Hi everyone, hope your having a very lovely Sunday afternoon! I’ve had a great weekend because I’ve been super productive. Yesterday morning I started by sorting through all the household paper work filing things away and filling a bag of documents to shred. I also sorted out my shelves on the book case putting away DVD’s, CD’s and books and today I’m planning on sorting through my clothes and bags (of which there are many!) into piles for the charity shop and eBay. I’ve also been busy in the kitchen making a big batch of lentil soup, a peanut lime sauce, roasted aubergine hummus, brown rice and barley and some raw crackers. I’m exhausted now!

Getting the base for my lentil soup going!

I also had a walk into town and back yesterday to meet up with the lovely Jess for a Starbucks fix. It was great to see her, she received a lovely complement from a stranger too, gotta love those communal coffee shop tables!

This morning I enjoyed a glorious run in the sunshine. I went out without the Garmin again and just ran for the enjoyment of running. No idea how far or how fast, I think I was out for about 40 minutes or so? When I came back I made a tasty Courgette Banana Bread Green Smoothie:

I made this with spinach, courgette, frozen banana, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, maca, ground flax, water and ice and topped it with dried cherries and lemon salted roast almonds, yum!

Yesterday mornings breakfast was delicious, Vanilla Chai Pear Oatmeal with Tofu Yoghurt and Walnuts!

I cooked the oats in some Pukka Vanilla Chai tea, added a chopped pear and vanilla stevia then topped with some tofu yoghurt, chopped oats and cinnamon.

For lunch I made use of some kelp noodles I’d won in a competition on the Viva Pure Facebook page – I rinsed then soaked them in filtered water and lime juice then drained them and added some carrot ribbons and a sauce made from 3 tbsp of raw dark tahini, sweet white miso and water. I also added a good amount of fresh parsley:

So good, I love my kelp noodles!

Last night I had an amazing macrobiotic inspired meal. I was chopping up a kabocha squash and thought it looked a bit pale and watery so I decided to try out a recipe from Blissful Bites for pumpkin with apricot and ginger glaze. As it turned out the kabocha was fine and that glaze was utterly amazing! I didn’t think much other than nut butter could make kabocha taste any better but this did. I served it with some steamed greens and quinoa mixed with edamame and parsley. I also added a drizzle of peanut lime sauce:

I’d picked up some limes from the reduced bin at the green grocers (4 for 50p) so decided to make a peanut and lime dressing. I mixed 1/4 cup peanut flour with one tbsp of sesame peanut butter (because I’m all out of regular pb) the juice from one lime, soy sauce and water. I also used it on today’s salad with more of the glazed kabocha, cos lettuce and some finely sliced mange tout:

I also used the lime juice instead of my usual lemon juice in my fave green juice blend:

This was cucumber, celery, parsley, ginger and lime juice, love my weekend juices!

For a snack this afternoon I’ve just had an apple followed by this chocolate berry smoothie using mixed frozen berries, 2 big spring green leaves, a scoop of chocolate amazing grass powder and a tbsp of raw cacao powder blended with water and ice drank out of a pretty mug of course:

So refreshing on a warm afternoon!

I really do love ticking things off the old to do list. I’m currently reading The Happiness Project, and one thing that I’ve taken from it so far is how tackling nagging tasks supports your overall happiness. I certainly feel better for getting those things done! I also know how much easier, cheaper and tastier, next week will be now that I’ve prepped a couple of dishes – I do love my Sunday cook up sessions!

Have you had a good weekend so far? Do you keep a to do list? How do you approach keeping on top of nagging tasks?

My knee seems to be a lot better today, yey! I can still feel it but I can walk down the stairs without wincing so I'm happy about that. I've strapped it up for the day and I'm going to see how it feels tomorrow before deciding to run or not. I might go out on my usual route which has plenty of easy short cuts home within it so if it gets bad I can just get home quick.

I had an amazing breakfast this morning!

Slow Cooked Fruity Strawberry Oats with Peanut Butter Sauce

1/4 cup of quick cook oats
1/4 cup of jumbo oats
white grape, pomegrante and raspberry juice
water
Strawberries
2 teaspoons of smooth peanut butter
2 tablespoons of rice milk

Cook the oats in the water and juice on the stove on a medium heat until creamy. While cooking make the peanut butter sauce by microwaving the peanut butter and rice milk and blending until creamy. When the oats are creamy add plenty of chopped strawberries and stir in. Top with more sliced strawberries and pour over the peanut butter sauce. De-lish!

This was so tasty and filling, cooking the oats with some juice works so well!

After breakie, sunday morning pottering and grocery shopping (I just love it when my fridge is full of amazing fresh veggies and fruit)I snacked on an apple then...

... I made a quick lunch - wholegrain slightly salted rice cakes with savory cottage cheese (cottage cheese mixed with a heaped teaspoon of nutritional yeast) and some carrot and cucumber sticks.

