WIAW - Avocado Baby!

Avocado Baby is one of Izzy's favourite books - she loves the idea of avocado making the baby super strong! More relevantly though, I ate lots of avocado yesterday, yummy! It's that time of the week again - What I Ate Wednesday - with thanks to Jenn for getting us all organised :)



I started yesterday with a very messy yoghurt bowl...

This was frozen mixed berries simmered on the hob with a bit of sugar + Yeo Valley mango and vanilla yoghurt...it tasted a lot nicer than it looked!!

Another Graze box arrived for me yesterday...

I had the toffee apple one as a morning snack...

Tasty, but I would have liked more toffee sauce - like dulce de leche, yum. The honeycomb flapjack also snuck its way into my mouth at some point yesterday - they only one of this box I'd had before, but luckily it's one of my favourites :)

Lunch was where the avocado started coming in - half an avocado with two digestive biscuits and brie...

The avocado clearly needs no explanation, and the brie/digestive biscuit came about when Liam was making his brie & grape sandwiches the night before, and I remembered how I always used to love brie on digestives. I think I must have put butter on the digestives in the past as these were a little dry, but that was easily remedied by slicing some of the avocado to put under the brie. Delish. I adore how creamy avocado is.

Indeed, today, I ate half of another avocado, just standing in the kitchen, eating the peeled avocado half a bit like an apple. Munch, munch, munch. Is that weird? I find it so much more satisfying than, say, chocolate, but I usually do go for the ease of chocolate. Cutting an avocado in half and peeling the skin off is hardly time-consuming though is it, I must have that as a snack more often!

I can't really tell you what I ate yesterday afternoon as for the first time in ages I've haven't been writing down what I've been eating this week. I usually start a new 'note' on my phone each day and write down the exact times and measurements of everything I eat. Boring. So this week I have been giving myself a break from both weighing myself, and recording my food. I know I ate the Graze honeycomb flapjack, but there was probably more as well!

Dinner used up the other half of the avocado. We had quesadillas. The others always have tuna mayo with sweetcorn in their quesadillas. Normally I have mozzarella with spinach and pesto or something like that, but this time I had avocado, sweet chilli sauce and grated cheddar...

Behind the scenes shot: most of the photos I take during the daytime have Toby lurking nearby ready to pounce and eat my food!

I didn't eat anything after dinner last night as a) I went out with my Mum to some craft fair thing for a little bit (luckily coming back in time to watch most of the Great British Bake Off final!) and b) I drank a whole pot of coffee during the day which gave me a tummy ache. I ended up not being able to get to sleep until 2am because of the pain - hence this post being a later one - I decided sleep was more important when Toby napped this morning!

Do you normally write down everything that you eat each day, or some days, to keep an eye on things? Or do you just eat whenever without worrying or recording it? I don't usually stop myself eating anything (although perhaps I should!!) but, like I said, I did always keep a note of everything that I ate on my phone. I'm enjoying the freedom of not writing everything down, but my memory is so rubbish that, with the exception of main meals due to a menu plan, I genuinely couldn't tell you everything I ate today. As I am still supposedly trying to lose weight, I do think I should probably keep some kind of an eye on what/how much I'm eating, but I'm not really sure what the middle ground is between obsessively recording everything, and recording nothing so then absentmindedly eating everything!

Bank Holiday Sunshine

I hope everyone in the UK has been enjoying the bank holiday weekend? We've had fun the last two days, enjoying the sunshine. Saturday was a bit miserable (which I solved by making caramel sauce!) but yesterday and today have been wonderful!

Despite my sweet tooth, I've been waking up fancying savoury breakfasts recently, specifically eggs. Yesterday I had two slices of seeded toast with raspberry jam, plus two scrambled eggs...

This morning I also had two scrambled eggs, with one slice of seeded toast + pure spread, and an avocado nectarine 'salsa'...

These were both delicious, I love the egg-jam combo, and this morning's avocado was so creamy, delicious!

Lunches have also been great. Yesterday, Liam had a long shift at work so had requested a "light" lunch as he's usually too tired to eat much. I aimed to please with a summery salad (plus it meant I could spend more time in the garden before starting to cook!) - spinach, quinoa and basil tofu, plus mozzarella for the others...

This was really tasty, warm quinoa with cold spinach and tofu was a great combo, and it was filling without being too heavy. I also drizzled a little sesame oil in the quinoa for extra flavour, yum!

