Disrupted Day

Phew, today has been all over the place!

It started off well with a yummy breakfast - banana sweet "cream" (I so need to come up with a better name!)...

This is so good. Thick and creamy, but thanks to the Greek yoghurt and peanut butter, the protein content is pretty good so this kept me full all morning :)

After breakfast, baby and I headed to toddler group. I spent the time chasing after baby as he was either being pushed over by the older children, or trying to poke the babies in the eyes!!! At snack time, I resisted the biscuits and just had an unsweetened cup of tea.

When we got home, baby went for his nap. I had a latte and was just looking forward to having lunch in peace, when I got a phone call from school. Someone had pushed daughter off the pirate ship and she'd got a huge bump by her eye so could someone collect her please. Gah! Just when she was so pleased to be back at school after hospital/Easter holidays/bank holidays etc! Liam was an hour away at uni with the car. Mum was at work. Grandma in Portugal. Minor panic that I was going to have to wake baby up and drag him out in the rain, and then walk back with daughter whinging that she was too tired to walk! My only hope was my Grandparents. Luckily they were in and my Grandpa agreed to go straight away to pick her up...phew! Poor daughter came home looking like this...

Poor little girl! Luckily the swelling has gone down as the day has gone on, but it also has become more purple/black...she's gonna have a shiner in the morning!! She's been pretty much her normal self though - a little shaky when she first got home, but only a small headache and the eye area only hurts when touched...think we got off lightly. And, importantly for her, the incident occurred after lunch - she only has school dinners twice a week and today was one of those days - she would not have been impressed to have missed spaghetti bolognese and kiwi fruit (which she chose over flapjack, bizarre!)

Lots of extra cuddles and an Easter egg seemed to get rid of any lingering shakiness...

I hadn't planned to eat any. Especially as I still hadn't eaten lunch. But we all know how lacking my willpower is!

Thankfully I didn't eat all the above. But I did eat about half the chocolate egg, one foam banana and one (unpleasant) hard boiled banana sweet.

This completely messed up my exercise plans for the day. I had planned to go swimming when Liam got home, and still be back in time to cook dinner, but I can't eat for at least 2 hours before swimming else I get a really sore stomach and spend the whole swim feeling sicky. I also didn't really want to go swimming for the first time in months on just sugar, but if I ate proper lunch that would've pushed back the time I could swim even later. Excuses, excuses...swimming got postponed until tomorrow!

I eventually ate "lunch" about 3pm. Pasta mixed with grilled peppers Philadelphia and topped with grated cheddar...

Yummy cheesey carbs! :)

Of course by now, my routine had been completely disrupted, as I wasn't at all hungry when dinner-time rolled round. The others ate a prawn noodle stir fry, and I waited until after putting the children to bed before making a smoothie. Don't let the word "smoothie" fool you though. This was anything but a low-cal option. 250g frozen berries, a banana, a couple of handfuls of spinach, milk, cocoa powder, Sweet Freedom and xanthan gum into the blender...

topped with desiccated coconut, Jordan's fruit and nut granola...

...and an amazing blob of PB&Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams...

Perfection in a bowl! This was so good, the DCD sunk to the bottom, so for the first half it was a great contrast between cold smoothie and crunchy coconut/granola, and then the second half was delicious smoothie made even better by bites of chocolatey peanutty goodness! Yum.

I have to admit I have still been feeling peckish tonight. It's not hunger, just that I want to eat. I have resisted though! My Mum has been also eating healthily the last few days to support me, so I felt a bit bad that she'd resisted eating any of my little sister's box of chocolates, whereas I'd eaten half of daughter's Easter egg! Moving on from that though!

*****

Yesterday went pretty well food-wise and life-wise. I started the day with a smoothie that looked similar to tonight's. This one didn't have any cocoa powder in it though, and instead had a spoon of peanut butter blended into it...

I love starting the day with lots of fruit!

We all then piled into the car (a mission to get all 4 of us ready first thing in the morning!) to drop daughter at school before going to the registrar's to give notice of marriage. This was literally just a case of giving name, birth and parent details. We have to go back 2-3 weeks before the wedding to discuss the ceremony in greater detail, including getting approval for any readings and songs we want included.

