Thanks for all your great comments on my last post, you’ve all made me feel much better! It was quite strange getting up this morning and not going out for my run, I really enjoyed having an hour to relax. I’m really looking forward to tomorrows run, I’m not going to put any pressure on achieving any time, I just want to enjoy the run and make the distance.

Last night I was just about to make a cuppa and for some reason I thought I would get out the old tea pot and make a full pot of tea so I could just keep topping myself up during the evening. I got it out again this morning for breakfast and made a big pot of Chai Green tea to accompany my bowl of chopped apple, raspberries and some of my new Mornflake Date, Apple and Fig Muesli (bought for £1 on special offer) with hazelnut and almond rice milk and cinnamon.




I really like this muesli, its so tasty! I definitely think the tea pot has earned its place on my kitchen counter now, I just need a retro tea cosy like this one from Etsy:



Ha ha! Reminds me of my nana! While I was looking at the tea cosy’s I also saw these for take out coffee, how cute!



I did all my cleaning and tidying then headed into town to have a look in some vintage shops and get some grocery shopping done in the market. Nothing interesting in the one vintage shop that was actually open, but loads of groceries, check out this haul!



I got all this Fruit and Veg (leek, cabbage, 10 little nectarines, 4 large peaches, 2 punnets of strawberries, 2 punnets of raspberries, 1 punnet of blueberries, bananas, giant cucumber, carrots, beetroot, 3 fuji apples, garden peas, 2 little gems, bag of spinach, 3 peppers, courgette) for just £15! Considering that fruit and vegetables make up the bulk of my diet that’s great value. I also stopped by Holland and Barratt and couldn’t help myself with the tea! I got some Yogi Rose tea and some Qi Green Tea with berries. I also got some dried blueberries and a pack of omega seed sprinkle for breakfasts, soups and salads.



I stopped by an oriental shop and picked up some goji berries and more green tea (yes, I clearly have a problem!) for £3. Before heading home I stopped by mmm which is a fabulous foodie shop in the market (thanks to blog reader Joolz for telling me about this place!) I scored the last of the local Jesmond Dene blossom honeycomb as well as some wheat germ to try and this Slow Puck snack disc which I had with a cuppa at my parents.
 

I also had to drop by the supermarket to get some milk, eggs, freedom food chicken breasts, Powerade to try on my run tomorrow and other stuff I couldn’t carry from the market. 



I love having a full cupboard, fridge and freezer!

For lunch I made myself a salad beast. It contained cos lettuce, spinach, cucumber, grated carrot, freshly shelled peas, yellow pepper, beetroot, roasted soya nuts and a goats cheese mini babybel with a dressing made from juice of half a lemon, teaspoon of garlic olive oil and a little dried oregano.



This was immensely good! I then had some strawberries, raspberries and a chopped apple which I couldn’t resist topping with a thin slither of honey comb.



So amazing!

This afternoon I made these Apple, Blueberry and Cinnamon Protein Muffins. I based my recipe on this one.
Apple, Blueberry and Cinnamon Protein Muffins (makes 10 small muffins)

• 1 cup of spelt flour
• 2 scoops of nutty berry spiru-tein powder (any neutral or vanilla flavour protein powder should work, although I have read that spiru-tein is better in baking).
• 1/2 cup of chunky apple sauce
• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
• 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
• 2 large egg whites
• 2 tablespoons of dried blueberries

Mix all ingredients together until well combined. Spoon into muffin cases and bake at 180 for 10 – 15 minutes.

 

I used my new silicone muffin cases which worked really well. I tried one of these as an afternoon snack spread with a little almond butter and it was delicious and had a really good texture. I’ve popped these in the freezer to keep, and to stop me eating them all at once!

For dinner I defrosted a portion of my Thai Red Tofu Curry and had it with some brown rice and steamed savoy cabbage with soy and ginger.



For desert I wanted to use some of my new honeycomb. I’ve never had honeycomb before so I did a little bit of research. The actual structure of honeycomb is made from beeswax which holds the honey in. As it comes like this in its most natural state it has not been treated in any way. Some people believe it has great health benefits, particularly in treating hayfever. I chopped a peach in half and popped it under a hot grill for 5 minutes then served it with some fromage frais, some of the honeycomb and some flaked almonds.



