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Hi everyone, happy weekend! I’m so glad it has finally arrived. Here’s a bit of a catch up on yesterday’s eats:

After doing my usual DVD workout I was extremely excited about making myself a giant chocolate cherry green monster. I really can’t go more than a couple of weeks without one of these in my life they just taste so good! It contained the usual spinach, frozen cherries, chocolate whey, soy milk, matcha green tea powder and maca powder. I topped it with half a bag of we are bear coca cherry pie granola.

This was to die for, just the most delicious breakfast. I also enjoyed a cup of tea pigs yerba mate tea to give me a morning boost.

Lunch was one of my home made egg white and spelt wraps filled with turkey slices, lettuce, green pepper, cucumber, red onion and sweet chilli sauce. I also had a large chopped carrot and two little plums.

 

The sweet chilli sauce was amazing, I bought my first bottle a few days ago and I think it will be ending up in allsorts of dishes!

Mid afternoon I snacked on some 2% Greek Yoghurt with walnuts and goji berries.

I had another delightful late night at work so dinner was another quick lazy one: egg and veggie scramble with cheese. I fried up some red onion and red pepper then added some spinach followed by an egg an an egg white. I scrambled it all up then topped with two sliced babybel light.

Quick, easy and delicious.

Desert was two chopped apples and a big square of the wonderfulness that is Lindt Dark Chocolate with sea salt. I saw these in Sainsbury’s on Wednesday (ok, so I was hunting them down) and bought two more bars to add to already large chocolate stash.

On to today…

I fancied treating myself to a lazy breakfast so I made up another egg white and spelt wrap with added mixed seeds and filled it with crunchy peanut butter and a sliced apple. I also had a cup of hazelnut and cinnamon coffee.

Just the perfect breakfast, it kept be full from 7am till 12, not bad going!

Lunch was a salad containing turkey, cucumber, green pepper, red onion, romaine lettuce and a dressing made from two heaped tablespoons of beetroot chutney mixed with some red wine vinegar. I also had a apple, pear and two mini plums.

 

Before hitting the gym I had a Beet It Shot. I did 45 minutes of HITTs on the usual cross trainer, step machine and bike followed by 3 x 15 reps on the chest machine and lat machine and 3 x 20 sit ups on the stability ball.

Today I also got my fruit and vegetable boxes from the food co op. This week I went for the £5 fruit box and the £5 veg box:

 

Still excellent value, I’m so happy that I’m able to take advantage of this scheme. I had lots of fun writing a meal plan to use all this up!

For dinner I wanted to make use of the Butternut squash I got in last weeks box. As the hubby has his mates over on a Friday night I get to make myself a special meal for one (they eat pizza!)

Butternut Squash and Quinoa Risotto (serves 1)

• 1/2 cup of quinoa, rinsed
• 1/3 butternut squash cut into small pieces and roasted
• 1 white onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup of frozen peas
• 1 handful of baby spinach
• 1 cup of vegetable stock
• 1 tablespoon of greek yoghurt (I used 2%)
• 1/2 teaspoon of nutritional yeast (or parmesan)

Begin by frying off the onion and garlic in a little oil, once softened and transparent add the quinoa. Then add the vegetable stock and bring the pan to the boil. The quinoa will absorb all the stock after about 15 minutes, but don’t let it become too dry, it should go a nice creamy texture. Then add the peas, butternut squash and spinach. Allow the spinach to wilt down into the pan. In a separate bowl mix together the yoghurt and nutritional yeast / cheese. Lower the heat then gently stir the yoghurt into the quinoa. Serve.

This was bloody gorgeous! Definitely one of my best recipes to date. I’ll be making quinoa risotto all the time now using different veggies. You could double the quantities and make it for two, but I would keep the onion and garlic the same. I just don’t mind eating all that onion!

For desert I made a lovely big bowl of double chocolate protein ice cream with dark chocolate chips.

I also enjoyed 3 sneaky pieces of deliciousness that I had baked. I can’t blog about the recipe yet as it was a practice batch for a blogger cookie exchange I’m taking part in and I don’t want to spoil the surprise for the lovely Tamzin!

Over the last couple of days I have discovered some fantastic cookery blogs:

Stone Soup: has some wonderful and extremely simple recipes made with only 5 ingredients. They even have a free ecookbook which you can download.

Veggie Num Num: A great vegetarian cookery blog with amazing food photography

All Day I Dream About Food: I’ve found several great low carb simple recipes from this blog

Now all I need is more meals in the day when I can eat them!

This weekend I will be running, shopping, seeing friends, watching movies and baking. Sounds pretty perfect to me! What have you all got planned? Whatever your up to hope you have a great weekend! :-)

Yay for Friday! So glad that the weekend is here :-) Hope you’ve all had a good one.

I’m going to apologise in advance at the number of pics of smoothies in this post, with the hot weather we’ve been experiencing alongside my general green smoothie craving I’ve had one everyday this week!

