Hi everyone, we are almost at the weekend thank goodness! I’ve had a bit of a crazy work week so I’m looking forward to the break.

I kicked off Wednesday with an early morning gym workout. I did 30 minutes of speed intervals on the treadmill. I say speed intervals, I don’t follow a proper plan – I just start with a 5 minute warm up (6mph) then 5 minute intervals at different speeds: 6.5mph, 7mph, 6.7mph, 7.2mph then finish with 5 minutes of 30 second intervals at 6.7mph / 7.7mph. Today I actually discovered how to change the display to show the pace as well as the speed so that could help when doing tempo runs in the future! Laura recommended that I read Run Less Run Faster to help get my head around all that so I have ordered it in at the library. I then did 30 minutes of HIITs on the cross trainer, step machine and bike followed by my abs and core.

Breakfast was unsurprisingly a smoothie! This one contained romaine, some spinach / kale / cabbage mix that I’d picked up from the reduced section, frozen ‘forest fruits’ mix, vanilla hemp protein powder, peanut flour, maca, spirulina, matcha green tea, ground flax, vanilla rice milk, water and xanthan gum. Toppings were Bear apple crumble granola and some mixed seeds:

I also had another raspberry coffee – so in love with that stuff right now!

Today started with a quick 15 minute full body toning yoga flow from Slim, Calm Sexy Yoga then a big bowl of Dorset Cereals Low fat Tasty Flakes with 2 chopped plums, vanilla rice milk and a maple and walnut coffee sweetened with agave:

This was the last of the bag of cereal so I got all the little crumbs, which I love!

Wednesday’s lunch was courgette and carrot noodles with some of my cheesy butternut sauce and an orange:

This was so moreish, the butternut sauce is just so good you have to try it! Today’s lunch was some Lentil and Spinach soup with two sliced kiwis and several pink lady apples:

Before lunch I had started to feel a bit faint and shaky so I ate a little satsuma at work then on the way to the Library I popped to the shops and got a pack of pink lady apples. I ended up munching all 4 of them, they are just so sweet and crunchy!

Wednesday’s snack was a pumpkin seed ryvita with hazelnut butter plus some sugar snap peas and cucumber slices:

Today I snacked on one of my raw vegan brownie bites. I hadn’t actually tried one of these yet even though I’d made them last week and oh my god it was so good, the texture was just heavenly! Very glad I have several more stashed in the freezer!

I also fitted in a quick gym session after work. I did my upper body free weights routine and followed it with 10 minutes of HIITs on the step machine and 15 minutes of HIITs on the bike.

Dinner both evenings has been a new recipe. I picked up an aubergine at the green grocers last week and wasn’t sure what to make with it so I consulted my Evernote account and saw I’d book marked the Leon recipe for Hippy Beans. It sounded delicious so here’s my slightly amended version:

Hippy Beans with Rice and Greens (inspired by recipe in Leon Ingredients and Recipes, makes 4 large servings):

• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 2 fat garlic cloves, minced
• 2 peppers – I used one red and one yellow, roughly chopped
• 1 aubergine, roughly chopped
• 1 bunch of runner beans, roughly chopped
• 1 tin of mixed beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 tin of kidney beans (could add whatever beans you fancy)
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 cup of water from a recently boiled kettle
• 3 tablespoons of sweet chilli jam / sweet chilli sauce
• 2 handfuls of spinach
• Rice and steamed spring greens / kale / cabbage to serve

In a large pan fry the onion and garlic in a little oil over a medium heat until softened. Add the aubergine, peppers and runner beans and continue to fry for a few minutes until the aubergine is lightly browned. Add the drained beans and chopped tomatoes. Add the hot water and the chilli jam. Cover the pan and allow to simmer for 15 minutes until the peppers and aubergine are tender and the sauce has gone syrupy. Add in the spinach and stir until it wilts down. Serve with the rice and greens and a sprinkle of mixed seeds:

This is just proper lush! The sweet chilli sauce adds a delicious syrupy sweetness and a touch of heat, so good :-) Tonight I had it with steamed kale, broccoli and cauliflower.

Wednesday’s dessert was some Conscious Cherry raw chocolate with chopped apples:

This was nice but I think I prefer the Conscious chocolate that is flavoured like the mint or orange rather than just containing dried fruits.

Tonight I whipped up a quick batch of tofu yoghurt (1 pack of mori nu silken tofu with 1 little jar of baby food fruit puree and vanilla extract, blended in food processor) topped with some pomegranate seeds:

So creamy, I really love this simple tofu yoghurt.

I enjoyed my little apple binge today (pink lady apples are my absolute fave) but I do know that in the past my excessive apple snackies have been a sign that I haven’t been eating enough and clearly that was the case today – especially when I started to feel shaky. I have to admit I’m still struggling with the balance of eating the right amount – I don’t calorie count at all and never have, but I’m finding myself drawn to the idea if only to give me some reassurance. I’ve tried to stop weighing myself all the time too and I’m going to wait until the end of the month and see what the scales say then. I really am trying to remember the healthy over skinny mantra as much as possible and eat when I feel hungry without feeling guilty afterwards. It may sound a little silly but changing the blog name from keeping slim to keeping healthy has made a huge difference to my mind set! I know I’ll get there eventually.

