Hello everyone, hope your enjoying your weekend! I don’t know where last weeks sunshine has gone, its been a bit bleak and grey these last two days. Anyway, I have had plenty of lovely things to keep me cheerful, this mornings pancakes being number one:

Vegan chocolate protein pancakes with strawberries, cashew butter and maple syrup. Absolutely delicious!

Number two would be this bowl of oats with pears topped with Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter and buckwheaties for crunch:

That finished off my jar of crack for now, must reorder some from iHerb!

I’ve also enjoyed this gorgeous Butternut Cherry Bomb smoothie inspired by Laura from Sprint 2 the Table:

This was spinach, roast butternut, frozen cherries, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, cinnamon, ground flax, maca, water and ice topped with lemon salted roast almonds, dried cherries and raw granola. It was fantastic and the toppings really worked well together too, I’ll be having the almonds and dried cherries together again soon!

Last night I had a craving for some British style comfort food so I made my version of a ‘Sunday Dinner’ with stuffed seitan roll, cauliflower mash, roast broccoli and gravy:

It hit the spot! For dessert I had a big bowl of frozen blueberries, a chopped pear, peanut sauce made from peanut flour and maple syrup plus cacao nibs:

I also ended up devouring a couple of bowls of millet puffs and chopped apple with extra maple peanut sauce too because it was so good as well as a couple of these home made raw chocolates:

I’d bought some cacao butter ages ago and finally got round to making my own raw chocolate! I used this recipe but halved it and added some lucuma powder, chopped pecans and sea salt. This made 6 little chocolates that taste absolutely heavenly!

For lunch today I’ve just had this gorgeous Warm Butternut, Lentil and Fig Salad:

I left off the pine nuts and added some simple tahini miso dressing instead. So so good, perfect salad for this time of year!

Something lovely happened at the gym this morning. I’d just done my gym workout (30 minute treadmill run, 15 minutes cross trainer) and was waiting for my kettlebell class to start when I bumped into a friend that I hadn’t spoken to in a while. She commented on how good I was looking since I’d gained some weight and that she was actually worried about me when I’d been thinner. It meant so much to me to hear her say that. I am trying to deal with this weight gain thing and its not easy but every time some one says something like that it makes me feel a million times better. At the moment I’m just trying to relax into things to see where my weight naturally stabilises eating and exercising as I am now although I am expecting that I’ll continue to gain for a while. I’ve started to think that experiencing both ends of the spectrum – being overweight and then underweight (for my own body) are just things that I’ve had to go through in order for me to grow as a person and hopefully help others in my future :-) 

I also went to the tattooist yesterday and managed to get booked in for a 2 hour session on Wednesday if I can get the time off work! So incredibly excited, as well as being a little nervous of the pain but I know it will be worth it. Looking forward to sharing the tattoo with you once it’s done!

What lovely things have you enjoyed this weekend?

Last night when me and the hubby sat down to watch the last Ashes to Ashes (anyone else been watching? I was happy with the way they ended it, but I am so going to miss the Gene Genie!) I attacked my chocolate stash and had the last of my Hazelnut and Raisin Green and Blacks chocolate which was amazing. I then had 9 dates, 5 of them stuffed with a little almond. I told myself I was 'carb loading' for todays run! ;-)

I got up really early as I knew it was going to be warm today so I wanted to get out on my run as soon as possible. I fueled up with a 9 bar original.

My bloody RunKeeper App failed on me and couldn't find a GPS signal so I just gave up on it and decided to run without it. I did the same route as last week so I knew I would be covering just over 11 miles. I really enjoyed the run, my legs held up much better than last week. The two big hills towards the end were tough but I just attacked them at a nice steady pace. It did get uncomfortably hot in the last couple of miles and my water ran out so I was gagging for a drink when I got home. I calculated that I did just over 11 miles in 1hr45, thats a couple of minutes faster than last week. I think my average pace was about 9.50 a mile so I'm fairly happy with that as the mile with the hills would have slowed me down.

