I am a great food smuggler :-)

Today has been a really fun Saturday

I always find it funny when I look forward to the weekend thinking I'll get a lie in, and I end up waking up pretty much the same time as I would, on a weekday! After getting up I decided to do a spot of early morning food shopping so I could ensure I had some healthy food for today as I went to the Rewind Festival with my friend and her friends. I had a bit of a conundrum in regards to what to buy for lunch as what food can cope with being in a hot handbag for a few hours and not go off? In the end, I decided to buy a salad with extra ham from Marks and Spencers and just eat it as soon as I got there!

I bought some strawberries from Tescos and had a really nice breakfast with them and a banana :-) I also followed that up with a slice of malt loaf an hour and a half later, so was trying to eat little and often.

I arrived at Rewind at 12:00 and met my friend and her friends in the queue. As we were walking to the gates, I remarked that I didn't have a camping chair to sit on, like them... however I did have some food. Then my friend told me - I wasn't allowed to bring food into the festival and it's one of the conditions.... Whoops! You can tell I'm not a regular festival goer :-) As we got closer to the security... I did indeed see them checking bags. Hrm... I was prepared to have to throw it away, however had recently bought a new handbag for work - one which has 2 main compartments in the middle. A quick readjustment and zipping one of them up, I tried my luck by only showing them one of the compartments... Guess what? It worked! Hurrah! I wandered past the security people feeling rather smug :-)

We wandered through the festival and found a really good place to sit, quite near the middle. We then went to find the toilets - one of my friend's friends had a slightly disability and as such, she bought 'posh toilet' passes - you pay additional money to go to very nice portaloos, rather than the usual type of toilets you get at festivals. Apparently she had bought one for each of us - I said that was cool and thanked her... and asked how much I owed her - £30.... Oh.. My.. God... £30! As I'm quintessentially British and in some ways, a bit of a pushover, I said that was fine... however guess what? I only used the toilet twice.. so that's basically £15 per toilet break.. really, really mental. Next year I think I'll be totally up front and say that I'll just use the normal toilets....

The festival was awesome - The weather was also really great until about 7:30pm when it started raining... However just to sit in the sun, chatting, listening to music.. it was great. I ate my salad and throughout the day, also ate my Nakd bar and some malt loaf so I didn't actually need to buy anything from any food stalls except water and a diet coke :-)

When my friends friends asked if I wanted anything, I politely declined - My friend said 'Imogen is very disciplined when it comes to healthy eating' which I thought was really nice.. I certainly don't feel very disciplined as if I was - I'd be a lot thinner than I currently am, however it felt nice that that's how she sees me.

We listened to Billy Ocean.. Hot Chocolate.. Belinda Carlisle... amongst others - Despite being born in the 80's I was actually surprised how little of their songs I knew! Still, it was great fun and loads of people dressed up in really awesome 80's costumes. I have to say, I've been to a few other types of festival - Reading Festival being the main one and the atmosphere is just so different... Rewind is just so 'relaxed' everyone is so nice and friendly whereas I find certain other festivals quite different - people throwing bottles of urine, glass in the crowds.. It's just not as pleasant and I can't relax as much.

I left before the main act as I'm still kinda getting used to work and felt quite tired, however noone minded. I'm now sat in my PJ's whilst my dinner is being cooked - turkey with baked small potatoes and steamed veg :-)

Eating healthy without a fridge or cooker - HELP!

A total brain puzzler

So, I’m on this ‘work thing’ overnight and from lunch time today until about 7pm tomorrow (Friday) I’ll be in a very remote location, limited WIFI and only a ‘snack shop’ for food. I’m one of the few people staying in a local hotel as the rest of my colleagues (approx. 100 men and about 10 women) will be sleeping on the floor and wherever they can find a space (Yes, it really is an ‘interesting’ company….). I’m such a light sleeper, the prospect of sleeping on the floor with people I don’t necessarily know very well, drunkenly talking, laughing and crying until early hours of the morning.

It also poses the question of food – what am I going to eat?

Well, for breakfast this morning was the obligatory porridge and as I’m trying not to waste as much food, I actually made myself a chicken fajita for lunch from the leftover bits I had last night after my friend left. I also have a pot of porridge for tomorrow and called into Marks and Spencers this morning to grab some grapes and strawberries and some packs of low fat crisps.

