Hi everyone, happy Friday! Hope your all ready to enjoy the weekend. Loved reading your comments to my Green Smoothie post, if anyone would like to join in with the 7 days, 7 smoothies challenge please feel free!

I’ve had a great couple of days off which have been spent doing my favourite pass times: shopping, cooking, eating, reading and exercising!

I started Thursday morning with a home workout. I decided that I wanted to get my workout completed early and as my gym doesn’t open until 9am on a Thursday I checked out my DVD collection and went with Davina Fit: Top Fit and MTV Yoga which gave me a total 1hr 15 min workout. I was starving after this but luckily I had prepared breakfast in advance:

My Vanilla Chia Wheat Germ Breakfast Pudding with two chopped white nectarines, yum!

I spent the morning getting all the grocery shopping done which included a trip to the farm shop, green grocer, Tesco and Sainbury’s – yep, there’s some stuff that Tesco do cheaper than sainsbos and some stuff I just prefer from sainsbos so I did both!

Lunch was some raw wraps made with spring green leaves, sunflower seed butter, carrot, pink lady apple and basil. I also had 4 clearspring sesame tamari rice cakes on the side:

I love these wraps they are amazingly tasty and filling!

Mid afternoon I fancied a big green juice so I juiced up 1 pear, 3 romaine leaves, celery, cucumber, broccoli, spinach and lemon, it was delicious!

Dinner was an awesome Buddha bowl. I combined roast kabocha squash, edamame, quinoa and chopped parsley with a lemon juice, braggs seasoning and cool oil dressing and served it up on top of some steamed broccoli and purple sprouting broccoli with shoyu. I also added some viva pure spicy pumpkin seeds:

This was so so good, I adore kabocha, nothing else comes close to the sweetness and texture of it, delicious!

Dessert was two raw vegan brownie bites topped with coconut flour ‘icing’:

Delish! I also had two unpictured fiji apples.

This morning I was up and off to the gym. I did 1 hour of intervals on the cross trainer, step machine, bike and rowing machine. Oh, and that’s 1 hour total, not one hour on each! I think the way I write that can be misleading sometimes, I do 15 minutes on each machine for a total 1 hour workout. I finished off with my abs and core exercises.

Breakfast was the first green smoothie of my Green Smoothie Challenge:

Apple Pie Green Smoothie (makes one large serving):

• 5 large kale stems (with thick stems removed) – or greens of choice
• 1 frozen banana
• 1 pink lady apple, chopped
• 2 ice cubes
• 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder (I used sun warrior)
• 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp of ground ginger
• 1/2 cup of rice milk
• 1 tsp of maca (optional)
• 1 tsp of spirulina (optional)
• 1 tsp of ground flax (optional)
• water to desired thickness
• 1/2 – 1 tsp of xanthan gum (optional but adds thickness)

Topping

• 1 tbsp of almond butter
• 1 tbsp of granola (I used viva pure raw apple granola)
• cinnamon

Add ingredients to blender in order listed above, blend. Top with the almond butter and granola and a dusting of cinnamon, devour!

This really did taste like apple pie, so lush! I loved the drippy almond butter on top.

James had the day off too so we headed to Newcastle – I got the most gorgeous ultra skinny jeans and coat from H&M, pics to come over the weekend! I also got stocked up on my favourite yogi teas and soya beans from the health food shop. We were going to have lunch in town but ran out of parking time so when I got home I threw together a tasty salad containing lots of mixed green leaves (spinach, romaine, lambs lettuce and parsley) carrot, red pepper, cucumber, sugar snaps, spring onion and spicy roasted chickpeas and a peanut lime dressing (1 tbsp of peanut flour, lime juice, water and shoyu):

I also had an orange. Later in the afternoon I had another green juice. Dinner was leftovers of last nights Buddha bowl with spring greens instead of broccoli.

Last week I said that I had came up with a recipe using the leftover pulp from making my sesame milk – and here it is!

Raw Chocolate Sesame Tart (makes 4)

• 1 cup of leftover sesame pulp (from making milk)
• 2 tbsp of raw cacao powder
• 1 tbsp of agave syrup
• 1 tbsp of coconut oil, melted

Combine all ingredients and divide mixture between 4 tart cases with removal bottoms. Store in the freezer until needed then remove from tart case 10 minutes before eating, enjoy!