When I got home I stretched, showered and then made the most amazing breakfast ever!

Chocolate Protein Pancakes with Grilled Pears and Peanut Sauce

For the pancakes:
3 egg whites
1 scoop of chocolate whey powder
2 tablespoons of apple sauce
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder

2 desert pears
Agave syrup or honey

For the peanut sauce:
3 heaped teaspoons of smooth peanut butter
3 tablespoons of non diary milk

Start by making the peanut sauce, mix together the peanut butter and non diary milk. I used this new coconut milk which I had seen in the shops a few times and then on Stella's blog so decided to give it ago.

Pop in a microwavable dish and nuke for a couple of minutes until the peanut butter and milk has combined into a creamy sauce. Add a splash more milk if needed.

Then wash and quarter the pears, removing the core. Mine weren't ripe yet so I microwaved them for a couple of minutes until they had softened. Place on a plate or tray and drizzle with the agave or honey and pop under a medium grill until they have slightly browned.

To make the pancakes mix all the pancake ingredients together well and spoon on to a medium hot frying pan (I use spray oil when making pancakes). When the surface starts to bubble its time to flip. This mixture made 3 medium sized pancakes. I keep the ones that have been done warm under a low grill until its all ready to plate up. Devour!

This tasted amazingly good, the peanut sauce was something really special and the pancakes were light and fluffy. I love the combination of pear and chocolate, but this would also go very well with fresh strawberries. Total foodgasm! I enjoyed these with a cup of Tea Pigs Chocolate Flake Tea, the flavours go together so well. The hubby is starting to make fun of me as he says I've started matching my flavoured teas to my meals like you would with wine! I don't care as it really does make a difference, for example my fruity Mao Feng Green tea would have totally clashed with this.

I had a lovely lazy morning and then headed through to my parents house. They had my little Nephew with them as well so it was great to see him. I just parked myself in their back garden with a pile of magazines and enjoyed the sunshine! I took a packed lunch though with me - a Mozzerella and Tomato salad made with fresh mozzerella pulled into pieces, a chopped vine tomato, cucumber, red onion, spinach leaves and a few chopped mint leaves. I also had a big bunch of red grapes.

A perfect sunny day lunch!

During the afternoon I grazed on this pile of fruit - grapes, strawberries and tangerines and then I had a lovely crunchy apple when I got home.

I stayed out in the sun for a good few hours, it kept clouding over but it was still really warm and I managed to burn my legs! I'm such an idiot, I never think that my legs will burn, I always worry more about my face and shoulders so I forgot to put sun screen on them.

For dinner I decided to try out this new tofu I picked up from Waitrose last week.

I stir fried it in oil and a little soy sauce then stir fried some veggies to go with it - brocolli, asparagus, red pepper, carrot, a little bit of courgette and some red onion, plus more soy sauce.

I decided to eat the whole block of tofu to fill me right up. It was delicious, I had a taste of it before I stir fried it and it will be perfect in salads. I'll definitely be buying more of this! For desert all I wanted was something ice cream like! I made a big bowl of chocolate raspberry sorbet.

Drinks - water, a lot of it! Green tea, chocolate flake tea, decaf tea, decaf coffee.

While I was at my parents my Mam asked me to go through a box of my old things to see what needed to be chucked out, I found some brilliant photos from a girly holiday I had to Cyprus with my best friend Charlie a few years ago. I popped these photos and some other bits and bobs I found in my Keep Sake box.

Do you have a keep sake box? What kind of things do you have in it? I keep old tickets from gigs, Airplane tickets, other holiday stuff  and old note books and journals.

This is definitely one of the things I'd try and save in a fire, it feels like so much of my life is in there!

Well, I have had a fantastic chilled out day. The weather has been amazing, and when you get weather like that in the UK you have to make the most of it! Hope you have all had a great day whatever you've been up to! x