I then made a super smoothie! I was inspired by Ilana's Epic Antioxidant Blast Smoothie. I used a handful of spinach, frozen mango, frozen cherries, some of my white grape, pomegrante and raspberry juice, 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

I decided to indulge my smoothie in a bowl addiction. This was amazing! So rich and chocolately, and even better, its so good for you!

I spent the afternoon flicking between the England football match and the Turkish Grand Prix while I did my training plan post. I don't mind a bit of sport on TV while I'm pottering about on my computer.

As I'm off to the cinema tonight I had my dinner early. I decided to try out a recipe inspired by one I'd found on one of my new favourite blogs (never)homemaker -

Tofu and Vegetable Thai Red Curry

1 tin of light coconut milk
Thai red curry paste
1 small head of brocolli
1 orange pepper
1 white onion
Stir fry or vegetable oil
1 block of firm tofu - drained and with as much moisture removed (I wrapped mine in kitchen paper and popped some heavy cook books on top for about 30 minutes to squeeze out some of the water. You can get proper tofu presses which do this too)

Chop the tofu and veggies into chunky bite sized pieces. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a wok on a medium high heat then fry the tofu until browned on all sides. Remove tofu from the pan and set to one side. Add more oil then stir fry the brocolli for a few minutes then add the pepper and onion. When the veggies are slightly tender add the curry paste then the tofu and stir fry for a few seconds before adding the coconut milk. Simmer for 10 minutes then serve with rice or noodles.

I served mine with a few brown rice noodles and some steamed chinese cabbage, carrot and red cabbage left over from my stir fry yesterday. I'm going to bag up the left overs and pop in the freezer for quick and easy dinner options.

Drinks - water, green tea, decaf tea

Well I am now off to meet up with my friends for SATC 2, I have a bag of Maltesers to enjoy, can not wait! Catch you tomorrow! x

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

Hello everyone, hope your enjoying a lovely relaxing Sunday! This morning I was at the gym for a 5 mile treadmill run and my Kettlebell class and now I’m planning on chilling out for the rest of the day, bliss.

On Friday night I had a big bowl of courgette noodles covered with some of my basil, hemp and pine nut pesto:

This was fantastic, home made pesto is the best! I also made a giant bowl of salty chocolately popcorn to eat while I finished the last Hunger Games book:

I just popped this dry in a pan and mixed with stevia powder, braggs and cocoa powder. I also added some raisins, so good!

Yesterday morning we headed into town, OOTD:

 Navy coat: New Look, faux fur scarf: New Look, sequinned jewelled jumper: Urban Outfitters, white vest: H&M, denim shorts: Dorothy Perkins, black tights: M&S, black boots: New Look 

I had woke up not feeling hungry at all (that popcorn was accompanied by a lot of raw choc covered raisins!) so I waited until we got to town to have breakfast:

3 berry smoothie with jasmine green tea from Olive and Bean

While we were in Olive and Bean I couldn’t resist their wall of tea!

Its amazing! I decided to treat myself to some Mint Chocolate Rooibos loose leaf tea, Licorice and Cinnamon tea and a new tea infuser:

While in town I returned one of the dresses I bought in the sale from Urban Outfitters. It was a bit of a snug fit and since I won’t be loosing weight anytime soon I decided to take it back. They didn’t have any more of them in stock so I swapped it for these lovelies:

 

Cropped striped jumper £10 and emerald green midi skirt £20 both in the sale. I love the green skirt especially, it has a lovely vintage feel. I also got a couple of plain vest tops from H&M and stocked up on some almond sesame tofu and frozen tempeh from the health food shop.

When we got home I made a lovely big salad:

This was black kale, carrot, yellow pepper, cucumber and olives. I topped it with a load of different things – gomasio, sea salt, sea veggie sprinkle and some cheesy spicy cashew and red pepper sauce which was leftover from being used as a coating for making these amazing raw kale chips:

These are so good! Very glad that I ordered that extra kale :-)

Other tasty things from the weekend include this yummy chocolate green juice shake:

I wanted my usual green juice but fancied something a bit more substantial so I blended my cucumber, celery and kale stem juice with a scoop of chocolate hemp protein powder, some spinach that needed using up, maca powder, midori greens, matcha green tea, ground flax and ice. It was delicious!

I made myself a big bowl of my raw ‘December’ Salad…

…followed by my fave evening snack of frozen cherries with peanut flour sauce and cacao nibs:

I can’t get enough of cacao nibs at the moment, I’ve been snacking on little bowls of them mixed with raisins or goji berries.

How has your weekend been? Have you tried any fancy teas recently?

Oh, and before I forget I’ve done a little rearranging of my recipe page so hopefully it should be a bit easier to look through – check it out! You also only have a few more hours to enter my blog birthday GIVEAWAY!