Juicing Is Hard Work!

As it's the start of a new year and being healthy is definitely on the top of my list right now, I decided to dust off my juicer and get some nutrients into this body of mine. 

Super Healthy Breakfast Juice

 

Anyone else got 'being healthier' on their resolutions this year? Yeah I thought so...

#WIAW Where's All The Veg?

Another Wednesday has rolled around in the blink of an eye and that means time for another What I Ate Wednesday.. But before we get in to the eats...

 

I have to give a little shout out to Jenn over at Peas & Crayons as she is celebrating her 200th WIAW today.  Her WIAW link up is one of my all time favs and I love checking it out each week, so congrats Jenn and a big thank you from me for hosting an awesome link party each week.

 

On to the food...

 

One of the things I love about doing WIAW is seeing what I've actually eaten in a day.  Todays eats are more or less veggie free (compared to what I think I should eat) which obviously wasn't a conscious choice but somehow it happened. 

 

Breakfast

  

 

Oh how I'm loving having my Blend Active out again for breakfasts! This mornings breakfast was a banana, frozen fruit salad mix (melon, grapes & orange), spinach and just water today as I'd ran out of almond milk.  I was a bit vary of adding the spinach but it was actually quite a tasty addition.

 

Lunch

 

You can't see the teeny sweet potato underneath all those beans but I promise you it's there.  These beans aren't your standard baked beans from a tin - these are my special amped up healthy beans that you can find the recipe for here. I love these beans as they're so much tastier and nutritious than baked beans.  I honestly think that if you try these you'll always want to have some in your freezer ready to whip out for a quick and easy lunch.  The variety of beans can be varied and for this particular recipe I think I used kidney and cannellini.

 

Tea

 

 

Yeah, yeah I know - brown slop doesn't really photograph that well. But as long as it tasted good, right?  This was left over veg curry that I'd made at the weekend served with quinoa.  I used a madras paste and added coconut milk, onions, garlic, ginger, black eye beans, peppers, courgettes and sugar snaps, topped with coriander.

Now, I know that sounds like a lot of veg but I'd got my quantities all wrong and it was mostly black eye beans.

 

What do you think?  Is this days eats seriously lacking in veggies?

 



What I Ate Wednesday - Making Time For Healthy

Sometimes finding a theme or topic for What I Ate Wednesday is a bit of a tricky one but this week it's been easy.  Thanks to Jenn for hosting.

 

I always struggle with 'healthy eating.' It's something I tend to think I do but in reality if and when I document what I eat over a week it's full of crap.  The last few weeks have been particularly bad and I've stuffed my face with far too many bags of crisps, heavy carb laden bread and pasta meals and even chocolate sweets, and I'm not normally a chocolate person.  The more I ate the rubbish, the more I craved it and I didn't even really enjoy it.  Even as I was taking the crisps out of the cupboard I knew I didn't really want them, I just couldn't be bothered making myself anything.

 

This week I made sure I went shopping and stocked up on a ton of veggies and fruit and healthy grains and pulses.  I enjoy eating healthier and I feel so much better for it but I know it's something I have to make time for.  Healthier meals tend to take more preparation time and definitely require more planning and organisation.

How do you organise yourself to make delicious, nutritious meals on a daily basis?

Pre-breakfast

The benefits of drinking lemon water are not a new thing.  Lemons are packed with nutrients, including vitamin C, B-complex vitamins, calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium. So, with that in mind I've been adding a hot lemon drink to my morning routine.  I don't drink coffee and only have an odd tea so adding this warm drink to the cold mornings we've started having is really nice.

Breakfast



 Oh how I've missed my Breville Blend-Active Blender! It's been in my cupboard for the past month or so for some reason and I'd forgotten how much I love having a smoothie for breakfast.  This smoothie was a banana, frozen melon and grapes, almond milk, spirulina powder and some water as it was too thick.  I think the spirulina powder is a plant based protein but I haven't looked in to it in detail yet.  I bought it a while ago when I was working in a gym at the recommendation of a fellow gym instructor.