Today Liam had the day off work, so we went out for lunch. I had a sweet and sour vegetable stir fry with noodles...

...plus a bowl of sweet potato fries for everyone to share...

The sweet potato fries were, of course, amazing! The stir fry was nice - the vegetables were really fresh - but there was a bit too much sauce for my liking.

After lunch, the others had ice creams on the seafront...

but I went to Costa instead and got a iced vanilla soy latte...

Mmm, real coffee! I switched to decaf coffee a week or two ago as every time I had a latte I was getting horrible making-me-double-over stomach pains. However, when it started happening after some of my meals as well, I started to realise that it usually occurred when I had a lot of dairy. So the last few days I have been using non-dairy milks, avoiding cheese etc (although still eating trace amounts of dairy in cakes and chocolate chips!) and I am pleased to report that, so far, I've had no stomach pains. And (more importantly!!!) this coffee caused no problems, so I can start having caffeine again, yey!! :-D

I haven't really eaten proper "dinners" the last couple of days - yesterday I had lots of snacks during the afternoon. Including, but not limited to, several coconut cakes topped with raspberry jam...

and an Alpro Soya vanilla dessert with pb & chocolate chips...

So I ended up having dinner pretty late, and still fancied something sweet. Enter porridge made with a mashed banana and peanut flour, topped with Julie's peanut butter granola...

I think I should have cooked the granola for a minute or so more as it didn't get very crunchy, but it was still so addictive - I ate the whole batch over the course of the evening!

Delicious, I want to try baking lots of different types of granola now - so easy to make, I can't believe I haven't done it before!

This evening, I haven't actually had any dinner yet. We didn't end up eating lunch until 3.30pm as Izzy was awake at 4am so had a 2.5 hour nap in the middle of the day! I have made muffins this evening, but I will wait until I can take photos in better light to share that recipe tomorrow. I ate one of those straight out of the oven though, and will go and get more food once I publish this, I just don't know what I fancy/can be bothered to make!

We have made the most of the sunshine to go to the play park lots over the last two days. Izzy had been desperate to go for days but the weather kept preventing us, so as soon as we saw the sun was out yesterday, we knew what we had to do! Yesterday, my sister and her boyfriend joined me and the children - we went at 9.30am on Sunday morning, so the park was still nice and quiet!

Today, Liam and I took the children to the park twice. Being a bank holiday, it was much busier, but we still had fun. We first went this morning...

We had then planned to go straight for ice cream, but both children were very tired (aka grumpy!) so we went home for them to both have naps. We came back to the park on the way home from lunch later on...

I'm so glad we managed to fit in lots of fun this weekend! I doubt the sunny weather will be around for that much longer (it is already quite chilly even when the sun is out) and Izzy goes back to school next week anyway. She's really looking forward to going back, but I'm a bit sad - it's been fun to have her around more and not have to stick to the routine of the school run!

How has your weekend been? Did you do anything special today if you had a bank holiday? Oh, and I wanted to say 'have a great time' to all of you that are meeting up in Manchester tomorrow - I've been reading all your tweets and wishing I could be there...if only it wasn't so far away/so expensive to get there! I look forward to reading all about it on your blogs though! :)

Lentil Cottage Pie + Satisfying Food Cravings

Cooking tonight ended up being a bit rushed as we spent most of the afternoon at Liam's parents "talking wedding" and lost track of time...dinner still turned out well though!

Lentil Cottage Pie
(serves 4)

• 650-700g potatoes, peeled and chopped
• butter
• splash milk
• oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 500g passata (or a tin of chopped tomatoes)
• 400g tin of green lentils in water, drained
• 3-4 carrots, peeled and grated
• splash of soy sauce
• 70g cheddar, grated

Put the potatoes in a pan of boiling water and cook for approx 25 minutes. Once cooked, drain and mash with the butter and milk.

Meanwhile, fry the onion and garlic in a little oil. Add the passata and simmer until there are 10 minutes left of the potato cooking time. At this stage add the grated carrots and the drained lentils, plus soy sauce to taste, and continue to simmer.

To prepare the cottage pie, first put the lentil mix into the dish (depending on the size of your dish, you may not need all of it - I was able to save back approx one pasta sauce portion). Put the mash potato on top and smooth down. Finally sprinkle evenly with the grated cheese (optional - growing up I never had cheese on top of cottage pie, but Liam loves it!)

Bake at approx 170C for 25 minutes, or until cheese/potatoes are golden and slightly crispy.

Enjoy!