After this we headed to a local cafe for lunch. Although it was a bit early for lunch being only 11am. So "brunch". Baby had a homemade flapjack with raspberry running through it. I had a bite and was very jealous of him getting to gobble the rest up! Liam had a bacon and poached egg bap, and I had a portobello mushroom, (roasted tomatoes) and poached egg bap. I think I got the better deal...

I removed the tomatoes (I was hoping they'd be little roasted cherry tomatoes, but they were big squelchy tomato halves. Yuck.) but the rest was divine. The mushroom was cooked in garlic butter and the poached egg was perfect - set white but runny yolk, just how it should be. I can be a bit funny about how eggs are cooked (runny whites = gross, overcooked powdery yolks = flavourless) and hadn't really thought about it when ordering, so was relieved the egg turned out so well!

So good. I could have eaten it all over again, but luckily Liam kept me on track - he didn't even let me buy one of their yummy cakes to take home with me!

Amazingly, I didn't actually eat again until dinner time. A combination of "first day of a new diet" willpower, and the fact that I spent a couple of hours of the afternoon asleep - I'd been awake since 4am stressing about table plans of all things (we haven't even sent out the invites yet, let alone got RSVPs back!) so a nap was needed. Speaking of the wedding, I have created a wedding tab (next to my newish recipe tab, underneath the blog header) to keep track of all the main posts I discuss the wedding in, as well as a to-do list I wrote on Monday which I will cross through as I go along to keep me on track!

Anyway, yesterday's dinner was the amazing Mama Pea's Quinoa Pizza Casserole, made even more amazing, although admittedly no longer vegan, by the addition of pesto coated slices of goat's cheese baked on top for the last 5-10 minutes. Divine.

The addition of pesto goat's cheese meant that Liam didn't feel the need to have any meat with this (he often supplements this meal with ham/pepperoni etc as he would with a normal pizza) so we all just had it with roasted peppers...

Delicious...

I tried to resist the leftovers in the kitchen, but it was impossible. Liam and I shared them so got another 'slice of goat's cheese + quinoa casserole surrounding it' worth each. Worth it at the time, but I was regretting it 30 minutes later when I went out for a 3 mile "wedding talk walk" with my Mum - serious stomach ache/stitch! Good idea of my Mum's though - her way of ensuring I at least get some exercise and distracting me from evening snacking... 2-3 times a week we're going to do a quick 3 miles or so of walking while we discuss wedding plans, instead of sitting at home talking whilst drinking tea and eating cake!! It was fun, although we got wet - the tide was super high so when we walked along the narrow path that is right next to the sea wall, waves came crashing down upon our feet!

Right, that's me caught up. Off to help Liam now - he has a uni project due in tomorrow, plus two jobs he's in the process of applying to, so he wants me to proof-read everything and help him write cover letters. Fingers crossed he gets one of the jobs, it would be amazing for him to secure a job close to home so near to the start of his job hunt! :)

Would You Like Some Peanut Butter With That?

This week, my eating has NOT been very structured! What with being in hospital until Monday, and then having decorators in...last night was the first meal in over a week that I was able to cook in my own kitchen! I made it a good one though - Mama Pea's Quinoa Pizza Casserole...

I topped mine with grated cheddar, roast peppers and basil smoked tofu, with some salad on the side...

This was sooo good! Loved by all - I had thought I'd have some leftover's for today's lunch but Liam went back for seconds and polished it all off!!

Until last night though, I have been eating more snacks than meals! I spent most of the week at my Mum's house (luckily she lives just round the corner!), we did have a few meals such as pasta with roast vegetables and pesto...

and baked sweet potato with broccoli, roast asparagus and grilled pepper Philadelphia...

the green veggies I'd been longing for!! :)

However there were also many many snacks! A lot of these were peanut butter based - I seem to be making up for the lost peanut butter time from when we were in hospital!! There were Oreo cookies, with peanut butter...

Apologies for the rubbish photo - I was too busy eating - delish!

There was also a Dairy Milk chocolate bar, with peanut butter...