Heavenly!

Big Budget Challenge Update

This week I have:

• Made a home made head band for the wedding I attended
• Put several items on EBay for the first time ever!
• Did my grocery shopping at Lidl and the market to save money
• Scored some free 9 Bars to review on the blog
• Instead of buying magazines I’ve been flicking through some old ones and getting week old copies of Grazia from my Sis

I’m getting there slowly but surely!

How’s everyone’s weekend going? I’ve got another busy day tomorrow with my run and hopefully sorting out my EBay items that have been sold!

I’m going to have to try and keep my hands off that honeycomb, have you ever tried honeycomb before? If so what did you think? I really enjoyed mine tonight, luckily it will keep in the fridge for quite a few months so I can treat myself every so often. I think I might have to treat myself to some full fat greek yoghurt to have with it some time, that will be just delicious!

Well I’m off to make another big pot of tea for this evening, I just need to decide which tea to have now! Hope your all having a good one x

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

Happy Wednesday everyone, and happy WIAW! This is actually what I did and ate on a Wednesday for a change, hence why this is a bit of a late post. Thanks again to Jenn for hosting the party!

When I got up I had the usual mug of warm water and lemon juice and then hit the gym. I did 5k of speed intervals on the treadmill, changing the pace every 0.25 miles. I did that in about 26 minutes then hopped on over to the step machine, bike and cross trainer for a further 30 minutes of HIITs to give me a great sweaty cardio workout all in under an hour!

Breakfast was something a bit special this morning, I surveyed the contents of my fridge and came up with this delicious Squash, Courgette, Banana Bread Smoothie!

It included spinach, 1/2 heaping cup of roast squash, 1 medium courgette, 1/2 frozen banana, 1 scoop vanilla sun warrior, maca powder, spirulina, 1 tsp black strap molasses, cinnamon, ginger, water, ice, gums and vanilla stevia. For toppings I added almond butter sauce, crunchy shoyu roasted squash seeds, dried cranberries, cinnamon and a drizzle of maple syrup. Heaven! This was so creamy, I loved the salty squash seeds with the sweet cranberries too. I also had a big mug of Tea Pigs Chilli Chai.

Lunch was a big salad containing romaine, red cabbage, carrot, cucumber, alfalfa sprouts, adzuki beans and a dressing made with tahini, sweet white miso, ume vinegar and black sesame seeds mixed with water, it was gorgeous! I also had a couple of satsumas:

For a mid afternoon snack I ate a pack of thai sweet chilli roasted chickpeas, raw kale chips and a pink lady apple accompanied by a giant mug of green tea:

Those chickpeas were amazing and so filling! I had fully expected to be raiding my snack drawer again but they kept me going until I finished work.

Dinner was from my frozen stash – Thai red curry with tofu and veggies along with some millet and steamed greens:

For dessert I had something really lush, Sweet Squash Dip with chopped apples:

I’ll share the recipe tomorrow as this is so good!

I thought I’d spice up this fairly dull WIAW post by sharing with you a few things I’m loving right now:

These Tumblr blogs:

• Fit Villains
• Blogilates
• Sarah Fit

As these are on Tumblr, posts tend to be short and frequent which I like. These three are awesome, excellent for inspiration, workouts to try, questions answered and tasty healthy foods. Check them out! You can also check out my tumblr page although I have neglected it a bit recently!

This little quote:

source

Love that :-)

This cute hand warmer:

Topshop, £6.50

I have terrible cold hands in the winter, I’d love this to slip into my pockets!

The fig and tahini combo I blogged about yesterday – I’m dreaming about it!

Attempting to make my own cushion cover to finally finish the bedroom redecoration.

The mix CD James made for me that I’m listening to on repeat in the car – it includes tracks by Fleet Foxes, Laura Marling, Friendly Fires, Pete Yorn + Scarlett Johansson, Air and Zero 7. So in love with it, he’s such a sweet fella :-)

Simply enjoying the beautiful autumn – the weather, the clothes, the food, the trees – everything! I’m so excited for Halloween and Bonfire Night!

What are you loving right now?

