Hi everyone, hope you are all having a great week! Here’s a quick recap of my exercise and eats over the last couple of days:

I started my Tuesday with a Yoga for Runners 20 minute podcast – great way to get the blood pumping and get focused before work! Breakfast was another big smoothie containing kale, strawberries, frozen peaches, vanilla rice milk, vanilla hemp protein powder, spirulina, matcha, mesquite and ground flax. I topped it with some bear coco cherry pie granola and gojis:

Yummy! Although my smoothies have been turning out a pretty yukky sludge colour recently, just goes to show you shouldn’t judge on appearances!

Lunch was a mug of miso soup followed by a big sun dried tomato high protein hummus topped salad containing lettuce, spinach, carrot, alfalfa sprouts, beetroot and sugar snaps. I also had two big apples:

I watered the hummus down a bit and then mixed it all in like a thick salad dressing, yum!

Before I went to Body Pump I ate a mixed berry Trek bar. Body Pump was awesome again, I love doing the clean and press, I feel proper bad ass with those big weights!

Dinner was not pancakes, I just wasn’t in the mood for them despite it being pancake day. The way I look at it is I can have pancakes when ever I like, I think pancake day used to be more special when I never ate pancakes!

Instead I had peanut soba noodles with edamade and veggies. I cooked some soba noodles and made veggie noodles using two small courgettes and my spiraliser. I quickly stir fried some shredded bok choy and sugar snaps then added the soba noodles and veggie noodles and some frozen edamade. I made a lovely sauce using peanut butter, lime juice, fresh ginger and soy sauce:

This was delicious, the peanut sauce was really good!

Dessert was a rainbow Fruit-ein protein shake made with vanilla rice milk, ice cubes and xanthan and guar gums for thickness. I topped it with a few flaked almonds:

My stomach was a bottomless pit last night so I also snacked on a few of my favourite pink lady apples.

This morning I decided to start work a little later and get a gym workout in first thing. I did 30 minutes of speed intervals on the treadmill and managed to slightly increase my usual speed :-)

I also did 30 minutes total HIITs on the step machine, cross trainer and bike and then did my abs and core. I managed to hold another 2 minute plank, I had been worried that when I achieved this time on Monday it had been some kind of fluke so I was extra chuffed!

Breakfast was one of my gorgeous Almond Quinoa Muffins with a chopped pear, Total blueberry split pot yoghurt and pumpkin and sunflower seeds:

I love this combo! The split pot was also pretty tasty but I think the blueberry compote was a little bit artificial tasting for me.

Lunch was some Pea, Broccoli and Pesto Soup with some cherries:

Mid afternoon I just snacked on some of my high protein sun dried tomato hummus with cucumber and sugar snaps for dipping. Dinner was a lovely combo of quinoa with kidney beans, courgette, red pepper and parsley served on top of steamed swiss chard and kale with shoyu and ume vinegar:

This was so so satisfying and utterly delish! I made a big portion so I have tasty leftovers for tomorrow too.

To make dessert I wanted to try out a little experiment:

Instant Coconut Milk (makes 4 cups)

• 4 cups of water (I used bottled)
• 3 tablespoons of coconut flour (I used Tiara available from Goodness Direct)

Add both ingredients to a blender and blitz! This amount of flour produces a texture similar to kara coconut milk (although not quite as smooth). You could add an extra tablespoon if you prefer it more coconuty and creamy or you could also strain this through some muslin cloth if you wanted a smoother result. Adding some cocoa powder or raw cacao powder and agave would give you chocolate coconut milk! This could be a serious money saver!

I used some of my coconut milk with frozen raspberries for a quick dessert:

Simple and lovely!

I’ve had a real craving recently for simple meals like my quinoa, kidney bean and veggie dinner. Kris Carr from Crazy Sexy Life calls them Buddha Bowls, Carrie from Moves and Munchies recently described similar meals as Luscious Bowls and Matt from No Meat Athlete describes them as a Green, a Bean and Grain. 

The formula I like to keep in mind is:

• Whole grain or healthy carb - millet, brown rice, quinoa, buck wheat, couscous, barley etc or starchy veggie like sweet potato
• Protein - beans, lentils, tofu, or non vegan protein
• Veggies – raw or cooked, possibilities are endless, but I always try and include a leafy green!
• Healthy fat – could be in the form of a sauce or dressing like a coconut curry sauce or green goddess dressing or just some plain oil, avocado, nuts or seeds
• Seasonings - soy / shoyu, vinegar, braggs, nutritional yeast, herbamare, fresh or dried herbs, garlic, chilli, ginger etc

Actually so many good meals can be broken down into this formula!