I served mine with some fresh strawberries and figs, it tasted fab!

I really enjoyed my big grocery shop. I was due one as the last time I really properly stocked my cupboards was October. I like to do a huge shop to stock up then I just work my way through everything. As well as the store cupboard type stuff I also got a fantastic haul of fresh produce from the farm shop and green grocers:

 

Yep, this filled my kitchen!

I’m looking forward to some delicious meals using this stuff for the coming week. I was also pretty good and stuck to my list apart from buying two new items:

Hemp milk:

Carob flakes:

Both spotted on Jessica’s blog. I had a taste of the carob flakes and oh my word they are so good! Have you tried hemp milk or carob flakes before? What did you think?

Do you do a monster grocery shop every so often or do you just get things in each week? I love having fully stocked cupboards then just picking up a few fresh items when needed.

Any exciting plans for the weekend? I’m out for one of my best friends birthday’s on Saturday night along with the usual family visits and my long run. I’m not looking forward to the clocks going forward, it always messes with by bio clock!

Hope you have all had a great week and enjoy your weekend!

Well I can’t believe another Sunday has almost been and gone, I’ve had a lovely weekend and another productive one, love crossing things off my to do lists!

The weather yesterday was amazing!

I started my weekend on Friday night with a lovely meal of apricot and ginger glazed kabocha squash, adzuki beans and millet with parsley and some steamed greens:

I also tried some of the Coyo yoghurt for dessert:

This was the mixed berries variety with some Kashi Crunch cereal, it was lovely, very much like the home made coconut yoghurt I’ve been making recently. I also had some for breakfast yesterday with two chopped pears, oats and dried cherries:

Yum! Yesterday I made a big bowl of kelp noodles with spiralised courgette and an avocado and lime sauce topped with nutritional yeast:

Unfortunately this just wasn’t that good! Luckily, most of my meals are tasty and satisfying but this was just meh. Half of it went in the bin. Instead I had a bowl of grapes, chopped apple and more Kashi Crunch:

Followed by a gorgeous mint chocolate protein shake:

This was just one scoop of chocolate sun warrior blended with ice, stevia and peppermint extract. It was amazing and made up for the meh lunch!

Last night I made a quick chickpea and spinach curry using garlic, ginger and garam masala fried in coconut oil with the chickpeas in a tomato sauce (just some plain passata) and spinach:

I had it with some steamed broccoli and more of the glazed kabocha on the side. That curry took 5 minutes to make and tasted so good! For dessert I had what is probably the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time:

Pretzels with strawberries and peanut dip! I made the dip with peanut flour, maple syrup and water. The pretzels dipped in the peanut sauce = absolute heaven! Unfortunately as lovely as that was it didn’t satisfy my snackies last night and I ended up having a late night party with several bowls of oats, dark chocolate buttons and Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter while watching Confessions of a Shopaholic. Oops! I just can’t seem to get past these weekend snack fests but I’m trying not to beat myself up about it.

At least I was well fuelled this morning for a 5k treadmill run, 20 minutes random on the bike and my kettlebell class – which was a killer, have any of you done kettlebell star jumps? I thought I was going to die!

After that I had a raw protein buckwheat bowl with vanilla sun warrior protein powder, maca, ground flax, chopped apple and cinnamon:

Then lunch was a nice healthy salad with little gem lettuce, carrot, red cabbage, edamame, roast edamame and a sweet miso and apple cider dressing:

As I’m looking to try and maintain my albeit heavier weight, I’m still trying to balance out those snack fests by just getting back to eating good healthy food the next day, not restricting and not feeling guilty.

Yesterday after visiting my Mam for Mothers Day, I had a lovely time with my best friend and her little girl including a nice walk in the sunshine and eating one of the peanut butter cookies her little girl had made:

I doubt these were vegan and were made with white flour and refined sugar but I gladly enjoyed one (these are the ones I brought home for James). It got me thinking about where I draw my lines when it comes to healthy eating and of course veganism. As long as I’m living healthfully, ethically and right by my body most of the time I’m not going to turn down a one off cookie home made with love and eaten over a cuppa with my best friend. So where do I draw the line then? I’m one that never says never but I can’t imagine any scenario when I would eat meat again. I only eat eggs and diary when they are tiny trace ingredients in some things like dark chocolate and would only consider eating them whole again if my body was really craving them and if so I would always go for organic / free range. I choose not to eat refined carbs like white flour, refined sugar or processed foods on a regular basis because I don’t see them as healthy and they don’t make me feel at my best. However as demonstrated above, sometimes I’ll say screw all that under special circumstances because life is too short not to eat a cookie made with love! I’m not one for labels and I firmly believe that everyone is different so I’m not making judgements here on how others eat, but I’m interested in your thoughts…

When it comes to healthy living, where do you draw your lines?

