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!

At the weekend I ended up with a big bunch of ripe banana’s. As I had eaten the last of my wonderful banana coconut bread I decided I wanted to make some form of baked banana goodness to keep in the freezer for when the fancy takes me. I wanted to make something healthy and hearty enough that it could be eaten for breakfast, but still sweet and tasty for afternoon snacks and even dessert:

Banana ‘Sunshine’ Muffins (vegan, makes 12 muffins)

• 1 cup of spelt flour
• 1 cup of brown rice flour
• 1/4 cup of non dairy milk plus 1/2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
• 2 mashed bananas
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup of zylitol or natural caster sugar
• 1/3 cup of rapeseed / coconut oil
• 2 tbsp of sunflower seeds
• 10 dried apricots, chopped (I used dark un sulphured apricots)

Pre heat the oven to 170c. Mix together the non dairy milk and vinegar and allow to sit for a few minutes. In a large bowl combine the bananas, sugar and oil. Add the flour and baking powder followed by the milk / vinegar mix and combine well. Stir in the sunflower seeds and apricots. Spoon into muffin cases – these don’t rise that much so fill them close to the top for big muffins (you will probably only get 10 out of the mix). Bake in the oven for 15 – 20 minutes until lightly golden:

These are very dense, hearty muffins filled with banana flavour, sweetness from the apricots and a slight nuttiness from the sunflower seeds. I enjoyed one crumbled on top of a simple green smoothie for breakfast yesterday and it was divine!

I actually went for a very basic green smoothie (by my standards at least!) which included spinach, frozen banana, vanilla hemp protein powder, rice milk, maca, mesquite, spirulina, xanthan and guar gums. As well as the muffin on top I added some freeze dried berries and granola. It was lovely to enjoy a simple banana / spinach green smoothie for a change!

Last night I finally got round to trying out a cheesy tofu sauce. I blended some silken tofu and mixed with 2 tbsp of nutritional yeast, 1 tsp of vegetable bouillon powder and about 1/4 cup of hot water then warmed through on a low heat. I had it as a sauce for spelt pasta, spiralised courgette and steamed asparagus then added a giant serving of steamed purple sprouting broccoli on the side:

This sauce is fantastic! So creamy and cheesy, perfect filling comfort food. In fact its so good I actually think James would eat this!

Dessert was a couple of frozen chocolate avocado cups:

Perfect as always :-)

This morning I had a craving for muesli so I had some of my home mix with chopped strawberries and rice milk:

Erm, I really don’t do small bowls of muesli do I?

Lunch was some Clearspring soya ramen noodles with some leftover spiralised courgette from last night plus lots of veggies – carrots, green pepper and sugar snaps:

I also had some melon and more strawberries – still in love with fresh fruits!

I made a really quick dinner tonight using up some of my Roasted Vegetable Curry from the freezer with millet and steamed greens with shoyu and mixed seeds:

The curry was fantastic again, I love how the flavours improve when it has been frozen and the texture of the aubergine was wonderful. I couldn’t resist more chocolate for dessert so I had some Fruit Fantasy Conscious raw chocolate:

This contains dried dates and figs and was just gorgeous as usual!

Exercise over the last couple of days has been great, I did Yoga for Runners yesterday morning and Body Pump last night (I think I’m almost ready to increase my weights!) and this morning I was at the gym for another tough sweaty 30 minutes of speed work on the treadmill followed by 30 minutes of intervals on the gym equipment plus my abs and core.

I realised after I made those muffins that I almost never just eat a muffin on its own, I love them with fruit and tofu yoghurt or crumbled into smoothies. A big spoonful of nut butter on top never goes a miss either! What’s your favourite way to eat muffins?

Happy Friday everyone! How has your week been? With working from home and getting the carpet and bed sorted my week has been a strange one, but its all good. Especially now I have a proper bed to sleep in!

