Eight "Meals" in One Day

A couple of days ago I bought a huge box of storage containers for only £12.99 in Lidl...

I used a few of them to save an overripe pineapple (gave me 4x 150g tubs to put in the freezer, plus some to eat at the time) and a couple of too ripe avocadoes (only made 1x60g tub for the freezer, as the rest was too bruised). This was pretty organised for me, and made preparing my smoothie super easy this morning! :) 1 of the tubs of pineapple and the tub of avocado...

plus milk and Sweet Freedom made today's green smoothie, with some desiccated coconut on top...

Unfortunately the camera didn't really pick up the colour of this, it was a gorgeous pale green...

this was really tasty, creamy and thick...and also really cold - next time I think a mix of frozen and fresh fruit will be needed to save my poor teeth!!

Speaking of my teeth, I have completely failed at only eating 5 times today, as the dentist recommended yesterday - I thought it would be relatively easy, but I think I've eaten at least 8 separate times today...whoops!! I wouldn't call them all meals exactly (one was just a quarter of baby's sandwich, and several others were more snacks/treats) but they are "meals" according to what the dentist said to me - he doesn't care about what I eat, just about how many times I subject my teeth to an acid attack! Grrr, way harder than I thought it would be to stick to 5 "meals" a day, which shows how out of control my eating has got lately really - it shouldn't be that difficult to stick to breakfast-lunch-afternoon snack-dinner-evening snack. It's not even like I've wasted any of my "meals" on drinks today, nor have I done any exercise that requires extra food!

That number count was not helped by a, rare for me, mid-morning snack. I'm still not sure why, only 2 hours after breakfast, I felt the need for a crisp sandwich, but there you go...

It wasn't even that nice - cheap bread does not a good sandwich make!

Despite not being overly hungry for lunch, I was still looking forward to it. I'd been to Waitrose this morning and stocked up on some yummy foods, including a bag of reduced ready-to-roast butternut squash wedges and this couscous salad...

the cold salad together with the hot roasted butternut squash made for a delicious meal...

Yum, yum, yum. The butternut squash was delicious as always, and I really liked this couscous salad. It had bits of roasted pepper, courgette and red onion in it, as well as a lemon & herb dressing...really summery! :)

This afternoon my daughter went to my Mum's house to "help" with cleaning, and I took baby to a local woodland area to stretch his legs. So cute. He spent half an hour wandering off in different directions - wherever fascinating dogs/trees/rivers took him - with me following behind with the pushchair! We then went back to my Mum's to pick up daughter, where I ate one of my apricot and almond flapjacks, plus some strawberries and grapes... "meal" number 5 I think - I'd also snaffled a quarter of baby's Philadelphia and cucumber sandwich an hour before having my own lunch!

Another snack was "needed" when I got home...I love this chocolate...

one or two squares at a time, the whole 100g was eaten over the course of about 45 minutes, delish!

Dinner was a simple one - Liam was home late from uni as he only has a few days left to work on his dissertation, plus not surprisingly after today's eats, I was craving some vegetables! Enter a stir fry - spring onions, peppers and a courgette...

cooked in coconut oil and served with noodles, plus prawns for the others...

something simple tasting was definitely needed, I just had this with a little soy sauce, yum.

Unfortunately, despite my tummy grumbling unhappily at me that it was full, my eating did not stop there. Liam got peckish, and I am way too easily led into temptation! Out of the freezer came this tub of ice cream...

and into my belly went half of it!

This was nice - I loved the caramel and marshmallow sauces - but the chocolate ice cream wasn't actually that great quality, shame.

Phew, I'm done. My stomach is so bloated! Although having said that, I'm already looking forward to tomorrow morning for a clean slate so I can enjoy whatever I decide to have breakfast!! I love eating and I love food, but eating on an already full stomach is not so enjoyable...hence breakfast being so great as I have the best chance of not already having stuffed my face beforehand!!!

Oh, and I almost forgot. I discovered this UK site today, has anyone used it? It sells PB&Co Dark Chocolate Dreams, as well as a whole host of other American goodies...could be expensive!!

It's A Smoothie Day...

As I posted yesterday, I had a bad smoothie experience earlier in the week, which gave me the final shove to buy myself a blender! :) I got it out of the Amazon box this morning...

After much comparing and reading of reviews, I settled on this Philips blender, I love the look of it, and the glass jar is heavy but reassuringly sturdy and easy to clean...so far so good! :) It's certainly been put to use today - back in January I had a day full of porridge, and today I decided to have a day of just smoothies...yum yum! :)

Luckily I'd been so distraught (!!) by my banana-less (and overly chunky!) smoothie earlier in the week, that I'd rushed out to Lidl to stock up on fresh fruit and veggies, so I had plenty of ingredients for these smoothies. I picked up bananas, a huge pineapple, a large cantaloupe melon, a mango, limes, pitted dates...

