Wednesday, 14 March 2012

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.

7 comments:

  1. I love the idea of that green porridge - a great way to get in some more veggies!
    Hummus is probably my favourite salad topping at the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow that porridge is super green! I thought you had used food colouring or something- I am impressed it went that colour- my spinach things often end up more brown.
    I love having fruit in salads too, esp if they have a balsamic dressing. I like nuts/ seeds (just a sprinkle for crunch) and things like dried cranberries are nice too. Or grated carrot. These are things I love but hsrdly ever do. I find cucumber good because you can slice it up small and it stores well too- I get fed up buying big lettuces/ bags of salads, and then they go brown before I eat them all, whereas cucumber seems to keep better.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like adding fruit to salad too, mango is great in salads. I love avocado and hummus on top of salads too, and some nuts/seeds for an added crunch. Oh I totally want salad now ha!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yum! I haven't had a green smoothie mixed with oats for a while...so good!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm getting in to salads, too, as the weather gets more spring-like around here. I'm not sure I have one favorite combo, but I do love to include at least one source each of fat, veggies, crunch, and protein. Some of my favorite toppings are boiled eggs, avocado, raisins, apples and some kind of cooked grain like quinoa, millet, or rice.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Green oats? That is such a great idea!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...