Hi everyone, hope your week has been good. I’m happy its the weekend after the crazy week I’ve had!
Yesterday I had my second late night meeting of the week so I was back to working out at home in the morning again. I did levels 2 and 3 of the 30 Day Shred back to back followed by the yoga stretch section of the Davina Fit DVD.
Breakfast was a wonderful Blueberry Cookie Smoothie inspired by HEAB’s cookie dough smoothie and the various other variations around the blog world:
To make this I soaked 1/3 cup of oats and 1 tbsp of chia seeds in 1.5 cups of water overnight in the fridge then blended it with a scoop of cookies and cream spiru-tein protein powder, a dash of vanilla extract and ice. I then poured this over half a punnet of blueberries, using the other half on top along with a crumbled Almond Oatmeal cookie (from my freezer stash). I don’t need to tell you how good this tasted!
Yesterday’s lunch was leftover Quinoa and Edamame Citrus Salad with watercress, red lettuce and braggs liquid aminos plus an un pictured braeburn apple:
This was so tasty, really love that salad – and it did taste better after the flavours had melded overnight! I also snacked on the last of my Cheesy basil and white bean dip with ryvita pumpkin oat crackers and a huge pile of chopped carrot, sugar snaps and red pepper.
After my evening meeting it was time for smoothie No 2. This included romaine, red lettuce, frozen cherries, frozen strawberries, carob powder, coconut flour, vanilla hemp protein powder, ice, water, xanthan gum, guar gum and stevia. I topped it with some peanut flour sauce, carob chips and coconut shreds:
I had totally forgotten about my carob powder and flakes – they tasted so good in this smoothie!
Today has been another crazy one as we have had a big event on at work. I was up early and made a lovely breakfast of strawberries, plain soy yoghurt, crumbled sunshine muffin and PB & Co white chocolate wonderful peanut butter:
This was really delicious and so filling!
I struck vegan buffet gold at our event – I enjoyed several big portions of fruity spiced couscous, rice and beans, fruity salsa, salad and veggies:
These dishes were absolutely wonderful! I hadn’t been expecting they would have anything suitable for me so I was pleasantly surprised. The fruity spiced couscous was full of grapes and dried fruit, just so tasty! I happily loaded up on this as it will fuel me well for my planned 12 mile run tomorrow.
After work I hit the gym and did a 3,2,1 workout for an hour. It felt good to be back in the gym after this weeks home workouts! I went easy on my legs for the strength component so I didn’t max them out for tomorrows run.
Dinner was Hippy Beans from the freezer with steamed kale and broccoli for a quick and tasty meal:
For dessert I made a huge bowl of double chocolate orange protein ice cream:
One scoop of chocolate sun warrior, 2 tbsp of Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp of orange extract, 1.5 cups of ice, water, stevia, xanthan and guar gums topped with a few candy covered sunflower seeds. This hit the spot!
Grocery shopping
It seems that most of you are interested in me posting details of grocery shops, glad I’m not the only noisy one ;-) I really need to get a handle on my grocery shopping as I’ve been getting into the habit of buying things I don’t need – particularly fresh produce. What can I say, I just love my fruits and veggies! They all look so beautiful but I end up getting too much then struggling to find ways of using it up before it goes bad.
My plan for the next few weeks is to:
- Do 1- 2 smallish shops and 1 larger shop a week – as my diet is so full of fresh veggies this seems to be the best way to ensure things don’t go bad before I get to eat them. I just need to be careful I don’t get sucked in by special offers and buy things I don’t need.
- I already meal plan but I need to start considering James meals a lot more in order to save money.
- Obviously I love my speciality healthy foods and it seems the more stuff I buy the more unusual (i.e. expensive and difficult to get hold of) stuff adds on to my ‘staples’ list. Recent additions include stevia drops, teeccino and peanut flour. I know that none of these are really essentials but they add so much to my enjoyment of food I do want to continue to buy them, I just need to do so in the cheapest way possible! I’ve started getting things on iHerb via the cheaper airmail option instead of DHL and I have an excellent deal going with one of my new sponsors for June – Goodness Direct which I’m very excited to share soon!
- Eat through my cupboards and freezer. I have so much stuff that needs to be used before it goes out of date and I have no more room in my freezer for extra portions of recipes anyway so I need to start getting creative with what I have before I buy anything new.
To start me off here’s my fortnightly organic veg box delivered today:
This includes salad greens, spring greens, asparagus, courgettes, cucumber, celery, bunched onions, pears, apples and bananas.This box cost £16.75 with Riverford Organics.
I’m going to be using up these beautiful fruits and veggies over the next few days in a variety of dishes. I know that organic produce certainly isn’t cheap, but I do believe in buying organic when I can. Getting these boxes once a fortnight is better value than the supermarket and forces me to be creative with its contents!
I did do a big budgeting challenge on the blog last year and I’ll be re visiting my tips for shopping on a budget to help me refocus!
Have you got much planned for the weekend? I’m so glad its a long bank holiday for us in the UK! I plan on doing my long run (12 miles, eek!) tomorrow morning and then we may have a trip into Newcastle and the usual catching up with friends and family.
