Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Does absence make the blog reader happy to have me back?  Let me know 🙂 I have been busy with work, socialising a little bit too enthusiastically and things keeping me busy at home which has meant writing the blog was not possible.

Here are a few snippets from the past 4 days.

I am trying really hard to eat more vegetables and one place to start is breakfast which is the most likely meal to not contain any veggies.  One day I took in to work this salad made with brown rice, sprouted mung beans, cucumber, tomatoes and 2 boiled eggs.  I also tried an Umeboshi plum which is pickled and a little sharp but quite pleasant.  A reasonably enjoyable start to the day. This is one of the tables in the Wild Food Cafe in Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden.  I didn’t have time to sit and eat in but I took a salad back to work. It was good but very expensive.  This is the organic Ayurvedic super salad.  It is
a bed or organic lamb lettuce and wild rocket topped with amaranth, courghetti spaghetti, hijiki seaweed, slices of artichoke hearts & avocado, cucumber & red pepper cubes, finished off with coriander, rocket & parsely pesto, mango salsa, activated savory seeds flavoured with leafy greens and spices, and marinated shitake mushrooms.This is not a main meal salad, it is more of a starter size and for £9.70 I expect a lot of vegetables.  So I enjoyed what I was given but will definitely not go back for that again.

On Thursday I worked from home.  We had team drinks the night before which was fun but I drank way too much.  I am usually really careful at those events as I hate feeling bad the next day but failed this time.  So Thursday was a struggle and required some stodge to start the day with – 2 poached eggs on toast did very nicely.
Lots of water and Berocca helped a lot too.
The little fella enjoyed a Berocca too ! I have a fairly constant battle with Harvey about eating healthily.  He is much better than most children because he will mainly eat the same food I do but usually with a bit of moaning which I find very tiresome.  So we have agreed that he will try very hard to stop moaning, to trust me and assume that meals will taste good but if he doesn’t like the meal or a part of it, he can leave it.  This approach is working better.  I was very pleased one day recently when I asked him what he would like and he asked for a chicken caesar salad with croutons!  Croutons were the least I could do for a young boy who asked for a salad for lunch. It was delicious.  I cooked the bread in garlic, olive oil and butter until it was crispy.  This is not a diet option as the bread soaks up so much butter but they did taste good.  In the salad we had mixed leaf lettuce, carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, mung bean sprouts and of course chicken plus an olive oil based dressing. I have been eating some bad food but nothing full of sugar which is an improvement.  I have snacked on coc-nuty granola with yogurt or toast and Marmite.  I did cave and have fish and chips one evening.  Looking at that plate of greasy stodgy lifeless food I can not believe I was tempted by it. These colourful vegetables are much more appetising. I made a huge stir fry.  I cut the leaves and soft tops off the broccoli and cook them after the onions and tougher stalks. I use all of a vegetable where I can.  The stalks were chopped up in to small pieces, stir fried in some coconut oil and then steamed quickly in a small amount of water I added to the pan to soften them slightly. At the end of the cooking time I added some sesame seeds.  The vegetables were served with spinach falafel, humous and raw tomatoes.  A delicious supper.

So there is a quick catch up on some of the meals I have enjoyed recently.  My next post will be about my attempt to eat 10 portions of vegetables in one day.  I think you will be surprised by how much that is.