Category: General ramblings

Hey

So after yesterdays post on iron, I started my mission to concentrate a little more on iron rich recipes. The other day when I was browsing blogs, I came across this recipe for courgette quinoa lasagne. It sounded good to me, so I have made a few tweaks (added in lentils, spinach, pepper and taken out the cheese) to make my own version.

Mine made 3 portions and I had trouble fitting them in the foil tubs!

First, cook 60g quinoa in some vegetable stock (I use a tsp vecon stock in about 150ml water). Once the quinoa goes “wiggly” add 1 tin chopped tomatoes, some dried basil + oregano, a chopped pepper and a tin of drained lentils.

While this simmers, slice 2 courgettes and line the bottom of the trays with half the courgette.

After about 15 minutes (once it has thickened a bit) add in a big bag (150g) of spinach, and some garlic puree.

Then spoon half the mixture onto the courgettes, top with the last of the courgettes.

(Excuse the blurry shot!)

Then bake in the oven for about 25 minutes. I would probably add a little grated cheese on the top, but I wait until it comes out of the oven as I do not like burnt cheese. The rest is going in the freezer for another day.

While I was making this I did think that I could amp up the protein (and iron) content even more, by blending in some silken tofu with some of the sauce to make a creamy layer. So I might try that next time as I love the creamy texture of the tofu pumpkin pasta bake.

According to WLR, one portion (no cheese or anything, just the ingredients above) contains 209 calories, 12.7g protein, 32.6g carbs, 3.5g fat, and 7.1g fibre, and I reckon it would go perfectly with some home made bread. Yummy.

Onto other things- body pump was great last night, although I found it harder than usual, and did not have the extra weights for the back track. But by next week I am sure I will be back to normal.

Today I also tried some of the raw chocolate (I shared a bar with Andy this afternoon alongside some tea)- I had the Twilight bar which is made of cacao butter, fructose, cacao mass and carob. It was lovely- the texture was a bit like an aero bar or something, not crunchy but not totally smooth. It was lovely and sweet too (the combination of fructose and carob I suppose), so if you are vegan and liked milk chocolate, this would be a good one to try I would say. Although Andy objected to the name!

We shared the 44g bar, and half was the perfect amount which is always good.

I was originally considering a run today, but I did not sleep well and was very tired, so I settled for a walk and decided to rest my legs in preparation for my long run tomorrow instead. I find it hard getting the balance between keeping the legs loose, and just tiring them out. If I have not run on the wednesday, then I find a gentle run on friday does not affect my run on saturday, but in fact I have not had a rest day since sunday, and as I am still not quite 100% I did not want to make myself over tired.

I need to plan my route now, as I have only run 13 miles during my half marathon races, not around here- how do you guys go about planning routes? I have a main route of about 8 miles that I can add loops to here and there, but I think now I need to get another “base” route to add to.

Oh, and the nakd offer I got here– it is still going on at the moment. 🙂

Yes I am afraid that is how I spend my days!

But first I decided to get rid of my old trainers as during my run yesterday it felt more like they were made of cardboard than rubber or anything. (To be fair they have done over 600 miles, well, I say they have done it, I have actually run that far but while wearing them) so I took out the sensor and put it in my new shoes.

Now I have a run planned for tomorrow morning, and have just seen that it is supposed to be raining- so they are going to get wet. But I must not be precious about my shoes- they cannot stay pristine forever! I will always have this picture anyway!!

Also now exciting news is that I am back to having tea- big news I know! I popped to see my Mum this morning and even had a cup of tea there- all is fine on that front I feel 🙂

Lunch was delicious- I saw these Food Doctor pittas and decided to try them- they are wholegrain and have seeds and whatnot- turns out they are delicious too! I can’t believe all these years I have been putting up with supermarket wholemeal ones. These are the business!

The combo of cream cheese and beetroot was too good to miss (I think if I made this to take to work it would be a soggy purple mess by lunch so I am taking advantage of the holidays)- plus some sweet chilli oat bites. These were not very spicy at all- I much prefer the onion ones I had the other day.

I have been getting busy in the kitchen again;

And with the creation of the pumpkin tofu pasta, there is still some pumpkin puree left, so I might attempt pumpkin cookies later in the week. Or I may just add it to my porridge.

I also made some spiced nuts and some brownie cupcakes (recipe to follow) for when I have some friends over tomorrow. Although I dropped one of the cupcakes on the floor, face down, when I was putting them in the tin- booo.

Mid afternoon was a snack of a Mule bar and some mint tea;

Now I am back on the tea I can start trying out the cosy teas- hooray 🙂 The Peppermint one was lovely- not too strong a minty taste but light and refreshing. The Mule bar was quite nice, but very sweet tasting- I preferred the apple flavour (shame they don’t do those ones in tescos) but this one was still good and provided me with some energy for aerobics.

