Naughty but nice - AnnaTheApple

August 14, 2013August 14, 2013

Enjoying my food

You know my feelings about cake. It’s my weakness. It’s my kryptonite. My heart’s desire and my biggest nemesis.

This bad boy was brought in to work yesterday (a present from a wife for her husband’s birthday):

Sonic the Hedgehog never looked more appealing. The guy is a software developer…so it kinda makes sense. Best wife ever? Seriously, husband, take note.

But I’ll come back to that cake shortly. First off let’s get started with WIAW and the ~~boring~~ other food I ate.

Thanks, Jenn!

I find some days are good days and some days are bad days when it comes to food. I use the word ‘bad’ lightly here because I’m a true believer that no food (or drink) is inherently bad. Oh sure, living on chicken nuggets and milkshake every day isn’t going to do your body any favours and will make you feel pretty rubbish eventually. But once in a while it can’t hurt! Newspapers love to scare us into submission, like pushing the idea that one sniff of a sausage will cause an immediate cancer epidemic. Whatever sells the papers…But in reality, I truly believe no food when eaten in moderation can cause our body’s irreversible damage.

That being sad, I like eating healthy, fresh food. Lots of vegetables, lots of fruit, meat, slow-releasing carbs…for me it’s not something I have to consciously work on because it’s second-nature to me.

This was dinner the other evening: smoked mackerel on a bed of lots of veggies, salad, slices of nectarine and sundried tomatoes

That’s not to say I’m the golden girl of nutrition. Far from it. I love me some sugar. Chocolate, sweets, ice cream… and of course cake.

My best intentions to try and have a day where I eat really well (i.e. avoid the copious amounts of biscuits and cookies at work and don’t consume too much chocolate in the evening) fell very short yesterday. I mean how could they not when you see such a beauty!

I ate a caramel flavoured slice from the top tier and a chocolate fudge slice from the bottom tier. And promptly felt quite sick.

Afterwards I needed to lie down in the foetal position for a while to recover.

But these things happen. Life happens. I’m not going to turn down an offering of a slice of Sonic the Hedgehog cake! I’d regret not trying it more than feeling a bit sick and a bit guilty after.

Like I said, cake is my nemesis…and it was damn good.

I’d also like to point out I wasn’t the only one who had two slices. There was a minority that I was joyfully part of…

Back to ‘proper’ food (i..e not just based entirely on sugar and food colouring haha)…one of my new favourite meals that I could literally eat every single day is this:

Three turkey sausages, broad beans (or other vegetable, I’m not fussy) and cauliflower mash with goat’s cheese. Hold the boat. This was delicious. I’ve had turkey sausages in the freezer for a while now but was inspired to do this meal by the lovely Laura.

The trick to this is to add a good amount of goat’s cheese to the cauliflower to really get the flavour zinging. Yes I said zinging.

Other than these meals, I’ve still been eating my usual stuff; loving the stir-fries and salads!

So basically my motto is, eat healthily but enjoy the good stuff too. Usually I try and ‘be good’ in the week so that I can relax at the weekend with a nice slice of cake in the evening, or a meal out with all the trimmings. But as you can see, this doesn’t always work out that way! But I won’t beat myself up about it because life is too short.

I will say though that I don’t think two slices of cake helped with running club in the evening. I felt very sluggish and a bit sick!! Ho hum.

Now I’m going to have a rant. A while ago I mentioned how annoyed I was getting with people using my mug. My lovely large mug, perfect for a good cup of coffee in the morning and a present from my mum. Yes I did leave it in the communal kitchen and no it did not have my name on it so my complaining was hardly that justified. I secretly glared at anyone I caught using it though.

It’s gone. It’s completely missing. I haven’t seen it in ages. I’m despairing. So I did what any sane, non-obsessed, normal person would do in a time like this. I created a poster and put it in the kitchen for all to see.

That picture is genuinely a photo of my mug. Ironic, I know.

Well, I’m in a state of mourning now as it’s been a week and all I’ve got are some sympathetic comments and strange looks. RIP mug.

