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Hi everyone, happy Friday! Hope your all ready to enjoy the weekend. Loved reading your comments to my Green Smoothie post, if anyone would like to join in with the 7 days, 7 smoothies challenge please feel free!

I’ve had a great couple of days off which have been spent doing my favourite pass times: shopping, cooking, eating, reading and exercising!

I started Thursday morning with a home workout. I decided that I wanted to get my workout completed early and as my gym doesn’t open until 9am on a Thursday I checked out my DVD collection and went with Davina Fit: Top Fit and MTV Yoga which gave me a total 1hr 15 min workout. I was starving after this but luckily I had prepared breakfast in advance:

My Vanilla Chia Wheat Germ Breakfast Pudding with two chopped white nectarines, yum!

I spent the morning getting all the grocery shopping done which included a trip to the farm shop, green grocer, Tesco and Sainbury’s – yep, there’s some stuff that Tesco do cheaper than sainsbos and some stuff I just prefer from sainsbos so I did both!

Lunch was some raw wraps made with spring green leaves, sunflower seed butter, carrot, pink lady apple and basil. I also had 4 clearspring sesame tamari rice cakes on the side:

I love these wraps they are amazingly tasty and filling!

Mid afternoon I fancied a big green juice so I juiced up 1 pear, 3 romaine leaves, celery, cucumber, broccoli, spinach and lemon, it was delicious!

Dinner was an awesome Buddha bowl. I combined roast kabocha squash, edamame, quinoa and chopped parsley with a lemon juice, braggs seasoning and cool oil dressing and served it up on top of some steamed broccoli and purple sprouting broccoli with shoyu. I also added some viva pure spicy pumpkin seeds:

This was so so good, I adore kabocha, nothing else comes close to the sweetness and texture of it, delicious!

Dessert was two raw vegan brownie bites topped with coconut flour ‘icing’:

Delish! I also had two unpictured fiji apples.

This morning I was up and off to the gym. I did 1 hour of intervals on the cross trainer, step machine, bike and rowing machine. Oh, and that’s 1 hour total, not one hour on each! I think the way I write that can be misleading sometimes, I do 15 minutes on each machine for a total 1 hour workout. I finished off with my abs and core exercises.

Breakfast was the first green smoothie of my Green Smoothie Challenge:

Apple Pie Green Smoothie (makes one large serving):

• 5 large kale stems (with thick stems removed) – or greens of choice
• 1 frozen banana
• 1 pink lady apple, chopped
• 2 ice cubes
• 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder (I used sun warrior)
• 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp of ground ginger
• 1/2 cup of rice milk
• 1 tsp of maca (optional)
• 1 tsp of spirulina (optional)
• 1 tsp of ground flax (optional)
• water to desired thickness
• 1/2 – 1 tsp of xanthan gum (optional but adds thickness)

Topping

• 1 tbsp of almond butter
• 1 tbsp of granola (I used viva pure raw apple granola)
• cinnamon

Add ingredients to blender in order listed above, blend. Top with the almond butter and granola and a dusting of cinnamon, devour!

This really did taste like apple pie, so lush! I loved the drippy almond butter on top.

James had the day off too so we headed to Newcastle – I got the most gorgeous ultra skinny jeans and coat from H&M, pics to come over the weekend! I also got stocked up on my favourite yogi teas and soya beans from the health food shop. We were going to have lunch in town but ran out of parking time so when I got home I threw together a tasty salad containing lots of mixed green leaves (spinach, romaine, lambs lettuce and parsley) carrot, red pepper, cucumber, sugar snaps, spring onion and spicy roasted chickpeas and a peanut lime dressing (1 tbsp of peanut flour, lime juice, water and shoyu):

I also had an orange. Later in the afternoon I had another green juice. Dinner was leftovers of last nights Buddha bowl with spring greens instead of broccoli.

Last week I said that I had came up with a recipe using the leftover pulp from making my sesame milk – and here it is!