Whatever you call them (I quite like the Buddha Bowl name myself) I think they are great: cheap to make, provide almost endless variety and are so healthy. I’ll definitely be playing about with this kind of meal more often especially while I’m trying to keep my grocery budget in check!

Do you eat ‘Buddha Bowl’ type meals? What’s your formula for a perfect meal?

I’m completely buzzing at the moment, we had some fantastic news yesterday – my husband has been offered a new job! He’s been trying to get out of his current job for a few years so this is just massive news for us. It also means that he will go from working all sorts of crazy hours to working a 9-5 week day job. This is going to impact on us in a huge way – we will actually have weekends together now! Anyway, I’m feeling extremely grateful for all the good things in my life right now!

Yesterday kicked off with my usual 45 minutes of strength and cardio from my Davina DVD followed by a massive kabocha squash smoothie:

I had a fair bit of left over squash so put in a little more than usual plus some ice cubes, vanilla soy milk, water, vanilla protein powder, ginger, cinnamon, wheat germ, ground flax and xanthan gum. This nearly overflowed the bowl! I topped it with a crumbled homemade gingerbread cookie and also enjoyed a cup of black Christmas tea. It was just amazing, so smooth and creamy, I can’t imagine life without kabocha!

Lunch was another hummus topped salad beast same as Monday plus two small pears. I decided to use some overtime hours at work and finish early so I popped to the gym for a quick workout – yes, two workouts in one day! I had loads of energy so I thought I might as well use it! I did 45 minutes of HIITs on the treadmill, step machine and cross trainer. Post workout snack was a delicious jammy Almond and Quinoa Muffin:

This one was from the freezer and I can report that they freeze very well. Dinner was some P’s Curry from the freezer served with a big side of steamed greens with soy sauce:

This curry really is tasty and so healthy, I must make up some more soon!

Desert was some Rachel’s Organic Coconut Greek Yoghurt with two sliced organic braeburns:

I also had another two apples after these. I think the additional hunger was no doubt due to the extra cardio. I’m certainly not going to sweat about eating an extra couple of apples when I’m hungry! The hubby ate what was left of the Coconut yoghurt, luckily he wasn’t a massive fan so I can keep this flavour to myself in future!

Today I’ve been officially working from home, but I decided just to do a few hours and use overtime hours again. This meant I could enjoy a little lie in and a relaxed breakfast. I made a peanut butter and apple seeded egg white and spelt wrap with a Christmas Coffee:

 

The Christmas Coffee was amazing! I was going to wait and do my last bit of grocery shopping tomorrow but the snow has started here and I knew I would just spend all day stressing in case the car got stuck so I decided to just go and get what I needed. My organic veg box should be coming tomorrow but I stocked up on a few other bits and pieces including organic apples, pomegranates, fresh figs, passion fruits, satsumas, maple roasted nuts, dark chocolate for baking and some milk and English muffins for James.

Mid morning I hit the gym and did 15 minutes on the tread x 2 plus 15 minutes of HIITs each on the bike and step machine plus abs work. I had wanted to do 30 minutes straight on the treadmill but it looks like my iPod shuffle has died a death and there’s no way I could run for that long on the tread with no banging tunes!

Lunch was some basil tofu, swede chips, kabocha squash and steamed greens with ketchup:

I also had a couple of un pictured pears. I’ve just snacked on a slice of tasty Couscous cake too:

Tonight's dinner will probably just be some toast with marmite and carrot and cucumber sticks and perhaps a couple of oranges as I have a friend popping round for coffee. Can’t believe we only have a few days left before Christmas, I’m so excited, especially for some of the tasty meals I have planned. Today I have done some cleaning and ironing and tomorrow will be lots of cooking. After much thought I’ve decided to make a veggie loaf as my turkey alternative for Christmas day. Thanks to you all who suggested lovely dishes, I’ve gone for this as it seems fairly straightforward and will make for yummy boxing day leftovers! I’m also going to make a chocolate orange cake which I will bake tomorrow and then decorate on Christmas Eve. At the moment I’m feeling pretty well organised although I have no idea what I’m going to wear on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I feel an emergency shopping trip on the cards! Do you dress up on Christmas day or go casual? I like to make sure I have an outfit with some room for a food baby!