I have lost a mug and possibly gained the title of “Weird Mug Girl”.

Happy Wednesday!

Have you lost something recently? I wouldn’t mind but, damn, that was a good sized mug.

What are you hopeless at resisting? It doesn’t have to be food. I’m also very and when it comes to anything running-related…what’s that? A new electrolyte drink that people are raving about? Let’s get five.

What’s your view on healthy eating and treats?

August 9, 2013

Taking a tumble in running

Friiiiiiiiday!

Nothing better than waking up Friday morning knowing it’s the weekend the next day. That’s pretty much the hardest part done, right? Sort of? I have spin Friday mornings which I currently have a love-hate relationship so it’s usually after that that I start celebrating. Today I quite enjoyed the session. I got the resistance right on the bike (last week I did it way too tough and really struggled to hit the RPMs) and felt like the time flew by. Got a spinning high I think!

Last night I went out with running club for our usual medium run (though I added a mile warm up before and a mile cool down after) around some local trails. We went on a new route and honestly it was brilliant. I felt really strong and speedy.

I like the trail runs as it’s so varied. We’re on road, then off-road, on a path, on the grass, in the forest…which I guess explains why the pace is all over the place. It’s brilliant.

Lately I’ve been really trying to work on my running form. I’ve been reading some articles and watching YouTube videos to help improve my form. For example, not over-stride my leg outside my centre of gravity, not bend at the hip…that kinda stuff.

Source

Interesting stuff! But it makes running a bit more of a mental thing. I was constantly trying to keep everything ship-shape. It requires a bit of concentration. Work in progress!

But unfortunately while running I managed to fall over a tree stump. *sighs* Maybe if I’d have spent a bit more time watching where I was going than checking how I was running I wouldn’t have fallen haha.

Please ignore my attire…PJs and compression socks post running and shower are an essential requirement

OK maybe not the best picture, but basically I’ve scraped all along my thigh. A very superficial injury but very painful as a load of skin has been scratched off. So annoying as well as this is the leg that I need to do lots of foam rolling on for my IT band. *sighs*

Anyway, it was more embarrassing than painful at the time. One of the other guys also took a tumble on the run as well and he hit his face which looked very painful! Crazy.

Moving on to food. I completely forgot to blog about this at the time so I just have to do it now. My lovely and amazing big sister baked me a cake the other weekend. She has suddenly got into baking and is whipping these cakes out like nobody’s business. All the while looking after an adorable but hyperactive 3 year old and almost 3 month old!! Super mum.

She made me a a red velvet cake with cream cheese vanilla frosting. Omg, omg, omg.

Can you hear that choir of angels singing in the background? That’s the soundtrack to this cake. Amazing. Thank you, big sis!

After enjoying a slice (or two) we popped it into the freezer in slices to stock up on our cake supply. An essential requirement in our household is we need cake in the freezer at all times. It got critical a few weeks ago when we were down to safety stock (one slice each left) but it’s back up to standard levels now. Panic over, people.

Time to get Friday done and dusted now. Enjoy your weekend!

What is your essential food requirement in your home? Oats, apples and cake. Absolutely no flexibility on that.

Have you ever taken a tumble on a run? Someone at work said “I guess you just went home then after that?” Yeah right, as long as nothing’s broken or sprained my motto is keep running!

What exercise highs have you enjoyed? Do you get them in strength training? What about yoga??

June 26, 2013

Cake and Recovery

Whew, I feel so much more human after getting some good night’s sleep for the past couple of days.

Honestly, the weekend adventures hugely took it out of me. And, this is going to sound CRAZY coming from me, but I have decided to not jump straight back in to running. My body is literally exhausted. I haven’t done cycling in years so to suddenly jump on a bike and cycle up a ~~mountain~~ large hill is quite a shock to my system. I’m happy to say my previous injury from the other week seems to have disappeared. However I now have a new twinge in the back of my knee but it doesn’t feel that serious. But ice, rest and cake should make things all better.

