Monday...

Well today was a little different to what I expected. Instead of going to the office this morning, I was required to wait in for the dishwasher engineer at my Mothers. Then in the afternoon I went to pick a new toilet and sink for her new cloakroom, and this is classed as part of my job. So I did, had a large row with my ex (who I work with every day, yes, such an excellent idea) then went home.

As a result of my weird routine, or lack of, I missed both Body pump and spin classes at the gym today and what I ate was odd and not what I had planned.

I did take a potion of homemade soup to my Mothers this morning but I never ate it. For breakfast I had porridge made with semi skimmed milk which was odd. Was so creamy. I had that with blueberries and seeds on top. For lunch I had a cheese savory sandwich on a white bun, bad bad Sarah.

Then when I got back to my Mams I had a couple of pieces of crusty baguette with a pea and asparagus pate thing from m&s.

For tea I had some leftover Spanish rice a roni from yesterday, a bowl of honey shreddies and a glass of white wine, oh. Dear.

On the plus side I baked a pesto loaf, hopefully some of which will be used for my lunch tomorrow:



On the plus side, as I baked the bread I know exactly what is in there. Since I went on a bread making course in December I don't think I've Bought a single loaf from the supermarket - just don't trust the nasties theyve put in there!


I also have a pic of the beautiful toilet and sink I picked for my mothers cloakroom:




Very snazzy. I wish my toilet was like that!

Anyway, back tomorrow with hopefully a much better food diary :)


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Weekend

HI All,

this weekend hasn't really been as healthy as I hoped.  Friday I went out for Lunch with my family. I had a smoked salmon and tomato salad to start, and then had a piece of Coley fish, with a lobster sauce, spinach, permentier potatoes, boiled new potatoes and turnip and carrot mash. Yummy.  Friday night I cleaned the house as I usually do, and for some reason I have absolutely no recollection of what I had for tea! ah well.

Saturday, I got up and juiced some beetroot, carrot and ginger, the beetroot and carrots being from my organic veg box from the previous week.  This was actually really yummy and I had two big glasses.

In the afternoon I went out for lunch with my friend Louise. We went to Gusto which is on the Quayside in Newcastle. Gusto has a 50% off sale on the food for January so excellent value.  Before we got to the restaurant I had a 'Bloody Shame' in a nearby bar, which is essentially a Bloody Mary without the alcohol! For lunch we first shared a tomato garlic pizza bread, and shared a tart as a starter which was tomato, goats cheese, caremelised red onion and cranberry, it was really lovely, should have taken some photos really.

Then for our main course, we both had Tagliatelle with garlic prawns, tomato, chilli and rocket. I have had this before and it was absolutely delicious. A lot of restaurants can overcook prawns but I have had this dish 3 times now and each time they were cooked perfectly.  After the restaurant we went back to the bar nearby, and met Louise's boyfriend, and they stayed on in town and I came home.

Today (sunday) i have not eaten that well to be fair. For breakfast I ended up having some quorn sausages and bacon, chopped tomatoes, two dry fried eggs and a tortilla wrap. The tortilla wrap wasnt great so I only ate about a third, and the quorn bacon was disgusting so I gave my three 'rashers' straight t the dog. I wont be buying that again!

This afternoon I have had a Linda McCartney leek onion and cheese plait, which struck me as not being very healthy, and made me feel a bit odd afterwards. I have also had some biscuits and the remainder of some Nobbys nuts out of the cupboard from Christmas. Oh dear.

Having done spinning on Thursday night in what must be the first time in 3 months or so, I now want to keep going if I can. I do really need to up my gym attendance, I find it makes such a difference to my mental health as well, although I don't want to be obsessed again like I was a few years ago.

I have signed up again for Spin class tomorrow night, so fingers crossed I make the effort after work to go!

New Start...

New year, new start.... sort of!

I am going to try and write in this blog more often, at least a few times a week anyway.  Even if its just me that reads it, it will be a record of my food and exercise and feelings, and a good way to monitor what is going on with me.

