Harvey had not wanted his smoothie the previous day so it sat in the fridge overnight.

I wanted to use it up but fancied something more substantial so I tipped it into a bowl and added 40g Jordan’s Country Crisp with nuts.  Delicious.  I love the colour, which came from all the blackberries in the smoothie.

I took Lara to Costco.  I tend to go every 2 – 3 months for a mega shop and she came along to help and to get some goodies for University.  Unsurprisingly we returned with a mountain of shopping.  It is even worse than it looks as the Costco shopping trolleys are about twice the size of a normal trolley.  The keen-eyed amongst you may notice the Velvet Toilet Tissue in the trolley on the left.  Well that is a bundle of 40 rolls.  Yes, 10 x 4 in a packet and they barely take up any room in the monster Costco trolley.

Lunch was some Sushi in the car on the way home.  Once Lara had got the hang of how much wasabi I liked they were delicious.  Her first attempt nearly killed me it was soooo hot!  I was disappointed to see how many points/calories Sushi has so it will be saved as a special occasion treat in the future.

So why do I go over to Lakeside Retail Park to shop in a massive warehouse when I could pop to my local supermarket of farm shop?  Partly cost; I am sure that even deducting the cost of petrol and the Dartford Crossing I saved money.  Mainly opportunity.  I can buy things in Costco and buy them in bulk that I can not find anywhere else.

For example, now that British fresh berries are finished I am using frozen berries.  At Costco I can buy 1.81 Kg of mixed berries for £9.59.  That is a huge bag and I now have 2 bags of ‘Nature’s Three Berries’ in the freezer which will keep me in smoothies until Christmas.  Any idea what a Marionberry is?

Another reason I go is because I think their meat and fish is good quality, full of flavour and very reasonable.  I bought this huge piece of salmon for £16.38.  I forgot to check the weight before I threw out the packet but as you can see in the photo, it is falling off both ends of my extra large chopping board and I put a bottle of Lee & Perrins in the photo to provide a scale.  The salmon is now chopped up in to 14 separate fillets, 4 are in the fridge ready for dinner tomorrow and the rest are in the freezer.  It is a beautiful piece of fish.  Bright in colour with no unpleasant “fishy” smell and not at all slimy to touch.

The downside to Costco, besides the journey time and that most of the produce is imported from the USA, is that they cleverly manipulate you in to buying more than you want to.  In a similar way that IKEA does, no one item seems expensive so you keep popping things in the trolley.  It is only when you get to the checkout and are presented with a MASSIVE bill that you realise you have been taken in again.

They are very clever with their set up.  By giving you a huge trolley, and because the shop is inside a massive warehouse, the huge packets of produce you buy don’t seem so ludicrously large.  I think it is no accident that the fresh produce is at the back of the store.  So you warm up and become acclimatised to the huge packets of food you are buying.  So when you get to the fresh produce you are soon hefting 5 Kg bags of potatoes in to your trolley and do not bat an eyelid at the 2 . 33 Kg tray of steak mince you are buying.  The usual 250 g packs are for wimps after all.  This is shopping for big girls!  It is only when you get home and try to unpack it you realise how big everything is.  And how much space the 10 x 185 g tins of tuna you bought for £7.49 take up.

After unpacking the car, putting the food away and decanting the large packets of salmon, mince and sausages in to meal sized parcels in the fridge and freezer, we took the dogs over the road for a walk in the woods.  I did 2 loops which takes about 55 minutes, Lara ran 5 laps and the dogs were confused.

I went to be weighed and Lara cooked dinner.  It was similar to a pepperonata but with more tomatoes in it.  She slowly fried onions, garlic and red pepper, added tinned chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper.  When it was nearly ready she put it in to a rectangular baking dish, cracked 4 eggs on to it and put it in the oven for about 10 minutes until the eggs had set.  It was lovely but not substantial enough, even with the leftover Sushi.

At Costco I treated myself to a tray of Turkish figs.  I love figs and these were perfect specimens.  I put 100 g Greek yogurt in to a bowl, added 2 figs and a tbsp of runny honey.  It was divine and worth every single one of the 8 WW points.

I may have spend more than I wanted to today but my goodness, we are going to eat like Kings and Queens.