For the first time in ages I woke up this Monday morning and didn’t want to crawl straight back into bed! I think this yummy breakfast may have had something to do with it:

Almond and quinoa muffin with chopped apple, tofu ‘yoghurt’ (mori nu silken tofu blended with 1 small jar of apple and blueberry baby food and 1 tsp of vanilla extract) plus pumpkin and sunflower seeds and a vanilla coffee sweetened with agave. I really enjoyed the tofu yoghurt, I’ve made loads of variations of blended tofu puddings but this was a perfect yoghurt replacement, delicious.

For lunch I decided to try out some of the Clearspring ramen noodles I received last week. I had the soya sauce noodles with nori wraps containing my avocado / nutritional yeast mix and shredded carrot:

I really enjoyed those noodles, they do have a long ingredients list but its all whole recognisable ingredients. The soya sauce flavour was delicious and they were very easy to make – just add boiling water, microwave then add sauce. Like a pot noodle but without all the crap!

I also had a sliced kiwi and orange:

Mid afternoon I had a peppermint stick Luna bar before heading off to the gym:

At the gym I did 15 minutes of HIITs on the step machine, 15 minutes of HIITs on the cross trainer followed by my abs and core exercises and my 30 minute spin class which was packed tonight.

Yesterday, as part of my Sunday cook up session I made some of my delicious Italian Leek and Bean Stew so for dinner I had a nice big portion along with some spelt pasta and swiss chard sautéed with garlic:

It was gorgeous and so filling. Dessert was a protein smoothie in a bowl made with ice cubes, soy milk and fruitein protein powder plus goji berries for topping:

The postie was also my friend today when he delivered my Viva Pure order:

I ordered maca powder, chia seeds, mesquite and raw cacao. Included with my order were a few additional goodies for me to review – raw chia seed superfood porridge mix, raw crunchy apple granola and spicy pumpkin seeds. I had a sneaky taste of the granola and pumpkin seeds and they are both fabulous, can’t wait to try out the porridge mix!

As I think I may have hinted in Friday’s post I’ve been doing lots of thinking over the last few days about my future. Just to give you a bit of background, I’m currently a project manager for a small charity that works to support other charities and community groups. Next year our funding runs out and it will be time to look for a new job. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would like to do next and I really fancy a bit of a change of direction. Obviously I am passionate about healthy eating, cooking and fitness and would love to be able to earn a living (or at least part of a living) doing work in this area. I’ve decided to enrol on a distance learning course to gain a qualification as a Diet and Nutrition Advisor. I’m really excited about it and think that it will complement the skills and qualifications I already have working in the community and voluntary sector. I love that feeling of optimism for the future and all it could bring!

I also have a few ideas for refreshing and reorganising the blog including a re design and a few more fashion and home posts, the flat is in need of a spring make over and I’ve been seeking some budget friendly decor updates I can’t wait to share with you over the next couple of weeks!

Have you ever changed jobs or careers or followed your passions?

Almond and Quinoa Jam Filled Muffins – (makes 12) inspired by recipe from Veganomicon

• 1 cup of vanilla soy milk
• 1 tablespoon of ground flax
• 1/4 cup of grapeseed oil
• 1/4 cup of agave syrup
• 1 teaspoon of almond extract
• 1 1/4 cups of wholemeal plain flour
• 1/4 cup of ground almonds
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 1/4 cups of cooked quinoa
• Dark Cherry Fruit Sweetened Jam (I used St Dalfour)
• Flaked almonds

Preheat the oven to 175c. Grease a 12 muffin tin or 12 muffin cases. Mix together the soy milk and ground flax and leave for a minute to combine. Add the oil, almond extract and agave and mix. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry until just incorporated. Fold in the cooked quinoa. Fill the muffin cases about a third full and using a teaspoon make a small ‘well’ in the dough. Add a teaspoon of the jam then add more muffin dough to fill the cases about 3/4 full. Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown and a tooth pick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

 

So jammy in the middle…

I had one of these babies for breakfast with some sliced kiwi and a Vanilla Coffee. So delicious and amazing healthy – just look at that ingredients list! The addition of quinoa gives these a great protein punch too. Expect to see these muffins in one form or another in the future – I think the basic muffin recipe can easily be adapted with different flavourings. I like the idea of making apple, raisin and cinnamon or orange and cranberry. The possibilities are endless!

Are you a muffin fan? What’s your favourite kind of muffin?