The one thing I’ve realised is: Most of the low fat food needs to be refrigerated or cooked before eating – Think about it, low fat sandwiches, yogurts, ready meals, vegetables – you can’t just leave them in your car overnight and expect them to be edible. Even my beloved houmous needs to be kept in a fridge (and I know that to be true after ‘Houmousgate’ a few weeks ago when it had been in a hot car for 2 hours and tasted pretty awful).

So what could I bring that's:

1. Healthy

2. Doesn't require a fridge to be kept in

3. Doesn't require cooking.

4. Fills me up

Honestly, I've been racking my brains for the last 2 days and haven't come up with a lot of things.

Unfortunately, I'm still rather stumped and I'm writing this at 23:30, having been on my feet for the last 6 hours, solid! After I got to the venue, I helped lift chairs into a van, drive the van, stick duct tape over errant cables for health and safety reasons and really got 'stuck in' to the event.... my usual dinner time came and went and by 8:00pm, I was feeling ravenous, not to mention, really thirsty as I'd got dehydrated doing all the lifting, moving and taping in the 25 degree heat.

All my colleagues were eating the food provided to them - nachos with chili and

cheese and I went to my car and ate a small handful of grapes, a bag of M&S 'Moroccan Spiced chick pea shells' and drank a whole litre of water. I think the whole lot came to about 130 calories which is dangerously low and not something I want to repeat. I managed to leave the venue at 22:50 and am now back in my hotel, utterly knackered.

If this was a regular event, I'd really need to plan better - On the one hand, I'm proud of myself as I didn't eat the unhealthy option, on the other hand, I'm kicking myself for not eating enough healthy stuff and worrying my body will go into starvation. I think I'm going to visit the local supermarket tomorrow (I found one quite close!) and buy a healthy and filling lunch tomorrow - maybe pasta salad? something that releases energy quite slowly but should fill me up. I'll also find something I can nibble on a few hours later as I don't think I'll be getting back home until after 21:00 and I don't want to make the same mistake again.

Knackered... Bed... Urgh.

But seriously, what can you eat that's healthy and doesn't need putting in the fridge or cooking?

Northumberland - Day 1

Looks like we brought the sunshine with us

Today has been absolutely fantastic so far. We managed to drive to Northumberland in less than 5.5 hours yesterday, so arrived at my partners parents house at 11:30pm. I was actually quite pleased with myself as I managed to drive over 2 hours in his large Audi, which is really different to my little Corsa.  As usual, we were welcomed with opened arms and spent the next hour and a half chatting to his parents in the living room. I'm really lucky as his Mother is absolutely lovely and so friendly - She knows I'm usually trying to eat heathily, therefore rather than buy any kind of 'junk' food, she went out and bought all kinds of fruit which was so thoughtful of her.

After heading to bed at 1:00am, I awoke at 7:00 and wandered next door to cuddle up to my boyfriend for a bit (his parents don't mind us sleeping together, but I'm such a light sleeper, I actually prefer having my own bed!) before we headed downstairs for the days excitement - Breakfast was my usual Porridge and blueberries, if you look at the photos on my last blog post you should see the 4 pots of porridge in my suitcase :-) 

My boyfriends Mother really likes feeding people and as I had brought my breakfast with me for the next 4 days, I think she wanted to make sure we were both completely full, so she made us a massive tupperware box of fruit and handed it to us before we went out the door. It smelt and looked amazing, however in my head I was thinking 'God, that's more fruit than I eat in 3 days, let alone 1' However, politely accepted it, said thank-you and was grateful it was fruit she was giving us and not chocolate or sausage rolls.

Once happily fed and watered, we headed out to Sea Houses to find an available boat tour so we could go to the Farne Islands and take photos of both puffins and seals and enjoy the fact that the sea looked beautiful, blue and most importantly - very calm! 

As we approached Sea Houses, it was clear to see that it was far busier than we've seen it before - I guess that's because it's June and usually, we go to Sea Houses in December or April (Christmas or Easter time) Thankfully we managed to park and went to see if we could buy tickets to go on the boat. Unfortunately, whilst waiting in the queue, I heard the woman telling another person in the queue that all the landing trips had completely sold out for today - there were only 'stay on the boat' trips left. As I really want to take photos of Puffins, this wasn't going to work for us, so we decided to put our names down for the boat trip tomorrow and change our plans as to what to do today.