This was really delicious. Liam commented that it tasted like "normal" cottage pie, which I think was meant as praise!! The green lentils give a really 'meaty' texture so work well as a mince replacement if you don't want to use fake meat. We always put grated carrot in our bolognese style sauces...I find them so bland without now, and it's a great way to get extra veg in. I would normally also serve this with peas, but I completely forgot. I clearly wasn't quite all there whilst cooking either, as just after I added the passata to this, I realised that cottage pie usually has a stock-based sauce rather than tomato-based, but hey, it worked! The leftover lentil mix can go in the freezer for me to have one time when the others have meat spag bol so that will save effort also...win win!

I haven't managed to photograph all my food today. There was a huge latte first thing to wake me up. And while I was cooking, I nibbled on "just one square" of Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt, which turned into the whole 100g bar...whoops...lucky dinner took a while to cook to allow me to become hungry again!

I did however photograph my lunch. I couldn't decide what to have, but knew I fancied either avocado or egg of some kind. In the end I decided to keep it simple and satisfy my cravings. A whole, perfectly ripe avocado, served with 2 boiled eggs and a drizzle of agave nectar.

The combo may sound a bit strange, but it tasted fantastic. The sweetness of the agave, for me, brought it all together, but you could go with something like balsamic vinegar if you don't have such a sweet tooth! Sometimes giving your body exactly what it wants is a good thing...I just hope my body starts asking for savoury/nutrient-full things more often rather than just peanut butter, chocolate, peanut butter!!

I can't believe Saturday is almost over already, today has gone by so quickly! Liam's back at work again tomorrow, boo, it's quite nice having him around sometimes!! :) How have everyone else's Saturdays been? Any favourite strange-sounding food combinations that actually work really well? The other one I love is medjool dates stuffed with goat's cheese, although I don't think that is that strange...anything goes well with cheese!

Healthy(ish) Friday vs Sugary Saturday

I had been planning to do this as a comparison style post for each meal, but realised that would limit my inane chatter...can't have that! Let's just say the last 2 days have been very different to each other. And as I'm currently sitting here feeling very bloated and yucky, I think it's safe to say my body prefers me to eat more healthily!

Yesterday's breakfast was a gorgeous bowl of porridge. I kept the porridge simple - just oats, milk and vanilla extract - then topped it with (ugly but yummy) grilled banana, flaked coconut and Meridian peanut butter...

I got this idea when searching blogs a while back for porridge combinations, from Clean Eating Chelsey, looking at it again just now to find the link...a) her's looks way better than mine and b) it was a pumpkin porridge version...I'd only remembered the topping. Healthy, filling and delicious nonetheless...this kept me going until lunch...

...which was an amazing salad...most of a bag of Co-Op's Beetroot Salad - shredded beetroot, red chard, spinach and apollo leaves - topped with a huge chopped avocado and prawns mixed with mayonnaise...

this was so pretty! And tasted divine! I love the combination of creamy avocado and prawn mayonnaise anyway, but the addition of interest salad just made it even more special! :) I discovered after eating (doh!) that it was 600 calories due to the size of the avocado - it was filling but not that filling! It was still pretty healthy though so all good :)

Unfortunately when Liam went to work, my afternoon descended into a sugar spiral...

the chocolate was lovely, the flapjacks unnecessary...especially as I ate all 4 in about 15 minutes (doing the trick of leaving the box on the table each time so I had to get up to get another one, else it would've been quicker!) oops! I'm calling it research though - my Mum bought these for me and asked me to make her a healthier version...so I get to eat the flapjacks laden with condensed milk, demerara sugar, honey and  golden syrup...before making a healthier version not for me...thanks Mum!! :-p

Last night I had planned to make Laura's Socca for dinner, but after all that sugar I wasn't particularly hungry and didn't have the energy to cook dinner and do baking for Mum...so baking won. I did lots of picking on leftover vegan fudge etc though so didn't go hungry!

So, baking...

Re-vamped apricot and almond flapjacks

150g butter
100g apricot fruit spread/jam (I used Meridian's which is sweetened with fruit juice rather than sugar)
40g black strap molasses (although this gave a bit of a funny taste so will try something different next time...is Sweet Freedom ok in baking?)
250g porridge oats
75g apricots, chopped (I used Organic ones my Mum had "donated" for her baking, so lovely natural colour)
30g almonds, chopped

First, get the butter, fruit spread and molasses...

and melt in the microwave until smooth (you could do on the hob, but pans are harder to wash up and we have no dishwasher!)

while this is melting, chop up apricots and almonds...

add oats, fruit and nut into melted butter/jam/molasses mix and mix it all together...

into a greased cake pan (mine always seems to be too big!)...

and into the oven at 175C for about 25 minutes until it comes out looking like this...

score into pieces (mine made 8 flapjacks for Mum, plus a rough edge for me!) and leave to cool before storing in cake tin...

