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Hello everyone, happy Friday! It has been such a beautiful day here in North East England. I’ve been working from home so have been able to sit with the radio blasting, all my windows open and the sun streaming in.

I headed to the gym first thing for a quick workout – 10 minutes of intervals on the cross trainer, step machine, rowing machine and bike (total 40 min) plus my abs and core. This week I changed up my intervals slightly by going from 1 minute intervals to 30 second intervals and changing up speeds and resistance. I also changed a couple of my usual abs exercises – I think its important to change things up every so often a) to avoid boredom and b) to keep your body guessing, changing and working hard!

After the gym I came home and made a great smoothie for breakfast. This contained romaine lettuce, spinach, frozen mango, frozen berries, 2 clemintines, vanilla sun warrior, maca, mesquite, ground flax, water and xanthan and guar gums for thickness:

I topped it with some amazing freeze dried berries and pineapple I had picked up from Julian Graves at the weekend plus a spoonful of drippy smooth peanut butter. Heaven :-)

I decided to get the grocery shopping done this morning and then just work through later this evening (although I actually managed to get everything wrapped up early). I was very happy to re stock my fridge! Please tell me I’m not the only one that gets excited about fresh fruit and veggies? I picked up some lovely purple sprouting broccoli, bok choy, wild spinach, berries and rhubarb yum!

I put some of those veggies to good use in my lunch - I threw together a wonderful big salad containing lettuce, chickpeas, green olives, carrots, spring onions, red cabbage and braggs liquid aminos as a dressing:

I just love olives and they went really well with the chickpeas plus I have leftovers for tomorrow! I also had two sweet persimmons:

As a mid afternoon snack I had a chopped pink lady apple with some coco-peanut dipping sauce (1 tsp of coconut flour + 1 tbsp of peanut flour + water):

The dip was lovely but I think it needed more peanut to coconut flavour – using actual peanut butter would probably be best!

I was craving another simple bowl of grains, beans and veggies for dinner so I made a Buddha bowl creation using 1/2 cup of cooked brown / wild / red rice, 1/2 cup of edamame from the freezer, fried onion, garlic, ginger and chilli, bok choy, purple sprouting broccoli and spinach with a little mirin, shoyu and some gomasio on top:

This was really good, so tasty and filling!

Dessert came in the form of fresh strawberries and half a bar of the green tea dairy free chocolate portion of this 2 bar pack I picked up when I visited York:

I just loved the unusual packaging! For some reason I hadn’t been expecting it to be green, it tasted lovely – like creamy white chocolate with a hint of green tea flavour. Have you tried green tea chocolate before?

So the weekend has arrived and is shaping up to be a great one: a long run in the morning followed by hopefully more sunshine, seeing friends plus plenty of relaxation time. What do you have planned? Hope whatever you are up to you have a good one! I’m off to map out a run route for tomorrow, make a cup of tea and plan a new running playlist – what’s your current favourite track to exercise to? My music taste for exercise is completely different to my normal music taste – I like more dance, R&B, and hip hop music for working out – I need a good beat to run to, but I prefer rock, indie, folk type stuff normally. At the moment I love David Guetta, Rihanna and Robyn for workouts. What kind of music do you prefer to workout to?

I have a bit of a jam packed post for you, so get comfy! I’ve honestly never stopped today, I’ve been cleaning, baking and cooking. I’ve cooked up rice and quinoa, made hummus, soup and cookies! This morning I decided that it has been far too long since I’ve had pancakes for breakfast, plus I wanted to try out my new coconut flour so I made some of Oh She Glows Spelt Pancakes for one (less all the add in’s and plus one tablespoon of coconut flour and two tablespoons of additional almond milk). I also made up a delicious creamy sauce by mixing one tablespoon of coconut flour with some water. I served mine with mango, blueberries and some desiccated coconut:

The coconut flour seems to be a great ingredient! Its full of fibre and when mixed with water turns into a paste (perhaps a little like peanut flour?) or the sauce shown above. It absorbs a lot of liquid so could be great for adding to smoothies for thickness and coconut flavour or even in porridge.