...and baby spinach, 2 avocadoes, a butternut squash, cherry tomatoes and a cucumber (the last 2 are more for packed lunches than smoothies!)...

...all for £10.71...I think that was pretty good value! :) as well as Lidl, we also have a Waitrose near to us, which I shop at for a lot of our chilled foods etc, but for quality of fruit & veg, Lidl easily wins...and it's a nice bonus that it tends to be a lot cheaper too!

Anyway, back to today...I started this morning with a simple smoothie I'd been wanting to try for a while, but had been waiting for my avocadoes to ripen...

Perfectly ripe! :)

and my blender to arrive...

In the mix...

Tropical Avocado Smoothie

• 1 ripe avocado
• half a mango
• approx 75ml milk
• agave nectar, to taste (I used 20g but have quite a sweet tooth!)

This was so creamy and thick, but smooth too, yey for my new blender! I topped this with a little desiccated coconut to continue the tropical flavour...

I loved the taste of this smoothie, sweet and creamy, yum :) it was slightly reminiscent of sweet guacamole...perhaps I should've saved it for my lunch or dinner smoothie, but whatever time of day it was delicious... I will definitely be featuring avocadoes in my smoothies again! :)

I then spent the morning completing most of my to-do list (Liam took baby out so I could have some time to make phone calls)...it is such a weight off my shoulders to have most of that done, just one or two more phone calls to make on Monday then I'm up to date (for now!). My morning ended with a trip to the post office to drop off a few parcels. This wasn't really a chore though as the weather was so lovely - I decided to walk the long way back from town...

I love this walk, especially when it's sunny...

blue sky...have to make the most of it while it lasts!

By the time I made it back home it was nearly time for my lunchtime smoothie. I wanted to try out my blenders abilities with spinach this time...

This one contained...

• 1 banana
• a couple of handfuls baby spinach
• last of my frozen exotic fruits (melon, mango, papaya, pineapple)
• 110ml milk (the frozen fruits made this thick and I wanted to drink it!)
• tbsp peanut butter

This smoothie was super green!

I didn't add any toppings to this one, just enjoyed it in a glass in the sunshine :)

this was really nice - a salty (from the pb) sweet combo. I tried it before adding the peanut butter and I could taste the spinach a bit too much for my liking (the first green smoothie I've even been able to taste the spinach in actually) but once the peanut butter was added it was delicious, and gave it a bit more substance too in terms of acting as a meal, yum :) I was also so pleased to see a pure green colour - no more spinach stems in smoothies for me!!

This afternoon (the last day of term - yey for all you teachers out there!) we went to see my daughter in her Easter parade. There was major panic last night when we realised she needed to take in a decorated Easter bonnet/egg this morning! Last night Liam and daughter papier mache'd a balloon to make an "egg", but when we went to decorate it this morning we discovered it was still soft, and even after a stint with a hairdryer it was not sturdy at all...fail. We then rushed round to my Mum's as she had a pink straw hat we could decorate...but after stapling many decorations to it, daughter decided it was too embarrassing to take in...aaaagh!! In the end, Mum drew a big egg shape on a piece of card and cut it out, which daughter decorated with a face and we stuck 'hair' and 'legs' to it...sorted! Of course, a lot of the children had bonnets but some just had painted hard boiled eggs so she didn't stick out too much...next time we will be more organised and not just skim-read the newsletters!

Once we got home, the children had a nap and then, after a quick dinner, daughter went off to her dance show and baby went to bed. Time for my final smoothie of the day! :) This time I fancied something chocolatey...

Carob powder and cacao brazil nut butter went into this, alongside spinach, banana and milk...

I added the brazil nut butter in last so it still had a bit of texture. This was a very sludgy colour...

Yummy though, I only wish there had been more of it!

I loved the texture of this - thick and creamy but with a slight crunch from the nut butter. Yummy tasting - 3/3 smoothie successes today!

Right, that's about it for today, time to get to bed! I've been really surprised today how I haven't felt hungry, and haven't had my usual cravings for multiple snacks mid-afternoon, I've even had a bit more energy than usual too, although that may be psychological! The smoothies filled me up and satisfied me, and were tasty and good for me too :) I will be back to solids tomorrow though - it's my Mum's birthday so my Mum, Grandma, sisters and I are going out for a girly lunch, really looking forward to it :)