A Blending Weekend

 Last week a decided to buy a blender.  People have been telling me that you shouldn't skimp when buying a blender and you are much better off waiting and saving then buying a cheap one.  The thought of waiting long enough to be able to afford the Vitamix at close to £460 just made my eyes water.  For now I have bought a "Philips HR2160/50 Blender with Pulse and Ice Crush, 600 Watt, Black"  on Amazon for approximately £30.  I am so impressed with this new toy!  This weekend I have been blending away and it's been great good clean fun.  My favourite concoctions so far have been:




Banana and Strawberry Smoothie
I simply put in four small bananas, a glass and a half of water and about 20 strawberries (some even with the green tops on) and blended it all together for an incredibly tasty and nutritious creamy smoothie.


Raw Vegetable Soup
First of all I put three generous handfuls of well washed spinach leaves in the blender for a few seconds with a glass of water.  Next I added chopped courgette, spring onion, lemon juice, a chopped tomato, some miso paste (although I won't bother with that next time), some chili flakes and blended that all up.  Lastly I added a small avocado and blended that for a few seconds more.  The result was a rather unpleasant to look at green bubbling sludge.  It didn't have an unpleasant taste but the texture didn't really go down well.  The after taste was very nice though and clean and refreshing.  I have to mention though that I drank this at about 7pm and was absolutely buzzing all night!  I felt amazing and my flatmate also mentioned the next morning how great he was feeling.  I will definitely be making this again!

Fitness4Less Club Enhancement Fee

This is just a very quick moan and grumpy ramble to be honest.  I'm quite annoyed to have been sent an email today from Fitness4Less to let me know that they plan to swipe an extra £5 out of my bank account this month as a 'club enhancement fee'.

Now I know most people are thinking - "hey, it's only £5 and we all want the club to be as nice as possible" but I don't like that they promote this £14.99 fee as their major selling point and then add into their small print that they can also take anything else they fancy out of your account whenever they like for any reason.  I say fair enough if I have missed a class or done something 'wrong' to warrant an extra payment but I don't like the principle this sets that can charge me extra for no reason at all.

There isn't much I can do about it but I personally feel that it would have been better to send an email round explaining the 'enhancement plans' and asking for a voluntary donation of a suggested amount and also to have collection pot in the gym itself.  I now am paying this extra £5 begrudgingly and am considering leaving - however I do realise this will only serve to 'cut my nose off to spite my face' as it were.  Grrr - very cross today.

Anyone got any advice or feel the same?  Leave a comment or email me.  Thanks!

Raw and Living foods class

On Saturday I went to my first 'non-cooking' class.  I'm going to just blurt it out now and say I didn't really care for any of the food at all.  The picture below is of the 'treats' we were given to take home.

I am pleased that I attended the class as there were a couple of moments where I thought I wasn't going to make it due to getting lost and public transport being a let down.

There were 16 people in the class in total and that includes myself.  The majority of the dishes that were demonstrated where prepared by using a blender and a 'nut milk' bag.  The class lasted from 12-3pm and I was starting to get a bit bored by the end as there is only so much interest you can have in a person blending fruit and veg.

The high points I think were the non-dairy milkshakes (although that is probably more because of the artificial sweeteners that were added and I doubt are part of the raw vegan diet really) and the curry with noodles made out of vegetables.  One of the not so good outcomes was when I bit into one of these ball things in the picture and then had to hide it in my handbag (so as to not cause offence) as it tasted so awful and when I got home I had this horrid smelling oily brown muck over everything in my bag

I think I've learnt how to make some nice smoothies and the people were all nice and friendly enough but I'm afraid this experience has only made me convinced that this way of eating is not for me.