A healthy spring lunch and a bit of an update

Hey guys, how's your Spring going? Mine's a busy one with work, family, puppy training, gardening and cooking from scratch. Also getting a bit of a health kick going with some 'clean eating' and exercise. Booya!


Walking and running with the dog is great for weight loss, but doing yoga and weights/exercise/aerobics not so cool with doggie jumping on me during my workout!!

Being a bit of a sucker and not putting her outside in her kennel.......!

Anyhow, here's what I had for lunch recently:

Homemade roasted red pepper hummus with wholemeal pita and some nice greens, plus a few herbs and some nastutrium flowers. Yum.

I'm still doing well with avoiding cane sugar (as much as I can) and trying to kick the cravings for sweet food. In fact, the times when I have given in to my cravings I have instantly regretted it and found the sweet 'treat' all too sickly. A good sign huh.

Next up is green smoothies. I'm currently researching a suitable blender, although I have a gutsy stick blender that will suffice for now. I fancy one of those blend and go machines with sipper cups.. Bought this recipe book to get me started:

With green smoothies in mind I now aim to harvest the kale and celery doing great in the garden, blend it up and freeze in ice cubes. With warmer weather on the horizon (although you wouldn't think so today with a cold southerly wind and rain), these crops may soon come to an end. Some of the celery I spied yesterday trying to flower/seed and the kale might follow suit soon. Time to harvest these babies before they spoil.

Also on the gardening front, D wants to have a vege garden this year so we have got him his very own garden bed. On the weekend we sowed spinach, basil, carrots, and radishes. Indoors he has sowed some sunflowers in newspaper pots, and we 'repurposed' a plastic food container as a mini greenhouse:

This year I used my heat pad to help raise the tomatoes and it did seem to make a difference to germination - they now need potting on and moving to my small outside greenhouse.

Tons of stuff still to do outside, it never ends. More mulch to apply to the garden and orchard, and loads more weeding. As always these things will get done time and weather permitting!