Hi everyone, hope you’ve been having a great weekend! Mine has been a good but strange one, I’ve been all over the place seeing family and friends looking at cars, catching up with work and study!

Breakfast on Saturday was a huge bowl full of strawberries with Dorset Cereal High Fibre Muesli and rice milk:

I also had a gingerbread coffee with sweet freedom and rice milk.

Saturday I was out at my parents and friends and looking at cars (haven’t bought one yet!) most of the day so I just snacked on a 9 Bar and some apples I had in my bag. When I did get home I had some miso soup followed by a big green juice:

This contained cucumber, broccoli, celery, lettuce, pear and ginger.

Dinner both yesterday and this evening featured some of my new home made seitan! Seitan is a vegan protein source made from vital wheat gluten flour. A little while ago I bought some vital wheat gluten from iHerb (can also be purchased in the UK from The Flour Bin) and when I saw this recipe I knew it was time to try it out:

Baked Seitan ‘Sausage’ (makes 3 – 4 servings)

• 1 1/4 cups of vital wheat gluten
• 1/4 cup of gram flour
• 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast
• 2 tsp of vegan vegetable bouillon powder
• 3/4 cup of water
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce
• 1 tbsp of braggs

Pre heat oven to 160. Combine dry and wet ingredients in separate bowls then add wet to dry. Mix together to combine and kneed for a couple of minutes. Place dough into some foil and roll up into a large sausage shape. Bake in the oven for an hour until golden:

To store wrap tightly in foil and keep in fridge. I’ve tried freezing some too but I won’t know how well this works until I come to defrost it!

Last night I used some finely sliced seitan in cabbage wraps also containing sun dried tomato high protein hummus, alfalfa sprouts, carrot, yellow pepper and fresh basil alongside some parsnip chips seasoned with herbamare and braggs:

These were awesome! The seitan was quite firm and chewy which I really liked. All the wrap ingredients went together so well, these were just super tasty!

Dessert was a bowl of Freedom chocolate ice ‘cream’:

On Sunday I was up nice and early for my run. I fuelled up with my usual orange and dates and set off. I did just over 7 miles in 1hr 08 minutes with an average pace of 9.38. That’s a big improvement on last weeks 9.45 average pace and considering that I ran a more hilly route today, plus it was freezing and windy I’m absolutely over the moon! :-)

Post run breakfast was another wonderful smoothie containing lots of kale, romaine, frozen cherries, 2 pears, rice milk, maca, matcha green tea powder, spirulina, raw cacao and almond butter topped with flaked almonds and half a bag of bear cocoa cherry pie granola:

Today I decided to use up some of my veggies by making a big pan of my favourite lentil and spinach soup. I had a big bowl for lunch followed by some fresh blackberries:

I also had another green juice, same as Saturdays but with apple instead of pear and lemon instead of ginger. It was so good, I heart green juice!

Tonight I made a seitan, veggie and millet pilaf. This contained the seitan, 1/2 cup of cooked millet, onion, swiss chard, carrot, yellow pepper and courgette plus some veg stock, dried basil, shoyu and mixed seeds:

This was such a delicious, healthy and filling meal! Dessert was some raw 75% cacao ginger chocolate and 2 sliced organic pink lady apples:

I bought the chocolate when I was in York last month, I love ginger chocolate!

Have you tried seitan before? What did you think? Obviously its no good if you have any kind of gluten intolerance. I was really impressed with the ease of this recipe, it could be amended to add new flavours and textures. I would love to try and make some spicy seitan sausage! Seitan can also be cooked in a flavoured broth instead of baked, so many ways to try it!

Today I also decided to sign up for the Bupa Great North 10k! Its being held in Gateshead where I was born, and isn’t very far from Durham at all. Its in July and should be great preparation for the Great North Run Half Marathon in September. I’m absolutely buzzing about it! Are you signed up for any races this year? The only race I’ve ever ran was the Great North Run last year (and I’m signed up again for this year, running for Cancer Research UK again too) so I’m really looking forward to running a race with a shorter distance.

Hope you’ve all had a great weekend!

I just want to start by saying thanks for the comments to last nights post. I was really torn about the whole thing, however I think the event is going to be a very interesting experience for me either way. Thanks for the comments about my yoga class too, I was feeling a bit inadequate about my abilities but I can only get better in time!

For breakfast today I made some millet porridge as I had some cooked millet in the fridge to use up. I warmed it through with some oat milk, a chopped pear, raisins, cinnamon and a teaspoon of sweet freedom. It was surprisingly tasty! I also made myself a fresh juice with 2 beets, 2 carrots, cucumber and a large chunk of ginger.

I don’t know what it is but I’ve been craving beetroot like crazy these last few days. This juice tasted fab too, I think the cucumber stopped it from becoming too tart. I also added a shot of acai berry juice to it along with milk thistle and echinacea tincture.

Mid morning I had a mug of miso and ginger soup. Lunch was a new to me combo. I used to make hummus and turkey wraps with cos lettuce ages ago (before veggiedom) and recently I’ve seen other bloggers making wraps with cabbage leaves. As I had both tasty hummus and cabbage in the fridge I thought I’d give it ago!

My wraps were made with a spring green cabbage leaf with the stem removed. I added a layer of my broccoli, courgette and olive hummus then some yellow pepper, cucumber, lambs lettuce and olives. These worked quite well but I think they would have been better with larger leaves as they were quite messy to eat!

 

These tasted fab though, will certainly be making these a regular lunch option. I was quite surprised at how filling these were too. I also had an orange and some passion fruit.

Before heading to the gym I snacked on one of my leftover cookies and an apple.

I did 30 minutes of speed intervals on the treadmill followed by 30 minutes of my new HIITs on the step machine, bike and cross trainer. I then did my abs and core exercises. My 1 minute planks nearly killed me!

For dinner I decided I was long overdue a good stir fry. I stir fried some courgette and carrot ribbons, asparagus, spring greens, mushroom and yellow pepper in coconut oil then added some mung bean noodles I’d picked up a while ago from an Asian supermarket. I made a sauce for the stir fry using some of the left over cashew ginger pate (from the nori wraps) by watering it down and adding a little more soy sauce and sweet white miso paste.

This was the bomb! Such a great stir fry, full of veggies just how I like it and I loved the mung bean noodles. The sauce worked very well to. That cashew ginger pate has lasted really well, there’s still more left that I think I may use on some baked tofu, yum!

Dessert was some raw chocolate, this time from the Conscious Chocolate Company. They produce various flavours of raw chocolate based on raw cacao powder, cacao butter and agave, all organic and soy, dairy and gluten free. I had half a small bar of mint chocolate.

Oh. my. god. This tasted utterly amazing! It has the most fabulous soft creamy texture and the mint flavour is perfect. I honestly can’t tell you how fabulous this is! I ordered this from Goodness Direct as part of my Christmas pressie but you can also order direct from the website. I can feel another order coming on!

Have you tried cabbage or lettuce wraps before? I was very happy with mine, a great way to get extra raw greens into your diet.

Have any of you tried conscious raw chocolate before? I’m really getting hooked on raw chocolate, I just love the texture and taste and the fact that you can argue that its a health food is just an added bonus!

Hope your all having a fab week, catch you later!