Hi everyone, hope your having a great week! I’m just busy trying to get back into a routine after being on holiday last week. Coming back to reality sucks but I do like to have a routine, and being able to be home and make my favourite green smoothies has been great. After a few days I had a serious craving for greens! I love that WIAW has a theme this month, I kind of missed it last week with me being away so but I’m definitely up for it now, goodness knows I love my veggies! I thought it would be interesting to do a portion count of how many veggies I eat in a day. These are my eats from yesterday:

I was back to my usual Tuesday routine so got up early to get in a quick yoga podcast before work. I did the 20 minute Yoga for Runners and boy did I need it, I was feeling so stiff! After that I had my warm water with lemon juice, got ready and decided to celebrate my recipe being in the new release of Kris Carr’s e book Crazy Sexy Juices and Succulent Smoothies by starting the day with a big green juice!

This was 1 cucumber, 1 head of romaine lettuce, 4 stalks of celery, kale stems, ginger and lemon (3 portions of veg) it tasted lovely! I’ll promise I’ll stop going on about Crazy Sexy Juices and Smoothies but I’m just so excited! Seeing my name in amongst others like Gena Hamshaw and Chad Sarno is just crazy. I got my copy of the e book last night and it is really fab, I have loads of ideas for tasty juices and smoothies I can’t wait to enjoy. In addition to the juice I decided to use some sunflower seed milk I’d made the night before in a matcha green tea latte:

I’d made the milk using sunflower seeds (1/2 cup soaked 8 hours, drained, rinsed and blended with 2 cups of filtered water then strained) and added some lucuma powder and vanilla stevia drops for sweetness. It frothed up pretty well!

I also took all my supplements and drank a couple of cups of green tea. Once I’d settled in at work I had breakfast no 2. I really enjoyed the simple breakfasts I’d had in Brighton of just fruit with nut butter for spreading so I made one again:

This was 1 large banana, 2 apples, a bowl of cherries and about 3 tbsp raw dark tahini and honey for spreading along with a mug of chai green tea, I just love spreading the nut butter on the banana:

Nom!!!! That raw dark tahini tastes amazing!

For lunch I had a bowl of Kabocha and Adzuki Bean Stew which was leftover from the weekend, accompanied by some of my home made almond and rosemary raw crackers:

Delish! (about 2 portions of veg)

Before I left work for the gym I snacked on some dried prunes and apricots for a little pick me up:

It was the usual Tuesday evening gym session of 20 minutes of HIIT on the cross trainer and bike followed by my Body Pump class which was my first in two weeks. I decided to try and stick with my usual weights and it was tough!

Once I got home I fixed a tasty dinner of baked tempeh with stir fried veggies:

I’m just in love with tempeh at the moment. I’d marinated it in shoyu, honey, ground ginger and garlic powder then baked for 30 minutes at 200c flipping once. This was actually baked on Monday night so all I had to do was warm it back up. The stir fry included broccoli, courgette, carrot, red cabbage and spring greens which I just added a little fresh ginger and shoyu for flavour (at least 3 portions of veg).

While we were watching TV after dinner I snacked on a couple of jazz apples:

Then later on I fancied something chocolaty so made up some double chocolate protein pudding by mixing a scoop of chocolate sun warrior protein powder with water and swirling in a chocolate sauce made from raw cacao powder, agave syrup and water then topped it all off with some cacao nibs and gojis:

I also made a delicious chocolate mint rooibos tea:

I love that tea, it has such a good flavour and reminds me a bit of the Teapigs chocolate flake tea but caffeine free!

