Getting motivated.

I know that I'm not the only one when it comes to being so stressed out that you just want to eat junk food and binge Netflix in your spare time, rather than having to face the world. For me the root of all evil is poor time management and shit motivation. After battling my lazy daemons I have found that "relaxing" with my favourite shows and playing videos games on my days off is actually counter productive. I don't feel relaxed at all, I end up worrying about all the things I haven't been doing and wonder why procrastination is always my first choice. Well it ain't no more, I have managed to get my vegan arse into gear and get on with all the stuff. Here are my top tips for getting on with life whilst feeling healthy and motivated.

Drink water.
Its surprising how quickly your body becomes dehydrated without you realising. Drinking a bottle of water ever day, three times a day can make you feel insanely good. You will notice the difference. After buying myself a nice new bottle and filling it with water every night to put by my bed for the morning I felt so much better. I then use it to drink with when I have my lunch and dinner. After doing this I felt more energised and positive. Its so much easier to feel motivated when you feel healthy. So go out and get yourself a nice new bottle to drink from.

Eat well, be happy. 
Its so easy to forget that you literally are what you eat. Think about the last thing you ate, was it nutritious? was it in anyway beneficial to you apart from tasting nice? Its deffo ok to eat some crap, we all do, but what about main meals and healthy snaking. Just making sure that you have a good decent breakfast in the morning can set you up for a whole day of feeling great. What I like to do is get on pinterest and make a board or have a good scroll through my favourite bloggers and youtubers for some recipe inspiration. Get stuck in and really seek out some nutrition.  


Don't expect too much from yourself. 
Its great to make goals and plans but it can also lead to disappointment and a feeling of failure when you set your targets too high. Its important to know yourself well enough that you don't expect too much from yourself. Set realistic goals and make sure its defiantly what you want, rather than what you think you should do. Another thing to mention is that we are all on our own paths. Just because someone else appears to be ahead of you in life does not mean you are late. You will arrive exactly when you are meant to. So get up, get motivated and start small. 

Write a journal
Reflection is one of the most healthy and productive things you can do with your down time. Go out and find yourself a lovely little note book, one that feels special. Start off with writing down all of your thoughts before you go to bed. This allows you to assess your mood, plans, wants, and ideas. From this you will feel inspired for the day to come. When we feel inspired we get motivated. Its also good for managing stress and can promote a sense of balance and peace of mind. So get your self a nice cup of tea and start writing.

Get started
Identify your first goal. Mine was learning to drive, so I booked my first lesson and threw myself into it. I think forcing yourself to take the first small step is best. You may not want to take that first step, you may feel anxious or unsure but just force yourself. After those first small steps have been taken, things will start to fall into place. And your next step will come quickly and easily, leading you to your next goal. Write an entry into your journal or put a tick on that list. You are on your way to a more positive, motivated and happier you.

Down time
Put time and thought into your downtime. Relaxation is crucial to your motivation. make time for relaxing baths, movie nights, seeing friends, reading, playing video games or whatever floats your boat. It gives you something to look forward to and a reward for your hard work. One thing to remember is that relaxing is best done last, if you do it before your chores, goals or plans you may get sucked into procrastination.

Sleep better 
Creating a peaceful and relaxing space for sleep is essential. Do you get disturbed during the night? Think about what you could do to eliminate disturbances. your goal is to sleep straight through. Make sure you are relaxed before you try to sleep. Try reading, meditating or listening to an audio book. I take a nice cup of tea to bed with me and read my book. By relaxing first you have more chance of drifting off peacefully rather than lying there getting stressed because you cant sleep. I find that if I give myself a really good amount of time to sleep I wake more motivated than ever and am ready to do my best in the day to come.

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So get cracking, you have things to do. 

Vegan pizza night

I have always loved a good old domino's. The other evening me and my boyfriend came across an article that said if you order the domino's thin crust without cheese you could make a vegan pizza. So immediately we got on the phone to our local domino's to see if this wonderful news was true. Sadly it was not and it left us with shattered dreams of pizza. So we then planned a pizza night to make up for our disappointment. We knew how to make a base and really enjoy creating our own food, so the date was set. This was the result and my god was it worth the wait. So I'm now going to give you the best and simplest vegan pizza base and a whole load of ideas to make your pizza night great.

First off this is the recipe, this makes around 4 slices but we multiplied it by three because we're pigs and got too excited. You will need. 