I'm really pleased with how these turned out. I don't normally make flapjacks at all, let alone experimental ones! Mum informs me that these were really yummy, not particularly sweet which she liked as she's not a sweet fan. She'd like me to keep experimenting until I perfect them though (!) suggesting that next time I try adding some honey to make a stickier consistency!! Lol. It's very frustrating baking and not getting to eat it, but I suppose it is good for my waistline, and she does pay for the ingredients so I can't complain!

Whilst I was making flapjacks, the blender was also whizzing...

making another batch of Katie's sugar free chocolate fudge...

multi-tasking at it's best! This was for Mum again, next time she'd like me to add raisins please!! I don't mind really, her and her partner are both running in the London Marathon this year so are wanting healthy snacks to go alongside their training. I like experimenting and as I'm the only one in my family who would eat these creations, its a good thing they head my Mum's way instead - unlike them I'm not running miles and miles each week to earn the calories to snack all the time!! :)

After all that baking, I was exhausted though so off to bed I went, ready for a "family day" today. It was my first Saturday since I left work - so the first day all 4 of us could spend together since New Year's Day (when the shop was shut), my daughter was so excited to do lots of things together!! And on that note...

...on to Sugary Saturday...

Unlike yesterday's healthy bowl of porridge, today's breakfast was my daughter's choice - pancakes! I only had one as we didn't eat until 9.30am and I was going out for coffee at 10am (more on that in a minute). I had my pancake with lemon juice and sugar...

Yum. I remember as a child my Mum hardly ever used to make pancakes. But on pancake day she would make them before school and after. I used to scoff between 5-8 pancakes (depending on how much batter she made!) and still be ready for more when I got home later! I think my daughter is taking after me - she had 2 pancakes this morning and was very disappointed to learn there were no more left! (she's only 4 so is a slow eater - Liam had scoffed the rest by the time she'd finished her 2nd!!)

This morning, as mentioned above, I went out for coffee and cake. With my Grandma and my little sister. I had a latte and some kind of chocolate-raspberry cake...

this cake was amazing, so rich and chocolatey...

Delish!

After coffee we hit the food shops - Waitrose and Lidl. I bought lots, more than my Grandma and my sister (doing shopping for my Mum) combined! Some of the things I bought...

reduced Bear Granola Nibbles, Sweet Freedom, Vanilla Chai Latte, Agave Nectar, Xanthan Gum, plus some over-packaged veggies...

satsumas, raspberries, mushrooms, peppers and broccoli...as well as the usual milk, cream, kitchen roll, potatoes, bread etc. I seem to have been buying loads of food recently...and this month is the first month in a while that we've gone back to writing down everything we spend...not looking forward to finding out the end of month total!!

This afternoon the 4 of us went swimming, something we haven't managed to do in quite a while. We all had a great time - the baby managed to last about 25 minutes before shivering so much that Liam took him out, and our daughter was even more excited than usual as she was bought her first ever pair of goggles (pink and purple of course!!) so spent lots of time underwater until she began to feel a bit ill!!

After stopping off at Mum's to sample the flapjack (verdict - yummy, but not sweet enough for me) it was time to go home and get on with some more cooking & baking - sugary baking this time! To round of "family day" we had a special dinner planned (including the rarity of pudding other than fruit or yoghurt!) - roast gammon...

and dauphinoise potatoes...

served with broccoli...

followed by a chocolate chip version (Liam doesn't like fruit in puddings) of bread and butter pudding...

mmm stodgy goodness...

Yum!

We've all had a really good day. I'm definitely looking forward to getting back to healthy eating tomorrow though!

And with that I'm going to finish my post abruptly. I'm finally feeling less bloated, 3 hours after stopping eating! But I've just noticed that my laptop's battery power has been slowly decreasing - it says "18% available (plugged in, not charging)" Any ideas?? I've had it before when a power cable/box has died, that the laptop doesn't recognise that it's plugged in at all. But I find it slightly worrying that it recognises that it's plugged in to the power, but isn't doing anything about it?!! Off to back-up all my photos in a panic!!!