Health Food Shopping

Today's post accidentally seems to have followed a trend I've seen on a lot of blogs recently - photos of purchases from health food shops. Hey ho, didn't do it on purpose, but I did go shopping today and am very excited about what I bought!! :)

First though - the morning routine. As I have to get everyone else sorted before having a chance to get my own breakfast (I didn't eat until 3 hours after I got up today!) a mug of coffee is an essential early morning ritual. Sad as it seems, I've started drinking it on the kitchen step so that I can drink it in peace away from the children and Liam's requests!!

reminds me of a book my daughter loves... I just wanted "five minutes' peace"!

Once everyone else was out the house and baby was napping, it was time for my breakfast. I haven't had pumpkin porridge in ages so I opened a tin of pumpkin etc... topped with some peanut butter and a square of dark chocolate...

Yum, this is so filling and I love that I (even with my sweet tooth!) can eat it without any added sugar, it has such a lovely warm taste on its own :)

Once baby woke up it was time to hit the shops! Considering how grey it has been today we were really lucky that there was no rain in the hour we were out, phew! We only went into 4 shops but this is what we bought:

First up, Julian Graves:

toasted coconut flakes (to top porridge), desiccated coconut (to make Katie's coconut nut butter/coconut banana fudge), rich hazelnut flavoured coffee (there were so many flavours to choose from - chocolate caramel, vanilla, amaretto, maple walnut, Irish cream... but I decided to try the hazelnut one first!) and a magazine (only 99p and contains vouchers I'll want to use that more than cover the cost!). Total cost: £7.26.

Next was the local health food shop:

date syrup, blackstrap molasses, plus a small carton of chocolate milk and a sugar free apricot coconut slice as a treat for later on :) Total cost = £4.38.

Then was Holland & Barrett:

almonds (possibly to make almond milk, but if not love them as a porridge topping/snack anyway!) and a big tub of crunchy peanut butter (thanks Maria for the recommendation on the peanut butter, and the heads up on the offer!) plus a little sachet of flaxseed and a couple of small packs of raisins & apricots for the baby (he loves his dried fruit!). Total cost = £9.27.

and finally the local fruit & veg shop:

Smile! 3 braeburn apples, 2 avocadoes and 2 bananas for £2.69. Probably not the cheapest place to buy them, but saved me getting tempted by junk food either from myself or the others in Tesco!

So total spend of £23.60...

not bad eh? Unfortunately there are some things I couldn't find, like chickpea flour to make Socca, so I may have to do a Goodness Direct order soon...this healthy eating thing is addictive!! :)

I couldn't trust myself to leave the coconut & apricot slice untouched throughout the day so I took photos of it straight away...

good thing too as I ended up nibbling on it throughout the day. It was so yummy...who needs added sugar when there are naturally sweet things like this?!! I don't imagine it was very calorie friendly though - basically just a huge chunk of desiccated coconut with some apricot compote (at first I thought it was apricot jam, but there were whole apricots in there, delish!). The only downside was that I pretty much had to eat it with a spoon - not sure if there was anything other than coconut in the coconut mix, but if there was it didn't hold it together very well...this was so crumbly!

For various reasons, lunch ended up being smaller than originally planned. I didn't find the time to eat breakfast until 10.30am this morning, so even by the time I came to eat at 2pm, I wasn't very hungry. Plus when I went to get a wholemeal pitta bread from the freezer I could only find white which I didn't really fancy. The main reason though - although not a particularly "good" reason to admit to - I wanted to make sure I had enough calories to eat the apricot coconut slice without guilt! A treat once in a while does me the world of good, and I've eaten really healthily this week so the odd treat wont do any harm :)

Lunch was still delicious - my favourite houmous...

with sliced yellow pepper...

I love this, so full of flavour! I should probably start making my own houmous, but this is so convenient...we'll see!

That is the last of the photos from today I'm afraid - the rest of my day was pretty boring food-wise! After school pick up we went to one of my daughter's friend's house where the children had their tea. I had a cup of tea with 2 sugars, oops. Then when the children were in bed Liam and I just had food from the freezer - meat free burgers and sweetcorn for me, plus chips for Liam. Not worthy of a photo! Finished off the last of the coconut apricot slice after dinner - I had about half left after my daytime nibbling, so good!

I'm looking forward to making use of some of my new ingredients tomorrow - hopefully starting with a hazelnut coffee!!