It was my first full week of the “norm” and my camera decided to act up on Tuesday so I have had to take photos with my phone camera, which isn’t ideal, but my photos aren’t exactly going to win any prizes anyway.

I have tried to be bit more careful and conscious of what I’m eating to beat a bit of the post holiday bloat. The first week of 2018 started with me feeling bloated and not that great. I stumbled on a couple of videos on YouTube with some pretty tasty and healthy recipes that I am going to try. One lunch inspiration I actually did try was from Liezl Jayne Strydom and first found via my YouTube recommendations and it was her Easy Healthy Lunch Ideas – For School or Work and it was the easiness of the houmous, pepper and carrot sandwich on rye bread that appealed to me. I happened to have those ingredients in my fridge anyway. I will definitely be making that for lunch again this week as it was just so simple, delicious and filling. If I was feeling a bit hungrier, I would pair it with soup. I am also planning on other recipes to try for dinner as well so will let you know how I get on.

Monday 8 January

On Mondays, I usually catch up with my mum and this is always over dinner. I had a M&S steak pie left over from new year that needed to be eaten by today so as there were 3 of us eating, that wasn’t going to be enough so I added a spatchcock chicken. I served these with roasted sweet potato (seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika with a little olive oil), stir fried broccoli and baby asparagus and carrots (boiled and no butter).

I didn’t become consciously healthy until after Monday, ok? We followed dinner with sticky toffee pudding and cream. My mum had it for the first time in December and I think she’s addicted to this dessert.

Camera didn’t like taking this photo. So far, this is the ugliest photo of the blog.

Tuesday 9 January

After work, I ran home and clocked just over 6km. On Monday, I went shopping in M&S and there were lots of reduced items, one of which was my dinner this evening. I can’t remember the exact name of the pizza but it was stone-baked with different cured meats and it was reduced from (£6.00) to £1.50. It is unlikely that I would have bought that particular pizza so it was nice to try it at quarter of the price.

There was parma ham and salami and another cured meat that I don’t recall. The pizza was quite salty and I only just over half so I probably won’t buy that one again.

Wednesday 10 January

I still had leftover bargain food from M&S, which was a chorizo and pepper tortilla from the deli. There were two slices and I already ate one at lunch time. For dinner, I wanted to bulk it out a bit with some salad dishes (no, not lettuce) so I made an asparagus, heirloom tomato salad.  In addition, I wanted to prepare the houmous, pepper and carrot sandwich so I roasted the baby asparagus and red pepper at the same time. Whilst that was roasting away, I grated the carrot for the sandwich and cut the tomatoes, avocado and feta cheese for the salad and placed in a bowl. I made a dressing of lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil and Dijon mustard. At this point, I put the tortilla in the oven to heat up.

When the roasted vegetables were done, I threw the asparagus in with the tomato mixture and a few teaspoons of the dressing and tossed it to coat all the elements. I served with the warmed tortilla and a sweetcorn and chipotle salad (prepared by M&S, also reduced, to 80p – bargain).

Thursday 11 January

The pepper, carrot and houmous sandwich was delicious and filled me up. Today I had it on wholemeal bread https and I would definitely have that again. I bought Mestemacher rye bread to try as per the original recipe tomorrow. After work, I ran 6k and I can feel that route was easier than the last time I ran it. I forgot my long sleeve top so ran in just a t-shirt. For 5 degrees celsius, it was actually not too cold.

I was so grateful to come home to roasted salmon (lemon juice, salt and pepper), roasted vegetables (pepper, courgette baby tomatoes with fresh chillies, parsley and coriander. I added a small baked sweet potato (in the microwave for 6 minutes). I topped the sweet potato with houmous and the roasted vegetables. I had asparagus salad left over so added that to it as well. That dish was to die for and very healthy as well! I could eat it over and over. Also, if you haven’t already noticed, I like houmous a lot.

Friday 12 January

End of the week – yay! I was also excited as I was having S and C round for a belated birthday celebration for S’s birthday on Monday. There was a request for a chippy (that’s food from a fish and chip shop) so I was glad I ate relatively healthy for most of the week. The three of us decided to go for fish suppers (a supper in Scotland is anything from the chippy served with chips) and share a single spicy haggis (single = served sans chips) and tub of curry sauce. My local chippy always fry their fish to order so their fish are never fried and left to sit in the warmer, which I love. I am more than prepared to wait for freshly fried/cooked food. The staff is friendly and recognised me (eek…do I go there that often??) so that was nice. Always an interesting character or two in the shop and tonight was no exception.

Warning: chippy food is not pretty.

In the east coast of Scotland, we have chippy sauce, which is like brown sauce (HP sauce) but more vinegar-ey. That is the brown sauce on the chips.

Apologies for the rough low light photos. The chips were good and were freshly fried with no dried, hard, small chips

The fish was the best thing out of the whole order. Frying to order is how all chippies should be doing it. It was a large piece of haddock in crispy batter. The fish was moist and flaky wrapped in crispy hot batter.

The spicy haggis is more peppery than spicy. It is also battered and deep-fried and the haggis was soft and peppery. I love the peppery-ness of this version compared to the regular haggis. Yes, Scottish people really do eat haggis. It was overshadowed by the fish though. The curry sauce doesn’t deserve a photo as it tasted like it was made from a ready-made powder, rather than made from scratch. I can tell because my mum makes hers from scratch and hers is the best (not biased at all).

The girls were in a food coma and couldn’t finish their chips (novices) and I had cake to finish the meal off. You can’t have a birthday dinner with birthday cake. I recalled that S likes coffee cake so we had M&S Colombian coffee and walnut cake. Although delicious, this is not a photogenic cake.

Here it is anyway.