What a beautiful day it has been! The sun has been shining and I’m feeling full of the joys of spring :-)

I was at the gym first thing for a speedy 45 minute workout – 10 minutes of HIITs on the bike, rowing machine and step machine followed by 15 minutes of abs and core exercises.

Breakfast was a fabulous green smoothie containing a whole 200g bag of spinach mix, frozen banana, 2 kiwis, frozen peach slices, vanilla sun warrior, hemp seeds, desiccated coconut, spirulina, maca, ground flax, water and the gums. I topped it with a coconut flour sauce swirl, rude health granola and more desiccated coconut and hemp seeds:

 

I had this bowl plus about another quarter bowl full it was that big! Really enjoying the hemp seeds – they add a lovely crunch and are so nutritious. This also kept me way fuller than yesterday’s cereal bowl. I’ve learned my lesson ;-)

Lunch was a bowl of barley miso and ginger soup, 6 nori wraps with cheesy avocado (1 small avocado mashed + juice of half a lemon + nutritional yeast flakes) carrot and cucumber, leftover carrot and cucumber, 2 delicious Clearspring sesame and tamari rice cakes and two plums:

Love nori wraps, especially with that easy cheesy filling!

Mid afternoon I snacked on last nights leftover tofu yoghurt with pomegranate seeds:

Dinner was some of my Thai Green Soya Bean Curry with mung bean noodles and steamed kale with ginger and shoyu:

I love mixing in noodles with Thai Green Curry, makes a nice change from rice!

Dessert was some Lindt Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt:

Still probably the best chocolate ever!

I really feel like Spring is beginning to kick in now. I love this time of year hearing the birds singing again, seeing the plants growing and the days getting longer. I like to freshen up things around the flat, not so much a spring clean, more of a de clutter – putting thick winter clothes away, changing cushions and things to be more spring like and sorting through my kitchen cupboards to see what’s past its best, what needs to be chucked out or used up and so on.

I have a couple of days off at the end of next week that I have put to one side to get everything done. I had been planning a trip to the Vitality Show with my best friend but we are both a little tight on funds so decided to give it a miss :-(

I can’t wait to make some budget friendly changes around the flat to bring the spring indoors. I plan on finding some new floral and patterned cushion covers for my living room. I saw these designs in Tesco of all places and love them:

Tesco Appliqué floral cushion, £10

Tesco Birds Appliqué cushion £9

I also want to change the patterned paper I have in my screen in the living room (this hides my gym equipment):

I’ve seen these beautiful papers in Paperchase (I snapped a pic of these on my phone) which will look fab:

I also want to change the pictures we have in these frames with something new, perhaps with some photographs I have taken myself:

I’m loving this new plant I bought last week for my bathroom and want to buy another one for my living room. Nothing says spring like yellow daffodils:

I also need to do a re stock of my kitchen cupboards with more tinned beans and nuts and other store cupboard items that have ran out. I think this time of year is good for checking the use buy dates on baking powders and flours and other store cupboard type ingredients. Nothing worse than getting the urge to bake and seeing that your flour is out of date!

Something else I fancy doing is ramping up the amount of raw foods I eat. I’m getting lots of cravings for green smoothies, big salads, raw wraps and so on. The benefits of eating more raw food are well described here. I never imagined in a million years I would actually crave greens! If I do eat more raw I will make a conscious effort to make sure that I’m getting the calories I need – no more apple binges! In fact today I feel like I’ve eaten really well, I feel satisfied in every way. That green smoothie really did set me up for the rest of the day!

So glad the weekend is here - I have a lovely relaxed one planned – off to town with James in the morning, then to visit to my parents and sis, I also have my best friend coming over and of course my weekend run and cooking session. Have you got plans for the weekend?

Do you have a spring clean? Do you mark the new season in any way? I love to bring the spring indoors with little plants and bright accessories!

Hope you have a great weekend!

I’ve had a fun and busy week including a really positive business meeting, a great yoga class, a very exciting tap installation (sounds random but more explanation on that to come!) and getting my application to register with the Federation of Holistic Therapists sent off. I love feeling productive!

I’ve had some super eats this week so I’m just going to give you a photo dump of them all:

Carob, coconut and raspberry ‘ice cream’ topped with tofu cream and cacao nibs and coconut, delish!

Salad beast with black beans and avocado

For breakfast on Shrove Tuesday: Chocolate protein pancakes (made with spelt flour, chocolate hemp powder and kara coconut milk) topped with chopped pears and chocolate hazelnut butter sauce, mmm!

Post yoga smoothie of Spiru-tein chocolate chip cookie dough flavour topped with cacao nibs (not totally crazy about this new to me flavour, just tastes like vanilla!)

Chocolate pear and ginger green smoothie with spring greens, 2 pears, chocolate sun warrior protein powder, raw cacao powder, maca, ground flax, fresh ginger root, water and ice topped with more pear and raw granola

Badly handmade nori rolls with leftover cooked brown rice, avocado, carrot and cucumber – tasted great though!