Yesterday I had the best nights sleep so I woke up bright eyed yesterday and ready for a quick bit of yoga. I did the usual Yoga for Runners followed by some foam rolling on my IT bands. Breakfast was so good but it was dark and rainy outside and I had to use the flash on my camera!

This was delicious: tofu yoghurt (its been too long), banana sunshine muffin, damson compote and a sliced peach, yum!

This morning I hit the gym for my NRoL workout – still doing 3 sets instead of 2 on all the moves, and warmed up on the step machine instead of treadmill. After that I had a wonderful protein packed green smoothie:

This contained spinach, cucumber, 1 frozen banana, 2 scoops of vanilla sun warrior, spirulina, maca powder, msm crystals, water, stevia, ice, xanthan and guar gums and topped with roasted almond butter sauce and goji berries.

Lunches have been veggie packed and tasty:

Slice of raw bread made with veggie juice pulp and brazil nuts topped with some cheesy avocado mash (half an avocado with nutritional yeast and lemon juice) plus lots and lots of chopped veggies and and 2 apples. I love snacky plates like these!

Other snackage has included my last Lara bar:

Cherry Pie, so good, I must make some home made versions of these! I also snacked on a big almond coconut cookie and apples:

That cookie was so good, they freeze so well! The snacking hasn’t stopped there though. Last night I was ravenous and snacked on apples, dried fruity pieces, popcorn, chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, chocolate nut butters – hazelnut, almond and peanut (!) and some fantastic bowls of brown rice puffs mixed with peanut flour sauce and agave. I recognised that this was genuine hunger and not any kind of binge as I felt in control and despite it being quite a lot of food, I didn’t feel sick or ill afterwards :-) I think my body clearly needed the extra fuel.

Last night after work I also popped to the gym and put in a great sweaty 1 hour cardio workout followed by abs and core exercises. I felt like I needed a really intense sweaty workout and I felt great afterwards!

Last night I had more seitan stir fry for dinner but tonight I fancied something new. I made up a socca with some coriander and filled it with a mix of mashed black beans, roast peppers, fried onions, a slice of vegan cheese and spinach. On the side I had some roasted courgette and carrot ‘chips’:

This was wonderful, so filling and I really loved the ‘chips’ too!

Desserts have included raw cookies and cream cheesecake and tofu yoghurt with damson compote and a chopped apple:

The tangy sweet compote was so good with the creamy yoghurt, yum!

I’m really looking forward to the weekend ahead, especially as we have bank holiday Monday! Tomorrow we are planning a shopping trip to town and catching up with friends and family then hopefully we will have the rest of the long weekend to relax. I’m also hoping to try a short run, fingers crossed my knee will be ok!

Are you a big snacker? Usually I just have one or two snacks a day but very occasionally I have periods like last night when I just graze on all sorts for several hours! What’s your favourite snack? I really loved the odd little combo I discovered last night of brown rice puffs mixed with peanut flour sauce and agave, yum!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Well this has been one busy week! I’ve been recovering from the Great North Run, worked two late nights, been grocery shopping for my Gran while my Mam and Dad have been away and doing a hell of a lot of thinking. Thank goodness the weekend is here, and better still, I have next week off!

I’ve still been able to fit in some great workouts this week:

• Sat: REST
• Sun: Great North Run!
• Mon: REST (obviously!) + 20 minutes yoga to stretch out
• Tue: Yoga (20 minutes) + Cardio intervals (30 minutes) + Body Pump
• Wed: Cardio intervals (1 hour) plus abs
• Thurs: Davina Super Sculpt Pump DVD, MTV Yoga DVD (1 hour 10 mins)
• Friday: Random bike intervals (30 minutes) cardio intervals (30 minutes) abs

Plus I’ve had some delicious eats including lots of snacks:

 Banana Sunshine Muffin and apples

 Bedtime snack of apple, carrots and cashew butter, mmm!