Hi everyone hope you’ve had an amazing weekend! I apologise if this post is very hyper, I’ve eaten a full bag of cinder toffee followed up with a packet of energy bites, you could peel me off the ceiling!

Today I joined 54,000 other people and ran the greatest half marathon on Earth and it was bloody awesome! I completed it in 1hr 52 minutes and 11 seconds, and considering that I’ve been dealing with an injury for the last month and have only run a few miles I am utterly elated! That time is also 15 minutes faster than my time last year!

Last night I got in some quality carb loading with this huge bowl of whole wheat spaghetti and courgette noodles in some of my Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper sauce with some brown noodles mixed in served on top of steamed savoy cabbage and topped with nutritional yeast and fresh basil:

Nom!

This morning I fuelled up with my favourite pre race breakfast of banana porridge with nut butter:

I went for some drippy almond butter and added some coconut nectar as a sweetener and for extra energy!

My work colleague helps to run a youth football team and some of the parents were running the race to raise money for them so we ended up being able to get a lift on their mini bus. James accompanied me as my official supporter bless him!

On my way to the start having just got off the bus

After a long wait at the toilets and eating some dates, aka my rocket fuel, I made my way to my starting area. Last year I ended up right at the back as I’d missed the gates closing so I made sure I went with plenty of time to spare. This year I was placed much further up the field so I was hoping that I would miss a lot of the congestion I’d experienced last year (unfortunately it made no difference, I spent the whole race dodging people!)

We were really lucky with the weather too, it was a perfect bright autumn morning! The gun went off and it took about 10 minutes to cross the starting line. I was so happy to wave to the amazing Mo Farah!

I was happily running along just about to get onto the Tyne Bridge when someone tripped me up. I went flying on to my face and hit my injured knee pretty badly.

Can’t believe my fave running pants are ruined. Good job I was wearing my knee support as that fall could have been a lot worse without it to cushion the blow!

If I hadn’t been wearing my gloves (I have terrible cold hands) I would have had very badly scraped hands too. Some lovely woman helped me up, and for a fleeting second I wondered if I should continue. But when you get knocked down, sometimes you just have to get back up and keep on going!

Obviously with my injured knee I was really worried that I was going to get the bad pain and tightness back, but I’m very happy to report that apart from a painful stinging from my fall, I didn’t even get a single twinge!

I managed to keep to a pretty solid pace for the whole race and when I checked my pace at 7 miles I knew that only a serious problem would prevent me from finishing in under 2 hours. The rest of the race just flew by, I enjoyed it so much! We did get some heavy rain but it had been getting quite warm so the rain was lovely and refreshing!

Crossing the finish line in the time I did, after dealing with my injury and having that fall at the start was just amazing. I felt invincible!

Cheesy pic alert!

After the race we waited with the guys from the football club for all the other runners to come in. I downed a carton of coconut water, more dates and a Clif Bar but when I was still hungry I had only one thing on my mind – chips! I also got a bag of my old favourite sweet treat, cinder toffee. It was delicious although I feel like all my teeth might fall out ;-)

I’ve just eaten this delicious Thai Red Tofu and Vegetable Curry with whole wheat noodles (none of my usual greens as I just didn’t fancy them for a change):

I’ve also has this amazing and very tasty smoothie:

This contained a frozen banana, frozen strawberries, vanilla rice milk, vanilla sun warrior, a lot of peanut butter and for toppings some PB&Co White Choc Wonderful and chopped Reece’s Dark Chocolate Miniature cups. Since I’m already high as a kite off the sugar I’d might as well enjoy it!

I’ve had an absolutely amazing day, I never thought I’d be able to top last years race but I think the fact that I’ve had a few obstacles to over come has made this years race even more special to me.

I’m off to soak in the bath now and have a lovely early night (plus eat more chocolate!) Hope you have a great week ahead :-)

The Red Arrows display was amazing, I loved this so much!

After the EAT Festival Party I stayed at my parents rather than getting a taxi all the way home. Its just an excuse to sleep in a double bed by myself for a change really! For breakfast I had a bowl of home mixed muesli containing two large tablespoons of Dorsets Cereals Roasted and Toasted Muesli, jumbo oats and brown rice puffs. I added two chopped plums and a couple of chopped strawberries and topped with skimmed milk.