Grilled smoked sesame tofu with brown rice, stir fried broccoli and brussel sprouts and peanut sauce

Montezuma Dark Chocolate turtles (so cute!) with chopped apples

 Honey and hemp muffin from the freezer with 2 chopped pears and a sachet of Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter for spreading, yum!

Persimmon slices topped with coconut butter and goji berries

Green smoothie with spinach, frozen mango, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, maca, ground flax, water and ice topped with popped amaranth, cashews and flame raisins

So quite a varied and delicious week!

I’ve also had a pretty varied workout out week including finally finding a half decent yoga class!

• Sunday – AM gym workout – 5k treadmill run, 15 min random bike, Kettlebell class
• Monday – AM Yoga podcast, PM DVD mash up
• Tuesday – PM Yoga class
• Wednesday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout B from Base phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike
• Thursday – PM Yoga class
• Friday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout A from Base phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike

I went to a new yoga class on Tuesday night at my local community centre and I loved it! Its still not a fast flowing class but I really liked the teacher who does a mix of Ivengar and Ashtanga styles and the whole vibe of the class was really great. Although I didn’t get a major sweat on I got a really good stretch, my muscles could certainly feel it the day after! It was also really good to have a teacher adjusting my pose and explaining things in more detail, it made me realise that although DVD’s and podcasts are great there’s no substitute for attending a class. I find that a class improves my practice so that I get more out of the yoga I do at home. I also realised that my focus on finding a faster flowing sweaty class was a bit daft considering the whole reason I wanted to do more yoga was to relax and help firm up a bit! As this class is on the same night as Body Pump, I’m going to alternate classes every two weeks.

To end this post I’m taking inspiration from one of my fave bloggers – Bonzai Aphrodite (such a shame she’s stopped blogging) and doing a weekend send off love list!  

Loving my sexy new tap installed today complete with a built in Brita filter!

A little while ago I was contacted by Brita to see if I would like to trial one of their tap water filters. I’ll blog more about this in future but its brilliant! The actual tap is such an improvement on our last one and has really made the whole kitchen look more stylish. I’ve always used a jug Brita filter in the fridge but this is so much more convenient. Other things on my love list this week:

Pig tails (the only way I can tie all of my hair back without bits falling out) // yoga of course! // listening to ‘Some Body I Used To Know’ by Gotye on repeat // getting tickets for Kendal Calling (so excited!) // stripes and polka dots // not stuffing myself on an evening anymore // feeling full of gratitude

What have you been loving this week? If your a yoga fan what’s your thoughts on classes v’s DVD’s and podcasts? Hope you have a brilliant weekend!

You still have a few hours left to enter my house plant GIVEAWAY, check it out!

I’ve had another busy day today – I feel like I’ve never stopped and work just flew over! Luckily I had a tasty breakfast to keep me going, half a pineapple, fresh organic blueberries topped with cashew cream and Rude Health Granola:

I’ve wanted to try out making the cashew cream for ages, I just soaked 1/2 cup of cashews in some water for a couple of hours then drained them and blended in the food processor adding a little water and agave until I got a creamy consistency.

Lunch was some nori wraps filled with some of my high protein hummus, carrots and alfalfa sprouts plus chopped carrot, cucumber and cherries:

I made the high protein hummus using soya beans. Soya beans contain 16 grams of protein per half a carton compared to 9 grams of protein in chickpeas. They only contain a few extra calories and also have a lower carb content too:

High Protein Soya Bean Hummus:

• 1 carton / tin of soya beans (I used a carton of Sainsbury’s brand organic soya beans)
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons of tahini
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 small garlic cloves
• Pinch of salt

Blend all ingredients together in a food processor. Add water until the hummus reaches your desired consistency:

This tastes really good, in fact I would almost go as far as saying I prefer it to regular hummus!

Mid afternoon I snacked on an unpictured nakd berry bar before hitting the gym. I did 20 minutes of HIITs on the cross trainer, 20 minutes of HIITs on the step machine and 10 minutes on the rowing machine plus my usual abs (up to 1 minute and 15 seconds on my plank now!) I then did my 30 minute spin class.

Dinner was a bit of a random mix – I had some veggies to use up after my epic grocery shop at the weekend so I made up a pilaf / risotto style one pan dish by frying an onion and some garlic in olive oil then adding tender stem broccoli, swiss chard, frozen peas and some cooked pearl barley. I then added some veg stock and nutritional yeast and served it on top of some rocket with a sprinkling of seeds:

So much green! This was actually really tasty for something so thrown together! Dessert was half a bar of this Broadberys raw rose flavoured chocolate plus 4 apples (two shown here but I went back for more!):

The chocolate was delicious!

I really am in love with my new hummus, I think it would also taste great with some roasted red peppers or olives added to the mix too. What’s your favourite flavour hummus? I also love the broccoli, courgette and olive hummus I made a couple of weeks ago, I love that you can make hummus out of so many different veggies and different beans!

Tomorrow I’ll be back with a special readers request post looking at unusual ingredients and where to find them. Hope your week is off to a great start!