the market I had bought something I never thought I would…liver! James has gone on about how his Mam used to cook liver for him so I decided to play the good wife and make some for him. I bought ox liver – it was only 50p! I fried it off with onions and then slow cooked in the oven with gravy and some of the pork sausages I’d bought from the farmers market. James was very happy!

For me, I made a very simple sausage and red lentil stew with onion, red lentils, veg stock, tomato puree and 4 chopped sausages (to make a couple of servings):

I had some with steamed broccoli and kale. It was delicious and I have to say those sausages are the best I’ve ever tasted!

For dessert I had a sliced giant persimmon with a cup of full fat Greek yoghurt:

Then a bit later I had a home made salted caramel hot chocolate!

I had loved the sound of these in Starbucks but feedback from my lovely friends on Facebook made me think I’d be better off trying my hand at my own version. I just mixed 1 tbsp of cocoa powder with an equal mix of hot water and warmed unsweetened almond milk, 1 tbsp of dulce de leche caramel sauce, a good pinch of salt and a few drops of plain stevia. It was the bomb!

Then me and James relaxed and watched a movie lying on a duvet on the living room floor :-) Such a lovely day!

I used to think it was really extravagant to take a day off work just to spend it like that, but I truly believe you need to look after yourself before you can look after others. Do you ever have time for a ‘me’ day? How do you spend them?

p.s Please check out my GIVEAWAY for a free registration for the fantastic Foods for Healing Course!