Hello everyone. I hope your week is going great so far. I thought I'd start of today's post by straight away sharing a recipe with you. I made these on Sunday and I've had quite a few comments about them on Twitter and Instagram, so I knew I had so share ASAP!
Paleo Orange Coconut Macaroons
80g ground almonds
80g desiccated coconut
60g orange blossom honey
1 tablespoon almond milk
zest of one orange.
Simply mix together with your hands and form into balls. You could of course use orange juice instead of almond milk to add a more intense orange flavour, and if you want to make them extra indulgent you can dip them in melted orange flavoured dark chocolate...! These balls are perfect when paired with Clipper's Orange and Coconut tea.
I used
Clarks Orange Blossom Honey which I have been sent to review, and is gorgeous, but of course you could use normal honey too.
Due to the honey these are very sweet, but a lovely sweet treat! I might attempt to make a version using maple syrup, and perhaps chopped nuts and cocoa!
As well as making macaroons I also had a go at making
avocado bread, the recipe via Natural Kitchen Adventures. I happened to have exactly one and a half avocados that needed using up, so when I saw this recipe I knew I had to make it.
I sliced it up ready to pop into freezer bags.
Unfortunately when I had some for breakfast yesterday the loaf tasted very bitter... the damn flaxseeds had gone rancid! Such a shame, as now I'll have to throw out the whole loaf in the bin, but once I restock the flaxseeds I'll give it another go.
So eats the rest of the week have been more of the same really.
At the beginning of the week the weather was lovely and warm, and the food reflected this. For breakfast one morning I had this very colourful plate of chicken, cherry tomatoes, bluberries and raspberries.
Lunches were salads, this one I actually sat out in the sun to eat: bliss!
Twice I had a mackerel and egg salad for lunch. I was popular in the work kitchen with my stinky lunch!
More fish was consumed after CrossFit one evening when dinner was lovely salmon with asparagus and half a sweet potato.
These were the perfect combination to top the salmon with!
I even bought myself some new sandals what do you think? Not sure if they are a bit too big, but I think if I'd sized down they would of been too narrow for my wide feet... I should of ordered two sizes to make sure! I'm hoping the colour will go with everything though!
But the weather quickly turned mid week to be very much gloomy, so I made a big batch of chili for tea. I used turkey mince instead of beef, and cannelloni beans instead of kidney beans, purely because that's all I had! I even added a tablespoon of cocoa powder into the chilli to give it an extra depth of flavour.
Both at dinner and lunch time I topped with plain Chobani yogurt, which really helped to counteract the heat.
Warming meals were all I had eyes on, and that's what I got in the form of this gorgeous curry. Skinless and boneless chicken thighs cooked with onions, courgette, mushrooms, deseeded green chili, cumin and paprika, and of course a tin of full fat coconut milk. I forgot how filling coconut milk is, I was stuffed!
Snacks have been strangely colour co-ordinated. I get more pleasure from this than I should!
And of course there was the usual greek yogurt dependency. This bowl was plain Chobani with blueberries, pistachios and mape suryp.
I then tried one of the flavoured pots of Chobani I've been sent to review. It was raspberry flavour, so of course I had to like it.
On Friday, as I already mentioned yesterday, I headed to a CrossFit social,
where I ran around an athletics track like a loon for two hours: it was fun! Afterwards we all went for an Indian.
I stuck to one poppadom.
But piled on the mango chutney.
And I managed to not order any naan bread, it tastes so good, but the massive portion makes me feel horrible, and I could never just leave half of it.
My side dish was Gohbi Bhaji, a spicy cauliflower dish.
Here it is piled on teh plate with my main, Chicken Shashlik, which is tandoori baked chicken with peppers, onions and tomatoes: really lovely. This is what I ordered last time and I'd had a few jealous looks last time, so there were quite a few orders this time! This meal was just right for me, perfect for refuelling after a strenuous workout, but it didn't leave me feeling overly full or bloated like I usually am after leaving an Indian restaurant, the rice and naan just isn't worth it for me.
