Family Fun and Lots of Cake!

Yesterday was a good day. The morning was spent chilling at home and enjoying the sunshine. I made sure to have a proper breakfast - porridge cooked with a banana, topped with peanut flour sauce and strawberries...

There is porridge under there somewhere! My food scales need a new battery...I think I ended up using a bit too much milk!

Despite the filling breakfast, a mid-morning snack was also consumed whilst the children napped. (Note to self: daughter having a morning nap even if she doesn't seem tired is a great idea - stops the mid-afternoon grumpiness!!)

Shockingly (and sadly!) this was the last of the Chai Cheesecake Bites...yep, I ate the entire rest of the batch, by myself, yesterday! Ooops, but so tasty!! And a coffee from our new coffee machine. Love. I've started making a big pot each morning, drinking a mug or two hot, and then putting the rest in the fridge for iced coffee later in the day. Mmmm, caffeine!! :)

Once the children woke up, we headed to a local fete. We went last year too, but I have just spent ages looking for the photos with no joy, so instead of the planned comparison shots, this is just yesterday. Photos Liam took while I was queueing for lunch (at least they got to sit down!)...

And then the food finally arrived! (this was my 2nd trip - I'd already brought a pizza for the kids and a hot dog for Liam, but I ran out of hands!)...

The pizza was amazing. The dough was rolled out in front of me, topped and then cooked in an open wood fire oven. Yum.

Delicious, but not enough of it. I nabbed a slice of the children's pizza and then we moved onto the sweet stuff. The others had huge chocolate cookies...

and I had a delicious raspberry-almond slice...

followed by a very pretty, but overly sweet blackberry macaroon...

Why I needed 2 things when everyone else only had 1, I do not know. And that wasn't even the end of it as you'll see in a bit. I got sucked into the "so pretty, must try everything" mentality!!

After lunch, we then headed over to the play area. Daughter had fun with some of the 'circus toys'...

and on the bouncy castle...

whilst baby was quite happy munching on his cookie...

and sitting in wheelbarrows!

We bought some sweet treats before heading home. When I say we, I mean daughter and I...the girls are definitely the ones with the sweet tooth in our family! Daughter chose some fudge...

£2.37 for 4 pieces of fudge!! I made sure to slice it up to make it last longer!

Vanilla with malteser, rocky road, clotted cream and mango.

I, of course, went for cake. A gluten-free red velvet whoopie pie, and a peanut butter & salted fudge (!!) cupcake...

the whoopie pie was a bit disappointing - dry and lacking in flavour...

but the peanut butter cupcake was amazing!

I would've loved it even more if the sponge was peanut butter flavoured too instead of just vanilla, but the icing was divine! I wish Liam liked peanut butter so I could make these type of cakes, I'd end up eating the whole batch if I made them, which even for me would be a bit too much!!

Looking back, I can see I had 5 sweet treats yesterday. No wonder I am consistently gaining weight at the moment. Liam only had 2 - the chocolate cookie and a Double Chai Cupcake in the evening. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had a cupcake in the evening when he did too, so make that 6 things for me. Gah.

We'll end this post with delicious vegetables though. In the form of last night's dinner - the amazing Mama Pea's Courgette Quinoa Lasagne...

This was so delicious. Liam and I both went back for seconds. This photo does not do it justice.

Baby was too tired to eat with us last night, so he has his portion saved for today's lunch. Lucky thing. I started planning out the week's meals last night and asked Liam if he had any requests. His response? "Tonight's quinoa was good, anything with quinoa in" Success!! :)

I'm aware I've been a bit absent with regular blog posts this week. I had a couple of (non-cancerous) moles removed from my waist and my neck on Wednesday, and whilst the operations themselves weren't a big deal, it is near-impossible to keep those areas still enough for healing to occur, so they are still quite sore. By the time I normally write posts in the evening, my neck has had enough of supporting my head all day so I have just been spending my evenings lying still on my side on the sofa!! It felt quite a lot better yesterday though, so I will try to post again tonight with some of the many photos that have built up over the week - I hate having a huge back log of photos that I haven't posted, and I did manage some yummy meals this week that I want to share! :)

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Hidden Bananas...

Today, my Mum and I encouraged each other to stick to our personal eating goals. The aim: only eat 4 times (plus a coffee mid-morning) and stick to healthy, clean (ish) foods. The result: a success! For today anyway, hopefully I'll be able to keep it up for the next 6 weeks or so til my wedding :)

Despite keeping "on track" with my eating, I've really enjoyed all my food today, perhaps even more so than usual.

Breakfast was my favourite green smoothie, and lots of it at that. Banana, spinach, pineapple, milk & xanthan gum. As the pineapple was from the fridge rather than the freezer, I also added some ice. Turns out ice = huge smoothie!