Raw Chocolate Sesame Tart (makes 4)

• 1 cup of leftover sesame pulp (from making milk)
• 2 tbsp of raw cacao powder
• 1 tbsp of agave syrup
• 1 tbsp of coconut oil, melted

Combine all ingredients and divide mixture between 4 tart cases with removal bottoms. Store in the freezer until needed then remove from tart case 10 minutes before eating, enjoy!

I served mine with some fresh strawberries and figs, it tasted fab!

I really enjoyed my big grocery shop. I was due one as the last time I really properly stocked my cupboards was October. I like to do a huge shop to stock up then I just work my way through everything. As well as the store cupboard type stuff I also got a fantastic haul of fresh produce from the farm shop and green grocers:

 

Yep, this filled my kitchen!

I’m looking forward to some delicious meals using this stuff for the coming week. I was also pretty good and stuck to my list apart from buying two new items:

Hemp milk:

Carob flakes:

Both spotted on Jessica’s blog. I had a taste of the carob flakes and oh my word they are so good! Have you tried hemp milk or carob flakes before? What did you think?

Do you do a monster grocery shop every so often or do you just get things in each week? I love having fully stocked cupboards then just picking up a few fresh items when needed.

Any exciting plans for the weekend? I’m out for one of my best friends birthday’s on Saturday night along with the usual family visits and my long run. I’m not looking forward to the clocks going forward, it always messes with by bio clock!

Hope you have all had a great week and enjoy your weekend!

Well I can’t believe another Sunday has almost been and gone, I’ve had a lovely weekend and another productive one, love crossing things off my to do lists!

The weather yesterday was amazing!

I started my weekend on Friday night with a lovely meal of apricot and ginger glazed kabocha squash, adzuki beans and millet with parsley and some steamed greens:

I also tried some of the Coyo yoghurt for dessert:

This was the mixed berries variety with some Kashi Crunch cereal, it was lovely, very much like the home made coconut yoghurt I’ve been making recently. I also had some for breakfast yesterday with two chopped pears, oats and dried cherries:

Yum! Yesterday I made a big bowl of kelp noodles with spiralised courgette and an avocado and lime sauce topped with nutritional yeast:

Unfortunately this just wasn’t that good! Luckily, most of my meals are tasty and satisfying but this was just meh. Half of it went in the bin. Instead I had a bowl of grapes, chopped apple and more Kashi Crunch:

Followed by a gorgeous mint chocolate protein shake:

This was just one scoop of chocolate sun warrior blended with ice, stevia and peppermint extract. It was amazing and made up for the meh lunch!

Last night I made a quick chickpea and spinach curry using garlic, ginger and garam masala fried in coconut oil with the chickpeas in a tomato sauce (just some plain passata) and spinach:

I had it with some steamed broccoli and more of the glazed kabocha on the side. That curry took 5 minutes to make and tasted so good! For dessert I had what is probably the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time:

Pretzels with strawberries and peanut dip! I made the dip with peanut flour, maple syrup and water. The pretzels dipped in the peanut sauce = absolute heaven! Unfortunately as lovely as that was it didn’t satisfy my snackies last night and I ended up having a late night party with several bowls of oats, dark chocolate buttons and Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter while watching Confessions of a Shopaholic. Oops! I just can’t seem to get past these weekend snack fests but I’m trying not to beat myself up about it.

At least I was well fuelled this morning for a 5k treadmill run, 20 minutes random on the bike and my kettlebell class – which was a killer, have any of you done kettlebell star jumps? I thought I was going to die!

After that I had a raw protein buckwheat bowl with vanilla sun warrior protein powder, maca, ground flax, chopped apple and cinnamon:

Then lunch was a nice healthy salad with little gem lettuce, carrot, red cabbage, edamame, roast edamame and a sweet miso and apple cider dressing:

As I’m looking to try and maintain my albeit heavier weight, I’m still trying to balance out those snack fests by just getting back to eating good healthy food the next day, not restricting and not feeling guilty.