125g Strong Flour
1 Tsp Salt
7g Instant Yeast
75ml of warm water

The method goes like this. 
Mix your flour, yeast and salt in a bowl, then make a little well in the middle and add your warm water. Mix this all together with a wooden spoon or hands and then kneed on a floured surface for around 5 minutes. Then its time to let this beauty prove. Leave it in a warm area in the bowl until it rises. Ours took at least 15-20 minutes. Cover it with a clean tea towel. See, simple. 

Now it comes to my favourite part, toppings. There is absolutely no need for cheese on a pizza, sounds strange I know, but its true. Some of the best pizzas Ive ever eaten have been cheese less. This time we did use some. we chose violife original which is actually really good, it melts well and doesn't go all chalky. My favourite base is a pesto but you can use BBQ sauce, tomato puree, brown sauce, hummus, caramelised red onions. You can literally just push that boat out. For me there must be pineapple and sweetcorn when it comes to toppings here are some other ideas

• Spinach 
• Mushrooms
• Peppers
• Asparagus
• Tender stem broccoli 
• Tomato's
• Onions
• Courgette
• Pine nuts
• Walnuts 
• Spring onions
• Garlic
• Fresh basil
• Mixed herbs

 but honestly apart from veggies there's a whole range of vegan goodies to put on top. In Holland and Barrett they have peperoni style slices, chorizo style bites, mozzarella style cheeses, chicken style strips, hot dogs (which you could slice up), ham style slices, chicken style slices. Go mental. One massive thing to remember is that stuffing a crust is easy and is the best thing that could ever happen on pizza night. Just grate up your best cheese or pop in your favourite sausage. Just place around the edge of the pizza and fold over, you could use a spot of water to seal it. 

Something else you could do is make up some garlic and herb wedges or even make a garlic butter to do a garlic bread on a pizza base. Get something nice to drink, invite your friends over and make a night of it. 

Enjoy!!

Vegan Lasagna midweek treat.

Lasagna is a lovely midweek meal and it's even better when you know that its completely cruelty free. Without garlic bread its absolutely syn free as well and it also contains some speed food. So if you're on slimming world that's fab. Make some nice wedges or a big salad or both. Chill out with something nice to drink and maybe a bit of your favourite show. Serve it on a romantic night in or make it for your family as a healthy low fat dinner. Either way you need it!

So lets get down to making it. 

Ingredients: 

For the sauce:
One tin of chopped tomatoes
Two tins of sweetcorn
One garlic clove 
1/2 tsp of salt 
Pinch of pepper 

For the rest:
Lasagna sheets 
Two garlic cloves 
Veggie mince 
Tin of chopped tomatoes 
One vegetable stock cube 
A hand full of chopped mushrooms, use as many as you like, I used 6.
One large onion
Salt to taste 
Tsp of dried basil
Red pepper optional.

First of all chuck your chopped onions into a pan. Spray them with fry light or use oil if your not a slimmer and fry them until they start to become clear. Then throw in your mushrooms and red pepper and fry for another minute or two. Pop your veggie mince in and mix all together. After another couple of minutes add your tomatoes and crumble in your stock cube, minced garlic and basil.
While you're mince fries put all of your sauce ingredients into a blender and blend together until smooth. 

Now layer up just like you would a normal lasagna. Mince then pasta then sauce. Repeat until your last layer was sauce and pop it into a 200 c oven. The sauce on top will crust and be delish. 

Enjoy!

We all scream for nice cream

This week I lost another three and a half pound's at slimming world, meaning I'm practically transparent. I was craving something naughty, so for a celebration this was the perfect treat. Technically this is called a "tweak" because I'm taking away the filling quality of the banana by blending it. In fairness its not like I can have that many of the free foods so I'm calling this free. It uses a teaspoon of choc shot which is half a syn. It went down so well and I'll be making it again for sure because in fairness nice cream is an amazing substitute for ice cream. Its no where near as bad for you, in fact its pretty good for you, so that's a plus! The pictures not great but we'll make the most of it guys.

This is probably the easiest recipe that's ever happened apart from toast.

• 3-4 bananas cut into small pieces and frozen overnight.
• A hand full of strawberries or fruit of choice. You could even use frozen fruit.
• choc shot or other low syn sauce. choc shot is proper amazing though and you can get loads of flavours like chocolate orange and hazelnut.
• Splash of vanilla extract 

You need a food processor ideally but some blenders manage. Just give it a go.

Get that frozen banana out, chick it into your food processor and blend away with a splash of vanilla. You will need to give it time to become a smooth creamy consistency. Then whack it in a pretty glass and shove some strawberries or frozen fruit in layers. I used the choc shot to cover the inside of the glass so its all the way through.

Pop something fancy on top and scoff your chops.