Near empty tahini jar with apples, raisins and cinnamon, microwaved and topped with granola

Plus countless more apples, rice cakes with nut butters etc, I’m really getting into the whole day time snacking thing, and its really helping to stop me from over eating on an evening :-)

Green smoothies have featured as usual:

I made this amazing Chocolate Cherry Almond Green Smoothie containing:

• Kale (or greens of choice such as spinach etc)
• Frozen cherries
• 1 scoop of chocolate hemp protein powder (or you could use 1 tbsp of cocoa powder)
• Ice
• Water (or you could use a milk or non dairy milk)
• 1/2 tsp of almond extract

For toppings:

• Almond butter (1 tbsp made into a sauce with hot water)
• Dried cherries
• Flaked almonds

I also added the usual xanthan and guar gums for thickness, maca powder, msm crystals, greens powder and berries powder. This tasted delicious!

I also finally got round to opening my box of Kashi Go Lean I’d ordered from iHerb:

I had a bowl with a large chopped banana, frozen blueberries and vanilla rice milk and it was delicious!

Speaking of iHerb:

I ordered this giant bag of peanut flour, I can not wait to have some fun with this! I think its going to be pretty much the same as PB2, however this is a lot cheaper than that! I love that it has 16g of protein per 1/4 cup serving, that’s better than a lot of vegan protein powders!

I also treated myself to a bar of this delicious chocolate at an event I was at for work:

Divine Ginger and Orange Dark Chocolate plus fair trade sultana’s to keep at work for snacks, yum!

While I’ve been working late I’ve been having a bowl of this amazing soup to keep me going:

I think I made a soup like this last year and called it Simple Soup its pretty much a fridge soup recipe – i.e. chuck in whatever veggies you have on hand. This contained (washed and chopped):

• 2 onions
• 2 leeks
• 3 carrots
• 2 courgettes
• 1 sweet potato
• 1 cup of red lentils
• handful of kale
• 2 tsp of vegetable bouillon and hot water

I semi blended it with a stick blender. I have to say you can’t go wrong with lentils and sweet potatoes!

Tonight for dinner I dug out a tofu and aubergine curry from the freezer and served it with quinoa and steamed greens, so good!

So I said at the beginning of the post I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my diet and stuff, well actually I’ve been thinking about things for quite a while! I really see October as being a fresh start for my diet, my exercise routine (especially post Great North Run as all my training has been geared up for that) and my budgeting! I’ve got a lot of posts I want to write over the next week on those subjects that I really hope you’ll enjoy, and won’t find too boring ;-) one of which includes this…

I’m busy writing up a post for my Big Budget Challenge Round 2, and as a few of us seem to be in the money saving frame of mind right now I’m going to make it a challenge that any one can join in with if they like! I’ll be designing a blog button we can all use and doing weekly budgeting posts from around the blog world. At least that way we can all be skint together ;-)

As for my weekend and week off, said budgeting issues have dictated that we will be staycationing in style! I actually really love to have time off to just chill at home and get caught up with things, especially at this time of year! We’ll probably have a couple of days out to town and maybe the coast, I’ll be getting a lot of stuff up on eBay, sorting out my autumn / winter wardrobe, completing an assignment for my course and watching the entire Star Wars series of movies on blu ray DVD :-) Of course there will be much cooking and baking going on too!

Do you have staycations sometimes? What’s your favourite staycationing activity?

Hope you have a great weekend and don’t forget to enter my international giveaway for the brilliant vegan recipe book Blissful Bites!

Hi everyone, happy Friday! Hope you’ve had a good week, I don’t know about you guys but I am ready for the weekend!

This week I have done all my workouts according to my plan but was working late on Tuesday so I swapped out my evening Body Pump class for the 30 Day Shred, levels 2&3 back to back followed by Davina Fit Yoga Stretch section before work. For yesterday’s anything goes workout I decided to hit the gym with missing it on Tuesday. I blogged my workout over on my Tumblr page, check it out it was fun! My strength training workouts have been awesome too, this week I increased my sets from 2 to 3 and next week I’m going to increase my reps from 10 to 12 :-)

I’ve had some very tasty eats this week too, so I apologise for all these pics but I just had to share!