Do you know anything about spirulina powder?

Lunch

 

There's nothing I can say about my avocado on toast that I have for lunch that hasn't already been said. I'm such a creature of habit when it comes to my lunch.  I wonder how many #WIAW this has featured in?  I might have to go back and check...

Tea

 

 

This tea was delicious! It didn't really take that long to make - just a lot of chopping.  It was spinach, cucumber, tomatoes, feta cheese, quinoa and a small sweet potato.  I topped it with a drizzle of my favourite home made chilli oil which added a yummy heat to the dish.

 

 

I've loved eating more healthy this week and I hope I can keep this up and continue my optimism for all these tasty dishes.

 

I'd love any inspiration for healthy, vegetarian recipes I can try so if you have any please link them down below in the comments.

 

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#WIAW Out N About In London

 

 

Happy Bonfire Night/Day to all my fellow UKers and Happy What I Ate Wednesday.  I've missed the last 2 #WIAW for one reason or another but I'm back this week with another #WIAW.  Thanks to Jenn for hosting.

 

If you checked out my new vlogging channel you'll know I went down to London last weekend to help my sister house hunt.  These eats are from my busy Saturday of house hunting and trekking around London.

 

Breakfast

 

 

Breakfast was a quick grab and go apple and orange as we had to get out there and pound the streets of London to find a house.  I'm not a fan of eating whole fruits like this.  In fact I find it really hard to eat any fruit like this.  I always, always chop up fruit and arrange it on a plate.  I find I eat more and it's so much more appealing to me, but that wasn't an option today so I had to just grab and go. 

 

Lunch

 

 

By the time lunch time came around I was really hungry so we headed back to my sisters place and made sandwiches.  I had an egg and spinach sandwich on multigrain bread.  I'm not a huge fan of sandwiches in general but this one was quite nice.  I teamed it with some sliced peppers and cucumber, a slice a melon and a few kale chips. 

 

It was just enough to fill me up before we headed back out on the house hunt...

 

Tea

 

 

If I was hungry at lunchtime I was even more hungry come tea time.  We'd walked for miles checking out different houses, calling in on estate agents and getting a teeny bit lost in unfamiliar parts of London.  We decided to go to the Blackheath fireworks which around 80,000 people attend each year.  I adore Greenwich in South East London so we decided to stop there for a bite to eat then walk the short distance around Greenwich park to Blackheath. 

 

We went to Cafe Sol which is a Texan and Mexican Cantina & Bar.  The food was delicious and I'd definitely recommend a trip there if you're ever in Greenwich.  Mexican food is one of my favourites but on this occasion I chose their tropical house salad which had pineapple, olives and goats cheese, three of my most favourite things in a salad.  Simply mmmmm! I can't resist a few carbs and had some yummy garlic bread on the side.

 

 

I don't normally have a sweet tooth but for the past few days I'd been craving something deliciously sweet and when I saw this vanilla cheesecake on the menu I had to go for it.  It was divine.  I think it's important not to deny of things you're craving otherwise it becomes a really big deal and I find it makes me really grumpy and moody.

 

Have you got a sweet tooth?   

 

Do you listen to your body and your cravings?

 

 

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What I Ate Wednesday | Veggie Chips Don't Do It For Me

Are you having a fantastic Wednesday so far?  I hope so! I do like Wednesdays...I'm not sure why, maybe because I'm off work in the morning or maybe because it's What I Ate Wednesday and I love having a nosey at what everyone's been eating. 

 

 

 

Before we get in to this weeks #WIAW I wanted to ask you if you fancy a sparkly, new camera?  Are you a food blogger? A beauty blogger? A budding photographer?  If so, make sure you head over to my Canon DSLR Giveaway  post and enter.  There are 59 chances to win and only 3 days left. 

Quick, go do it now then you can head back over and continue this little read.

