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Hi everyone, hope your week has been good. I’m happy its the weekend after the crazy week I’ve had!

Yesterday I had my second late night meeting of the week so I was back to working out at home in the morning again. I did levels 2 and 3 of the 30 Day Shred back to back followed by the yoga stretch section of the Davina Fit DVD.

Breakfast was a wonderful Blueberry Cookie Smoothie inspired by HEAB’s cookie dough smoothie and the various other variations around the blog world:

To make this I soaked 1/3 cup of oats and 1 tbsp of chia seeds in 1.5 cups of water overnight in the fridge then blended it with a scoop of cookies and cream spiru-tein protein powder, a dash of vanilla extract and ice. I then poured this over half a punnet of blueberries, using the other half on top along with a crumbled Almond Oatmeal cookie (from my freezer stash). I don’t need to tell you how good this tasted!

Yesterday’s lunch was leftover Quinoa and Edamame Citrus Salad with watercress, red lettuce and braggs liquid aminos plus an un pictured braeburn apple:

This was so tasty, really love that salad – and it did taste better after the flavours had melded overnight! I also snacked on the last of my Cheesy basil and white bean dip with ryvita pumpkin oat crackers and a huge pile of chopped carrot, sugar snaps and red pepper.

After my evening meeting it was time for smoothie No 2. This included romaine, red lettuce, frozen cherries, frozen strawberries, carob powder, coconut flour, vanilla hemp protein powder, ice, water, xanthan gum, guar gum and stevia. I topped it with some peanut flour sauce, carob chips and coconut shreds:

I had totally forgotten about my carob powder and flakes – they tasted so good in this smoothie!

Today has been another crazy one as we have had a big event on at work. I was up early and made a lovely breakfast of strawberries, plain soy yoghurt, crumbled sunshine muffin and PB & Co white chocolate wonderful peanut butter:

This was really delicious and so filling!

I struck vegan buffet gold at our event – I enjoyed several big portions of fruity spiced couscous, rice and beans, fruity salsa, salad and veggies:

These dishes were absolutely wonderful! I hadn’t been expecting they would have anything suitable for me so I was pleasantly surprised. The fruity spiced couscous was full of grapes and dried fruit, just so tasty! I happily loaded up on this as it will fuel me well for my planned 12 mile run tomorrow.

After work I hit the gym and did a 3,2,1 workout for an hour. It felt good to be back in the gym after this weeks home workouts! I went easy on my legs for the strength component so I didn’t max them out for tomorrows run.

Dinner was Hippy Beans from the freezer with steamed kale and broccoli for a quick and tasty meal:

For dessert I made a huge bowl of double chocolate orange protein ice cream:

One scoop of chocolate sun warrior, 2 tbsp of Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp of orange extract, 1.5 cups of ice, water, stevia, xanthan and guar gums topped with a few candy covered sunflower seeds. This hit the spot!

Grocery shopping

It seems that most of you are interested in me posting details of grocery shops, glad I’m not the only noisy one ;-) I really need to get a handle on my grocery shopping as I’ve been getting into the habit of buying things I don’t need – particularly fresh produce. What can I say, I just love my fruits and veggies! They all look so beautiful but I end up getting too much then struggling to find ways of using it up before it goes bad.

My plan for the next few weeks is to:

• Do 1- 2 smallish shops and 1 larger shop a week – as my diet is so full of fresh veggies this seems to be the best way to ensure things don’t go bad before I get to eat them. I just need to be careful I don’t get sucked in by special offers and buy things I don’t need.
• I already meal plan but I need to start considering James meals a lot more in order to save money.
• Obviously I love my speciality healthy foods and it seems the more stuff I buy the more unusual (i.e. expensive and difficult to get hold of) stuff adds on to my ‘staples’ list. Recent additions include stevia drops, teeccino and peanut flour. I know that none of these are really essentials but they add so much to my enjoyment of food I do want to continue to buy them, I just need to do so in the cheapest way possible! I’ve started getting things on iHerb via the cheaper airmail option instead of DHL and I have an excellent deal going with one of my new sponsors for June – Goodness Direct which I’m very excited to share soon!
• Eat through my cupboards and freezer. I have so much stuff that needs to be used before it goes out of date and I have no more room in my freezer for extra portions of recipes anyway so I need to start getting creative with what I have before I buy anything new.

To start me off here’s my fortnightly organic veg box delivered today:

This includes salad greens, spring greens, asparagus, courgettes, cucumber, celery, bunched onions, pears, apples and bananas.This box cost £16.75 with Riverford Organics.

I’m going to be using up these beautiful fruits and veggies over the next few days in a variety of dishes. I know that organic produce certainly isn’t cheap, but I do believe in buying organic when I can. Getting these boxes once a fortnight is better value than the supermarket and forces me to be creative with its contents!

I did do a big budgeting challenge on the blog last year and I’ll be re visiting my tips for shopping on a budget to help me refocus!

Have you got much planned for the weekend? I’m so glad its a long bank holiday for us in the UK! I plan on doing my long run (12 miles, eek!) tomorrow morning and then we may have a trip into Newcastle and the usual catching up with friends and family.