On our way back, we went past Bamburgh, the beautiful castle to our right hand side on the hill. We had a quick wander on the beach and I suggested my boyfriend take a 'selfie' of us. This is actually quite a monumental moment as I really dislike how I look - I don't think I'm attractive in any way, shape or form so tend to prefer to be behind the camera, rather than in front of it. Oddly enough, I think it turned out really nicely, is this my brain changing how I feel about myself? maybe,.. I'd like to look at photos of us and think back to all the lovely things we've done in the past.

We also made a quick pit-stop for some kippers. I love kippers and the ones you can get from Craster are apparently rather famous, either way, they certainly taste delicious. Not only did I buy some in a packet, I decided to buy a 'kipper in a bun' for lunch. However, rather than just eating the bun, I just ate the kipper and gave my boyfriend the bun - He was only too happy to devour it, along with his 'crab in a bun' as well. I also bought some beef jerky to have for lunch - I appreciate it's hardly the most balanced of meals, however when you're out and about, it's hard to be completely prepared so I jumped at the chance of eating low fat protein, as opposed to opting for a scone, clotted cream and jam, which the cafe next door to the kipper shop was advertising.

As I was in the shop, I noticed a sign - 'Don't look down on others, unless you're trying to help them up', which I thought was really nice and also a good motto to live by. I dislike the fact people judge each other so much and I know I've been guilty of that in the past. 

Having devoured the kipper and jerky, we headed back to base camp to drop off the kippers (and the sausage rolls my boyfriend had bought for his parents) and headed out again to go to Vindolanda, which is a massive roman fort near Newcastle. The weather was still looking good and we made good use of the fact it was only 3:00pm when we arrived. 

The place was a lot bigger than we imagined - there was a really comprehensive museum, an absolutely huge site full of Roman ruins and also a really nice shop and cafe, all hidden in utterly beautiful surroundings. As we went round, I was really happy that I was spending my day with my boyfriend and not at the Hell hole, more commonly referred to as 'work'. 

We spent a good hour walking around and reading about what the different ruins were used for. I feel quite at home when it comes to the Romans as I went to a school that taught us Latin for 5 years, so I actually have a good idea what the Romans got up to and can pretend I'm super smart when translating the odd Latin word :-)

Despite not feeling it, we've done over 6,800 steps today, so the exercise isn't going too badly and I imagine there will be a few more tonight when we go out to an 'All you can eat' sushi restaurant. I know the words 'All you can eat' and 'Healthy eating' don't always go together, so I'm going to try and be very mindful of what, and indeed, how much, I'm eating. 

Productive and positive Tuesday

Today has been bliss so far.

Not having to get up and go to work has vastly improved my mental state, positivity and motivation. After a lie in, listening to the birds,  reading my book with a cup of (green) tea, I changed the sheets, cut the grass, fed the birds, put the washing on, had a shower and had my breakfast which was strawberries and blueberries and was really nice - I would have had raspberries as well, however they seemed to be mouldy, so I threw them away. One of the dangers of fresh fruit, I guess!

I was rather chuffed as I tried on some size 16 jeans which were too tight to wear a month ago and whilst they're still snug, they actually fitted! This really motivated me to continue as I really don't like playing Russian roulette with my jeans - every time I wash them, am I still going to be able to fit into them if I've been eating junk food and rubbish?

After breakfast, I went food shopping to get things for the rest of the week - I've never actually gone food shopping at 11:00am before and it was just really nice - far less people, no queues at the tills, people seemed much less harassed and the whole experience was far, far nicer than at a weekend. I drove back in the sunshine, hung up the washing and started on lunch which was a really nice chicken salad. I appreciate I'm not the worlds most amazing food photographer, however it comprised of beetroot, lettuce, pepper, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, roast chicken and a little bit of crumbled feta cheese with balsamic glaze - utterly delicious and I actually felt really virtuous eating it. 

I've already made dinner which is 'Mediterranean vegetables with lamb' and it's in the slow cooker, cooking. I'm seeing my boyfriend tonight so I thought I'd make the most of the slow cooker, considering I don't have to work and throw something together quite quickly. Fingers crossed it will turn out nicely - if so, I'll share the recipe, if not.. I won't inflict it on anyone else! 

The next couple of hours are going to be spent watching 'The curse of the witching tree' which I have to say, after 15 minutes, I'm not overly impressed, but hey ho... there seem to be a lack of good horror films out at the moment!