As for my running I know I’m going to have to get my head around a half marathon training plan soon if I want to improve my speed. When I trained for the Great North Run last year I just winged it but this year I’d like to try something a little more structured. To all you runners out there, do you do speed work / intervals / tempo runs? How do you approach your running training?

Hope your all having a great week, bring on the weekend!

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!

Hi everyone, hope you’ve all been having a great weekend, I’ve been loving this glorious weather! I’ve been having a lovely time, I’ve caught up with my friends and family and enjoyed some much needed chill time as well as having some amazing eats!

I decided to do my long weekend run on Saturday morning so I was up bright and early and after a couple of lovely medjool dates I set off with the sun rise. My plan was to just run a relaxed 10 miles and that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t push my pace too much and got into a nice groove for most of the run that made it really enjoyable. I did 10 miles in 1hr37 with an average pace of 9.43 which is slower than last week but as I certainly wasn’t pushing myself I was happy with that pace.

I’ve been looking back through the blog at last year and how I was doing back then to compare with now. My average pace at this time last year (before I got injured) was around 9.54 so I have definitely improved. As I said last week I have noticed a huge improvement in my recovery – maybe due to eating a more plant based diet or perhaps doing more yoga? Who knows, but I am feeling great – not even a twinge in my knee but I really need to go and get myself fitted for some new running shoes soon!

When I got back from my run I made my Tropical Recovery Smoothie but added some spring greens and a sachet of banana flavoured Spiru-tein powder. I topped it with some raw coconut shreds, hemp seeds, goji berries and cacao nibs:

I love the coconut water in this and I really felt like I needed it to rehydrate!

Other highlights of my weekend eats include Saturday evenings delicious dinner:

Herbed socca wrap (usual socca recipe with plenty of chopped basil and parsley) filled with a roasted beet and sunflower seed burger plus tahini lemon sauce and roasted cauliflower and purple sprouted broccoli drizzled with remaining tahini lemon sauce. This was just so gorgeous!

I also made some use of my seasonal rhubarb:

Rhubarb and Orange Compote (makes 2 – 3 servings):

• 3 stems of rhubarb, chopped into 1 inch thick pieces
• Juice and zest of one orange
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup of water
• 2 tablespoons of liquid sweetener such as agave syrup (I used sweet freedom)

Add all ingredients to a small pan and simmer until the ‘syrup’ is bubbling and the rhubarb has softened but still has a little shape. Serve warm or chill and store in the fridge. I enjoyed this with some vanilla freedom iced dessert:

It was gorgeous, so wonderful slightly warm with the ice cream!

On Sunday morning I decided to indulge in something I haven’t had in a while, pancakes!

Carob spelt pancakes with blueberries and coconut maple sauce (serves 1):

• 1/2 cup of spelt flour
• 1/2 cup of non dairy milk, plus 1 tbsp (I used home made almond milk)
• 1 tbsp of carob powder (could sub cocoa powder)
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1 small punnet of fresh blueberries
• 1 tsp of coconut flour
• 1 tbsp of maple syrup

Combine the spelt flour, milk, carob powder and baking powder in a bowl until smooth. Heat a pan on a medium high heat and spray with cooking oil (I used coconut oil). Pour out a third of the mixture into the pan to form a pancake. While the pancake is cooking drop a few blueberries into the batter. When bubbles appear on the surface flip over carefully and cook the other side. Transfer to a plate and keep warm under the grill while you cook the remaining two pancakes. To make the sauce combine the coconut flour, maple syrup and some water until you reach a creamy consistency. Serve the pancakes topped with the remaining fresh blueberries, the sauce and an additional sprinkle of desiccated coconut.

These may just be the best pancakes I have ever had! The blueberries cooked in the batter tasted fantastic and go so well with the deep taste of the carob and sweetness of the sauce. If you don’t have coconut flour a drizzle of maple syrup on its own would be just as lovely. Oh so good!

Today’s lunch was awesome! I made up a big snack plate with blue corn chips, almond butter dipping sauce (1 tbsp of almond butter + 2 tbsp of water microwaved for a few seconds then combined) carrot, sugar snaps, red pepper and a few strawberries:

I had been inspired by Emilia to try the almond butter / blue corn chip combo and it was immensely good – saying that, I think almost anything would taste amazing slathered with almond butter!

Dinner was hippy beans with stir fried brown / wild rice, red cabbage and bok choy plus shoyu and mixed seeds: 

Now I quite fancy a couple of squares of Lindt Dark Chocolate with Sea salt!

Over the weekend I spent some time editing my recipes page, taking off some older recipes, adding in some of my more recent recipes – and marking which of them are vegan. I have quite a long list now! I often go back to that page for when I’m re making things I’ve made in the past. I have to say I’m very proud of the range of tasty and healthy meals I have listed :-)

I know that smoothies, especially of the green variety are a bit of a speciality of mine but recently my favourite creations include my high protein hummus, squash dip, veggie loaf, sweet and nutty lentils and cauliflower rice and the many Buddha bowl variations I have made. Do you have some special favourite recipes of your own? What makes them so special to you? I have another super recipe to share with you tomorrow and all I can say is NOM!

Hope you have a great week ahead, catch you later!