As annoying as it is, I’m going to take a break from running this week and try using the elliptical machine at work instead. I think I really need to just take some time to allow my leg to fully heal. The Challenge really didn’t help things just after getting better last week. I hate the elliptical but I think I need to do something to stop myself from going mad.

My next race is a 10 mile trail race through the New Forest (beautiful forest in the South of England) on 14th July so I’m hoping this break will be good enough to be better before then.

So speaking of cake…it was my birthday last week and I didn’t really get a chance to go into much detail about how I celebrated. Well I didn’t to be honest. I had the UK Challenge the next day and that went on until Sunday so celebrations were limited. But my amazing mother brought round cake in the evening. People, there is always time for cake.

How pretty is this cake?? It’s gorgeous! My mum isn’t a great baker. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her bake. Ever. I could controversially say I’ve never seen her cook…but I don’t want to incur the wrath of the mothership (love you, Mumsie!!)

But, despite not being Nigella Lawson, my mum knows how to SHOP. And she did good on picking this beauty out. A Waitrose special cake (for those non-UK-based, Waitrose is like the queen of all supermarkets. Maybe just one below M&S Food).

However, the decorative butterflies could not be eaten we quickly found. Very disappointing and slightly nasty to chew. But otherwise, a very tasty jam and buttercream birthday cake sponge.

At work I was also give some very beautiful flowers from my lovely co-workers.

So I felt very spoilt despite having a mid-week birthday with no weekend celebration!

And in the morning (I’m working my way backwards through the day here for some reason…) my husband, Ben, decided to send me on a bit of a treasure hunt around the house. He had printed out lots of different pictures of my favourite clothes shops and running gear shops and restaurants (and hid them all about the place with clues to direct me to them). I could pick and choose what I wanted in terms of spending some money to get some clothes and going somewhere to have a nice meal. There were also little pictures of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and our favourite Indian restaurant so that’s on the horizon too hehe. So lots all my favourite things to look forward to!

From my parents they gave me a Lululemon workout top. SO chuffed. I’ve seen this top all over the Internet I loved the design.

Not sure how much I’ll get to wear this year round due to the weather though! Best get wearing it soon

From my mother-in-law she bought me a Lumie Bodyclock Starter Alarm Clock.

Not hugely necessary at the moment as it’s so light in the morning…but in the winter this will mimic the light of a sunrise and will, supposedly, gradually wake me up just before my alarm. I love being woken up my sunlight in the morning at the moment so this will be great (hopefully!) in the winter when it doesn’t get light until like ~~ever~~ 9ish.

On to some food-related news…stir-fries are back in the game again. Anything where more than half the meal is veg is a winner for me. I’m not sure it even warrants a recipe (basically throw together a load of veg, noodles, chicken and a handful of cashew nuts). But I did make my own sauce and that was pretty tasty.

Lemon Stir-Fry Sauce (serves 2)

2/3 cup chicken stock
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. sugar
1 tbsp. flour/corn starch (to thicken it)

So easy, so tasty.

Psst! I’ve got some exciting news which I will divulge soon in my next post!

What’s your favourite stir-fry sauce? I love lemon, but I quite like black bean as well.

What do you like getting for your birthday? I’m not great with surprises so I usually ask for things I’ve seen previously. From Ben I just said surprise me and I was so chuffed he put so much effort into the treasure hunt and in the end letting me choose what I wanted from a predefined list (which he knew I’d love haha).

Do you like being woken up early by the sun? Though it means I can’t sleep in at the weekend I love having the whole day ahead of me and feeling all refreshed.

June 12, 2013

What a surprise…

Howdy people. How’s your week going? Mine has been dampened by the cold weather and some bad running-related news (I’ll get to that in a minute).

But firstly, to pull me out of my dark and shady place (OK, I’m being dramatic), I must share a couple of the new-to-me meals I’ve been having lately. After spotting THIS recipe on Jessie’s blog I knew I had to try it.

Basil Avocado Chicken

I changed it slightly as I added in a load of random veg with the chicken and I also added a big dollop of Philadelphia cream cheese (because, let’s be honest, everything tastes amazing with cream cheese). Also, being lazy and reluctant to do more washing up than strictly necessary, I didn’t food process the avocado. I just chopped everything up, fried it until it all became melted and then threw in the cream cheese.

