Food Fabulous Food

Hello again Fudgey Friends,

After publishing yesterday's post I realised that I hadn't given you the week 10 stats so here you are:

Stats for Week 10
Distance run this week 32.95km / 20.47 miles
Time running 3 hours 32 minutes 18 seconds

Now onto the food as promised:

Sweet Potato, Carrot, Chilli & Rosemary soup
2 small onions chopped
3 cloves of garlic chopped
1 large sweet potato peeled & chopped into small pieces
4 large carrots, peeled & chopped
1/2 tsp lazy red chillies
generous pinch of rosemary
vegetable oxo cube

I put the onions & garlic in a pan with a little water and cooked a couple of minutes till soft, I then added the red chilli & cooked for another minute, I then added the sweet potato, carrots, a vegetable oxo cube & topped up with water. I then added the rosemary and simmered for about 20 minutes. I then left to cool & blended.
We had this for dinner this evening & it was gorgeous. I just made it up myself inspired by a friend's facebook post about sweet potato mash with chilli & rosemary...so Thanks Alex. Mr Fudgey might have liked a little less chilli but he still enjoyed this. I'll be making this one again.

I also made another batch of banana & blueberry muffins for work.

We had invited Mum & Dad Smith for Sunday dinner so I made Haggis Filo Parcels & Plum sauce. We just love these so simple to make & so tasty.

Then for main course I made garlic chicken again so easy, simply stir fry chicken pieces & then once cooked add plenty of chopped garlic & stir fry a couple of minutes more. I also made 5 spice pork, pork strips marinated in sherry, soy sauce & chinese 5 spice powder. I use a tablesppon each of sherry & soy sauce & 1/2 teaspoon of chinese 5 spice powder per 100g of pork. I marinade the pork for at least 30 minutes & the stir fy with whatever veg take my fancy. Yesterday mange tout, baby corn, re & green peppers and red onion.
I served the main course with cous cous to which I added lemon juice, chopped cherry tomatoes and chopped spring onions.

We had a little cous cous left over so I added some chicken breast and some mint and Mr Fudgey and I both had this for lunch today.

And back to the running

Week 11 Run 1
Just a short 20 minute run today and did 3.24km. Nothing exciting to report....though legs feel very good after the ice bath

Blog Title
It occurred to me today that in 13 days time the Fudgey EHM Countdown will be over...I'll need a new blog title. I'll need some new challenges. I haven't booked anything yet, though I do fancy The Scottish Kilomathon, but I'm not signing up for anything till after the half marathon... we'll all just need to wait and see!

And that my dear friends is it for another day.

Take care everyone
love
Fudgey
xxx

Excuses

Hello Fudgey Friends,

Hope you have had a lovely weekend. We have had a fairly productive one.

Saturday
Yesterday we were up early & I wrapped my wee niece's birthday present, Mr Fudgey very kindly took it round to the post office. Mum and Dad Smith dropped in for coffee and to deliver a couple of parcels for us.
I had made another batch of plum chilli sauce for them to take away with them. Mum Smith served it with scallops & mussels & I hear it went down very well. In fact I am making another batch now & Mr Fudgey & I are going to have it with some pork fillet this evening. I also made another batch of my. homemade cereal bars, but this time I used cranberries instead of apricots & almond butter instead of peanut butter - they turned out great.
I then spent the afternoon doing housework, while Mr Fudgey was busy with the pc's & a few technical difficulties. An ENORMOUS Thank you to Paul for getting us up and running - very very much appreciated. Clumsy Fudgey then tripped on the hoover cable & came down hard on my knees - the right one taking most of the force & my right shoulder also hurting from trying to put my hands out to save myself. I really am a numpty sometimes. I spent the evening limping about being fed up with myself, though our lovely dinner of chicken & roasted vegetables did make me feel a bit better. I LOVE roasted veg....today I used red & white onion, chestnut mushrooms, courgette, red & green peppers, cherry tomatoes, garlic, a small tin of new potatoes, some extra virgin olive oil & of course my favourite Oil & Vinegar shop wild garlic mix. Chopped everything up & roasted in the oven for about 40 minutes. After dinner we watched a hilarious film called Zombieland.