Lushie life

Sometimes the day to day grind of work, housework and everyday adulty life gets on top of us. Even now at 28 I am still figuring it out. Its all a journey though and we're going to power through guys. Time out of life is essential if you want to keep you're stress in check. As well as a cheeky half an hour in my favourite cafe I Love a good old bath whilst binging my current obsessions on Netflix, yes I watch Netflix in the bath, candles and all. One of the best things to accompany a bath is obviously a bath bomb, mountains of bubbles or bath oil.  For me its all about LUSH and I love nothing more than to try their latest additions.

                                                            SO WHITE.                                            SHOOT FOR THE STARS 

I love seeing other peoples videos and blogs about the lush products they've  tried and for some reason I also feel compelled to do exactly that. So I'm going to review my favourites as well as the ones that I hadn't been quite so taken with. These two are some of my most recent buys and I can't wait to try them out.
I'll do the first one on this post and then the other in my next LUSH post. 

Shoot for the stars:

There is nothing better than a deep blue bath of glitter and a shed tone of candles. This bath bomb is full of rich orange and bergamot scents and its shimmering conditioning stars will nourish your skin leaving it beautifully soft whilst covering you with a golden sparkle. At first I thought there were just three stars but when it had finished fizzing away I found that inside there are about six more. They smell like honeycomb and are made out of coco butter as far as I can tell. They float around like stars in the night sky before melting away into the water, the colour is so deep that you can't see your hands at the bottom. I love this one, it was so relaxing. My skin is incredibly soft and glittery because I stayed in the bath for like 2 hours binging Netflix with a cup of tea. 

I recommend this one to anyone.

Check out this link to see the ingredients list.
https://uk.lush.com/products/christmas/shoot-stars

So get the candles on and have a bath. 

Pasta and meatballs vegan cheat

An all time favourite of mine was pasta and meatballs, full on comfort food. It's a meal that I missed, so I improvised and made a vegan cheats pasta and meatballs that's quick, easy and filling. Its also only 4.5 syns on slimming world if you're interested. Snuggle up on the sofa with a big bowl of this to warm you up whilst watching your favourite show.

Ingredients:

One can of chopped tomatoes

One stock cube

One large onion diced

One clove of garlic minced

3 Linda McCartney sausages

½ tsp of dried basil or fresh would be lovely also.

6 white closed cup mushrooms diced

Oil or fry light to fry the onions (fry light is syn free)

Pasta of your choice.

Optional:

Extra garlic

Red pepper thinly sliced

Cheese to top (violife prosociano parmesan is great) 

I used the original sausages which are 1.5 syns each but these two are amazing also. The chorizo ones are 0.5 syns each and the red onion ones are free on slimming world.

Method:

Put your pasta on to cook, then put your sausages into a 200 c oven for around 15 minutes. Whilst they are cooking fry your onions and mushrooms until soft. Add your chopped tomatoes, the stock cube, minced garlic and basil. When the sausages are ready, chop them into meatball sizes and chuck them into your sauce for another few minutes. By now your pasta should be ready, so strain and serve! Quick, easy and amaze. 

Pumpkin and coconut soup

When I was a young boy I always looked forward to autumn. I loved wrapping up warm when the nights drew in and the smells of the changing seasons in the air. My family was on that got excited about Halloween and bonfire night, as bonfire night is also my mothers birthday, and one thing that was a constant in the years growing up was her fantastic pumpkin soup. Unfortunately her recipe was not vegan or I would have found a way to persuade her into giving it to me. So over the past few years I have been making my own soup and now this autumn warmer recipe is my yearly addition to the season and is a perfect accompaniment for any Halloween or bonfire night get together. It's rich creamy and filling and will not leave you disappointed. So weather your huddled around a bonfire or watching some scary movies with friends be sure to have this to keep you cosy.

Ingredients:

• One large onion.
• 500g of pumpkin, peeled and diced. 
• 500ml of vegetable stock. 
• Two tablespoons of coconut cream scooped from the top of the coconut milk, more if you fancy.
• Oil or fry light. 
• Tsp of salt. 
• One clove of garlic minced.
• Pepper to taste.

Method:

Gently fry the onions in the oil or fry light on a low heat until they loose their colour, then add the diced pumpkin and fry with the onions. 

Whilst they fry, boil 500ml of water and stir the stock into it. 

Now the pumpkin has some colour add the stock, minced garlic, coconut cream and salt. 

Bring to the boil and then let simmer for 25 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft.

Now its time to blend it all together in a blender or food processor and serve with some lovely fresh bread and lots of dairy free spread. 

Tip: To be flashy, Scoop out the flesh from the pumpkin and then use the empty pumpkin to serve.