What I ate and Quinoa Edamame Salad recipe

So here's what I ate one day last week, including calorie breakdown and a recipe for the quinoa salad!

I started with a cup of the Califia Farms Almond cold brew coffee. It was actually the unsweetened one I had that day, but forgot to take a pic so here's a pic of the sweetened one. I added some agave to the unsweetened one.

I've mentioned before, I don't really eat breakfast that often during the week. So my coffee and a couple of litres of water was all I had in the morning. It was like 32°C that day! SO HOT. It was too hot to even go for a lunchtime walk so I had to go to the gym early and walk on the treadmill instead.

Lunch was (I know, I'm predictable) tofu scramble. I added some veggies (courgette and red peppers) into this one though. Served on some seeded toast with ketchup. (If you want to see my recipe for my go to scramble, check out this video.)

At dinner time I put on some quinoa to cook, because it was really hot, I didn't want to have to turn on the oven when I got home from the gym. I turned it into this yummy salad which I had with a couple of vegan Quorn fillets, that I just cooked in the microwave and then rubbed with some spices. Recipe for the salad is at the end of the post.

For dessert I had this Tesco Toffee vegan cornetto (so good!)

For snacks throughout the day, I had some of the M&S pea snacks and a Nakd strawberry crunch bar that I forgot to take a pic of!

And here's my MFP breakdown for the day; just under on calorie goal (I aim for 1400 during the week) and slightly over on protein (I aim for 70g a day).

And for anyone interested in the salad, it's so easy and if you're doing slimming world, it would be syn free! So here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
100g (dry) Quinoa
100g Frozen Soya Beans
150g Sweetcorn
2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons lime juice or rice vinegar
handful of cherry tomatoes, quartered or one regular tomato, chopped (I used about 85g)
1/2 a red or orange pepper

Method
Cook the quinoa according to package instructions and, if necessary drain off any excess water when cooked.

Defrost the soya beans by running under hot water then refresh with cold water. Mix all the ingredients together and taste for seasoning. I added some black pepper but some sriracha is a nice addition too if you like a bit of spice.

And that's it.

Hope you're having an awesome day
Sal xXx

Ps: hey, have you seen my latest vlog and subscribed to my youtube channel yet? No? Whaddya mean no? It's HERE!

What I ate in a day & weigh in

First things first, down 1 lb this week! Considering last weekend was my birthday and a lot of prosecco and cake was consumed, I'm happy with that!

So here's what I ate on Wednesday (as per my last food diary, I didn't eat breakfast, just had water and tea - I'm just not finding myself that hungry in the morning and am preferring having a couple of bigger meals instead!)

Brunch and I'm getting predictable aren't I! Tofu scramble but this time I added veggies.

Dinner - easy comfort food of sausages and noochy mash and green veg

When cooking dinner I had a glass of this, aka my new favourite thing! (If you have a decent sized Sainsbury's near you, you should go look for it now!)

I also had some strawberries, because British Strawberries are in season right now and if you get the really red ones, they are usually amazing! But it's such a short window of opportunity before the good ones are all gone again. These were good though, they didn't need anything on them.

Later on I had a tesco toffee chocolate free from cone thing, but forgot to take a photo, duh! Sorry.

So here's the breakdown of the day. I was a bit low on calories, (I wouldn't normally finish that low) even after eating a tesco cornetto. I think it was because I didn't have any snacks as it was a busy day ! Also, I was not that hungry. I made up for it yesterday with Nando's though :)

Have an awesome weekend!
Sal xXx

Recipe: Baked Tofu Bowl With Miso-Tahini Sauce

So I didn't gain! I actually lost half a pound, which I was pretty pleased with.

In my last post I mentioned eating more mindfully to try and hit things like my protein, calcium, iron etc goals and so I've been tracking in Cronometer.

I must admit I've been going over syns as sort of an experiment and I'm not expecting a loss this week as I was not tracking or on plan at the weekend (we were celebrating!).

Anyway what I am leading up to it's that it's been super interesting seeing where I'm short on nutrient goals and where I'm winning.

I always hit my protein goal and stay under my fat goal, but I was finding myself low on the Omega 3 (I do supplement that anyway as I have dry skin and creaky knees!), Iron is a bit low (again I supplement as I have a history of iron deficiency/anaemia. I was finding calcium a bit low but not too bad, but am keeping an eye on that to make sure I'm getting enough. The one thing I am always getting almost zero of is Vitamin D! So although my soy milk is fortified, I'm obviously not having anywhere near enough to cover that. So may have to look into a supplement. I'm not an expert on nutrition, so I'm going by what Cronometer tells me mostly but have upped the suggested protein goal a bit.

Last night I made this yummy bowl for dinner that is packed full of protein, has a tonne of calcium thanks to the tofu and also, the nooch in the sauce is almost your RDA of B12 (my fortified soy milk made up the rest and I do supplement B12, as it's advised by RDs that everyone do this, not just vegans!)

The sauce from this recipe is inspired by a couple of recipes from Isa Chandra, who has a tonne of awesome recipes on her website: HERE.

Baked Tofu Bowl With Miso-Tahini Sauce
Serves: 1
Syns: 3

Ingredients (the purple ingredients have syns, the rest are free foods):
1/2 a pack of Cauldron original tofu
Chinese 5 Spice Powder
Soy Sauce
Frylight

Cooked basmati rice (mine was about 50g or 1/4 cup dry, but use as much as you like)

1/2 a cup of frozen edamame/soy beans, thawed
Stir fry veggies of choice - I used:
Onion
Pepper
Carrot
Asparagus
1 tsp tahini 
2 tsp white miso
1 tbsp (scant) nutritional yeast (with B12)
Sriracha (technically has syns but the amount used is so small it is negligable)
Hot Water

Method
Cut the tofu into pieces, the size/shape is your choice. Place on a baking tray, sprinkle with 5 spice powder and spray with frylight. Bake at 200°C for 20 minutes. Flip, sprinkle the other side with 5 spice, spray with frylight and bake for another 15 minutes. When you remove from the oven, splash some soy sauce over them to season.