Yesterday after visiting my Mam for Mothers Day, I had a lovely time with my best friend and her little girl including a nice walk in the sunshine and eating one of the peanut butter cookies her little girl had made:

I doubt these were vegan and were made with white flour and refined sugar but I gladly enjoyed one (these are the ones I brought home for James). It got me thinking about where I draw my lines when it comes to healthy eating and of course veganism. As long as I’m living healthfully, ethically and right by my body most of the time I’m not going to turn down a one off cookie home made with love and eaten over a cuppa with my best friend. So where do I draw the line then? I’m one that never says never but I can’t imagine any scenario when I would eat meat again. I only eat eggs and diary when they are tiny trace ingredients in some things like dark chocolate and would only consider eating them whole again if my body was really craving them and if so I would always go for organic / free range. I choose not to eat refined carbs like white flour, refined sugar or processed foods on a regular basis because I don’t see them as healthy and they don’t make me feel at my best. However as demonstrated above, sometimes I’ll say screw all that under special circumstances because life is too short not to eat a cookie made with love! I’m not one for labels and I firmly believe that everyone is different so I’m not making judgements here on how others eat, but I’m interested in your thoughts…

When it comes to healthy living, where do you draw your lines?

Hi everyone, hope your having a great week! I’m just busy trying to get back into a routine after being on holiday last week. Coming back to reality sucks but I do like to have a routine, and being able to be home and make my favourite green smoothies has been great. After a few days I had a serious craving for greens! I love that WIAW has a theme this month, I kind of missed it last week with me being away so but I’m definitely up for it now, goodness knows I love my veggies! I thought it would be interesting to do a portion count of how many veggies I eat in a day. These are my eats from yesterday:

I was back to my usual Tuesday routine so got up early to get in a quick yoga podcast before work. I did the 20 minute Yoga for Runners and boy did I need it, I was feeling so stiff! After that I had my warm water with lemon juice, got ready and decided to celebrate my recipe being in the new release of Kris Carr’s e book Crazy Sexy Juices and Succulent Smoothies by starting the day with a big green juice!

This was 1 cucumber, 1 head of romaine lettuce, 4 stalks of celery, kale stems, ginger and lemon (3 portions of veg) it tasted lovely! I’ll promise I’ll stop going on about Crazy Sexy Juices and Smoothies but I’m just so excited! Seeing my name in amongst others like Gena Hamshaw and Chad Sarno is just crazy. I got my copy of the e book last night and it is really fab, I have loads of ideas for tasty juices and smoothies I can’t wait to enjoy. In addition to the juice I decided to use some sunflower seed milk I’d made the night before in a matcha green tea latte:

I’d made the milk using sunflower seeds (1/2 cup soaked 8 hours, drained, rinsed and blended with 2 cups of filtered water then strained) and added some lucuma powder and vanilla stevia drops for sweetness. It frothed up pretty well!

I also took all my supplements and drank a couple of cups of green tea. Once I’d settled in at work I had breakfast no 2. I really enjoyed the simple breakfasts I’d had in Brighton of just fruit with nut butter for spreading so I made one again:

This was 1 large banana, 2 apples, a bowl of cherries and about 3 tbsp raw dark tahini and honey for spreading along with a mug of chai green tea, I just love spreading the nut butter on the banana:

Nom!!!! That raw dark tahini tastes amazing!

For lunch I had a bowl of Kabocha and Adzuki Bean Stew which was leftover from the weekend, accompanied by some of my home made almond and rosemary raw crackers:

Delish! (about 2 portions of veg)

Before I left work for the gym I snacked on some dried prunes and apricots for a little pick me up:

It was the usual Tuesday evening gym session of 20 minutes of HIIT on the cross trainer and bike followed by my Body Pump class which was my first in two weeks. I decided to try and stick with my usual weights and it was tough!

Once I got home I fixed a tasty dinner of baked tempeh with stir fried veggies:

I’m just in love with tempeh at the moment. I’d marinated it in shoyu, honey, ground ginger and garlic powder then baked for 30 minutes at 200c flipping once. This was actually baked on Monday night so all I had to do was warm it back up. The stir fry included broccoli, courgette, carrot, red cabbage and spring greens which I just added a little fresh ginger and shoyu for flavour (at least 3 portions of veg).

