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?

LIFE | A Level Results Arghhhhhh

I've just realised it's A Level result day here in England. It brought back all sorts of bad memories of my own A Level result day.

Back in 2000 I was collecting my A Level results and I remember all the mixed emotions throughout the day.

Theoretically it's a day you've worked for for the past 2 years of your life. Personally I was awful in college. I'd passed all my GCSEs without any revision or working that hard (I guess I was one of the lucky ones who didn't really need to put much effort in at school to achieve reasonably well) and chose to do Spanish, Art, Geography and General Studies at A Level.

Unfortunately I was a 16 year old girl whose last priority was her future and studying hard to achieve good grades. I skipped classes to hang out with friends, lay in bed far to long and was late for classes and of course, I had discovered boys!

When it came to A Level results day I was so nervous. I knew I hadn't worked as hard as I could have done but I was ever hopeful that I may just have achieved 4 decent passes.

I remember opening the letter and my heart sank. I'd achieved (or not achieved depending how you look at it) 2 fails and 2 E grades. I was fiercely disappointed. For a girl who had never really failed anything, I felt like a complete and utter failure.

Then the next thought - how the hell am I going to tell my parents?! They will be so disappointed in me. I was disappointed in myself. I'd let them down. I'd let myself down. They were on holiday at our villa in Spain - exactly were I am now. (I'm writing this by the pool)

I couldn't face phoning them so I put it off. I was delaying the inevitable. I knew they'd phone me. I knew I had to talk to them.

My Dad phoned and I choked up. It was so hard to tell him my grades. As I told him I burst into tears. 

To cut a long story short I had to go though clearing and eventually managed to get in to university doing a primary teaching degree.

My message to anyone getting their results today is 'it will all turn out ok in the end.' You might not believe that now but trust me - I felt the world was over but in reality it was just beginning. 

If you achieved good results, well done you. All that work and effort was worth it. If you didn't achieve what you'd hoped, there are so many options and paths you can take so chin up, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and plan what you're going to do next.

What I Ate Wednesday | Holiday Eats

I'm still in sunny Spain so this weeks eats are holiday eats.

Breakfast

I love to have freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast and some fruit. Today I had delicious, juicy watermelon, followed by muesli and a chopped banana.

Lunch

A group of 18 of us went out for a lazy, boozy lunch which included lots of wine and to eat - just a huge salad. Being a veggie I struggle to find anything I can eat in Spanish restaurants - they don't really cater for veggies in Spain!

We went out for lunch at our local beach restaurant at 1:30pm and arrived home at around 9pm - like I said a lazy , long and boozy lunch with friends. Perfect.

Tea

A quick snack for tea to soak up all lunchtimes vino. A tortilla sandwich, a nectarine and a paraguay.

Espana | Day 1 | Water Park

Happy Friday everyone.

 

I'm enjoying Day 1 of my holiday in Spain today. 

We arrived yesterday lunchtime at Barcelona and made the 2 and a half hour car journey to our family villa.

 First on the list of things to do was to meet up with friends. We come every year and have a fab group of friends that we meet up with, drink vino and just relax.  

All the children play together and we have such a wonderful time.

We have what we call 'The 5 o clock Club.' What that means is wine time! There's around 6 families and we take it in turns to bring jugs of Bellinis or a bottle of wine to the pool, have a gossip and watch the children playing.

After our little drink me and Mini Greenoid headed out for a pizza across the road. They're Mini Greenoids favourite thing to eat in the world and he's been looking forward to it for weeks.

I had a delicious goats cheese salad and a vegetarian pizza. It was yum!

It's our first full day today and a group of 16 of us have come to the waterpark.

I'm gonna go find a water slide to go on. 

Hasta Luego

What I Ate Wednesday | Using Up The Fridge

Well, Wednesday's swung round again fast hasn't it?  Can someone just slow down time a little bit please? - it's going far too fast for me at the moment.

 

I had a very colourful, fruity day for this #WIAW.  The reason was, not to be healthy, but I'm on holiday tomorrow (have I mentioned how frickin excited I am?!) so todays eats (or should I say drinks) were all about using up the food I've got in.  It just so happened it was mainly fruit so that could only mean one thing for me lately - trying out new recipes with my new Breville Blend-Active.

Breakfast

The first smoothie of the day was a yummy concoction of

• 2 bananas
• 3 plums
• a handful of strawberries
• pure squeezed orange juice
• a handful of ice cubes

I loved this one.  I thought it was going to be a bit odd with mixing bananas with the orange juice but it was delicious and very filling.

 

Lunch

 

 

In the morning I was checking over my greenhouse and found quite a few tomatoes that were ready for eating so I picked them and decided to use them in my lunch.  I couldn't think of anything majorly exciting to do with them but I had a seeded bagel or two left over, bit of cheese in my fridge so I made pizzas.  My love for pizzas is never ending!

 

Snack

 

Honestly, this was one of the most revolting things I've ever tasted and I only managed to drink half of it.  I found the recipe on Breville Creative Kitchen which has some tasty looking recipes for the blender.  It was one of the only recipes that I had all the ingredients for so I thought I'd give it a go. 

 

When I follow a recipe I never pay attention to quantities.  I always just add what I think.  On this occasion, I think I messed up the quantities.  I'll try making this smoothie again following the instructions but this time it was just all wrong.

 

Tea

I was not put off by my smoothie snack and stuck to another smoothie for tea.  This one was

• 2 nectarines
• 3 plums
• 3 tablespoons of greek yoghurt
• squirt of honey to taste

This one was delicious.  I didn't add the honey at first but after tasting it without I decided it needed a little something to sweeten it slightly. 

 

My fruit bowl is now almost empty and I'm pleased that I used most of it up before my holiday.  I hate wasting food.

 

I was surprised that I wasn't at all hungry throughout the day.  I've never tried a smoothie/juice detox before as I felt it would be impossible for me but I really enjoyed making the smoothies and might look into these detox things a bit more.

 

 

What do you do with your fruit / fridge contents before a holiday?  Do you make weird and wonderful dishes to use it up?

 

Have you tried a juice cleanse?