Whole Foods Goodies

My brain sometimes struggles to formulate words for my posts (hence the lack of posting this week - I've been so exhausted so each night I've either spent most of the time relaxing in the bath and/or going to sleep super early!) but today I've got loads to say! I am however still really tired, so I will probably keep this post relatively short and then post again tomorrow...will see how it goes as I get typing!

Despite having a stressful week (loads of important phone calls to make, no baby-free time to make them blah blah is beginning to stress me and cause me not to sleep properly!) today has been really good! :) My Dad came down yesterday...bringing with him my (5 weeks early!) birthday present!! :) he was in London yesterday for a couple of business meetings and I begged him to go health food shopping for me before his train home! The most convenient shop for him to go to was the Whole Foods Market in Soho so this was what he brought me...

I am very impressed and grateful for all that he bought... I can't imagine my Dad in a health food shop!! I had texted him a list of possible purchases, and apparently he went into the store, found a friendly looking shop assistant, showed him his phone and then just followed the shop assistant around the store to all the products!!

All the goodies together...

I was so excited to look through all this!! I wish I lived nearer to London/could afford to visit so I could browse the stores myself, but Dad going shopping for me is a good substitute for now! :) While searching for stores near to where he'd be I also discovered Planet Organic's Website which I think I will be ordering from in the near future...order only needs to be over £30 to get free delivery, which I'm sure I'll be able to manage!!

Back to today's treats though! My main requests (especially as they can't be purchased on Planet Organic) were PB&Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams and Chia Seeds. Sadly the store only sold PB&Co plain crunchy and smooth varieties - boring! Dad did succeed with the chia seeds though - 2 packs so I hope I like them, looking forward to experimenting soon!

In the bag was also a jar of Cacao Brazilnut Bliss (to make up for lack of PB&Co Dark Chocolate Dreams) and a jar of pumpkin seed butter (they didn't have any sunflower seed butter...I'm quite impressed that Dad thought to get alternatives!!)...

I immediately (of course!) tried a spoonful of the cacao brazilnut bliss, it's quite nice but a bit grainy. I haven't opened the pumpkin seed butter...don't want to have finished up everything before my birthday even arrives!!

There was also a big jar of raw honey and a jar of pollen grains...

I randomly added the pollen grains to the bottom of the list after seeing them on a blog, not really expecting Dad to get them, and now can't remember which blog it was or how they used them, but will give them a try soon...got to have at least one random item in there!! :) looking forward to trying the raw honey too, yum.

Another alternative by my Dad (I am so impressed he even went into Whole Foods, let alone think of substitutes himself!!) - I'd asked for carob flakes, which they didn't have, but I'm looking forward to trying this carob powder...

And last, but by no means least...Conscious chocolate bars!! My favourite! :) Mint, Orange and Nutty...yum yum...

I of course had to eat one of these immediately! I chose the mint one...

I love Conscious chocolate. It has by far the nicest texture of any raw chocolate I've tried, and this mint one was no exception, really nice with a strong, but not too strong, minty flavour too :) I was very restrained and kept this in the fridge, just having one piece at a time, which made it last all day, delish!

All in all, a fantastic early birthday present, thanks Dad! :)

Another lovely surprise was that last night my sister and her boyfriend came round to give Liam and I our early wedding present! (2 early presents in 24 hours, bizarre but fab!) the present is from my other sister as well, and is for one night away at a posh country hotel nearby...my sisters thought it'd be nice for us to have a bit of a break before the stress of last minute wedding preparations! The package includes dinner, breakfast the next day, a bottle of champagne, chocolates and afternoon tea on our choice of day, plus full use of the leisure facilities (gym, swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna etc) and my sisters are going to look after our children while we go...bliss! We've decided to go for the Friday night of birthday weekend (Liam's birthday is 12th May and mine is 15th May so we tend to celebrate together!!) so we can spend the Friday-Saturday relaxing, but still celebrate Liam's birthday on the Thursday and my birthday on the Sunday with the children. Can't wait! :) So appreciative to all my family for being so generous, I'm so lucky to have them!!

Back to the food though...as mentioned earlier, I've been super stressed today. I don't really know why, I've got a super long to-do list and I've just let it all build up until it's too much and getting me really down. I hardly have any baby-free time to do anything in, so when baby napped this afternoon I decided to tackle the financial phone calls, but then couldn't find Liam's most recent payslip which I needed...aaargh!! Rather than acting like a normal adult (!), I headed for the food cupboard to ease my stress!! First a chocolate fudge flapjack bar...

This was ok, but not great. Luckily my semi-sensible brain kicked in and decided that sunshine and a smoothie would be more relaxing...

a simple smoothie of a banana, some frozen exotic fruit (melon, pineapple, mango & papaya I think), cocoa powder and milk, this was tasty. It also made loads - I had another glass then saved the rest for my daughter to have after school, which made her very excited, bless! I only managed about 10 minutes in the sun before baby woke up from his nap, but it still helped, as did sleepy baby cuddles afterwards! :)

After Monday's disastrously chunky smoothie...

...I've been a bit put off using my food processor this week...still intact spinach stems are not good!! I will post more on that tomorrow though... hint: I bought myself a new blender :-D it arrived this afternoon but I haven't even found time to open the Amazon box yet!!! I thought the my food processor would still be able to manage a pure fruit smoothie like the one I had this afternoon though, but it did not like all the frozen fruit - was leaking out round the top of the lid! Hope I haven't broken it - I still need it to make nut butters - but definitely the right decision to purchase a blender for my smoothie making!

Dinner tonight was something I've been meaning to make for a while to use up our huge amount of leeks (buying some the day before some more arrive in the veg box is not good!) I found a recipe on BBC Good Food for Spaghetti with leeks, peas and pesto. I didn't follow the measurements - just used the amount of leeks we had, the correct amount of spaghetti for our family, and just poured peas into the pan - but apart from that I followed the recipe. This made lots!!

Delicious...

I really liked this. It was simple but fresh tasting, I think I would add a bit more pesto in next time though for a stronger flavour.

Right, I think that's me done for tonight! I've got a couple of recipes that I will find time to share at some point over the weekend, and I hope to back tomorrow with some smoothies made in my new blender...can't wait to open it up in the morning!!