Excuses
Do you ever find yourself making up excuses to yourself for why you can't do something? This is the frame of mind I went to bed in last night. 'I don't think I can do my long run tomorrow....my knee, shoulder and head hurt' I told myself. Then I realised 'Oh No I can't do my long run because I've left both pairs of my running shoes in my locker at the gym' But then I got into solution mode...wait & see how the knee etc feel in the morning, I could go up to the gym early & collect my shoes - in fact I could go in my kit put my shoes on & run back, or I could run wearing my non running trainers, it was a right battle between yes you can / no you can't parts of my brain.

Week 3 Run 4
I woke up this morning and just didn't want to run. I then also mistakenly thought it was an hour later than it actually was as we somehow thought the clocks changed this weekend...Doh. I hauled myself out of bed without even the energy to chat to hubby, pulled on my kit, ate one of my lovely cereal bars, put on my gorgeous new Garmin & headed out the door. I opted to try & run in my non running trainers. There is nothing wrong with these trainers - Nike Dart, it's my feet that are the issue - I'm a very severe over pronator so I have a pair of motion control shoes & a support shoe that I alternate for running - these help to balance my over pronation & prevent injury. This is a piece of Fudgey advice for all fellow runners out there - if you can, do get your feet & your gait assessed and get the appropriate shoes for you - it really does help. I'm a real girly girl & I would just buy things because they look nice or have pink bits :-) but when it comes to all my running kit I'm a a very sensible Fudgey.....though loads of it does have pink bits!
The run was awesome, the training plan had 80 minutes easy & I ran just over 81 minutes and managed 13.14km. This is my furthest run to date. I had set the garmin to autolap every km so was able to check my pacing which was pretty good today. When I got back home I uploaded all my garmin data to the garmin training centre....I am such I geek I love seeing my splits, calories burnt & my max speeds etc broken down over each km. I was also flying high from running 80 minutes with no stopping or walking at all - in fact I am positively looking forward to next weekends 90 minutes. I also had no aches, pains or niggles though now I do feel like I've run 13km but it feels good ;-D
Today I also tried a different energy boost gel. This time Science in Sport Smart 1 Now to say I actually like this would be stretching it slightly however this is the best I have tried so far. It was a lot less viscose than the others I've tried and a lot less sickly sweet. I took it after about 40 minutes and I think it did help as I'd only had my cereal bar before heading out. I need to start getting up earlier so I can eat a little more ahead of my long runs especially as they get longer.
There are a couple of minor issues to report - not injuries I don't know what to call them - annoyances really. I have cut my arm from my Doberman alarm rubbing the skin & I had a not very nice blood blister on the toe that has already lost a nail - I don't see these as bad things - I see them as proof that I'm becoming a real runner!

So the Stats for Week 3
Total distance run this week 36.11km
Total running time 3 hours 52 mins 16 secs
9 weeks today till the half Marathon :-$


and all this was by 10am this morning!!

After a well deserved muscle soak bath & some scrambled eggs, Mr Fudgey & I went into town and had a wee wander around the shops and stopped for coffee and cake - again well deserved I think.

We've also been & done a food shop and I have made a lamb chilli for tomorrow and the plum sauce for tonight.

Well time is marching on and I still have plenty to do so I guess I better leave you here and get on.

Take Care everyone

lots of love
Fudgey
xxx

So Much to Blog about… so little time

Hello all
I’ve had a busy few days since I last blogged on Saturday and so much I wanted to blog about but not enough time to sit down & get typing. So here goes I’ll try not to bore you too much.

Saturday:
We had Mum & Dad Smith over for dinner. I think it’s fair to say it was enjoyed by all.

Starter: Baked Haggis Filo parcels with plum chilli sauce
For the haggis filo parcels I took 4 sheets of filo. I sprayed one sheet with spray oil & then put another sheet on top. I cut this into quarters. I put approx a teaspoon of haggis in the centre & then scrunched up. I did the same with the other 2 sheets of filo. I then put the parcels on a baking tray sprayed with spray oil & baked in the oven at gas 4 for 20 minutes.
This made 8 wee parcels. You could also try this with vegetarian haggis.

The plum sauce was a bit of classic fudgey experimentation of just chucking stuff in but it turned out amazing:
4 plums stone removed & chopped up
60 ml water
30 ml white vinegar
Generous pinch of ground ginger
2 tablespoons of granulated sweetener
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
Wee bit of lazy red chillies

I put everything in a pan, brought to the boil & then simmered for 12 – 15 minutes. I removed from the heat & once cool blended till smooth. I made this in advance & simply reheated later when I wanted to use it.