The next morning I fancied something a little bit different for breakfast: oats! I've not had oats in forever, and I really don't see no harm in having them every now and again despite them not being paleo. What I have noticed since going paleo is that when I 'cheat', rather than eating cake, pizza, and biscuits (although I can't say that doesn't happen too...!), it is generally by eating things like beans, seeded bread, sweetcorn... you know things that are generally healthy for you anyway? I guess with paleo your perception of what going off plan changes, so that when I do go off plan, it is still within the confines of healthy eating... Make sense?
When searching through the cereal cupboard for some oats, I discovered this bag of date and coconut porridge, my mum and I have similar tastes in food, sounds lovely doesn't it?!
And lovely it was! I made the porridge my favourite way, with a chopped apple, almond milk, and a healthy dose of cinnamon.
Lunch was more leftover turkey chili, but this time topped with bacon, a fried egg and quarter of an avocado. I loved the mix of flavours!
The afternoon was spent doing some paperwork and watching a bit of TV.
With a break in the middle for a welsh cake or two.
Which I had with a mug of almond milk tea.
I really wanted to do something fun and cheap, but the weather was absolutely atrocious, so we decided to stay in and watch a film. We started watching The Woman in Black, but after twenty minutes I realised Iestyn was sleeping! It was coming up to dinner time so I thought it was a good idea to make us a cup of tea and a snack to keep us going, so I chopped up three small apples, and we had his 'n hers piles of Juistin's chocolate almond butter.
Iestyn didn't remember any of the film so we started again from the beginning. I'm not a big scary movie fan, so this being a 12 rating meant it was just about bearable! Ha!
When we finished watching the film we did a bit of pottering before realising it was nearly eight o'clock, we hadn't had dinner, and we were meant to be at our friends house by eight. I had planned on making lamb kofte's, but when you factor in cooking, eating and cleaning time, it would of taken at least an hour before we were ready to leave. So Iestyn made the suggestion that we should pick up a takeaway on the way...
I tried to go the healthy route by ordering a mixed tandoori and tickka chicken kebab in a pitta bread, with so much salad! Under the circumstances I think I did alright. I did find it a bit dry without dressing, but I was aware that asking for garlic mayo could of doubled the calorie content of the meal easily! I did spend the evening glugging water, so I suspect there was a lot of added salt!
Sunday morning I was nudged awake by Iestyn asking if please could we have sweet potato pancakes and bacon for breakfast. He wasn't too impressed when I pointed out we had in fact finished off the bacon the day before!
In lieu of bacon I improvised and made a blueberry sauce by simply heating up frozen blueberries, and topping with maple syrup and a few pecans. As usual Iestyn was in charge of the peculator for a dose of coffee.
I do find that on Sunday's I tend to graze rather than have a proper lunch, I think this is mostly down to it being food shop day, so the fridge is empty, and once I've been shopping I've got some food prep to do, so I don't want to add to my cooking time!
When I returned from food shopping I made up this snack plate: beef spread with horeradish, boiled egg, chopped strawberries, and pecans.
And once I cleaned the kitchen after making the above orange macaroons and avocado bread, it was dinner time.
The other week I was called urgently into the living room by my mum who was watching the telly, evidently watching some cooking programme, only for her to ask 'What's halloumi? Some sort of fish?'. So when I spotted some in the shop I had to buy it.
I haven't had haloumi in years, and I was surprised at just how salty it was... but in a good way! Alongside the haloumi I made mint and lamb meat balls with the lamb mince I was supposed to use before: the rest of the batch will be used for some lunches this week! alongside it I made a mint and cucumber yogurt dip which complimented it well.
So over the week I felt like I dropped the ball a little bit: an Indian, a kebab, and quite a few welsh cakes, coupled with a scaled back week of workout means that I shouldn't be surprised that I only lost 0.2 of a pound this week. Hopefully the so-so week will give me the kick up the bum that I feel that I need this week, I'm hoping for at least a pound loss!
Do you have curry dish that you always order, or do you try something different every time? I'm a big fan of Indian food, so I tend to try and be adventurous and try something different every time. However now that I have discovered something which fits into my way of eating, I'll be mostly sticking to it!
Does what you eat depend on what the weather is doing? It seems to change so much at the moment it's hard to know what you fancy, but I do think salads taste better in the sun, and a warming curry is perfect for rainy weather!
