I've been looking forward to this all day

Sleeping in until 8:30am is usually unheard of for me

However I definitely needed it and felt a lot better for sleeping for a long time (although I still woke up to go to the toilet during the night!). Today has been incredibly productive, both in work and in my personal life which always makes me feel happy as I like feeling like I've achieved something.

Breakfast was another Soreen malt loaf breakfast bar and at 11:00am I had a banana - Rock and Roll! I didn't know what I wanted for lunch, however when I drove to Tescos, I had a big craving for scrambled eggs on toast, so that's what I went for - with a little ketchup on the top, it was lovely! I then managed to phone up the Bank and sort out another savings account (so I can start saving money as I won't be entitled to maternity pay from my company) and then phoned up the storage company and confirmed a storage Unit from 1st November onwards... The boxes I ordered from eBay turned up shortly after that, so I was happily packing things up, in preparation for moving in with my Boyfriend.

Work wasn't too bad either, considering I was working from home - I had quite a few phone conferences, however they all went fine and I managed to crack on with a few things which was good. 

Then came the meeting I'd been looking forward to for the last 3 weeks - seeing my counsellor. I didn't mention 3 weeks ago, however I turned up to my regular appointment and she wasn't there - it totally and utterly threw me and I was very upset, whilst the logical explanation was that she got the dates I was on holiday mixed up, I couldn't help thinking that maybe she didn't like the fact I said I wasn't happy being pregnant and had decided not to see me any more, or, God forbid.. something had happened to her. 

Nope, it was just the fact she had got the dates mixed up, but I was really upset as wanted to talk to her about the Midwifes appointment and how I was feeling. As I then went on holiday, I hadn't seen her for 3 weeks and it was really good to talk about everything - About how I feel, how scared I am, how worried I am about losing control of my body, putting on weight, things changing - It's just terrifying really. 

Having someone who doesn't judge you, who listens and doesn't tell you how you should feel is really good - especially at the moment. She seemed to understand I was scared and petrified about the thought of a vaginal birth and said that she could understand why I didn't feel I could go through with it. She also said that maybe it would get worse, before it gets better, but it will get better at some point. I'd certainly like to think so - It's not going to be 9 months of feeling like this, surely?

She also said that it's a shock... I started off this year dreading my wisdom teeth removal.. got over that.. had a great job I enjoyed, then I started getting bullied at work... then I changed jobs... and now, 9 months later, I find myself just under 2 months pregnant. Life never stays still, does it? If I took today on its own, I'd be like 'Yeaaah, this is fine, I can do this for 7 months' as I've not been feeling too sick or tired, however I'm just waiting for my mood to flip and feel like crap again.... 

One thing that did make me happy today was my dinner - A baked sweet potato with lots of beans and coleslaw - EPIC DINNER! I don't know why, but I've been looking forward to this all day and it was absolutely perfect, I managed to eat quite a lot of it and not feel sick at all :-) 

Tomorrow night I'm seeing my drama friend which should be nice as I've not seen her for a while actually. Not sure what we'll do in regards for dinner, but I'm sure it will be something nice :-)

Healthy fish and chips with only 5 ingredients

I love this recipe

I love fish and chips, however I'm not overly keen on the greasiness, nor what it does for my waist line so I developed a healthier version. It's incredibly simple and as I can be pretty lazy and impatient in the kitchen, works for me really well!

Your five ingredients

And here we go!

1. Cod (or whatever fish you want)

2. A sweet potato (1 per person)

3. A tin of mushy peas (I will eat the whole tin, but depends how much you like them)

4. Olive oil

5. Cajun spice

Preheat oven to about 200c fan / 220c normal oven

1. Peel and chop the sweet potato into chips - You can do wedges, you can do whatever you want, however I've found chips about this size, take about 40 mins in the oven so make sure you know how long they take to cook! 

2. Place chips on baking tray, drizzle a tablespoon of oil... coat the chips in oil and then sprinke approx 2 tablespoons of Cajun spice on the chips. You can do more, you can do less, I'm not keen on spicy things, however this spice really doesn't seem to have a lot of kick in it. If you wanted them plain, then that's cool.. or maybe even try a different spice?

3. Chuck chips in oven for 20 mins.

4. Grab some silver foil (you don't need to do it this way, but I prefer it) and brush some oil on the foil. Place fish in the middle of the foil and close - I tend to make it like a giant silver pasty.. but you can cook the fish how you wish... I just prefer steaming it in the oven in its own juices.