I love this flavour, especially as it doesn't need any extra sugar - the pineapple makes it sweet enough even for me!

This was great, although the extra volume did leave my tummy feeling a bit heavy for an hour or so.

Late-morning, my Grandma came round so I made myself a skinny latte - can't drink plain black coffee like she does! Then it was time for lunch. I fancied something cooked, and had some veggies that needed using up. So I roasted a pepper and a courgette in a little coconut oil (with some basil tofu added in at the end to bump up the calories and protein) served with quinoa...

this was just what I wanted, warm, tasty, filling and healthy!

Yum, I love quinoa, I love roast veggies and I love smoked tofu - I'm in a very "loving everything I eat" mood today it seems!!

As I was going to circuits this evening, I planned to eat something quite big about 4.30pm to keep me going through the exercise. I ended up having a great snack I haven't had in ages - Averie's Microwave Blueberry Banana Oat Cake. I took a photo before turning it out of the bowl as I didn't trust myself not to break it!

I was right to as it fell apart majorly!! Peanut butter makes everything better though right?!

This is sooo good...I must remember to make it more often! :) Just checked back and I hadn't had it in over 2 months. It seemed to hold together better back then though!. It seemed to hold together back then though!

Yum, perfect pre-exercise snack! I think next time I will try cooking it for a bit longer to see if it holds together better. I'd written it down as 3.5 minutes cooking time, but looking back just now, I see Averie says 3.5-4.5 minutes so maybe that'll help mine to look as pretty as hers!!

Circuits was better this week than last week. Well harder work anyway. As we knew the exercises we were on the go constantly rather than waiting for things to be explained to us. Good to actually feel like I've done exercise! :)

Back home, I decided to have my 3rd banana of the day. Hence the title "Hidden Bananas" - I do love blending/mashing bananas into things to provide texture and/or sweetness. I hardly ever eat bananas on their own, unless covered in peanut butter! So my 3rd banana concoction of the day - Banana Sweet "Cream". I actually weighed the ingredients this time, and reduced the amount of peanut butter and honey to 20g each. It still tasted just as good :)

Yum. This was thicker than last time too, no doubt as a result of less peanut butter and honey. I wasn't too hungry after circuits, so this is a great way of getting some calories and protein in me without too much bulk. Pretty much the opposite of the, considerably lower in calories but hugely greater in volume, green smoothie I had this morning! Both delicious and both have a place in my "healthier" diet, yey!

Right, enough waffling! Time to give Liam his laptop back. I got a text on Friday saying my laptop had been fixed, but, despite the fact that when it broke they managed to pick it up the next day, they're not going to return it to me until this coming Friday!! Why does it take 7 days to return it?!! Grrr. I just hope it really is fixed when they do bring it back!

Finally, some advice... When you do exercise classes in the evening, what do you usually eat before/after? Circuits is 7pm-8pm and we usually eat at 6pm, so I was really hungry before we went (despite having microwave oat cake at 4.30pm) but by the time I got home I didn't really feel like eating anything. I think next week I might try to prepare something else before I go to circuits so I can just grab food from the fridge, but any other ideas would be appreciated!

Just another day...

I always know when my mind draws a blank for any blog title ideas, that the day has been pretty standard. Today has definitely been one of those days. Aka I don't have much to talk about!

For breakfast, I started to make porridge on auto-pilot - got the bowl out, poured some oats in...and then realised I didn't actually want porridge this morning! So the oats went back in the box and I had a yummy cinnamon&raisin bagel instead, topped with crunchy peanut butter and apricot fruit spread...

So good, and a nice change from the usual porridge or smoothie.

Bagels are also quicker for me to eat, so I had more time to get ready before toddler group - we were so early we ended up doing a quick Lidl shop first (and the benefit of going shopping on the way to somewhere was I only bought as much as I could fit in the basket under the pushchair, bonus!). I resisted the biscuits at toddler group (although I can't say the same for baby!!) and just had a cup of tea, no sugar. I'm beginning to get used to the lack of sweetness, although it is the only time all week I have tea - at home I stick to my lattes, sweetened with various different options - agave nectar is my favourite at the moment I think, yum.

By the time we got home, baby had fallen asleep in his pushchair, so I put him into his cot and set about making my lunch. I had 2 avocadoes which were very ripe, so I made them into easy guacamole - just with lemon juice and sweet chilli sauce added...

I had some with my lunch and froze the rest in individual portions - felt very organised! Hopefully it will save me time for future lunches, and definitely saves waste and/or me eating 2 avocadoes in one sitting so all good! :)

Lunch was similar to yesterday, albeit not as pretty - roasted peppers, quinoa and guacamole...