Beautiful breakfasts:

 Raw chocolate courgette pudding (courgette, banana, chocolate sun warrior protein powder, pumpkin seed milk blended and mixed with 2 tbsp of chia seeds then topped with some Living Intentions raw cacao granola)

  Porridge made with half Scottish oats and half oat bran mixed with 1/4 cup of peanut flour, defrosted frozen berries and topped with a spoonful of peanut butter with flax

  Two slices of fruity cider bread, one with Clearspring Cherry spread and one with almond butter plus chopped banana

 Current fave green smoothie combo: kale, 2 pears, chocolate hemp protein powder, mesquite, barley grass, ice, water, gums and topped with my raw pear and ginger granola and some hazelnut butter

Lovely lunches:

Black bean veggie chilli with spinach and cold roast squash, yum! 

Courgette noodles and alfalfa sprouts with spicy peanut sauce (1/4 cup peanut flour, lime juice, ginger, chilli, shoyu) and roast squash (inspired by Gena’s spiralised zucchini with butternut squash and garlic sauce)

Super snacks:

Sunshine muffin with redwoods diary free plain yoghurt and a chopped pink lady apple

  Raw juice pulp crackers topped with garden pate and alfalfa sprouts, chopped carrots and apple

  This was so good – 100% cacao dark chocolate and un-sulphured dried apricots with blob of tahini – amazing tasting combo, plus its packed with calcium! 

Sliced apples with a dipping sauce made from home made raw macadamia butter, lucuma and water

Delicious dinners:

Slightly broken up Socca with parsley served quesadilla style with onion, roast squash and mashed white beans with roast brussels and swede chips on the side. Loving swede chips right now!

Vegan sausages with swede chips, roast brussels, roast beetroot and steamed cabbage with shoyu

This week has been a bit of a challenging one so I thought it would be nice to end this post with some Friday Faves to put a smile on my face!

Kale

As well as getting lots in my veg box, I went to my green grocers and since they had some in I decided to get all of this! The dehydrator is on making kale chips as I speak. I just love getting the proper big stems of kale, so much better than the machine chopped bags you get at the super market.

This hauntingly beautiful song and vintage inspired video

Having a Starbucks in Durham

Chai Soy Latte with cinnamon – prefer their usual big chunky mugs though!

I’ve been working from home today so had the flexibility to pop into town for an hour. James said he would treat me to a Starbucks as he knows I’m trying to be good for the Big Budget Challenge. It was lovely to have a little coffee date, and it reminded me that no matter how skint you are, its important to make time to do something together. We’ve decided that we are going to keep a little cash aside to be able to do things like this, or hire out movies for a ‘date night’ at home a couple of times a month.

Feeling balanced

I really feel like I’m finding my ‘sweet spot’ with regards to balancing my eats and exercise. I love that I’m eating quite mindfully at the moment and honouring my hunger and cravings without it getting out of control. I’m also really happy that I’m achieving a nice balance of my favourite raw foods alongside cooked foods, which I think all the pics above demonstrate.

What are your Friday Faves? Have you got a busy weekend planned? Hope whatever you are up to you enjoy yourself!

Hi everyone, hope you’ve enjoyed a great weekend! I’ve had a busy one catching up with friends and family including a kiddies party and BBQ.