Hopefully I won’t end up buying too much fresh produce at the market tomorrow – well at least stuff that I know I will be able to use! What’s your biggest issue when it comes to being frugal with your grocery shopping?
Hope you have a great weekend!
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I always get caught up in all of the deals in the supermarkets and markets. Last week I was at the market and they were selling raspberries,strawberries and blueberries for 2 for £1. Another stall had 5 punnets of blackberries for £1. I stocked up my freezer stash and I’m definitely going back tomorrow!!!
Ooooh, that carob smoothie!!! My carob obsession is well-documented and now I wish I was going into Newcastle so I could get some of the flakes from Almonds and Raisins. How could you forget about them!?! Well, you have other things in your life besides food and I do not, clearly!
Glad to see your workplace is better with vegan food than the conference at York I went to.
My biggest issue is the same as yours: ‘essentials’ are inevitably expensive and require huge shipping rates from the US. Occasionally my Uncle brings stuff over but mostly FedEx owns me. It’s always been the same and I can’t blame blogs: I used to have to get Sun Warrior from a US website well before blogs even existed. But I have gone through obsessions with PB&Co, Larabars, Clif Bars and now Peanut flour/PB2.
I’m not really doing anything this week-end…aside from moping around, and I am rather good at that :P
Good luck with the run :)
xxx
P.S Where did you get those wonderful sunflower seeds? I’m sure you’ve mentioned it in a post but I must have missed it.
Sleep, yoga, date rest! Can’t wait i actually have Sunday and Monday off! x x
I’m the same as you: all the fruit and veg looks so pretty, I often buy it without thinking how I’m actually going to use it! I really need to get back into proper food planning, but I then tend to make meals too complicated when I plan it out, when sometimes all I really have time for is a sandwich!
I’m so happy about the bank holiday! I haven’t really got anything planned, probably a run tomorrow, I think I just want time to go food shopping and chill out, read write and draw hopefully!
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Hooray, strawberries and plain soya yoghurt is my favourite combination – for breakfast and pudding – at the moment; it’s amazing!
And yeah, fruit and veg is my biggest spend; I went to Sainsbury’s the other day and out of £32-ish, £20+ of it was fruit and veg, just for one person! Not good, can’t wait for my dad’s vegetable garden to start doing its thang :-)
I always buy too much of fresh produce – I always eat all and enjoy it, but it is really expensive sometimes..and living on budget is a huhe challenge for me :/ I love that carob smoothie!
I am thinking about getting a veg box again. I really do think it’s cheaper than shopping in the supermarket. Plus it beings a bit of variety into your life!
Plans for my weekend are work work work. But then a get a little mini-break mid-week next week, so I shouldn’t complain. The life of a PhD student eh :)
Oh, and a run! We’ll see how that goes…
My biggest issue is definitely fruit and veg! It’s not too bad this time of year because berries really come down in price and you can get cheap British strawberries (my favourite).
I’d love to try an organic box, but I’m worried that there’s really nowhere to leave it at my house – I love the idea of not knowing what you’re getting :-)
you definitely don’t need to tell me how good that smoothie tasted; it looks IN.Cred.IBLE! and that applies to all THREE of your amazing concoctions in this post! I REALLY want to try that last one especially, it looks like melty softserve ice cream, Mmmm!!! and great grocery habit plans…I definitely feel the same way, where expensive not truly staples have now become staples in my life, hello sunflower seed butter, coconut butter and udis bagels!
Jemma – I think if you have freezer space those offers for fresh berries can be excellent. My problem is that I already have a freezer full!
Jess – those sunflower seeds are an NYC buy from Trader Joes, they are so good, will be gutted when I’ve finished them as I would have no idea where to get anything like them again!
Tam – hope your enjoying your weekend!
Ffion – that sounds like a blissful weekend you have planned!
Parky – sounds like you have a great weekend planned! I know what you mean about the supermarkets, its the same with the grocers and the farm shop I sometimes go to, its so hit and miss with the quality :-(
Eleanor – better 20 quid on fruit and veg than other stuff I say! I wish I had access to an allotment!
Lenna – that is exactly like me, the organic stuff especially is so expensive but worth it a lot of the time.
Alison – hope your run goes well! I agree that a veg box is a good way to make you creative!
Sarah – I adore strawberries at the moment, so wonderful! I do tend to know roughly whats going to be in the box a week before which is useful for meal planning but still gets me to be creative!
Livvy – So glad your loving my concoctions! Sunflower seed and coconut butter are the same for me know too!
Hi :)
I love this post, great to hear about how others are planning their food shopping.
I tend to shop almost every day. Sometimes for only a basil plant or whatever, other times I need more and may need to fill up on basics like grains and oil. I love love love to shop for food, and I use SO much money on it! I want to eat all organic, and organis veggies and fruit are CRAZY expencive in Norway.
I also, like you, buy a lot on Iherb, and i try to use the international air mail instead of DHL. I tend to order a few times a week. A glass of nut butter or shampoo is maybe all I order at the same time!
Have a nice Sunday :)