 

Breakfast

 

So, without going in to too much detail I needed some prunes.  Is that TMI? Maybe.  But hey, we're all friends here, right? I've not eaten prunes for a hell of a long time and I'd forgotten how delicious they are.  Don't you just love it when a super healthy food is also delicious.  Prunes are full of fibre and antioxidants such as iron and manganese.  I teamed my prunes with a few tablespoons of simple natural yoghurt.  Delish.

Lunch

 

A staple for me as you can see from #WIAW A Day of No Fruit and #WIAW A Healthy Holiday? is my avocado & tomato toast.  I'm no bore though, I mix it up with (oooo check me out) different breads, maybe a chilli flake or two, mashed or sliced avocado (that is normally dictated to me by how ripe my avocado is) and if I'm feeling really adventurous like I was today maybe even adding an extra ingredient.  I know, I'm a thrill seeker! 

 

The bread I use is amaranth/quinoa rye bread which I think is amazing.  I've tried it with normal toast and it just isn't the same.  Today I had sliced avocado, chopped tomatoes, spinach and cheddar cheese.  It's a winner every time.  Mama taught me if it ain't broke, don't fix it and various forms of this will continue to feature heavily in my diet.

Snack 

 

These little babies are a new(ish) one for me and I'm still trying to decide if I like them or not.  They are kale chips.  I'm a huge, huge crisp girl.  I love them.  I have to be really disciplined with myself not to just eat them all the time.  Once, when googling alternatives to crisps, in one of my many attempts to eradicate crisps from my diet, I stumbled across this little idea.  And let's be honest, there's just no way a vegetable, let alone kale, can replace the yumminess of a real crisp.  But, I'm persevering and maybe one day I might write on here how much I love kale chips and how you should all be converted to them. We'll see...

Tea

What a boring tea this is.  I figured that just to combat all the goodness I did by eating the high fibre prunes for my breakfast I'd eat two eggs for tea.  Go figure.  Not much to say about this one really. I had spinach I needed to use up and heck, why not still two eggs with it?


Do you like kale chips?

Have you one lunch time staple that you always return to?

 

If you liked this little read why not

What I Ate Wednesday | Inspiration For New Eats

Hey Sparkly1s.  I hope you're having a wonderful Wednesday.  Wednesday only means one thing around here and that's WIAW.

I've mentioned before about being stuck in a rut with my food but over the past few weeks I've come to realise that it's not so much being stuck in a rut, it's about not being organised enough.  I love cooking programmes, have a zillion and one recipe books and am forever reading foodie blogs for new recipes. My problem is I don't store that information.  If I see a tasty looking recipe I just think 'Mmmm that looks tasty' and move on.  What I need to start doing is writing/printing out / bookmarking the recipe and actually cooking it. 

My goal over the coming weeks is to try one new recipe a week.

To do this I'll need to
1) find a tasty recipe (easy! I think I have about 5 open in other tabs right now)
2) write a list of the shopping I need to do for said recipe
3) actually go buy the goodies
4) cook
5) GOBBLE!

Now that might sound simple for a lot of you but for me it's just not what I do.  I have a repertoire of X number of dishes that I just cook over and over again.  I need inspiring!!

Breakfast

You'll notice a blank space where breakfast should be.  That's because OMG this morning was just a crazy amount a busyness and lateness and 'food is the last thing I can think of' type of morning.  Hey ho, onwards and upwards.  Let's hope the rest of the day calms down so I can actually have something to eat on this WIAW!!

Mid Morning Snack

Yeay for food!  Finally managed to get something to eat around 10.  When looking after kids is your job sometimes you don't get to eat at regular times. 

I've been craving fruit other than oranges and apples which is all I seem to have had in my fruit bowl for a while now and oooo this pineapple was tasty! 

I've never eaten coconut in chunks like this before and I'm not really sure what I think of it.  You know one of those foods where you have to keep eating it to see if you like it, but can never really decide.  I didn't really know if it was a healthy snack option or not and when I looked at the packaging I was surprised to see 36g of fat, 31g saturates in 100g! I decided to look into the health benefits of coconut flesh a bit more and found this article about the benefits of coconut flesh.  I dunno??

