Random eats

Happy Friday everyone! Boy am I glad the working week is done –  this weekend couldn’t come soon enough for me

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind and I found myself reverting to old habits as my eating became increasingly disordered. Its funny, but as much as I can understand what is happening in those frantic moments when I raid the cupboards or head to the vending machine at work, I feel powerless to stop myself. As I write that I realise that it sounds silly – of course I have control and responsibility for my own actions. One thing I have reminded myself of this week is that eating like that doesn’t make me feel any better and it certainly doesn’t help me to deal with the stress any better I have started reading Intuitive Eating and I guess I have to treat these phases as a learning experience and move on. Tomorrow is another day!

Here are a few selected eats from the last couple of days:

Thursday lunch – ham salad sandwich, carrots and smoked paprika hummus.

Thursday tea: Curry leftovers

Out of the fridge…..
And on the plate!

This tasted even better second time around

Friday Dinner @ Pizza Express

I ordered the Vitabella, one of their new range of Leggera pizzas.

PizzaExpress has created an entirely new kind of pizza. It’s called Leggera, pronounced Lay-jer-ah, which means ‘light’ in Italian. It has a hole in the middle, and a salad in the hole.

Each one is designed to be about 500 calories, meaning that you can enjoy a tasty pizza without even the slightest pang of guilt.

My pizza with a hole(!) was topped with mozzerella, peppers, roasted veg and asparagus spears!

Thats mine at the front. Can you see the hole in it with a green salad in the middle? At the back you can see h2b’s giant chicken pizza (I had a taste of course ). I really enjoyed the pizza and the toppings were yummy and light.

I decided to have a pudding too. The Caffe Reale,

Baby figs in a cinnamon and white wine spiced syrup with a dollop of mascarpone and served with a standard coffee of your choice.

I’ve never seen such tiny figs! This was a nice sweet ending to the meal served with an Americano coffee. The baby figs were delicious and the syrup complemented them perfectly. I also had a taste of h2b’s chocolate fudge cake!

Doesn’t that look amazing!

Now settled down in front of the tv watching highlights from Glastonbury! Have a good evening

Banana Bread and Curry

Ever since I read Leah‘s post last week where she made some delicious looking banana bread I knew I had to make some! I had the bananas sat in the fruit bowl for days waiting for them to become perfectly over-ripe. Am I the only person who buys bananas and deliberately leaves them until they are going black? All my favourite uses for bananas (cakes, muffins, smoothies) benefit from over-ripe bananas!

Like Leah, I followed this recipe with a couple of adjustments. I used 3 bananas as that was all I had. After I had started the recipe I realised I was missing a couple of ingredients so I improvised. Instead of low fat yogurt I used 1/2 cup Total 0% mixed with skimmed milk and at the last minute I discovered I had no eggs so I left them out. The recipe seemed to work alright without. I made a loaf and with the leftover I filled some cute heart shaped tins

So breakfast this morning had to include a slice! I had the rest of the Tropicana smoothie from Sunday with a thick slice of banana bread

The cake was really yummy, moist and full of banana flavour!

When I posted my menu plan for the week I really thought it was accurate but I guess its just typical that it ended up changing as soon as I posted it! Sunday became a meal out with a friend, and Mondays curry ended up being todays dinner.

I made a Chicken Curry with rice and naan bread

I fried some diced chicken in spray oil until cooked and added chopped onion, pepper, mange tout and sugarsnap peas. Once the veggies had started to soften I added a shop bought Tikka Massala sauce and simmered for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I cooked the rice and heated the naan bread. Right at the end before serving I stirred through a large handful of baby spinach until wilted and then served. I ate the plate above and a couple of extra pieces of bread! This was a really tasty meal and we really enjoyed it. And the best part is that we have leftovers for tomorrow (so another day we won’t follow the menu plan!!).

After dinner we decided to make the most of the beautiful sunshine and headed out for a walk. We have found a great circular walk that we can do from home, its about 2 miles so just a nice walk after dinner. We really enjoyed the chance to walk and talk and catch up on each others day.

Off to catch up on blog reading and see some tv.  See you tomorrow!

Please support a great cause…

Just a quick post tonight to let you know about a great fundraising event being held by Jenna over at Eat Live Run. She has put together a great e-cookbook full of about 100 easy weeknight dinner ideas and it can be yours in return for a donation of $10 to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS). This is a great cause and I am happy to support it. I have just received my copy and am off to read through the recipe ideas

Please support this cause if you can!

Walk along the river

Happy Sunday everyone!

H2B had a friend stay over last night and they had a bit of a late night. I played the dutiful wife and picked them up slightly the worse for wear at 1am! So this morning when I woke up (late!) I was feeling a little rough! My stomach was doing back flips for some reason so I decided to keep breakfast really light.

I tried this Tropicana Strawberry and Banana smoothie. Each carton is made from 30 strawberries, 3 bananas, 1.5 oranges, 3/4 apple and 60 grapes! I had half of the carton for a light start to the day and I felt much better as soon as I had finished it. I knew that we would be going out for lunch not long after this breakfast so was happy to keep it light.

We parked up near to town and walked along the river to Double Locks, about a 30 minute walk along the river.

When we got there we grabbed a table by the water and a drink!

The view and my drink! 1/2 pint of Kronenburg lager. I had a chilli con carne which came with rice, sour cream and tortilla chips. Sorry no photo. I don’t feel comfortable taking pics of my food in front of other people at the moment

After the meal and a lot of chatting we walked back and dropped our friend at the train station, then headed home to do some chores! Afterwards I worked on one of my wedding projects for a couple of hours and it went really well. I love doing crafty projects but rarely find the time – I should make more time for things I enjoy!

By 8pm I was feeling peckish but I didn’t know what I felt like so I rummaged in the fridge for some nibbles.

Not the most attractive plate ever I know! Carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, smoked paprika hummus and leftover garlic bread from the weekend. It was just enough to fill me up.

Urghh why do Sundays go so fast? I can’t believe I am sitting here already thinking about work tomorrow Off to read some blogs in front of the TV now, see you tomorrow!