Powered by Porridge

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been trying to get back on track with healthier eating for the last few days. One of the main bad habits that had crept in over the last month or so was not having breakfast. I'd been making myself a large latte first thing, and then not eating anything else (or perhaps picking at chocolate/cake) until lunchtime.

Since Wednesday I have been focusing on making time for breakfast. My favourite winter breakfast is porridge, and it doesn't take any longer to cook it in the microwave than it does to heat up the milk for my latte...so I have no excuse!

I've actually really enjoyed getting back into porridge to be honest. I used to eat it all the time during winter 2010, and it's been great re-discovering some of my favourite combinations. Here are some of the porridge breakfasts I've been enjoying recently...

Porridge made with fresh cranberries and vanilla stevia, topped with crunchy peanut butter:

Porridge cooked with chopped fresh plums and cinnamon, topped with spiced plum jam:

Porridge with cranberries and vanilla stevia, topped with a couple of squares of Lindt sea salt:

Mmm, chocolate is a good addition - sweet & melty!!

You might not be able to see much porridge in this bowl, but this was porridge cooked with chopped fresh pear and ground ginger, topped with a mix of melted white chocolate and smooth peanut butter - delicious!

Finally, this morning's breakfast. Porridge cooked in tinned pineapple juice instead of milk, with the leftover pineapple pieces as well. Mixed with agave and desiccated coconut, and then poured into a near-empty coconut butter jar:

Cooking the oats in pineapple juice instead of milk made the porridge quite tangy, but the coconut butter soon added back lots of creaminess :)

What is your favourite porridge combination? Which breakfasts do you find keep you full for longest? I love all types of breakfasts - French toast, pancakes, cereal etc, but I definitely find that porridge keeps me more full, which is ideal at the moment as one of the other things I'm trying to focus on is cutting back on how many snacks I have. I don't want to miss out on all the other breakfasts I love though, so on Sunday I had porridge for breakfast and then French toast for lunch...with a maple banana sauce...it was New Year's Day after all! ;-)

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!!!

Amazon Delivery :)

After waiting in all day yesterday for the British Gas man not to turn up, this morning it felt like the doorbell was ringing non-stop! First my Grandma arrived with an offering of lunch in exchange for me teaching her how to use her mobile phone (after everyone else in my family had lost patience!!) and then within 10 minutes of her arriving, a delivery man came with our Amazon delivery, and the British Gas man finally turned up, phew! The Amazon delivery was mainly Graphic Design books for Liam, but there were a couple of things for me...I'll talk about them later...first the food I've eaten today!

Breakfast...porridge...delicious! :-D I got a bit stressed last night when Liam came home from the shops with loads of junk foods (expensive chocolate biscuits, chocolate trifle pots and the dreaded Nutella), none of which I ate because I got in a strop...sorry Liam!! Anyway, overnight I decided I would treat myself to a spoonful of Nutella on my porridge...but when I came to make my porridge after Liam had left for uni this morning, I discovered he'd hidden it to "save me from myself"!!!! It seems I made up for the lack of Nutella by topping my porridge with everything else in sight! Porridge made with mashed banana and cinnamon in, topped with dark chocolate drops, blueberries, golden syrup and peanut butter...

loving the sunshine we've had over the last couple of days!

this was so good! I haven't had golden syrup in ages...was very sweet but divine, so glad I couldn't find the Nutella...this was much nicer! :)

So for lunch, Grandma had brought a salmon and prawn bake from M&S...basically a 'posh' fish pie with but with sliced potatoes. Luckily I cooked some peas to go with it as by the time we split it between me, Grandma and the baby there wasn't much to go around! I actually had half of it which was the "correct" portion size, but still looked tiny to me!

this wasn't great if I'm honest, no nicer than a standard ready meal, and no where near as nice as fish pie I can make myself! Still, a promise is a promise, and I spent the next 1.5 hours trying to teach Grandma how to send and receive simple text messages! I think she finally got it...ish...I'll see if she still remembers when I see her on Sunday!

Mid-afternoon I found the Nutella jar - Liam had hidden it behind his gardening gloves on top of the (un-used) table top dishwasher! Oh dear...

I ate about half the jar and didn't even enjoy it! Kept it on the dining table away from me, but kept going back for another, and another, and another spoonful! It was way too sickly sweet and left a gunky feel on the roof of my mouth - I much preferred the substitute sugar laden porridge this morning...when will I learn!

As mentioned, a couple of things I'd bought from Amazon arrived today...

Paul McKenna's "I Can Make You Thin" and Jillian Michaels "30 Day Shred" DVD ... I will be slim and toned by my wedding, hopefully achieving more natural/intuitive eating along the way!! Has anyone read/watched either of these? Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to start reading the book until after the Nutella incident!!

I like the basic principles in "I Can Make You Thin":

• Eat when hungry
• Eat what you want to eat, not what you think you should eat
• Take the time to enjoy every mouthful
• Stop when full

Not sure how easy it will be to take time over my food (he recommends putting your cutlery down between each mouthful) when baby is around, but I will give it a go! Also need to override my "must clear my plate" mentality! It seems to make sense though, and hopefully will "allow" me to enjoy my food I like without feeling guilty :)

I decided to give the principles a try with dinner - pork&apple sausages, mashed potato, onion gravy and savoy cabbage...