Lunch

Lunch was delicious.  I'm a sucker for hummus but I haven't had it for ages.  I bought a pack of 3 mini pots last time I was shopping and decided to have the jalapeno pepper flavoured hummus today.  If there's one thing I love more than hummus, it's flavoured hummus.  I think roasted pepper hummus is my all time fav.

I ate it with these multigrain cakes which were sooo tasty and cucumber & carrot sticks.

Tea

My tea looks more like something I'd usually have for lunch and I'm not really sure why I had it for tea today but it was delicious all the same.  It's a recipe that I first found from the lovely Linda over at I Am Linderella.  I was so weary of this idea at first but it really works.  I used my usual quinoa and amaranth toast topped with a mashed banana & 2 boiled eggs. (I don't like yolks so that's why it's only the white, in case you were wondering)

I also had a strawberry yoghurt topped with a handful of blueberries.

Where do you get your inspiration for new recipes from?

Do you eat coconut flesh? Do you think it's a good addition to your diet? How do you include it in your diet? 

Do you like flavoured hummus? 

What I Ate Wednesday | A Day Of No Fruit

 

 

And in a blink of an eye it's Wednesday again! It's so cliché but how the heck does it happen each week? 

 

I'm back in the swing of normality here, back from hols, back to work, back on the school runs - you know the deal.  I have to say I'm quite enjoying it though.  Give me another week and I'll be screaming out for another holiday. 

 

As it's Wednesday let's crack on with #WIAW    

 

Breakfast

Like I said, I'm back to work now so my mornings are kinda rushed.  I don't have to be outta the house super early or anything but I just like to faff about  take my time in the mornings leisurely showering and doing my make-up, making Mini Greenoids lunch, maybe a quick play on Farmville on my iPad (there's no maybe about it, I have to have a quick fix in the mornings before I'm ready to go!) 

 

Work comes to me, in the form of kids getting dropped off at my house.  They all arrive around 8am so once they're here I can pretty much forget about doing anything else.

 

Whilst shopping the other day I was browsing the 'healthy' section and saw these Nakd. bars and thought I'd try them.  I bought 1 in each flavour including Cocoa Orange, Apple Pie and Banana Bread.. I think they're all wheat and daily free and some of them, like the Cashew Cookie are gluten free too. 

 

I had the Ginger Bread this morning which was really tasty.  I'm not normally a fan of so called health bars as I tend to think they're not really as healthy as they say they are but I quite like these.  They are simply nuts and fruits cold pressed with no added sugar or syrups.  That's gotta be good, right?  

 

 What do you think of so called health bars? 

 

  

Lunch

 Oh wow, lunch was a stressful event at my house today.  I'd forgotten what it was like trying to actually make myself something to eat with little children and babies to look after!

 

I've returned to my faithful, trusty avocado and tomato on toast.  This week I served it slightly different.  I'd roasted a load of tomatoes in the oven with balsamic vinegar, Worcester sauce, squeeze of honey and olive oil.  Normally I blitz this up and use it as a pasta sauce and add veg or chicken but this time I thought I'd use it on my toast.  I didn't blitz it up first and just placed on my amaranth/quinoa toast with slices of avocado, bit of cheese on top and under the grill.

 

 

Tea

This tea was delicious! It was some of my blitzed up tomato sauce with pasta with chargrilled courgettes and peppers.  I served it with 2 small slices of garlic baguette.  I love garlic baguette, it's one of my real guilty pleasures and could happily eat the whole thing but I controlled my urges today.

 



What are your food guilty pleasures?

 



 

 

 

It was only writing this I realised I hadn't eaten any fruit today.  There was probably a little fruit in my Nakd. bar but no actual fruit. 

 

Do you get a lot of fruit in your diet?