Over the course of the last few months I have put on quite a lot of weight, had to buy a size larger in work trousers, and now even they are far too tight.  I am currently around 8 stone 8, from being 7 stone 13 at my thinnest.  I also am at 27% body fat now, which is just too high.  When I sit down my belly is hanging over the front of my trousers, and my 'muffin top' is hanging over the back.

I have been avoiding the issue, and also the gym for some time, usually just attending now once or twice a week but now my muffin top is really getting me down, as all of my clothes are now getting too tight and my confidence is reaching an all-time low.

Added to all of this my Mother has been diagnosed with bowel cancer, and this tends to put a lot of things into perspective.  In the past, I honestly did not care what I ate as long as I was under my calorie allowance for the day and I lost weight.  Now, as I am at greater risk of getting bowel cancer, I am reassessing my eating habits completely. 

I have cut out meat entirely for January, just really to see if it is possible and I can do it. I have still been occassionally having fish, and so far so good. I did slip up at a funeral when my Aunty handed me a slice of ham & egg pie and I bit into it without thinking! Apart from that, its all going well.

I have also purchased myself the River Cottage everyday veg book, and have also restarted my Riverford veg boxes.  I have been trying recipes out of the book and shock horror have even been trying some Green Smoothies!

I made my first with Kale, desiccated coconut, chocolate protein powder, frozen peaches and bananas. It was awful!

This is my first green smoothie, which to be honest was a bit chewy and Im sure they shouldnt be!  Anyway, I tried again yesterday and the result was much better:

The second go at a Green Smoothie had, coconut milk, desiccated coconut, spinach and 2 bananas and 1 scoop of chocolare protein shake. This one was yummy and tasted just like a banana milkshake, I will definitely be trying this recipe again :-)

I MUST start doing exercise again, I have today decided to go to a class at the gym tonight, so hopefully Ill actually go this time! From going 5/6/7 times a week, I have dropped down to only once or twice, which is woeful, and is clearly contributing to the weight gain. I also find my moods and mental health to be a lot better when I do exercise regularly, so that is another reason I need to get myself back to the gym.

I am babbling now, so will be back tomorrow or later today with what I have eaten and the possible exercise I have done.

Bye for now

Rubbish blogger

So, it turns out I'm a rubbish blogger! I remember every day but when I get home I forget to do it! I'm blaming it on the fact That my MacBook is out of action and it's really cold in the spare room where the proper computer is so I never use it!

Well, this past week has been a bit hit and miss it has to be said. Last week I only made it to the gym on wednesday, so started afresh this week. I did spin last night, first time for 4 or 5 weeks and my god my poor bottom bones are sore today off the saddle, but it felt good! I also made it down there tonight for Fitball and I have my usual body pump and body balance combo planned for tomorrow. It's typical as well, when I've been good I put on 1.5lb in one day! :-(

With my money saving mission I've managed to pay £550 off my credit card this month so im really pleased with that. I spent £20 all last week and so far this week spent around £22 (not got my spending diary to hand!) but I did make a massive turkey lasagna with the shopping and have 5 portions to freeze so that's quite good.

Here is a pic of my lasagna:



I find that the more I try cook from scratch, the better it is for me but the more weight I put on! So frustrating.

Meanwhile I now have £150 I thjnk jn my freezer fund. I need £270 for the beko freezer which will survive the winter in my garage so slowly getting there :-)




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Freezer fund!

Due to the fact I have been trying to spend nothing and certainly am not using my credit cards, I have been trying to save for a chest freezer for a while.

I didnt Want to move money out of my salary as I want as much of this as poss for my credit card debts. Therefore, I've just been paying my earnings from amazon and eBay into a savings account and now have grand total of £70.00!

I reckon in past couple weeks I've made another £50 so once amazon decides it's time to transfer more money I should almost have enough for my freezer! So excited! And also, it's soo much more rewarding saving for something yourself rather than paying for stuff on credit cards when it's not even your money.