I did manage to fit in a couple of great workouts - As I’m off to NYC next week I’ll be taking a few days off from working out so I thought I’d squeeze in an additional workout this weekend and use it as an opportunity to try out something new. I had read in this months Ultra Fit magazine about the 3,2,1 workout system used by Hollywood personal trainer Ramona Braganza:

source

It basically means 3 sections of cardio, 2 sections of strength and 1 section of abs and core work (at least that’s how I’ve interpreted it based on the info in the article). Here’s how I transferred this idea into a workout:

• section 1 – 10 minutes cardio intervals - cross trainer
• section 2 – 10 minutes lower body strength circuit including lunges, squats, dead lifts (I have serious DOMS in my glutes today from this!) etc
• section 3 – 10 minutes cardio intervals - step machine
• section 4 – 10 minutes upper body strength circuit including shoulder press, hammer curls, upright row, tricep kick backs etc
• section 5 – 10 minutes cardio intervals – bike
• section 6 – 10 minutes abs and core – 2 min plank, 1 min side planks, sit ups on stability ball with medicine ball for added resistance, bicycle crunches etc

I really enjoyed this workout, I loved combining the cardio and fast paced resistance circuits as it made the workout fly over! I think I may incorporate this system into my training more often!

Today’s workout was my long run. I changed up my usual route completely – this one includes a couple of hills, two of which are an absolute killer and right in the last couple of miles of the route. I set out early and completed 10.5 miles in 1.39 with an average pace of 9.24 which although slower than last week I was pretty chuffed with considering those hills! I am still in shock every time I see my pace as it has improved so much since last year.

Eats have been great too! Breakfast on Saturday morning was so so good:

I had bought a tub of plain soy yoghurt to try as I have never had it before and wanted to see how it compared to my tofu yoghurt. I also a bottle of orange flower water that I’d picked up as an impulse purchase. I mixed the soy yoghurt with a teaspoon of the orange flower water and had it alongside some blueberries, a crumbled sunshine muffin and some pistachios. I loved the delicate orange flavour of the yoghurt. As far as the soy yoghurt versus tofu yoghurt goes I actually still prefer my tofu yoghurt! This was ok but I like the simpler ingredients of my tofu yoghurt as the soy yoghurt contains added sugar. One thing that the soy yoghurt has over the tofu yoghurt is that it has added calcium and vitamin D. I think in future I may change up between the two so I’m getting the added vitamin and mineral benefits.

Lunch on Saturday was my favourite sunflower seed butter raw wraps made with spring green leaves and filled with apple and carrot. I also had some chopped plums and more carrot on the side:

For dinner I made a herbed socca pizza base and topped it with my high protein hummus and roasted veggies including aubergine, asparagus, courgette, red pepper and red onion:

It was heaven! The combo of hummus and roasted veggies is always good but was wonderful on top of the herbed socca.

This morning I refuelled after my run with a tasty tropical green smoothie:

This contained spring greens, frozen banana, frozen mango, vanilla sun warrior, ground flax, mesquite, maca and xanthan and guar gums. I topped it with coconut flour sauce, cacao nibs, gojis and raw granola.

Today we were round at James Dads for a BBQ. I had two tofu sausages, onion rings, lots of salad, picked onions, beetroot and ketchup:

I also had more salad, several jazz apples and lots of strawberries! We enjoyed the BBQ in his little sun trap of a back garden:

OOTD: Denim Jacket: New look, gray tee: New look, gold chain necklace: Topshop, Tan bag: Dune, cardigan (just seen): Tesco, trousers: Topshop, gold sandals: Next

Before we headed round there we had a quick shopping trip into Newcastle. I picked up a few cheap purchases from Primark:

I loved the cherry print on that top and thought it would be a great summer look to go with jeans or shorts. I also loved this khaki colour chinos which I’ll be able to wear for work with smarter tops as well as casual. I just couldn’t resist the Wonder Woman tee, will be great to wear around the house, as well as with jeans and converse! I usually don’t like much I see in Primark so I was happy to find these for a change!

I can’t believe we are now in May! I’ll be back tomorrow with a quick post looking back over April, my goals for May and a few thoughts on weight maintenance. I’m definitely thinking of incorporating the 3,2,1 system into my training plan, especially as I want to avoid boredom as well as continuing to challenge my body in new ways. Have you came across the 3,2,1 style of workout before? What did you think? Do you change up your workouts each month or do you just go with the flow?