Lovely stuff!

I headed home quite early and popped to the shops for some groceries on the way back. When I got home I snacked on a quick apple before doing some blogging and trying to catch up on blog reading!

Lunch was 4 Kallo Savory Rice Cakes topped with cottage cheese mixed with a teaspoon of nutritional yeast served with chopped cucumber and carrot on the side.

I followed that with a green monster containing spinach, 1 frozen banana, teaspoon of maca and some kara coconut milk. I indulged my smoothie in a bowl addiction and added a few grape nuts on top for crunch.

I had the biggest green monster craving and this sorted me out!

I spent the afternoon going through my holiday clothes to check what needs to be washed / ironed etc before next week. I know I'm going to have a manic week and worry that I've forgotten to do things so I'd rather be as organised as possible now!

Mid afternoon I made a chocolate cherry smoothie in a bowl. I blended a scoop of chocolate whey with a few frozen cherries, 8 ice cubes and some water. This blended up lovely and thick.

I'm loving having my protein shakes in almost ice cream like form. The cherries add very few additional calories but add extra nutrients and fibre and the creamy texture makes it so much more satisfing than just drinking a watery protein shake. If your not into the protein powder thing I'm sure you could recreate this by just using a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder instead of the protein powder and perhaps a little agave syrup for added sweetness.

For dinner I defrosted a portion of my Thai Red Tofu and Vegetable Curry and served it on a bed of steamed savoy cabbage and bok choy.

Today at the shops I thought I would pick up a tub of quark as I enjoyed eating it so much the last time I got it. I wanted to do a little experimentation with it and I've had this idea in my head for a fab desert for ages so I thought I might as well give it a go tonight!

Cheesecake in a Glass
(serves 1)
125g of Quark Cheese
1 pack of Coca Cherry Pie Bear Granola (or subsitute with 3 tablespoons of any granola that doesn't have too much dried fruit and nuts)
Fruit of choice for topping - I used mixed Forest Fruits defrosted from frozen - other ideas could be strawberries, passion fruit, blueberries etc
Agave syrup

Pop the granola in a bag and use a hard blunt object like a rolling pin to crush it down a bit. You don't want a fine powder but not huge chunks either. In a bowl mix the crushed granola with a teaspoon of agave and a tiny bit of warm water. This should make the granola change texture and become more sticky. Press this mixture into the bottom of a glass or bowl. In a seperate bowl mix the quark with a small amount of agave, depending on how sweet you like it. Carefully spoon the quark on top of the granola base and smooth out the top. Now add your fruit topping and a sprig of mint for decoration if your feeling posh. Now stuff your face with cheesecakey goodness!

This comes in under 300 cals and makes a lovely healthier version of cheesecake and looks so pretty in a nice glass bowl or even a wine glass.

As the match is on and I'm trying not to have anymore alcohol this week I made up a big jug of Orange, Mango and Cinnamon iced tea using 3 tea bags and then chilled in the fridge. I've added a wedge of lime, ice cubes and served in a wine glass so I can at least feel like I'm having a drink. Ok, well maybe not like a proper drink but it will have do me for tonight!

Summer Confidence Challenge Update - I'm still doing ok, I haven't been too bad on the snackies apart from the muesli craving I had and obviously I indulged at the EAT Festival but I was always planning on doing so. I'm glad that I've lost two pounds this week, but like I said in my last post I'm not going to stress myself if I don't lose anymore next week. I enjoyed last nights indulgences so much, plus I'm eating at my parents tomorrow so I'm likely to go a bit off plan then too. I've managed to continue with most of my training plan despite my knee injury so a lack of exercise shouldn't really have impacted too badly. I've continued to moisturise / fake tan daily and use deep conditioning treatments for my hair. My hair is now dyed a lovely deep reddish brown, and the trim I had yesterday has made a huge improvement. This week I need to give myself a home manicure and pedicure and generally get myself pulled together ready for Majorca!

I don't mind a bit of footy so I'm embracing the World Cup. I've had today's matches on the TV while I've pottered about and I'm getting ready to watch the England match right now, I really hope we win! Hope your enjoying your weekends, don't forget to check out my post on the EAT Festival, you have to see those cupcakes! GO ENGLAND! x