I made sure to put my cutlery down between each mouthful (despite the baby screaming with tiredness through most of the meal, pour Liam was sat next to him this evening!) and really taste the food. To be honest, I didn't actually enjoy it as much as I thought it would - the mash was too watery, the cabbage a bit tasteless and the sausages had an odd texture. Still nice, but it didn't quite live up to the expectations I have in my head of this meal. That's the problem with family life though - sausage & mash is one of Liam's favourites so we will still have to eat this sometimes, I can't always eat exactly what I want. I left some of the mashed potato but ate all the sausages and cabbage...

I didn't feel full whist eating as such, but I did start to enjoy the food less a couple of mouthfuls before I stopped eating. I kept eating because I wanted to finish the sausages and cabbage - my favourite aspects of the meal. MISTAKE! About 5 minutes after I'd finished eating, I felt very full and bloated, a feeling which has so far continued for the rest of the evening, not nice. I should have stopped when I started to notice the lack of hunger...there will be other sausages and cabbages!! Looking back, I regularly feel full and bloated after my evening meal especially, just haven't really taken much notice of it before...need to start listening to my body!

I really do like the concepts of Paul McKenna so will continue to follow this. Tomorrow I get to choose what I really want for dinner as Liam is at work - at the moment I fancy a margarita pizza topped (by me) with roasted peppers and goats cheese, but I'll wait until tomorrow afternoon before going shopping to see if I change my mind!

30 Day Shred... I've heard that you really ache for the first few days of this, so I'm going to wait until Sunday to try it - I can already barely walk by the end of my full day working on Saturday, so don't think it would be helpful to be in pain before my shift even starts!!

Pearl Barley Risotto

Whilst I have loved eating Yeo Valley's apple flapjack yoghurt for the last couple of days, this morning I felt the need for porridge. I decided to incorporate both the yoghurt and the porridge oats for an apple inspired bowl :) This is what went into the bowl with the oats and milk (reducing my usual amount of milk as put about 50g yoghurt into the mix)...

So 40g oats, 200ml milk, 50g yoghurt, 100g apple slices and quite a lot of cinnamon...

I've never tried tinned apple before, let alone in porridge. Verdict is I prefer tinned peaches and tinned pear, but the apple version was still good, and an easy way to get extra fruit into my diet :) I topped it with the rest of the yoghurt and some sultanas, to go along with the flapjack theme...

porridge looks so much prettier than my recent breakfasts! Something was missing though...I gave in and added a blob of peanut butter...

yum, everything most things taste better with peanut butter! :)

Baby had been napping whilst I ate my breakfast (we'd been awake since 6am, yawn!), I had to wake him to take him to his one year check with health visitor, can't believe he's grown up so fast! He's on 91st centile for height and just above 75th centile for weight...little big muncher! He was born at 11lbs 3oz though so not particularly surprising!! Poor little guy hates being dressed/undressed so wasn't too impressed at being weighed naked, especially when he'd just been woken up!

Back home and time for lunch. We'd popped in to Tesco on way home and I'd been so tempted to buy a big jar of Nutella to fall into...was literally hovering by the shelf for ages trying to tear myself away! Managed to resist though so treated myself to some ham and smoked cheese instead which, with the leftover egg from yesterday, made up my lunch...

Yummy and filling, I made it into egg mayo and cheese roll-ups :)

Mid-afternoon, 3 Thorntons chocolates slipped into my mouth, whoops!! Plus a couple of skinny lattes to try to beat the tiredness!

This evening's dinner was pearl barley risotto, a really simple tasty recipe that can easily be adapted to whatever food you have in really!

Pearl Barley Risotto
(serves 3-4)

• 170g pearl barley (or more/less depending on appetites)
• carrots (I used 3)
• onions (2)
• leeks (2)
• mushrooms (I used about 200g)
• 1-2 tsp oil
• approx 425ml stock (or boiling water + stock cube in my case!)
• Plus any extras - ham/chorizo/tofu/extra veg etc all work well with this, or it is delicious without any extras

First, prep the veg (or in my case get Liam to do all the chopping!!) - carrots and onions finely diced, leeks and mushrooms sliced...

next, soften the leeks, carrots and onions with some oil in a large pan/casserole dish for about 5 minutes over low heat...

then add the mushrooms and fry for a couple of minutes...

before adding the pearl barley...

I stirred this through and then at this stage I added 90g of shredded ham hock - one of the freebies Liam got from work on Christmas Eve that then went into the freezer :)

To be honest, when I made this pearl barley risotto in the past, I didn't add any meat. I said at the time that it didn't need it as the vegetables give a lovely flavour, and the ham hock didn't even add anything to the dish so next time I would go back to it being meat-free.

After mixing everything through I added the stock - 425ml of boiling water and one stock cube...

bring to the boil and then cover with lid...

lol, pointless photo!! Apart from for the big reveal (!) - after 45 minutes of simmering on a low heat, it should look like this...

this is so yummy...

Liam commented that the pearl barley looks like sugar puffs/puffed wheat, but we were all agreed that this was delicious :) made enough for my portion (above), a slightly bigger portion for Liam, a smaller portion for daughter and 2 baby sized portions...ie probably enough for 3 normal adult portions!

Today has been a really good day. However major chocolate cravings struck after putting the children to bed...I made the mistake of sending Liam out to Spar, and this is what he came back with for me!

all eaten whilst writing this blog...ooops!! Need to convince Liam to only bring me one thing back in future - at least that would limit the damage! Or go myself so I can choose what I get - he likes to bring me a 'choice' back but I inevitably end up eating it all!!