Hopefully by the end of sept I'll have my chest freezer and it'll be all set up in the garage and then me and my label maker can go into overdrive batch cooking and labeling allsorts to keep me going through winter!

It'll be a whole lot easier as at the moment I am having to send stuff to my mams freezer and sometimes I end up throwing food away as I just have nowhere to put it, so hopefully soon I'll have my chest freezer and then I can really start saving money :-))


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A busy week...

Well, Ive had a busy week the past week, including Bank Holiday Monday yesterday.

Ive set myself a budget of £50.00 a week for everything except necessary bills ie Credit card repayments, mortgage, water, electricity, sky, mobile bills.

Last week I spent a total of £49.75, and that inlcuded managing to only spend £1.00 on food the whole week! My spending was as follows:

Dog Bowl x 2 = 1.98
Chopped tomatoes x 4 = 1.00
Dog Food x 2 = 11.00
Dog Eardrops = 10.79
Eye Shadow = 3.99
Mascara = 3.69
Dog Haircut = 15.00
Sandwich= 2.30

Total £49.75!

Hopefully I wont need to buy dogfood again for another 2 months, and the mascara and eyeshadow should last me a while. Instead of getting these items from Superdrug as I would usually, I got them from an ebay shop for much less money so a good saving made there! Also, the dog food is usually £7.99 a bag and I got two bags for £11 while it is on offer at Pets @ Home so another good saving there!

I have also finished transferring my Credit Card debt to my new card, so now I just have one card to pay off. Pity the one card has £8500 on it, but heyho! I have also closed my other 5 cards so that I do not have the extra temptation and also to hopefully increase my credit rating a bit, as I do not have access to so much money!

Also, I have been doing pretty good in my being Thrifty at home, on Saturday I made a massive batch of Lamb Stew in my slow cooker, I used lamb I found in the freezer (which at the time I thought was beef!) and added water and lamb stock, broth mix and made dumplings for the top. I had this for my tea Saturday night and managed to freeze an additional 5 portions!

I also made pea soup yesterday, randomly, as everytime I opened the freezer peas kept falling out and it was doing my head in! I made this just with peas, an onion and vegetable stock and a couple of potatoes. I was pretty annoyed I had no mint sauce left, so I Improvised and added in a sachet of lamb & mint gravy to get the mint in there! My soup is now a little bit brown but still delicious. I had a portion yesterday for Lunch and today for lunch again at work. I am also going to freeze the rest tonight when I get home.

Also yesterday I made some Strawberry Jam using frozen strawberries and jam sugar i already had! I got 4.5 portions so that should keep me going for  a while :-)

I have however put on 9lb which I am most unhappy about, I am booked in for Spinning tonight so If I can be bothered Ill go! I do however have an issue with having my puppy with me at work, so will need to find a babysitter pretty sharpish if I want to make the 630 class!

Almost forgot - another Thrifty thing I did this weekend was go to Newcastle Library! It is MUCH better than Gateshead Library and I got 10 thrifty books out, almost all of them were on my Amazon Wish List :-)

An iffy day...

Today has been okay, not great anyway. I continue to be disappointed by someone and for that I am a fool ;-(

Anyway, for lunch I had some leftover chicken and noodle soup from yesterday.

In the afternoon I baked some bread in my breadmaker and then had a couple of slices with butter on, and then randomly salmon paste.

For tea I had leftover paella I cooked yesterday, I also froze another five portions! My mother had a go at me for being wasteful (?) but I think it's great, thats another five teas I dont have to make! This will be perfect for evenings when I can't be bothered to cook, and will hopefully save me from wasting money on takeaways.

I have had to put my five portions In my mams freezer for now, I am continuing to save for a chest freezer, using only my money I've made on amazon or eBay, I currently have £61 so a bit of saving still to go!

With my paella I had a piece of Italian bread with tomatoes and onions on top and a glass on white wine with strawberries in. At the moment I have something of an obsession with strawberries floating in wine, kind of like a dessert and wine in one! The italian bread I got last week in Costco and have still got an additional four pieces in the freezer, it cooks beautifully from froZen.





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