After Wednesday’s shortened workout and hellish DOMS I was glad to wake up feeling refreshed and less achy on Thursday morning. I did my Thursday morning yoga and core workout with a few changes for progression:

• Warm up – jumping jacks, bum kicks, running on the spot, skipping (5 minutes)
• 20 minute Yoga for runners podcast
• plank (as I didn’t do my plank last night – 1 min 25 sec)
• side planks (40 sec hold each side)
• v – ups (20 reps)
• twisting windmills (20 reps)
• stability ball leg raises (20 reps)
• stability ball leg curl (20 reps)
• Side to side (20 reps each side)
• Donkey kicks (20 reps each side)

I could really feel my core and shoulder muscles after this! Breakfast was a massive green smoothie containing 1/2 frozen banana, spring greens, 2 nectarines, 2 ice cubes, 2 tbsp of vanilla hemp powder, 2 tbsp of peanut butter, spirulina, matcha, ground flax, mesquite, xanthan gum, soy milk and water:

It was a bowl of absolute awesomeness! I topped it with half a bag of Bear apple crumble granola.

Lunch was a second portion of Quinoa, grape and walnut salad with lettuce followed by 2 plums and a kiwi.

Mid afternoon snack was one of my Almond and Quinoa Muffins I’d rescued from the freezer:

I made these back in December and froze some – they still taste amazing!

I then needed to do my 30 minute run I’d ditched from my Wednesday evening workout. I spent all day pondering one big question: to run outdoors for the first time in almost three months or to just go back on the treadmill. It got to 4pm and the weather was beautiful outside, a bright clear crisp day. I knew what I had to do. I rushed home, got changed straight into my running tights, vest top, thermal top and hoody and set off. I decided not to use my Run keeper App and just go out and run for the love of running, and boy did I love it! I had been so worried about getting back outdoors after such a long break, I thought it would be unbelievably tough, that I wouldn’t be able to run all the way, that I’d collapse with exhaustion after half a mile. But I didn’t. I ran for 45 minutes without stopping and it was wonderful, it reminded me why I love running so much. I have no idea what kind of pace I did but it didn’t feel ridiculously slow. I was just so chuffed!

Dinner was some Lentil Dahl with a big pile of greens with shoyu and mixed seeds:

Dessert was a full punnet of blueberries, a chopped pink lady apple with unsweetened soy milk and the other half of the pack of Bear Apple Crumble granola:

This morning I was in the mood for socca! I had socca filled with almond butter and fruit sweetened black cherry jam plus a big green juice:

The socca tasted amazing – I love nut butter and jam in any form and this was lush! The juice contained 3 apples, 1 cucumber, big bunch of parsley, ginger and lemon.

Lunch was some spicy sweet potato and leek soup with parsley and a gorgeous blood orange and pink lady apple:

I then hit the gym for my second strength workout of the week. I did a very similar routine to my home workout I did on Tuesday but warmed up for 5 minutes on the treadmill, used the gyms heavier weights and dropped the reps. I even managed 1 full push up! I couldn’t do any more after that though so went back to doing them on an incline. I also did my lateral raises and squat as two separate exercises so that I wasn’t dropping my form with using the heavier weights. Then I did 30 minutes of HIITs on the cross trainer, step machine and bike. 

To refuel after my workout I had a vanilla chai protein shake made with vanilla spiru-tein, cooled vanilla chai tea, soy milk, xanthan gum and ice:

As spiru-tein contains spirulina it came out a greeny colour so I thought I might as well add some matcha green tea powder to the mix. I also topped this with cinnamon, yummy!

Dinner was roast kabocha squash and adzuki beans with a huge pile of steamed kale with ume vinegar, shoyu, mixed seeds and chopped parsley:

Dessert was some vanilla freedom iced dessert with a teaspoon of graham cracker crumbs:

This was just as good as the chocolate version, it has a lovely vanilla flavour and a great creamy but light texture, I’m officially hooked on this!

I think I’m still buzzing from my outdoor run. I do need to try and find some good gloves as I suffer from extremely painful hands when they get cold – that was one of the reasons I took my runs back indoors in the first place but thankfully the weather is getting warmer. Anyone have any running glove recommendations? Has the winter affected your running schedule? If you moved your runs onto the treadmill how do you make the move to outdoors running again? I think I’ll be trying a few more runs without tracking my mileage or pace until I’m fully back into it.

Tomorrow is the hubby’s birthday, he’s not really fussed on big celebrations so we will probably just have a nice relaxing day and head out for lunch somewhere. Hope you all have a good weekend!