5. After 20 mins, check on the chips and turn them over... (else one side cooks more than the other) 

6. After another 5 minutes place fish in oven

7. After another 15 minutes (so 40 for the chips, 15 minutes for the fish) check on both... they should be ready!

8. Quickly zap the peas in the microwave (if you have a microwave, I'm backward.. so don't!) for a few minutes whilst you're dishing up the rest of the food... and voila!

AWESOME TASTING FISH AND CHIPS :-)

As I'm not a food technician or nutritionist, I'm not entirely sure how many of your five a day this covers, however I'm guessing it's two.... one with the sweet potato and one for the peas? Also.. you've got fish which is low in fat and really good on the protein front, so I think you're hitting a lot of the 'good' foods when you shove this into your gob!

Slumming it Sunday

Sometimes the mundane days are the days I need the most willpower

Sunday has been lovely - nothing crazy, nothing different, but just, nice... I saw my sister and my lovely niece and we went for a walk, fed the ducks and caught up. It's funny, as I don't have any children of my own (yet), the first 18 months of my nieces life seemed rather boring - as she was mostly an eating, pooping, crying machine - seeing her today and talking to her in coherent sentences was both amazing and slightly unnerving.

Going for a walk in the park and feeding the ducks was both nice to get out and also nice to spend time with my sister - She only lives 40 miles away, but because we both work and she has a child and a Husband, it's been hard to see her as much as I used to - It feels only yesterday all 3 of my sisters and I were at home, in Wiltshire, trying to kill each other as children! :-)

My sister gave me the massive bag of rhubarb that my Mother had kindly passed her to give to me. Apparently she has been overrun with rhubarb in her garden so was trying to find people to give it to - I mentioned I'd be happy to take some off her hands and try and find some low fat recipes to use it in, so she harvested a massive bag of the stuff (watch this space for low fat recipes using rhubarb in the next few days!).

It's been an odd day in terms of food -

Breakfast was porridge as per usual, however lunch was some slices of chicken and a snack-pack of malt loaf. Dinner was a lean gammon steak, some sweet potato chips and half a tin of BBQ Beans. Hardly the most un-processed of meals, however not laden in either fat or calories. I don't have anything fresh in at the moment and as I spent all of yesterday with my boyfriend and all of today with my sister, I've not been able to do a proper food shop!

The fact I'm not working tomorrow is absolutely brilliant. A lovely day with a friend beckons :-)

Hardware failure & Venison burgers

Dell servers are great, until they fail....

I'd like to think I'm quite knowledgeable in terms of how healthy a particular food is.... I also think I'm quite knowledgeable in I.T... and one thing I know is that when you see 'CPU needs reseating' on a Dell Power-edge server, you know it's not a good thing.

So, once again, there were issues at work which really wasn't good - Everyone got stuck in to try and resolve the issue, however my anxiety was pretty high and I felt ill that my Boss was going to phone me up and have another go at me.... 

Lunch was another portion of my Moroccan chicken with butter-nut squash and whole wheat couscous and dinner was a Sainsburys Venison burger, sweet potato chips and half a tin of BBQ beans. 

Yeah.. I know - I'm not going to win any medals for food photography, am I? However, despite the fact it might not be displayed overly professionally here, it was actually really nice. 

Let's break down the calories and fat...

1 Venison burger- 165 calories and 5.7 g of fat. 

1 portion of sweet potato chips - 180 calories - 7g of fat

1/2 tin of BBQ beans - 171 calories and 0.5 g of fat

TOTAL = 516 calories and 13.2g of fat

That's pretty awesome actually. I'm happy with that and it felt like a decent and nice meal without me having to scrimp on anything. I also had a chocolate desert - However I still tried to make a healthy choice, so had a Marks and Spencers chocolate muffin desert...

So my entire meal was 670 calories and 15g of fat, which I'm totally cool with :-) 

I don't usually analyse calories, I don't want to be one of those people who can be a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to calories, but I think it's good to sometimes do a 'spot check' to make sure I'm not eating too much. 1200 to 1500 a day is fine with me at the moment so today is a WIN!

I'm glad tomorrow is Wednesday - half way through the week already! 

Motivation isn't too bad at the moment... still trying to take it just one day at a time...