Aerobics was hard work, but it is hard to take it easier (unlike running when you can slow down, you have to move with the music and keep up with the line)- some good tunes helped though.

My late night snack was scrumptious;

Some muesli topped with vanilla alpro and a little blob of my home-made chocolate pb (which I did keep in the fridge in the end). Scrummy 🙂

I am off to cross my fingers that it does not rain too much tonight- night 🙂

and I have loads of time to spare, I know what to do…… Bake!

Last night I made kidney bean burgers.

I used a recipe from Veganomicon for black bean burgers, and changed it a little bit.

I cooked one chopped red onion until browned, then added in 1tbs tomato puree, a tsp lazy chilli and a drained tin of kidney beans, then I half mashed this all up (so some beans were crushed and some were left). Then I added in about 30g vital wheat gluten and 1/2 cup of water, and mixed it all up. Then I shaped it into 4 (massive) patties and baked in the oven for 25 minutes.

I had two of them for dinner in a wholemeal wrap with a load of spinach, beetroot and a gherkin! Nothing goes better with a burger than a gherkin! The burgers were tasty, but not very spicy- next time I think I will have to be braver with the lazy chilli. I have frozen the other two for another time.

Today I impressed myself by being so efficient! Andy was off for a 13 mile run, so while he was gone I got on with a total cleaning blitz- I cleaned the kitchen, bathrooms, cleaned the floors, did a load of washing and washing up, did the dusting, took out the recycling- phew! Then I walked up to the shops and was actually so excited when I saw these babies on sale in Tescos;

Mule bars! I tried some of these a while back and really liked them, but I did not try this flavour (summer pudding which is different berries- here is to hoping that they might start stocking other flavours too), and also PB&Co peanut butter!! It is only the normal stuff and not dark chocolate dreams, but I am hoping one thing will lead to another! Plus I might use this to try and make my own choc pb- more authentic don’t you think?

Woo!

I needed a mid-afternoon snack and I decided to make this chocolate pudding that I keep seeing on various blogs. One partly frozen banana whizzed up with 3 dates, a blob of pb and 2 tsp cocoa powder. Leave in the fridge for a bit, and then enjoy.

Yummy Yummy Yummy! 🙂 So chocolatey and delicious, scrumptious, I loved the dates in there, and although it looks like a tiny amount it was quite a bit (it was a whole banana).

Then I got on and made some peanut butter bars which I saw here;

I changed the recipe a bit (had to use what I had in)- 120g oats, 55g chickpea flour (thought I would try it in a sweet recipe), 100g sweet freedom, 100g PB, 50g chopped dark chocolate, 10g ground flax seeds and a few tbs water (I had no eggs)- mixed up, baked at 180C for 17 minutes, turns into this;

Andy had one with some tea this afternoon so they have passed the taste test 🙂 Plus each one has 6.6g protein so not too bad for a little snack.

On a random side note I am pleased to note that I do not have a caffeine addiction! I only tend to have one or two cups with caffeine per day, but the last cup of any kind of tea I have had was last monday, and I have been fine. Silver cloud and all! I am still off tea for the moment- might try a cup tomorrow. Rock ‘n’ roll.

I have decided that I am going to ignore my marathon training plan for this week, and make sure I get back to feeling 100% before I attempt a really long run. Lots of your comments really talked sense, and Andy (he was moaning about how he was not looking forward to the 13 miles, and I said to him that at least he could go out) also talked some sense into me- 2 weeks off now is not going to make much difference in the long run- we still have nearly 4 months to go and I know I can run half the distance already. The 4 miler was much harder than I thought, and I don’t want to make myself worse. So basically I am going to see how I feel on each run, make sure I do routes that I can cut short if I need to, or repeat if I feel like it.

So my recap of the week is pretty much non existant- a 3.7 mile run on Saturday is all the exercise I have managed. But I am going to move on and not dwell on it. On marathon news, I got an email this week saying that they have moved the start time from 2pm to 11.30am, which I am pleased about. 2pm did seem a weird time, and although I did have one practise of running after lunch (and was planning to do more) it did concern me that by the time I finish it would be time for dinner and then bed (or maybe just bed!), and I would get really stiff. At least this way around, we can take our time having breakfast, do the race and then have some time to wander before dinner, and hopefully not get so stiff. And I can run better on porridge than anything else! Good news, right?

And I am looking forward to doing much more baking! Pumpkin tofu pasta is again on the cards (yippee) as will be copious amounts of sweet stuff- I have some friends over in the week and I love to ply them with baked goods! Yipee! So on the subject of baking and cooking, if you could have one item of baked goods, what would it be? And what is your favourite meal?