A good combo, but would've been even better with dark chocolate...obviously lots more peanut butter was spread on this after the photo!

And in the same "snacking session" a banana was also spread with peanut butter...

I have also this week eaten six packs of, unpictured, Reese's peanut butter cups, less 2 cups that Mum ate, so 16 peanut butter cups total!! They were reduced from 60p to 29p in Waitrose on Tuesday so I bought 3 packs, then on Thursday they were reduced further to 19p so I bought the last 3 packs...looks like Waitrose won't be selling them anymore :( I know I can make much better quality versions though, I ended up popping these in one after the other...too addictive!!

* To avoid any possible confusion, I have clearly eaten more than the above the last week - there have even been some other meals - muesli, soup, toasted teacake out with my Grandma etc - but less photos have been taken than usual due to disrupted routine!

****

Today I had it all planned out that I would get back to normality. Daughter was back at school for morning + lunch today (thank you so much for all the well wishes, she's much better now, she started improving as soon as she had the op, so we're just glad they finally realised what was wrong with her!) and I had planned to go to the gym. That was until we snoozed the alarm for 45 minutes and ended up having to rush to get daughter to school - got out of the morning routine habit! I just had no energy this morning, had been awake in the night blah blah blah, and couldn't face the gym. After taking daughter to school, I settled for a healthy breakfast instead...

This was a bit of an "eat up fruit that's been forgotten about while we've been out of the house" smoothie - 2 small overripe bananas, 2 overripe pears, spinach, frozen cherries, vanilla rice milk and xanthan gum. Topped with toasted coconut flakes and, of course, peanut butter...

this was fantastic! My smoothies can be a bit hit or miss (especially if I add protein powder, bleugh, not a fan of the texture!) but this was divine :) I have to admit it though that it pretty much just tasted of banana and peanut butter...but that's fine with me!! :)

Lunch today was a simple poached egg on seeded toast...

I was doing so well! Then Liam went to work and the peanut butter jar started calling to me from the cupboard!!

Medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter...

and then peanut butter based fudgy oaties inspired by Oh She Glow's Frosty No-Bake Glo Cakes. I simplified it down a bit, just mashing the last small overripe banana (55g), then mixing in 45g peanut butter, 20g maple syrup, 8g cocoa powder and 35g oats. I wanted a fudgy pudding so I didn't freeze the mix, in fact I only managed to put it in the fridge for 10 minutes before I could wait no longer! Topped with chocolate chips...

I shared this with my daughter for a tasty afternoon snack, it reminded me of something but I can't put my finger on what it was (annoying!) but it was super yum, lovely and gooey and chocolatey :) It also kept me going until after I'd fed the children, put them to bed and had time to make my own dinner.

The original plan for dinner was roasted butternut squash wedges thanks to Mr Waitrose...

but after spending some of the afternoon browsing Oh She Glow's Recipe Page, I found a way to add some peanut butter into my meal! Parsnips...

with yet more peanut butter, in the form of Peanut Butter Crusted Parsnip Fries...

with the addition of lemon & coriander houmous from this trio...

all cooked and put together...

this was delicious and, despite appearances, really filling. I'd been a bit worried that the parsnip fries wouldn't crisp up because the butternut squash took up a bit too much space in the baking tray, but these were perfect! I love the crunchy crust that the peanut butter formed :)

2 hours later I'm still full up, so hopefully that'll be me done eating-wise for today!

This weekend has the potential to be a bit food-filled - today is Liam & I's anniversary, but he has to work (boo!) so we're going out for dinner tomorrow night. Then Sunday is Mothering Sunday and I'm baking a cake to take round to my Mum's in the afternoon...details will be shared once made if it's a success!! I must just try to eat as healthily as possible - I feel so much better when I do - not sure where peanut butter falls in that though - it seems to have replaced my old addiction to Nutella!

Hope you're all looking forward to the weekend! It's going to be quite a busy one here - as well as the foodie occasions mentioned above, I'm also meeting a friend for coffee tomorrow morning, and going to see daughter (she's well enough to be in it, yey!) and my little sister in a dance show in the afternoon. Should be a good one :)