Main Course: Roast Chicken Breast, Stuffed Tomato & pearl potatoes.
Decided to keep it simple & roasted my 4 chicken breasts in the oven.
Cooked 500g of pearl potatoes & drained & added a little bit of butter..

I made my stuffed tomatoes with light Philadelphia with basil, spring onions, red onion, a couple of cherry plum tomatoes, a little chopped red pepper & some wafer thin ham & of course not forgetting my oil & vinegar store wild garlic mix– pretty much per my previous blog on these. The plum sauce also got used with the main course as there was some left & everyone liked it :-)

Dessert: Chocolate Peach Flan
This is an adaptation of a favourite Scottish Slimmers Recipe of mine. So easy to make.
1 small flan base
1 small tin of peaches in juice
200g quark
Drop of vanilla essence
1 tablespoon granulated sweetener
Sachet of options hot chocolate

Remove sponge flan case from pack. Take a tablespoon of juice from the fruit & drizzle over flan. Mix quark with sweetener & vanilla essence. Spread this over flan base. Drain the remaining peaches & arrange on top of flan.
Mix the options hot chocolate with 1 to 2 tbsp of water to make a smooth fairly thick paste & then drizzle over the peaches. Put in the fridge and serve when ready. I served with a spoon of half fat crème fraiche.

You can vary the fruit, you can use any non flavoured soft cheese (eg Philadelphia) & you can experiment with the flavoured hot chocolates.


Week 2 Run 4
This should have been Friday’s swapped Run 3 consisting of 5 minutes easy run, 10 minute steady run, 10 minute temp run, 5 minute faster run, 10 minutes easy run = Total 40 minutes, however I find it quite hard to judge my pace outside so decided to just run. This will change soon though as I bit the bullet and ordered a Garmin :-D which I hope will really assist my training
It was a beautiful sunny Sunday morning and for the first time this year I ran outside without long sleeves or a hat. 8.16km and 49 minutes 16 seconds later I returned home a happy energised little Fudge. Mr Fudgey was amused by my co-ordinating pink & white top, pink watch & pink joggers alarm….I probably had a matching pink face too!
We headed out to see Mum & Dad Smith so we could deliver the Mother’s Day gift we forgot to give her on Saturday evening.
Then we headed over to Glasgow to meet some friends for a fabulous meal. It was great to catch up and a lovely evening was had by everyone, we weren’t even too late home and I am still on the half marathon training wagon ….though the wine did smell amazing.

So the Stats for Week 2
Total distance run this week 32.83km
Total running time 3 hours 29 mins 06 secs
10 weeks Sunday till the half Marathon :-$

Week 3 Run 1
Well a new week, a step closer to the half marathon, I was feeling positive that I managed 4 runs last week – yet I was not in the mood to run today! Training plan has a 35 minute easy run. Monday night is my weigh in night so I got home from work and started to get my stuff together and get ready to run, much procrastinating later I finally left 20 minutes later than I should have which meant either a) running or b) catching the bus, since I was in my running gear option a was the winner. I had to add an extra loop onto my route as I can make it to ‘fat club’ in a round 23 mins so I added an extra 2.76km on & managed to run 6.16km in 38 mins 31 seconds. 2 minutes 19 quicker than I ran the same route the previous week – so much for lack of running mojo. So this is my tip – even if you don’t fancy training – give it a try – you might be surprised – but if it’s not working for you don’t beat yourself up over it either. I find that I normally run best when I’m not up for it – I think it’s because there is no expectation and once I start running I unwind and all my frustrations / annoyance / stress get relieved even if just a little.

Week 3 Run 2
Interval Training day. 10 minutes easy run followed by 5 x (4 mins at tempo pace & 2 mins jog) finishing with 10 mins easy run. Another 8.48km clocked up.
I was so invigorated I also went on the cardio wave machine for 10 minutes
Then 3 sets 12 reps bicep curls 6kg dumbbells
3 sets 15 reps bosu squats
And then a lovely triset for my abs 3 sets of (15 ab extensions with 8kg medicine ball, 12 Russian twists with 8kg medicine ball & 15 reverse curls)

Well that’s my training right up to date so I’ll say cheerio for just now and will be back soon with more chat

Lots of love
Fudgey xxx