I loved it. It was nice to have smooth avocado bits and chunks of unmelted avocados randomly throughout. I don’t eat avocado that much (mainly because Ben ~~runs screaming from it~~ hates it) so this was such a nice change. Basil and avocado are a great combo.

Salads have been a regular meal as well when the weather was sunny.

This was a citrus themed salad. Chicken with goat’s cheese and loads of different veggies and chunks of orange drizzled in lemon juice and olive oil. Fresh and zingy.

And just to throw this one in there…Cake of the week (though strictly speaking there were two cakes of the week, but this one ROCKED – no pun intended): rock buns. I’m loving how ‘non-artificial’ this brand is. Let’s be honest, cake will never be classed as a superfood (I know, it’s upsetting) but having a ‘clean’ cake is surely the closest thing to it.

I have never had a rock bun before but when I saw them in the shop they looked like giant cookies so I was sold. And honestly the jokes are endless

Surprisingly they weren’t rock hard. They were soft in the middle. Like oh-my-god-this-is-amazing-soft-in-the-middle. With raisins, sugar dusting and a hint of cinnamon. I’m going to aim to not buy these every week but seriously it will be hard.

This is yesterday’s outfit. I’m not a massive fan of the selfie photo but when I feel particularly happy with an outfit I feel the need to share because most of the time I don’t have much style. Though arguable the below picture doesn’t prove otherwise

Tops from New Look, Owl necklace from Mango, Jeans from Topshop, Shoes from Tesco

Loving the peep toe shoes: let’s pretend it’s summer. And gotta love the photo bomber having a good old stretch there.

In terms of running…ack. Surprise surprise I have acquired a small injury. I knew this would happen – and I’m sure you’re not surprised if you’ve been following my huge running obsession lately. Serves me right for running so many damn races. I could feel something wasn’t quite right last week (hence the sports massage I had). It was fine during the runs at the weekend but afterwards my right thigh was really painful when I went up and down stairs. I thought it was fine but when I went for a run Tuesday morning within minutes I was in pain and it just wasn’t happening. So I turned round and went home. There’s a way to ruin your day before 7am.

I did a bit of Googling (as you do) and worked out it was my IT band.

So I booked in with the physio (again) and managed to swag an appointment that day. She confirmed it was my IT band and that I needed to take five days off of running. FIVE days. She did some ultrasound and acupuncture on me and gave me some stretches to do at home. She’s a great physio but I couldn’t help but be miserable. But I’m going to be sensible. Five days ~~is a lifetime~~ isn’t that long and it’s not worth risking a serious injury and being out of the game for weeks or even months.

Even if I start twitching…

I’m not ~~bitter~~ that bitter. I didn’t glare at Ben as he went for a run this morning…much. I’m going to try to use my time productively. In effort to be a better, healthier runner it’s time to get back into the strength training groove. Woo, woo, party on. So instead of running this week I’m working on my strength training. Joy of joys.

For all the you gym bunnies and proper strength training experts, I know this looks pathetic. Humour me.

So at the moment it’s nothing leg-focused as I want to fully heal. I want to start working on my core again. After reading a ~~gazillion~~ few running articles on injury prevention I realise I’m definitely not being a smart runner. I need to be more balanced and not just run, run, run. So I’ll be aiming to do this at least once a week to begin with. When my leg is better then I’ll add things like squats and lunges, etc.

I can hardly contain my excitement. Not

Make sure to check out Peas and Crayons for the What I Ate Wednesday link-up!

Pssst, also check out Jemma’s great Simply Bridal giveaway – click HERE.

Have you had an injury before? Did you cope well with resting? I’m just feeling all annoyed that I let this happen and that it’s stopped me just as I was feeling like a superstar. But I guess that’s just it really, never take it for granted and let your ego take over. Don’t be stupid: stretch, foam roll, listen to your body.

