I have shown no restraint in the past few days and have enjoyed every mouthful and sip.  Now it is time to start scaling back.  I am not rushing to be super healthy but am beginning to get back on track, so by the beginning of January I will be in the weight loss zone again.

So I began the day with a smoothie.

An old favourite of 1/3 cup of oats, 1 cup of almond milk, 1 banana, 1 passionfruit and 1 tsp chia seeds.  When I took the photo of the ingredients I was going to use sunflower seed butter but as I put the ingredients in the blender, I thought chia seeds would work better.  It was satisfying and delicious.

One of my favourite presents this year was a splendid new tea pot.  I prefer loose leaf tea to tea bags these days but only had a large tea pot so Holly gave me a pot for one.  Actually it makes 2 cups and is fab.  It has a strainer within it so the tea percolates and is strained as you pour it.  A simple and genius design with a spout that doesn’t leak.  I love it.

I was also given a sachet of coconut tea which I tried mid morning.  It is a black tea with pieces of toasted coconut in it.

The tea pot and coconut tea is from Adagio teas.  It tasted and smelled lovely and I drank it without milk.

I decided to have some fun at lunch time and make Nori rolls.  Harvey and I have done them before with Jenni which I wrote about in the Masterchef Masterclass  post but James and Lara had not made them before.

Lara and I prepared the fillings by finely chopping cucumber, spring onions and smoked salmon.  We also had some dried onions (which I had bought previously in Wing Yip ).

James made the sushi rice and I also served black sesame seeds, wasabi and soy sauce.

Everyone had their own rolling mat and a sheet of Nori (dried seaweed).  We spread the rice on and then selected our filling.  I tried a bit of everything.

After rolling the Nori up we cut the rolls in half and then in to smaller pieces.

I served the Nori rolls with salmon which I fried in a ridged pan with a minimum amount of oil until it was just cooked through.

This was a really fun meal to prepare and it tasted lovely too.  It was great to eat something fresh and light after all that rich food of Christmas.

But still being in the Christmas piggery zone, no meal is complete without a pudding!  Waitrose are selling Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream for half price so a carton is only £2.22.  Bargain.  I had some Phish Food and Coconutterly so we had some of both of those with the last pieces of the brownie pumpkin pie I had made for Christmas Eve.  I think a restaurant may have called that a “trio of chocolate desserts” 🙂

For supper I tried a Mary Berry recipe I had seen her make on The Great British Food Revival which has been a fabulous series where chefs/cooks champion their favourite ingredient.  Mary Berry was promoting fresh herbs and one of her recipes was a goat’s cheese, red pepper and thyme galette with onion marmalade.  The link to her recipe is here.

In summary, you caramelise 3 onions, roast and then skin 3 red peppers, roll out some flaky pastry, spread the pastry with goat’s cheese, pile on the onion, thyme and pepper then bake for 20 minutes.  Easy to make and it tasted delicious.  I served it with an undressed green salad and we all really enjoyed it.  Give it a go.

I have enjoyed the fruits and veggies I have eaten today and we all had fun with our Japanese lunch.  I wonder what we will feel like tomorrow.