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Hope you are all enjoying the Jubilee weekend so far! I thought I’d get into the spirit of things and wear my pretty vintage rose print dress:

OOTD: black leather look hooded jacket: Topshop, vintage rose printed dress: Beyond Vintage, bright pink satchel: H&M, black tights: M&S, cream flats: Next, gold cat cocktail ring: Topshop

I thought that since I was having a look round town, meeting the lovely Jess for a coffee (love meeting up with other bloggers, I feel like I could chat to Jess for ages), and then going to a little tea party for my Nephews birthday I’d make an effort!

Before all of that I had got up early to get my run in. I have to admit it took every single bit of my will power to get out there, the weather wasn’t exactly great and bed was so nice and warm! I was glad I did it though, 8.5 miles done and dusted. When I have difficulty motivating myself to run I always think about how awesome I will feel when I’m finished. Its a fantastic feeling knowing that you have achieved something and that and you have the rest of the weekend to chill!

After my run I made a gorgeous breakfast:

This was a smoothie made with papaya, full fat coconut milk, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, water and ice topped with Kashi Almond Honey Flax Crunch. This was fantastic and extremely creamy, I’ve been enjoying my full fat coconut milk this weekend! I also had some in my Thai Red Soya Bean Noodle Bowl with Kabocha (this recipe but with Thai Red Curry paste instead of green):

I had roasted up a massive kabocha and it was so good to make this again! I also had the kabocha in one of my other favourite meals with raw courgette noodles featuring this beautiful veggie:

I got this sunny yellow courgette from the green grocers and spiralised half of it with a regular courgette, topped with roasted kabocha and drizzled with some sauce made with sunflower seed butter and sweet white miso:

I know squash isn’t that seasonal right now but I just never get sick of that stuff! I had the other half of the courgette in a big salad topped with hummus for lunch today:

I’ve been loving hummus topped salads recently!

I decided to freeze the leftover coconut milk as I had a few ideas about how I could use it in this way:

I thought that it would be really good just melted into a hot bowl of oats and I was right! I made some slow cooked oats on the stove top mixed with mashed banana, vanilla stevia (would also work with vanilla extract and some sweetener) and a pinch of sea salt. Then I added one of the coconut milk ice cubes on top along with a sprinkling of coconut palm sugar:

I had bought a bag of The Raw Chocolate Company coconut sugar ages ago to experiment with, it was fabulous! It melted on top, almost like caramel. I’m think those coconut milk ice cubes will be great added to coffee or a smoothie and are an excellent way to use leftover canned coconut milk. After the hot oats I cooled off with a peanut butter frappe:

This was another experiment, I blended chilled coffee, rice milk, peanut flour (peanut butter would also work) and ice with a little bit of vanilla stevia. Utterly delish!

Other tastiness was this big smoothie topped with pretzels and chocolate chips:

I had a bit of a random day of eats yesterday after eating lunch late at the tea party. By the time dinner came around all I really fancied was another smoothie! This was spinach, mixed berries and chocolate sun warrior, ice cream heaven in a bowl :-)

I’ve also been getting my bake on this weekend:

I had a couple of brown bananas needing to be used so decided to make up a new recipe. Let me tell you these are damn good! I made these especially for James featuring two of his favourite flavours: Cherry and Almond. Will share the recipe soon!

Other than that I’ve been getting prepared for my little Jubilee get together tomorrow. Its going to be tasty and just a little bit boozy, just how I like it!

How has your weekend been so far? Are you a fan of coconut milk? If you are in the UK are you doing anything to celebrate the Jubilee?

Yesterday we had our little Jubilee get together with our closest friends and family. We used my parents place because its nice and big and has a larger garden. Luckily after a bit of rain earlier in the day the sun came out so the kids (my nephews and my friends kiddies) could play. Oh and how adorable are those kids? They played so nicely with each other bless them! We all ate plenty of cake and those of us not driving or pregnant (one of my best friends and my cousin are both almost 8 months preggers, they both look beautiful with their bumps!) enjoyed more than just a few cheeky drinks :-) The buffet was delicious and included salad, veggies, hummus, olives, salsa, crisps, pie, quiche, pizza, sausage rolls, chilli and garlic sweet potato wedges, my Mam’s home made cup cakes, my cherry and almond muffins and my vegan vanilla cream sponge cake. I also filled some little tea cups with sweeties and marshmallows as a treat for the kids, they looked great on the buffet table! I enjoyed making a dent in the massive amount of Welch’s Grape juice I was sent last week, all varieties tasted really good, the white grape juice went exceptionally well with ginger beer and lime juice and the black grape juice reminded me of some kind of sweets but I just can’t put my finger on which one’s!

Today we are home again and just chilling out before its back to work tomorrow. I’m going to watch the Jubilee Carriage Procession later I think :-) Have you done anything to mark the Jubilee or even just to enjoy the extra two days off?

Last weekend I had a couple of brown banana’s sitting on my windowsill that were just screaming to be made into a tasty baked treat. I was also feeling generous and wanted to make something especially for James. Luckily I have pretty well stocked cupboards full of random things, and on inspection I found that I had some natural glace cherries and some ground almonds. One of James favourite flavour combos are cherries and almond and hence the following recipe was born!

Cherry Almond Muffins (vegan, makes 12 muffins)

• 2 medium ripe bananas mashed
• 1/4 cup of applesauce / baby food (I used a little pot of apple and mango baby food)
• 1/4 cup of rapeseed oil
• 1/2 cup of sugar (I used xylitol)
• 2 tbsp agave syrup
• 1/2 tsp of almond extract
• 1/2 cup of spelt / whole wheat flour
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup ground almonds / almond flour
• 3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 cup of fresh pitted cherries or glacé cherries
• Flaked almonds to decorate

Pre heat the oven to 180c / 350F and line a muffin tin with muffin liners.  Mash the bananas and combine with the applesauce / baby food, oil, sugar, agave and almond extract. Add the flours, ground almonds and baking soda and mix with the wet ingredients. Add the cherries and fold into the batter. Spoon the mixture into the muffin liners filling them 3/4 full. Top with flaked almonds if desired. Bake for 20 minutes until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

These turned out very nice indeed! James loved them, and the few that were leftover went down very well with my guests at my Jubilee party, in fact my friends were going back for seconds!

These turned out lovely and light and moist with a distinct almond flavour and sweetness from the cherries. If you don’t want them to taste super almondy then reduce the almond extract. I also used a mix of spelt flour and plain flour in these to make them lighter, you could make them with all wholemeal or all plain depending on your preference. If you really wanted to up the health factor with these, you could try replacing some of the flour with oat flour – just oats blended in a food processor until they become a fine meal.

I will definitely be making these again soon, they would taste fantastic made with fresh cherries which are so in season right now. They would also work very well with fresh raspberries or any fresh berries. Holy yum!

What’s your favourite flavour combo? Do you treat your partner / friends and family to their favourite foods? What are there favourites?