Have you ever had an issue with your IT band? I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t know what the IT band was before this…

What’s your favourite avocado recipe?

Have you tried rock buns before? Because you should. Like now.

June 5, 2013

You can never have too many puddings…

I don’t know about you but this week is dragging. But it’s finally mid-week. On a side not, embarrassingly, it has taken me ages to get why people say “happy hump day” on a Wednesday. Yep, I’m that slow. (Pssst, if you didn’t know too it’s because you’re over the ‘hump’ of the week!)

And being Wednesday I’m back in the game for What I Ate Wednesday.

Thanks, Jenn, for hosting as ever.

This is food is from Sunday – aka 5 mile race day (recap still to come!)

Breakfast – what a surprise I know. If you’ve been a long-time reader you know this is fairly standard stuff. And on race day it isn’t going to change!

Oatmeal and unsweetened almond milk

I had this before 8am, the race started at 10.30am so enough time to digest adequately! And perfect fuelage for the race.

And to make things interesting, here’s what Ben ate:

He wanted to share as he felt his breakfast was up to healthy standards for once He went for oatmeal with cow’s milk, dried fruit and a chopped banana. Notably absent was any added sugar!

After the race, hanging about chatting to people and getting home, we were famished! So we straight away had lunch.

This is re-used photo as I forgot to snap it before the hunger beast took over

I had one of my favourite quick meals. Chicken, random veggies and half a tin of pumpkin puree with cream cheese. I know it looks pretty grim there, but seriously this is heavenly.

Sunday was a great day of snacking as well… I might have had another one of these my granddad had left with us:

Meringue with dark chocolate and strawberry on top

And dinner was another repeat offender but one we hadn’t had in a while.

Beef meatballs. Mine is on the left and Ben’s is on the right. If he can put cheese on something, he will. I love this meal. I am still loving beef mince.

And pudding…well pudding was fantastic.

This was a slice of raspberry sponge cake that I got at the end of the 5 mile race. No medals, but a choice of cakes! That’s my kinda running. I didn’t eat it straight after the run as I just didn’t fancy cake straight away (food immediately after running just doesn’t go well in my stomach, plus I wanted to savour it later with a hot drink), so I had it after dinner with a hot chocolate. And I reaaaally enjoyed it.

Er…I might have nabbed another slice of cake as well at the race. I twinkled my eyes and gave my best smile to wrangle another slice of cake… Absolute lie, I offered cold hard cash. All of 50 pence to be exact

Slice of banana bread (infected a little with the raspberry sponge)

Unfortunately I had to share this slice with Ben. *Sighs* I do hate being married. Totally joking

An honourable mention this week is the appearance of one of our favourite salads.

Grilled halloumi (or fairly well done halloumi, whoops) with a whole host of veggies and roasted butternut squash. Divine.

As you can, I love my balance. On the one side I’m a huge fan of salads, fresh vegetables, home-cooked meals, and obviously my beloved and ever-present apples. But on the other side, I will always have my cake. Cake is my indulgence. Cake is my weakness. I need it every week to feel 100% Anna and 100% happy. It’s my soul food. I like to give my body good foods and good fuel to keep it healthy and happy. But for my soul, my mind, my spirit – whatever you want to call it – I need cake. My happy food. Don’t get m wrong I don’t have it every day (seriously, who can afford cake every day?) but it definitely makes a routine appearance every week. Whether I’m curled up on the sofa watching a film on a Saturday night, or sat in a cafe having a chinwag with my mum, or munching on something a co-worker has brought in to the office, I will have my cake. And it is always eaten

Just don’t get me to choose between cake and apples. It can’t be done.

What is your soul food? It doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘naughty’! I would class apples as my soul food too. Basically it’s the food I always look forward to eating, always enjoy eating, it never gets old, and always makes me a happy happy Anna.

What are your repeat offender meals? Halloumi salads are a winner in our house, but meatballs are more of a weekend food as they take a bit longer to throw together,

What’s your ideal pre-race/workout fuel? Oatmeal has always worked (race or no race). Ben will always have a banana but sometimes will leave it at that or have something bigger.