I also got my baking groove on with some fab cookies!

Almond Oatmeal Cookies adapted from Shutterbean (Vegan, makes approximately 16 small cookies)

• 1 cup of almonds (I used 1 cup of almond meal leftover from making almond milk)
• 2 cups of oats
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 cup + 1/4 cup of plain wholemeal flour
• 1/2 cup of grapeseed oil
• 1/2 cup of maple syrup
• Raisins or other dried fruit (optional)

Pre heat the oven to 175c and grease a baking sheet. If using the whole almonds chop them finely in a food processor, then put to one side. Add the oats and salt to the food processor and blend them until they resemble flour. Add the oats to the chopped almonds. Add 1/2 cup of flour, the oil, maple syrup and dried fruit if using and combine well. If the mixture seems a little too wet, add the remaining 1/4 cup of flour. Take heaped tablespoons of the mixture and form into balls. Place on the baking sheet and press down to flatten slightly. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes until golden brown:

I made some plain almond oatmeal cookies and some almond, oatmeal and raisin cookies. I had two of these mid morning with a cup of rooibos tea, they taste really good, sweet and nutty!

Lunch was a big bowl of kabocha squash soup with pumpkin seeds followed by 2 chopped apples:

Mid afternoon I made a big green juice: 2 small apples, 2 kiwis, cucumber, celery, lettuce, ginger:

Dinner was a slice of my veggie loaf with some cheesy leeks (sautéed leeks topped with vegan mozzarella and grilled), steamed purple kale, spring greens and carrot with shoyu:

This was so tasty, I love that veggie loaf and it went amazingly well with the cheesy leeks! Dessert was a couple of squares of RAW cherry dark chocolate and a mug of Japanese cherry sencha green tea:

Comfort versus style

Last week when I posted my outfit of the day I was interested in the comments that indicated that most of us prefer comfort over style. As the week has gone on and I have been out shopping I’ve been pondering that question myself. More recently I have definitely become more attracted to relaxed clothing, but I’d like to think that I can wear this stuff and still retain a bit of style! I seem to have a few basic items that I wear all the time, as soon as I get in from work or on a weekend I’m straight into my sweat / yoga pants, hoodies / zip up tops, leggings, cotton dresses, vest tops and baggy jeans.

It just goes to show how much I love those basics as look what I ended up buying this week!

Zip up top and black sweat pants from Peacocks:

I love these as the top has a few nice details like the roll over neck and roll up sleeves which make it look a little different than just a plain hoody. The sweat pants are sooo comfortable and I love the gathered bottoms of the legs. I could easily wear these with a smart top and ballet flats in the spring.

Denim dress from Mango on sale (£14):

Denim dresses seem to be everywhere on the high street in the new collections (and cost around £40 for a decent one), so when I saw this simple shift dress on sale I thought it was a great bargain. Will be fab with leggings and a little belt, and when the weather gets warmer bear legs and flip flops.

Cotton dress from H&M (£12.99):

So simple and comfortable to wear, will be great over tights, leggings, jeggings or skinny jeans.

My top tips to style up comfortable basics:

• Use accessories like a funky scarf or belt to dress things up a bit. I love wearing some long patterned or wooly socks just peeking over boots to add something different:

• Buy items that have an unusual styling detail like a roll over neck on a zip up top, a print or pattern, stitching or gathering detail.
• Use colour – I have a habit of going for neutral colours which can get a bit boring. I have loads of colourful vest tops which I wear under t-shirts and hoodies to add a bit of colour:

• Mix up smart and casual – my favourite thing to do is pair a hoody with a blazer – smart but oh so comfy and warm! You could even add a little belt around the waist too:

What are your favourite comfortable clothes? Do you think you can be comfortable and stylish at the same time?

Oh, and one more pic before I go, here’s some little postcards I picked up in York. I have the ‘keep calm and carry on’ in full size in my hallway but I loved the other sayings as well:

I’ll be sticking these up around the flat and at work. I especially love the ‘when in doubt brew up’! Speaking of which, a sleepy time tea is calling my name… hope you had a great weekend!