Delish. I must try to have something different for lunch so I don't get fed up of quinoa based salads - they're so easy and tasty though! I think I preferred yesterday's version - having the peppers raw and the avocado non-mashed made it take longer to eat and therefore feel more filling, this was delicious too though.

Mid-afternoon I fell asleep on the sofa for an hour while baby was napping...not how I intended to spend my afternoon but probably needed!

It also meant I didn't eat again before dinner, as by the time I woke up there was only time to quickly wash up the day's dishes before Liam and daughter got home - doesn't that make my day sound interesting...not a usual occurrence however - Liam was pleasantly surprised! We then all spent some time in the garden as it was so nice & sunny today, cold but sunny :)

Dinner was one of my favourites, sweet potato and cauliflower curry...

I didn't have any rice with it today, it really doesn't need it...

this is so delicious, sometimes the old favourites are as good as trying new recipes :)

Once the children were in bed, I snacked on a Nak'd banana bread bar...

I'm not sure if I like this or not to be honest. A bit too sweet (even for me!) and even though the banana is natural, it tasted a bit like the banana medicine you used to get given as a kid...hmmm...think I'm glad I only bought the one of this flavour, there are so many other Nak'd bar flavours I like so much more!

And with that, I come to the end of my rather dreary post!! Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more interesting!

Not related to today's post, but does anyone have any recommendations for cakes that they've made?? I usually stick to cupcakes but my Mum has asked me to bake a big cake for Mothering Sunday (a while off yet I know!) and as my fussy sister and Liam aren't going to be there, I thought I could get a bit more experimental rather than sticking to chocolate or lemon drizzle!! I've been looking through the BBC Good Food site, but there are so many different cakes to choose from, so any tried & tested recommendations (not just from Good Food obv) would be good! Especially as I can't really test it beforehand if I'm making one that Liam won't eat up, so I'll be crossing my fingers when my Mum cuts into it - I get so much more anxious making big cakes than cupcakes as you don't know how the middle will be until the host cuts into it! (as with my disastrous white chocolate mud cake on Christmas Day...luckily that was on the old blog so can be forgotten about!!!)

Colourful Quinoa Salad

Yesterday was a bit of a write-off food wise - I just couldn't seem to stop eating!! Probably the less said about it the better, but here are just a few of the (many!) highlights...

Unfortunately I did not listen to the biscuit tin telling me to "step away"!

Messy, but still delicious, chocolate peanut butter cups

Cheese and oatcakes - a late evening snack despite already having had a huge breakfast (oats in a not so empty peanut butter jar!!), lunch, dinner and many snacks/treats in between!!

Anyway...line drawn__________ moving on...luckily I managed to turn it around today!!

I started the morning off with a gym visit - an hour of cardio (rowing machine, cross-trainer, wave, cross-wave) plus 10 minutes on the arm cycle, free weights and leg machines. I was there an hour and half which is longer than I usually manage - making the most of Liam not going into uni today! :)

On the way home I ate a Nak'd cocoa mint bar. I then had a long soak in the bath, by which time it was 11.30, so I decided to start prepping lunch rather than having breakfast. Lunch was delicious...

a salad of lettuce, sliced pepper, avocado and cooked quinoa, topped with a little sweet chilli sauce...

this was so tasty! I love the warm quinoa with the raw veggies, will definitely be having this type of salad again! :)

After lunch, we wandered into town. Julian Graves had 50% off everything...I couldn't resist!

Desiccated coconut (not from Julian Graves, they'd sold out), rice crackers, sunflower seeds, almonds and mixed nuts...

yoghurt coated cranberries, milk chocolate coated dates, maple walnut coffee and some new bars to try - Nak'd banana bread plus the 9bars...hope these are as nice as people say they are!

When we got home I couldn't resist trying out my new coffee - a maple walnut skinny latte, sweetened with some agave nectar...

Yum, I could really taste the walnut in this, much more nutty than the hazelnut flavour...really good!

Dinner was bolognese - lentil bolognese with wholewheat penne for me, meat bolognese with white penne for the others...multi-tasking at its best!

This was really tasty - mine had onion, garlic, passata, half a veg stock cube, water, red lentils, grated carrot, Worcester sauce and a blob of marmite added at the end!

a much bigger portion than I was expecting it to make! I still topped it with some cheese though...

This really filled me up...or so I thought...

Unfortunately I think I spoke too soon when saying I'd drawn a line under yesterday's pig-out! Whilst writing this post, this has been opened and the whole 100g consumed...!

Whoops!! This was nice, I really liked the chocolate, but the cherries were a bit too chewy - and in no way comparable to Concious' raw cherry chocolate sadly!

My first "official" weigh in for the Honeymoon clothes challenge is on Thursday...a classic example of self-sabotage I fear! And now, of course, I want even more chocolate, gah!