MIMM: Sunshine and Smiles

.. and rainbows and fairies and castles and candy floss and unicorns..

Hello and a very happy Monday to you! Did you have a good weekend? Mine was pretty good, again, my last two potential lie ins for another 12 days (yup I’m doing that crazy double week with a weekend in the middle again) so I made the most of the rest.

Lots of marvellous things happened and I will share them with you below – check out the blooming lovely Katie’s page to see lots more marvellous (including a baby’s first Valentine’s Day card.. my heart melted!).

Friday

I already posted about a few great things that happened on Friday but here is another – my first yoghurt bowl with nut butter! This was Total 0% with strawberries, cherries and winter berries and almond butter. Wow. I can’t tell you how good this tasted but also how filling it was.

Yes I am aware there’s about half a tub of almond butter in there, one of the jars I bought on sale was all separated and weird and needed lots of stirring – then it came out in a huge clump. Technically I could have separated it but where’s the fun in that? In other news, I’ve discovered my almond butter limit.

We went out to celebrate one of my friends leaving work in the evening at Racks, a wine bar in Clifton. It was lovely to see her off!

Saturday

This was an amazing day because I had another CrossFit session and it went really, really well! I’ll review it in full in a separate post but here I am all dressed up and ready to go:

With my eyes closed. Well it was the morning after the night before

I walked home after the class taking in the beautiful weather and the bustling markets on the road home.

I was so tempted to buy myself a bunch, they were all so pretty. There were some great fruit and veg offers on too.

But I managed to abstain so I could pick up lots of goodies from the health food shop:

Yogi Tea (love Pure and Women’s Energy), Sesame Snaps with yoghurt and chocolate (Tamzin sent me some with coconut for my first Foodie Penpal package and I love them!) and a Pecan and Cashew Bounce Ball.

I deliberately left the Nakd bar out of that list because it deserves its own line. It probably deserves its own post. Caffe Mocha flavour. Chocolate, dates, nuts and coffee in one bar. Can you get anything better? It tasted incredible and the only thing that upset me was that I didn’t buy ten times as many. You have to try it, end of.

When I finally reached home it was time for lunch out at Wagamamas. We started by inhaling some green tea, miso soup and pickles before my favourite dish there, chicken and mandarin salad with cashew nuts.

It was piled really high on my plate and tasted delicious. Love the fresh flavours! James had pork noodle soup, which I sampled too.

After lunch we went shopping before heading out to our friends’ engagement party. It was really cute – they cooked us chilli with soya mince (my first time trying both!). I need to grab the recipe so I can make it at home, their version was a huge hit.

Sunday

We did mean to go for a run on Sunday morning but I ached from CrossFit and was feeling very lazy so we pottered about the flat instead. Then it was time to grab coffee and head into town as it was a beautifully sunny day.

James and blue skies – there’s not much more that could fill me with happiness on a Sunday morning!

First stop in town was the library:

How cute is this? For Valentine’s Day they covered a number of books in paper and decorated them with hearts so you didn’t know what you were choosing. I really wanted to grab one but I have a stack of reading to do already so will have to hope that they do it next year..

We then did a little shopping at another health food store.

I picked up these incan berries as I was intrigued by the ‘sweet and sour’ claim. My favourite haribo are sweet and sour so I wanted to see how this translated into something healthy.

They were really good, like sour mini figs. Yum!

Lunch was a little later than usual and we were super hungry, only a burger could do. We went to Boston Tea Party in search of my favourite coffee cake but they were sadly all out.

Lunch was insanely tasty though – a veggie burger with hummus, homemade coleslaw and chips. I would have liked a side salad for some extra green on the plate but you can’t have everything.

Want to take a closer look?

The burger was courgette (zucchini for my American readers), beetroot and pine nuts – and vegan! I really want to try to make these myself at home. I did have a quick look online for a recipe but couldn’t find one so guess I’ll have to get creative.

Thinking about making the burgers got my creative juices flowing and I started baking when we returned home. I whipped up a batch of my three ingredient shortbread.

All you need to make it – flour, sugar, marg and my blog

I tried a new flavour on top of the classics and it was insanely good. Date and cacao nib shortbread.

I was a bit concerned with how the nibs would taste after baking but they were great, it intensified the flavour.

You can see some cranberry hearts on there too! I covered them with white chocolate:

I also made some traditional shortbread rounds.

They turned out really well! I added a little more sugar and baked on a slightly higher temperature to get a more crisp traditional shortbread texture.

Our evening ended wonderfully – with the film It’s A Wonderful Life (you may remember that I read the book at Christmas).

The perfect feel-good way to finish off a great weekend. Hope yours was equally awesome!

* Do you know any good veggie burger recipes? What would be your dream biscuit topping?

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