 

 

     

What I Ate Wednesday | Erratic Eating

So my What I Ate Wednesdays have now returned from the sunny skies of Spain to the slightly grey skies of Northern England. But that's ok. (Really did I just say that that was ok??) 

We're still kinda on our holidays in the Greenoid household. I don't go back to work and Mini Greenoids not back at school until Monday. It's been lovely getting back off my hols and having a week to get back in to the whole swing of normality.

I have been working slightly - catching up on paperwork and getting organised for the start of a new term but nothing major.

So, on to this weeks WIAW. I've been struggling since getting back off holiday to get back into what I would call a 'normal' eating pattern. 

 

On holiday, breakfast isn't till around 11:30am, lunch could either be a big lunch at a restaurant around 2ish or a small snack of tortilla round the pool around 3:30pm and tea? heck knows what tea could be from night to night from nibbles at a friends house to a 3 course restaurant meal.

 

My body isn't quite used to eating early in the morning yet so I'm eating kinda erratically.  I figure once I'm back at work properly though this will all just fit back in to place so I'm not too concerned.

 

I also haven't been for a big shop since getting back from holidays so the choice of recipes is rather limited.   

Breakfast 

It's pretty much a given now I'm back home that breakfast is some form of smoothie using my Blend Active. I've mentioned it before, but I really can't recommend the Blend Sctive enough, it's simply fantastic.

This mornings breakfast was 2 bananas and frozen cherries. Cherries are pretty much the only fruit that I'm not really that keen on but I did enjoy them in this smoothie.  I'm going to look in to some different recipes for smoothies this week so I can vary my usual of banana and some form of berry!

 

Do you have any good smoothie recipes?

Lunch

 

Lunch was a non starter today.  Like I said my eatings erratic at the moment.  I didn't have my smoothie till around 12pm as I was lazing around in bed for a while then did a bit of work on the computer.

 

I'm a big believer in trying to listen to my body and my body didn't tell me I was hungry until much later on so I didn't eat any lunch.  I suppose you could say my smoothie was my lunch and I skipped breakfast, as I did have it at lunch time.

Tea

 

  As lunch didn't happen i was pretty hungry come tea time! And as I've already mentioned I haven't really been shopping yet so... what else could I do but order pizza! 

 

Looking at the pictures now it looks all greasy, unhealthy and horrible but at the time is was yum.  We decided to have a movie night.  Mini Greenoid picked the film of Casino Royale and I ordered the pizzas.  Mini Greenoid had, of course, a margarita and I ordered a spicy vegetarian.  We also ordered some garlic bread to share but somehow I only got 1 piece.

 

I love pizza and movie nights!  Pizza is my favourite unhealthy food. I eat it topped with loads of veg though so I tell myself it's half healthy. That's ok right? :) 

 

Not the most healthy of days eats but there we go.  I've started running since I got back off holiday so I'm thinking I deserve a little treat here and there - considering the fact I can hardly walk and every muscle in my legs and even sides are aching! But more on that another time.

What is your favourite unhealthy food?

 

Do you find it easy to get back to 'normal' eating after a holiday?


 

What I Ate Wednesday | A Day In Barcelona

Guess what? I'm STILL in Spain for this weeks #WIAW. I've relocated slightly from our beach house to a friends apartment in Barcelona for a few days. I love Barcelona. It's currently rivalling London as my favourite city.
I've had a wonderful time in Barcelona visiting many touristy sights such as the Olympic Statium, Camp Nou, Montjuic Castle and many more.
I'll share the photos when I'm back home in rainy England.
This weeks eats are from my first day in Barcelona and it's definitely a 'pizza day.'
Breakfast

Breakfast was a delicious pineapple pancake at a little crepe place. It was delicious. I figured I'd have a pineapple one to offset the badness of all the sugar.
Snack

Wandering around Barcelona is hungry work so I had a mid day snack of 2 chocolate chip cookies.
I've kinda given up being healthy for the last few days of my holiday and am indulging in a fair few treats.
Lunch