So I think I had a fairly veggie packed day, I had at least 8 portions of veg including:

• Cucumber
• Celery
• Romaine
• Kabocha Squash
• Broccoli
• Red cabbage
• Carrot
• Courgette

I love eating a variety of veggies! I think I probably must average about 7-8 portions of veg a day, sometimes more if I’m having a green smoothie plus a salad. I know that when it comes to my leafy greens I don’t feel quite right after a few days of not having them!

How many portions of veg do you tend to eat in an average day?

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!

I’m happy to say that I’ve had another pretty productive week! I seem to have peaks and toughs with my productivity, but this week I have done a lot of thinking and planning – see my thoughts on writing a personal mission statement at the end of the post. A few things are starting to come together, at least in my head, and I think that’s half the battle sometimes.

A random lovely thing from this week has to include my new house plants:

I got these at the weekend to replace one that had died and another than was over growing. I love having plants around the house, I think a room feels lifeless without at least a bit of green or some pretty blooming flowers in it!

This week I’ve been loving my breakfasts! I generally love breakfast in any case, its certainly my favourite meal of the day, but this week they have been exceptionally lovely:

Slice of toasted sunflower and chia seed bread with almond butter and black cherry jam with a simple green smoothie on the side

Have seen a few Cinnamon vanilla socca on various blogs so gave it ago! Stuffed with almond butter and fresh peaches

Fresh peaches, strawberries and honey pear with a bowl of tofu cream and granola plus a spoonful of sunbutter for dipping

Plus coffee with all of those, there is always coffee ;-) I’ve just been craving sweet fresh fruit all week! Other meals have tended to be the usual stuff:

A very green ‘clean out the fridge’ salad with romaine, quinoa, cucumber, edamame and avocado

Lentil soup and home made raw crackers – glad I saved that for lunch yesterday seeing as the weather was so dreadful a warm bowl of soup was much needed!

Raw courgette noodles topped with roast kabocha squash and tahini miso sauce – always good!

Green smoothie snack – with romaine, courgette, chocolate chip cookie dough spiru-tein protein powder, water and ice topped with dried figs and tahini

Strawberries, pear, tofu cream and Dorset Cereals Strawberry and Redcurrant Granola

Last but not least, a rice cake slathered with Justin’s chocolate Hazelnut butter!

This weeks workouts:

• Saturday – REST
• Sunday – Just over 9.5 mile run
• Monday – Gym – this strength and HIIT workout
• Tuesday – Gym – 30 minutes cardio HIITs on the cross trainer, bike and rowing machine, Body Pump (new release!)
• Wednesday – Hot yoga class 
• Thursday – AM 3 mile run, PM yoga class
• Friday – Gym – 5 min warm up cross trainer, 15 min treadmill speed run, 25 minutes of random strength exercises focusing on upper body and abs, 5 min bike cool down

Its been a fun workout week indeed! Running though to my parents house on Sunday morning made a great change to the usual out and back or loop running routes. Tuesday’s new Body Pump class was awesome, I loved the new body weight squats and squat jumps, lots of fun! Then I went for another hot yoga class at Yogalilies – it was brilliant as usual, extra sweaty! We even attempted some head stands and side crow pose but I think I need to work on achieving those! In this mornings workout I stuck to upper body strength exercises to give my legs a bit of a break ready for this weekends long run.

On the Love List this week…

Matcha loving!

When I saw that Tea Pigs had a 20% off offer on their Matcha Green Tea I couldn’t resist! I can’t wait to make some iced almond milk lattes! Also…

This post from Gala Darling with 100 things to do instead of wasting time on the internet – I’m already planning a wardrobe edit! // writing my own personal mission statement // exciting developments with my business! // Summer Solstice – I may not have done the 108 sun salutations but it was a beautiful sunny day and finishing it off with Hot Yoga and a chocolate avocado smoothie when I got home was perfect // anticipating the great weekend ahead – hair and wardrobe makeover!

Have you ever considered writing a personal mission statement? Or do you already have one? I’m quite into personal development and I’m so glad that I got round to spending some time developing my mission statement. If you haven’t done it I strongly urge you to have a look, its really helped to clarify a lot of the stuff going on in my life and help me to focus! Ditto with inspiration boards, I’m also a big fan of those!

In case you missed it:

• Check out my Dorset Cereals GIVEAWAY for a chance to win some of their lovely muesli!
• I talked a bit about foam rolling
• I gave you some of my tips to avoid the dreaded hangover!

How has your week been? What’s on your love list?