While the tofu is cooking, cook your rice and stir fry the veggies (you could do the edamame along with the other veg, but I wanted them separate) until soft. About 30 seconds before you take off the heat, splash some soy sauce over the veg and stir through.

To make the sauce, mix together the tahini, miso, nooch and a squirt of sriracha to taste (optional). Then add hot water a tbsp at a time and mix until you have the consistency you like.

Arrange everything in a bowl and drizzle the sauce over. I added a sprinkling of black sesame seeds as well but you can leave those off if you don't want the extra syns.

And here is the nutritional info from Cronometer for this dish (the protein is actually not quite that high, but they didn't have Cauldron brand listed, so I went with the nearest one).

Sal xXx

Food Diary

I didn't weigh last week, I'll be honest, I chickened out as I knew it'd be a gain cuz we've been eating crap!

The likely gain coming my way this Thursday doesn't bother me so much, but I'm really trying to be more mindful of eating to feel better.

Breakfast
- A pink grapefruit
- Alpro Go On Passionfruit (1.5 syns)
- Coffee with 200ml Alpro Hazelnut milk (1/2 HEA)

Snack
- Golden delicious apple

Lunch
- Vegan quorn pieces, onions and red peppers, cooked with some spices in Frylight
- Romaine lettuce and cucumber
- Follow Your Heart Blue Cheese dressing - 2 tbsp (7 syns, totally worth it but 1 tablespoon was probably enough!)
- tsp sesame seeds (1 syn)

Dinner
- Linda McCartney Red Onion Sausages
- Roasted veg, SW chips and roasted veg (sprouts, mushrooms, cauliflower and a bit of alpro go on mixed with srirach to dip (not enough to syn it).

Snacks/Drinks
- I roasted some edamame beans, seasoned with a bit of salt and some nutritional yeast (0.5 syns). No I'm not synning the beans, I know I probably should as they're technically a tweak but I'm not gonna. If SW allow a pack of ham or chicken pieces to be a free snack, then I'm keeping my edamames free!!
- 300ml Alpro light soya milk (other 1/2 HEA) throughout the day for cups of tea.
- Pepsi Max Cherry with lunch (I'm using up the cans I have then trying to cut out fizzy drinks!)
- About 2/3 litres of water
- Proper corn popcorn (3 syns)

I ended the day on 13 syns and forgot to have my HEB! I had planned to have walnuts but forgot to eat them.

Cronometer!

As I mentioned earlier, I am trying to eat a bit better to feel better - I have issues with stomach acid (reflux) and iron deficiency that rear their ugly heads when I eat like crap. So... just to satisfy my curiosity, I plugged everything into Cronometer to check I'm getting enough calcium, iron... etc and I'm a bit low on a few things!

Calories - I only ate about 1200; although I didn't find I was really hungry all day, I did get hungry and now I know why! I probably should have eaten some fruit to bump this up a bit so am going to try to make a conscious effort to do that.

Selenium - I have ordered some brazil nuts to get this in.

Vitamin D - I was way low! I probably will need to supplement that.

Others.. I hit my protein, iron, omega 3 and calcium goals - I do supplement Iron and Omega 3 (see below) though.

I did hit most of my RDAs and met my protein, fibre and carb goals. I did go way over my sodium goal though so I will need to look at that.

* I do take a few supplements:

• B12 (once or twice a week as one tablets is about 4000 x your RDA and I've never had a deficiency! My soymilk is fortified with B12 and so is my beloved Nooch, but it is recommended that everyone supplement B12 by RDs!)
• Vegan Omega 3
• Iron + Vit C (I went slightly over my RDA for Iron today, but I do supplement to ensure I get enough because I have a long history of iron deficiency from even before I was vegetarian!)
• Pro Biotic (Lactobaccillus Acidophilus) to help digestion
• Starflower oil - high strength

What are you eating today?

Sal xXx

What I ate video

No weigh in update this week because I couldn't get to group due to a work event. However, I'm pretty sure it'd have been another gain. But I'm back on track now and feeling quite inspired to stay on it until the weekend when I'll no doubt do some more damage :)

I decided to film a what I ate video and introduce myself a bit. If you are interested in that, here it is. Excuse my derp face thumbnail! haha

Have a great week everyone
Sal xXx

What I ate Yesterday

Here is a food diary of yesterday's eats:

For breakfast I had an Alpro Go-On Yogurt (1.5 syns) and a banana. And a litre of water throughout the morning.

For lunch, I had the last of the potato/leek soup I made the other day (free). I also had a packet of beef flavoured hula hoop pufts but forgot to take a pic (3.5 syns).

For a snack when I got home from work, I hate a massive hunk of raw cauliflower. I won't like, after a few mouthfuls it got weird! But I was hungry so I ate it.

Dinner was this chilli and rice. Super easy and tasty, recipe will be up later on tonight or tomorrow morning with my weigh-in results. The chilli and rice were free but I also added 3.5 syns worth of avocado on top because it's yummy!

I also made myself a mug cake out of my HEB oats that worked out at 0.5 syns and then I added some alpro coconut cream for 1.5 syns and a tablespoon of coconut choc shot for 2 syns. I didn't take a pic and it was kind of a stodgy mess, so I'm gonna have to work on that before I share the recipe.

I ended the day on 12.5 syns and used my HEA for Alpro Light Soya Milk and my HEB for 35g of oats. I drank about 2 litres of water, not including teas/coffees throughout the day.

Sal xXx