I've mentioned in previous #WIAW how hard it is for me as a veggie to find food in Spain so I was again 'forced' into my stable of pizza. 
Myself and Mini Greenoid shared this delight of a margarita pizza and the only veggie tapas dishes we could find of pimientos and patata bravas.
As I'm in Spain it was, of course, washed down with lots of water and a little glass of vino.
Tea

  I met up with friends around 5 o clock and the plan was for us to share a bottle of vino in the square whilst the kids played in the park. Then move on for an early tea.
Inevitably, this didn't happen as more and more friends joined us and another and another bottle of vino were ordered.
Eventually myself, a friend and our kids (1 each) decided we really should go and feed the children.
My friends child is celiac and I'm a veggie so you can imagine the headache we had in trying to find somewhere to each.
Eventually we were kinda forced into the decision to go to a pizzeria as everywhere was heaving.
The pizza I ordered was called La Madonna and honestly, after the vino, I can't quite remember what was on it. Is that bad? I think it was asparagus, artichokes and various other veggies. 
I have to say, it was one of the best, if not the best pizza I've had in a long time (and believe me, I've tried a few!)
I'm not normally a dessert person but there was a lemon sorbet, prosecco and vodka mix on the menu and I just couldn't resist. Unfortunately in my hast to eat / drink it I completely forgot to take a photo.
Do you like desserts?
Do you eat differently on holiday than you do at home? 
Do you like experiencing the local cuisine or do you stick to what you know?

What I Ate Wednesday | A Healthy Holiday?

Hola everyone. I hope you're having a wonderful Wednesday. I'm still in sunny Espana so of course my Wednesday is filled with glorious sunshine, lazy lying by the pool and maybe a stroll to the beach stopping off at our local beach side bar for a little drink.

I had hoped to post more on holiday but internet access is infrequent. I also only have my trusty iPhone and iPad so it's not all that easy to post.

It's Wednesday though so let's crack on with this weeks #WIAW.  

Breakfast

If you've read any of my #WIAW before you'll know that I've recently purchased the Breville Active Blend and LOVE it. So much so that my sister and I decided to purchase another one for out here in Spain. 
This morning I had a mango, nectarine and paraguay smoothie with a banana and strawberry yoghurt drink. 
It wasn't the nicest smoothie I've made but it used up some of the over ripening fruit.

I absolutely adore mangoes. After using the flesh in my smoothie I sat on the balcony of the villa with the stone to bite off any last bits of the juicy, sweet flesh. I loved it. Whenever I use mangoes in anything it's my little cooks treat to suck the mango.
Do you do that with mangoes? 

Lunch

I had a couple of avocados that needed eating so I decided to make a kind of staple for me - avocado, tomatoes and cheese. 
If bought some 'tostas' from the supermarket which were like, well I'm not sure really? Kinda mini wheat cracker things. I loaded them up with mashed avocado, chopped tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, under the grill for a minute or so and ta da!
I also ate a chopped pear, plum and nectarine, again in my quest to use up the fruit before it over ripens.

Snacks

We took a stroll down to the port and grabbed an icecream at our favourite icecream parlour there . I'm normally a vanilla girl but with the vast range of flavours on offer I decided to mix it up and go for the marshmallow flavour. It was quite sickly sweet and I thought it would have bits if marshmallow in it (which it didn't) but it was ok.

On the walk back to the villa we decided to stop off for a bit of wifi (we can only get wifi at our local beach side bar - excellent excuse I say!) Of course a cheeky glass of vino had to be consumed - I'm on holiday afterall!
Tea
It was some friends last night so a group of us made the long trip across the road to a delicious pizza place. I had my usual there of 'pizza vegetal' or veggie pizza. It was simply delish and I ate it all. It's the kind of pizza that's cooked in a proper pizza oven and I just love them so much. Thin and crispy. The topping included tomatoes, courgettes, mushrooms, artichokes and I'm not sure what else. 

What do you like to eat on holiday?
Do you find yourself being more / less healthy on holiday?