Spinach, 2 celery stalks, 1 large raw beet, 1 frozen banana, 1 cup of home made almond milk, hemp protein powder, maca, barley grass, purple corn powder, msm crystals, stevia, ice, xanthan and guar gums plus sunflower lecithin for added thickness and creaminess topped with fresh strawberries, pistachios and coconut:

This was absolutely gorgeous, raw beet adds so much sweetness along with that gorgeous berry colour. Yum!

Little gem lettuce, celery, persimmon, frozen peaches, home made almond milk, mesquite, spirulina, msm crystals, ground flax, hemp protein powder, stevia sweetener, xanthan and guar gums for thickness and topped with some strawberry and coconut rawnola and mixed seeds:

The ‘rawnola’ was actually made from some failed cookies! I had been trying to make some raw cookies in the dehydrator with leftover almond pulp from making milk (plus agave, coconut, dried and fresh strawberries), they didn’t quite turn out right so I just crumbled them and dehydrated a bit longer to create a granola type mix that will be perfect for topping smoothies and yoghurt bowls. Even James has been eating this on his porridge! Speaking of James and coconut:

39p what a bargain! James adores fresh coconut so we cracked open this baby, I drank the delicious milk and had a few pieces of flesh while he enjoyed the rest, so so tasty!

Another green smoothie! Kale, celery, frozen banana, pink lady apple, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, cinnamon, maca, spirulina, msm, almond milk, ice, xanthan and guar gums for thickness topped with almond butter sauce, raw buckwheaties and gojis:

The buckwheaties were another raw kitchen experiment. I just soaked some buckwheat over night, drained and rinsed and dehydrated for a few hours. These are wonderfully crispy and crunchy, I’m looking forward to eating them like a cereal!

I also made up this lovely simple smoothie one very hot evening:

Watermelon slushie (just frozen watermelon blended with a drop of stevia and water) topped with a sliced persimmon and goji berries, simple and perfect :-)

Cooling and fresh meals probably best sum up my eats these past few days. When I picked up a cauliflower on the cheap at the green grocers I decided to make a cauliflower ‘rice’ salad!

Raw Cauliflower ‘Rice’ Salad (makes 2 large servings, vegan)

• 1 head of cauliflower
• 1 red pepper
• 1/2 cucumber
• 1 red onion
• 1 small bunch of parsley
• 3 tbsp of raisins
• 4 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp of hemp oil (or oil of choice)

Break the cauliflower into florets and add to a food processor, processing until the mix resembles rice. Finely chop the onion, cucumber, pepper, cucumber and parsley and mix into the cauliflower rice adding the raisins, vinegar and oil and mixing well. Serve!

I enjoyed mine on top of a mixed leaf herby salad. This is so so good! The sweetness of the raisins and fresh herby taste really are key in making this extra delicious. Such a perfect summer lunch! Obviously if you wanted to make this more substantial you could make it with actual rice either in place of or in addition to the cauliflower, but I really enjoyed how light and zingy it is with just the cauliflower.

In addition to the other dehydrator experiments I also had a go at making some juice pulp crackers! They turned out perfectly:

I enjoyed them with some raw carrot and ginger dip and lots of veggies. To make these I just combined 1 cup of green juice pulp with 1/3 cup of ground flax, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian seasoning and a dash of water then spread out on a lined dehydrator sheet, scored into crackers and dehydrated for 5 hours, flipped, and dehydrated for a further 4 hours. The carrot dip was absolutely divine! The recipe does need a little tweaking before I share it though but I will be making it again for sure!

Dinners have included a twist on my Fresh Asian Salad:

Basically the salad recipe but with added soba noodles, leftover courgette noodles and smoked sesame tofu instead of the edamame, plus a sprinkle of gomasio. This rocked my socks off, the dressing is just so full of flavour! Another ideal warm weather meal.

Tonight I really fancied a big plate of comfort food, enter my quinoa risotto:

I added peas, courgette and sugar snap peas to this recipe along with a side of lightly steamed broccoli. Hit. the. spot :-)

Ok, so I’m about to have a little pity party so please bear with me…

I had a bit of a crappy run this week. On Wednesday morning I did my usual hilly 7 mile route. I actually felt really great and felt like I was going reasonably fast. When I checked my time at the 5 mile mark I realised that I was actually quite slow, slower in fact than the last time I ran that route when I had been feeling really rubbish. I did the 7 miles in 1hr 04 with an average pace of 9.10, the last time was 9.07 and the time before that 9.05. It really knocked my confidence, not so much being slower, but the fact that I had thought I was putting in a really good run!

Insert OOTD from this weeks liberating my wardrobe challenge! Silver hoop earrings: Accessorize, blush blazer: Next, striped top: Zara, harem pants: New Look, gold sandals: Next

It really got me down for some reason and really knocked my confidence. I don’t usually keep an eye on my pace when I run as I like to focus on just enjoying it, but after weeks of progressing so well I don’t want to start going backwards. I know it could have been due to tiredness from the weekend, and perhaps I wasn’t as well fuelled from the day before as I should have been. Anyway, I have long training run scheduled for tomorrow and by god I am determined to make it a good one!

