WIAW - Green Porridge

Happy What I Ate Wednesday! It's another green week around here thanks to the lovely Jenn!


As I mentioned last week, I do love my themes, and I wanted to have another all-green day for this week's WIAW. However I wasn't fancying a green smoothie for breakfast...so I made green porridge! I usually make my porridge with 40g oats, 200ml milk and a mashed banana but for this breakfast I blended a banana, 150ml milk and 50g spinach and used that "green milk" to cook the oats.

The colour once cooked was even brighter than the smoothie was originally! However, whilst the banana-spinach-milk tasted perfectly sweet on its own before cooking, once cooked the taste (& smell!) of the spinach got a bit stronger! I added some agave nectar after this photo was taken and that was enough to mask the spinach taste again. Plus a blob of cinnamon raisin peanut butter on top. Yum. I still prefer green smoothies but green porridge was fun for a change! :)

Lunch was green, delicious and easy! I had some bagged salad leftover from the weekend so I mixed it with a little salad dressing, and added an avocado and half a mango. I love big salads like these and the avocado-mango combination was wonderful.

This was so fresh and tasty. I know I could make my own salads much more cheaply if I didn't buy bagged salad leaves, but I never end up doing it - I'll buy a lettuce and it'll sit in the fridge going to waste. At least having a bag of salad means I'll actually use it, and if I add a few extra ingredients it ends up tasting really good! :)

Mid-afternoon, the first non-green food slipped into my day. 1.5 of these delicious chocolate cereal bars that I was sent to review:

As I mentioned in the review, I'd only been planning to eat half a one of these, shared with Toby, but when I tasted how delicious they were I couldn't stop myself from eating a second one by myself as well. Whoops!

Liam is having to do a lot of overtime at work at the moment so isn't home in time for dinner during the week. Shame he doesn't get to see the children before they go to bed, but it does at least mean that I can cook what I like without having to worry about whether he'll like it or not! Monday's dinner was definitely one of those "Lucy meals"! Cooked brown rice mixed with chopped avocado and savoury peanut sauce, served with broccoli...delicious!

This tasted a lot more appetising that it looks, promise! Izzy and I loved it - the rice mixed with the peanut sauce was really rich, but then the broccoli freshened it up again...perfect! Toby ate all his broccoli and a few spoons of the rice mix which is pretty good for him in the evening - he always eats lots during the day and then by dinner time he is too full to eat much - his little tummy is always sticking out and solid by then!!

Evening snacks included a slice of toast with peanut butter and another Doves Farm cereal bar, but both of those managed to avoid being photographed. Plus I'm sure there were a few lattes and cups of tea in there somewhere - I rarely take photos of my drinks.

What are your favourite salad toppings/mixes? As the weather gets warmer, salads are a great solution for quick lunches, and a good way to get more greens in. I love adding fruit to my salads - mango, strawberries, peaches - and I also like to add cheese to the mix sometimes. I need some inspiration for the greener parts though - I seem to just stick to bagged salad leaves, avocado and sometimes asparagus but would love to think of more interesting veg to add in for more variety.

New Hair & Random Eats

This post might be a bit of a mish mash of things. My laptop broke on Monday night and, except for the WIAW post I wrote on Liam's laptop, I don't think I've blogged or uploaded photos since. So I've got a few things to share! If it looks like it's getting too long I'll leave some for another post - I need to do a Summer Holiday weekly re-cap post anyway - I forgot to do one last week!

I'll start though with a photo of my new hair cut - this was so overdue! I had my hair trimmed a couple of weeks before the wedding, but she wouldn't cut much off the length in case it made my wedding hair style more difficult. So I hadn't had a proper cut since the end of April - my hair was almost looking as bad as in that post! Now it looks like this...

So much better! When I'm having my hair cut, I always feel so much lighter once the bulk of it is cut off...I really shouldn't leave it so long between cuts!

Last night, the doctor that I took my daughter to on Tuesday left a message on my phone to call her back. Of course, at 6.45pm the doctor's surgery was shut so I couldn't phone back! Grrr, I don't really understand why she so phoned so late! I tried not to worry too much, and instead ate some Ben & Jerry's - a new to me flavour - Coconutterly Fair...

Not enough coconut caramel sauce for my liking, but lots of chocolate covered crunchy bits. Mmmm!

First thing this morning, I phoned the doctors back and booked Izzy in for a blood test. Not sure what's wrong with her - the lymph nodes in one side of her neck only have been enlarged for the last 2.5 weeks, the same side as where she had an abscess when she had to go into hospital before. Hopefully we'll get some answers tomorrow. Despite the fact that she had a horrific blood taking experience in hospital (Dr waking her up at 10.30pm, long after he was due and therefore long after the anaesthetic cream had worn off, to take blood!) she was so brave today. We applied lots of "magic cream" to her arms an hour before her appointment, and wrapped them up with clingfilm...

The nurses said I did a good job - Izzy chatted to one nurse while the other took blood and Izzy barely even noticed it being done, phew!

Before we went to the doctor's, I made time for breakfast - Oats In A Jar! I haven't had this for ages, but with the horrible weather today I really fancied porridge. I just did a simple mix - oats, milk, a tsp of peanut flour and half a chopped banana, with more banana layered through once cooked...

Plus loads of peanut butter - the jar wasn't so empty!!

I didn't end up having a proper lunch as I waited for Liam to finish work, but then ran out of time before my own doctor appointment! A Waitrose squashed fruit bar whilst walking down the road it was! I'd also had lots of yummy raspberries at my Mum's after Izzy's blood test - Mum usually buys her fresh produce from the local fruit & veg shop...it always tastes so much nicer than produce from the supermarket!

The usual family stuff went on this afternoon - Toby tried on Liam's shoes...

Izzy sang and danced to herself in the garden mirror (I sneakily took photos through the kitchen window!!)...

and I got lots of baby cuddles...

I also snacked on a delicious plum...

So juicy! I love summer fruit :)

For dinner, the others all ate meat (!) My Mum decided today that the reason Liam and Izzy's appetites have reduced recently is because they are bored of eating a vegetarian diet...so she gave them some meat-filled ready meals! I'm not really sure that what they ate tonight was in any way better than what I cook for them most nights, but meh, it gave me an excuse to eat a yummy salad...

Admittedly a bag of salad (lettuce, grated carrot and cabbage) with chopped apple, blue cheese and goats cheese. This was so refreshing, and did actually fill me up, albeit not all evening. For an evening snack I ate the last one of these...

Not quite as pretty as the ones I took to the hen do on Saturday, but still just as tasty!

How often do you get your hair cut? Do you change your style often or tend to stick to the same style? I'm often tempted to change my style and go shorter, but then I worry that I won't like it and will have to go through an in between growing out stage. So I end up going with the same style - lots of layers, shaping around my face etc...I like it though so that's the main thing! :)