While we were watching TV after dinner I snacked on a couple of jazz apples:

Then later on I fancied something chocolaty so made up some double chocolate protein pudding by mixing a scoop of chocolate sun warrior protein powder with water and swirling in a chocolate sauce made from raw cacao powder, agave syrup and water then topped it all off with some cacao nibs and gojis:

I also made a delicious chocolate mint rooibos tea:

I love that tea, it has such a good flavour and reminds me a bit of the Teapigs chocolate flake tea but caffeine free!

So I think I had a fairly veggie packed day, I had at least 8 portions of veg including:

• Cucumber
• Celery
• Romaine
• Kabocha Squash
• Broccoli
• Red cabbage
• Carrot
• Courgette

I love eating a variety of veggies! I think I probably must average about 7-8 portions of veg a day, sometimes more if I’m having a green smoothie plus a salad. I know that when it comes to my leafy greens I don’t feel quite right after a few days of not having them!

How many portions of veg do you tend to eat in an average day?

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?

Hey everyone, hope you're having a great Wednesday! I’m having a good week so far, I had another great healthy eating workshop at the community centre last night. As its Wednesday that can only mean one thing:

These are my eats and goings on from Sunday. I started the day with a very early run, we wanted to go to the cinema to see the Avengers movie and make the early showing so that meant an early start, no Sunday lie in for me!

As usual I had my warm water and lemon then got all suited and booted for some where around 6 miles of horribly cold and windy running. Even though I had two pairs of gloves on my fingers were numb and ached. I can’t say I enjoyed the run much but the hot shower afterwards was great! For breakfast I decided to indulge in a slightly unseasonal squash smoothie:

This is quite an autumn / winter type smoothie but considering the weather we’ve been having you wouldn’t guess it was May! I had a bag of roast kabocha squash in the freezer that needed using up so I’d defrosted it overnight and blended it with ice, two scoops of vanilla sun warrior, ground flax, cinnamon, ginger and a little vanilla stevia. Then I topped it with some of my raw tamari ‘roasted’ almonds, dried cherries, dried pear and maple syrup. It was divine! Then I needed coffee:

I had that mug x 2. It was the last of my vanilla coffee and I must buy some more, its Wednesday and I’m already having coffee withdrawals!

I thought I’d save some money on the expensive cinema snacks by taking my own. I had two large chopped carrots, home air popped popcorn, pretzels and some dried mulberries plus a bottle of water:

Those snacks kept me going nicely! The movie was awesome, James is a self confessed Marvel fan and it was geekasms all round! Once we got home I was pretty hungry so grabbed some rice cakes and topped them with red pepper hummus. I also had a pink lady apple:

A little later on I would have usually made myself a green juice but I have to admit I just couldn’t be bothered to clean up the juicer afterwards. I also felt like I needed something a bit more substantial so I made a basic green smoothie instead:

Spinach, banana, water and stevia. Quick and easy and hit the spot! I had two big mugs full.

Dinner was absolutely fantastic! I just had a couple of slices of baked marinated tofu, half a giant baked sweet potato topped with almond butter and lots of steamed broccoli with soy sauce:

For something pretty simple it tasted so good! Then for dessert I decided to treat myself to a bar of Raw Dark Mint Chocolate from The Raw Chocolate Company:

This chocolate is the bomb! I put it in the freezer for 20 minutes so it was hard and crunchy, very good indeed! After that I made myself a hot chocolate:

This was 1 1/2 scoops of cococardio with water and stevia. It was perfect for such a cold and blustery evening!

I’m pretty happy with my eats but I feel like I should have probably ate a bit more after running that morning. It is good to notice some different habits are forming though. Usually I would have just had one scoop of protein powder in my smoothie but after seeing how low the calories would have been I made sure I added the extra scoop and additional almonds on top to give it more saying power. I would also never ever have eaten a full bar of chocolate like that either. Even though those are small bars, I would have only allowed myself half. Boy did I enjoy eating the full thing! I think this shows me the difference between eating to lose weight and eating to maintain weight, and how for a long time I didn’t make that shift.

What’s your favourite cinema snack? Do you take your own or buy it at the theatre?

I absolutely loved that tofu, broccoli and sweet potato dinner! What’s your favourite simple but really tasty meal?