In addition to that workouts have been the usual stuff, yoga podcast, cardio based gym session with abs and core and my amended NRoL workout this morning, all of which were way better than that run!

I’m so looking forward to this weekend, I need some serious relaxation and catching up! I’m hoping to get that long run done first thing then I can get on with the rest of the weekend, seeing friends and family and getting caught up with stuff around the house. Have you any exciting plans for the weekend?

I’d also like to say a quick hello to my first ever blogger sponsor the lovely Cat from Knitting, Running, Eating! Please head on over to her fab blog and check it out! If your interested in promoting your blog with me just drop me an email: laura@keepinghealthygettingstylish.com

How do you deal with a crappy workout? I guess I’m just more determined to make my next run a good one!

Hope you have an awesome weekend!

Hi everyone, hope your having a great week! Here’s a bit of a catch up of some of my eats:

Yesterdays breakfast:

Butternut Smoothie with Vanilla Sun Warrior and Rude Health Granola – oh so good!

Today’s breakfast:

10 grain hot cereal with vanilla rice milk, egg whites, brown rice syrup, cinnamon, two chopped plums and mixed fruit and nuts I’d picked up at Tesco – delicious!

Yesterdays lunch and snacks were just a big tofu salad plus plums and peanut butter hummus with cauliflower and carrot sticks. Last nights dinner was a random but tasty combo:

Egg fried rice with veggies: leftover brown rice with onion, mushrooms, carrot, kale, chard, egg whites, shoyu, mixed toasted seeds and parsley. Yummy big mess!

Today I snacked on some fruity tofu yoghurt I’d whipped up using silken tofu, vanilla extract, brown rice syrup, a pear and some frozen blueberries:

I also had another pumpkin spice cake bar:

I still can’t get over how tasty and moist these are, they’ve kept so well in the freezer.

Lunch was some of my smokey spicy black eye pea and greens soup followed by a couple of satsumas.

For dinner tonight I made myself a Butternut and Quinoa Risotto without the peas and with soymilk instead of the yoghurt (making this vegan) and shallots instead of the onion. I also mashed up some of the roast butternut to make it more creamy. I served it on top of some steamed kale and spring greens.

Absolutely gorgeous, the perfect comfort food for me!

Desert was a frozen chocolate avocado cup nuked for a few seconds until melty and spread on two wholegrain rice cakes along with a sliced organic apple.

I’ve also been keeping up with my training – yesterday I did my Davina Bottom Fit and Top Fit workouts.

Today I was scheduled a 5k run which I usually do on the treadmill including speed intervals. I have a bit of a confession to make – I’m really not feeling the running at the moment. My outdoor run on Sunday felt so slow and difficult. I don’t know why I seem to have lost so much speed since the Great North Run. Every run I do at the moment feels like a struggle. On the way home from work I decided give myself a kick up the arse and just do it. It was a lovely evening (although extremely cold!) so I ran to the gym then did 10 minutes of 30 second sprint intervals for 10 minutes (covering about 1.2 miles) on the tread mill, 10 minutes of intervals on the cross trainer and 10 minutes of intervals on the step machine followed by by abs and core exercises. I then ran home. I didn’t track my run for my times but I mapped it out and I covered 3 miles so in total I ended up running in excess of my 5k target, plus the additional cardio so it wasn’t all bad!

So I’m not sure what to do. For me, I want to enjoy exercise – I don’t think it should ever become a chore. I felt like I ran a lot quicker on the way home when I was really warmed up which makes me think this is a key issue. I wore an extra layer tonight and I already wear gloves (not the best quality) and a wide hand band that covers my ears plus running tights, vest, long sleeve top and hoody. My aims in terms of running at the moment is just to retain a base level of fitness – I’ve been running 15k a week – 5k during the week and a 10k on a weekend more and more of which has been done on the treadmill instead of outdoors. I’m also bored of my outdoor running routes so may need to think of changing them up.

Do you have any advice for me that will help relight my love of running? In terms of retaining fitness do you think that running a total distance over a week (i.e. 3 x 5k runs = 15k a week) or making one a longer run (i.e. 1 x 5k run + 1 x 10k run = 15k) is best? I think doing several shorter runs may make things easier for me but I don’t want to lose the endurance of running constantly for a longer period of time. Any advice would be very much appreciated! 

Just before I go – the lovely Leashieloo tagged me to answer these fun questions:

1) What was your favourite crayon colour as a kid? Orange!

2) What is your favourite TV show? I can’t possibly pick just one! I love Chuck, Fringe, CSI and any cookery shows :-)

3) Do you have any siblings? Yes, I have one younger sister who is pregnant with my second nephew :-)

4) Where do you hope to be in 5 years? In a bigger house with a kiddie running round, perhaps in a job related to health and fitness – but most importantly, happy!

5) What’s your favourite fruit? Apples

6) What’s your favourite scent? Perfume – Lola by Marc Jacobs or freshly cut grass, fresh roses, cinnamon and bonfires :-)

7) Who is your idol? My Nana

8 ) What is your favourite animal? Whales – I loved whales and dolphins when I was little

Catch you all later, have a great evening! :-)