Hopefully I won’t end up buying too much fresh produce at the market tomorrow – well at least stuff that I know I will be able to use! What’s your biggest issue when it comes to being frugal with your grocery shopping?

Hope you have a great weekend!

Hello everyone, I can’t believe it is Wednesday already! Hope you are having a good week, mine has been pretty busy…

As I was working late on Tuesday evening I needed to fit my usual workout in before work and at home (as my gym doesn’t open till 9am on a Tuesday). I decided to dust off the old 30 Day Shred DVD and did Levels 1 and 2 back to back followed by my usual Yoga for Runners podcast. I totally forgot how tough that DVD is! This morning I was up for an early morning run. I decided to do some hills so I did 3 laps of my ‘hilly’ route for a 7 mile run in 1.04 with a 9.11 average pace. Considering the hills and the fact that the last time I did these laps my average pace was 9.24 I was very happy! When I got home I did my abs and core exercises too.

As I’ve been trying to balance things with time at work and home, eats have been easy and speedy, but always tasty of course! Yesterday mornings breakfast was lovely:

Toasted quinoa and amaranth bread with MaraNatha Almond Butter, a vanilla blueberry smoothie (1 scoop of vanilla Sun Warrior Protein Powder with frozen blueberries and water) topped with some treacle granola plus a mug of black vanilla decaf sweetened with vanilla stevia. I’m really enjoying the toast, nut butter and smoothie combo at the moment!

I just did the leftovers thing for lunch – so easy to just throw leftovers on top of a big salad! I also enjoyed more cheesy basil white bean dip with crackers and veggies for snackage.

Last nights ‘dinner’ after my late meeting was a delicious smoothie made with spring greens, romaine, frozen strawberries, 2 nectarines, coconut flour, water, vanilla stevia, maca, mesquite, xanthan and guar gum then topped with softened coconut butter swirl, cacao nibs and freeze dried berries:

The coconut butter hardened into a lovely shell which I cracked with my spoon like the top of a crème brulee!

This mornings post run smoothie contained more spring greens and romaine, small frozen banana, frozen peaches, one scoop of spirutein fruitein powder, maca, mesquite, water, xanthan and guar gums then topped with some treacle granola and Trader Joes apple and watermelon fruity flakes (from my trip to NYC):

These apple and watermelon flakes are so good, they taste like sweeties, will be gutted when I’ve eaten them all!

Today’s lunch was Pea, Broccoli and Mint Soup with Clearspring tamari sesame rice cakes and un pictured cantaloupe melon. I ate the melon half an hour before the soup and rice cakes as I read that melon is so quickly digested its best eaten on its own!

I also had a Cinnamon Roll Larabar:

I was so looking forward to having another of these from my NYC stash, really loving them! I may try and recreate these at home as they have such a simple ingredients list.

For dinner I wanted to make something super quick and easy but still healthy and filling. Enter my version of fast food! I picked this pouch of Merchant Gourmet Red and White Quinoa at the supermarket ages ago:

It was quite pricey, but for busy evenings like this these pre cooked microwavable pouches of grains can be so handy. This doesn’t contain any hidden nasties either. I often use rice and couscous packs when I’m making meals for James.

Edamame and Quinoa Citrus Salad (makes 2 servings, vegan)

• 1 cup of defrosted frozen edamame (soya beans)
• 1 cup of cooked quinoa (I used the Merchant Gourmet Red and White quick cook quinoa pack)
• Approx 1 cup of chopped sugar snap peas (or your choice of veggie: spring onions, roast squash, carrot, courgette etc would all taste wonderful)
• Finely grated zest of an orange
• Juice from half an orange 
• 2 tablespoons of oil – olive, hemp, flax etc. I used Cool Oil blend
• 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
• Large handful of chopped parsley

This is so easy! Just combine the edamame, quinoa and sugar snaps / veggies then mix the orange zest, juice, oil and vinegar together with the parsley. Pour over the quinoa and edamame, mix and serve!

I served this slightly warm but it will also taste amazing cold (I’ll be having the second portion for lunch tomorrow!) This was so good! I really enjoyed this, the orange dressing is sweet but with a great punch from the vinegar. Quinoa and edamame has to be one of my favourite combinations of ingredients – for a more Asian twist you could add some ginger and chilli and swap the oil to sesame oil for the dressing too. I served it with a big pile of lightly steamed kale and broccoli:

Really filling and satisfying. I can’t believe this only took 10 minutes to make! For a sweet end to my day I enjoyed some Conscious raw chocolate:

After my review yesterday I was craving some of this. It may be expensive, but damn, its good!

Do you ever use the quick cook packs of grains? What’s your thoughts on these kind of ‘convenience’ foods? I don’t put these in the same category as ready meals and what not, and would much rather cook from scratch, but sometimes, just like tinned beans, they make life a little easier!

On a slightly random note, I was just wondering what readers thought about me posting details of my grocery shops? I’m really trying to get a handle on my grocery spending and meal planning and posting about it will help me to focus! Is it something you’d find interesting?