Banana cake with Puhoi Valley apricot and honey yoghurt on the side.

Next time you are at the supermarket check out  Puhoi Valley’s lemon yoghurt.  Yum. You should. It is amazing.  Really amazing.  But if you are on Weightwatchers don’t!  Run, run very quickly in  another direction as it is 16 PP per tub.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1/2 cup raw sugar

1 egg, lightly whisked

1 tsp vanilla extract

100grams butter melted (cooled)

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup milk

1 cup mashed banana

1/2 cup choc chips – optional

Method

Preheat oven 200C

Combine sugar, flour, in a bowl.  Combine egg, butter, vanilla, and baking soda dissolved in milk.  Combine wet and dry and then add banana, gently mix until ingredients are just incorporated.

This recipe is just as good in muffin form.

Lake McGregor, Tekapo  

Our family, spread from one end of the Commonwealth to the other is doing things a little different this year.  My impressively talented bro in law created a secret santa website for us all to visit independently to be allocated our recipient.  Big thumbs up Chris for you creativity.

I must confess to wondering who will be gifting to me this year as I scheme away at my own secret santa gift.  This is so much fun and I can’t wait till the babies start to tear paper as the adults start guessing who gave what.

The fabdetox is moving swiftly along, here I am at day 6 already.  I am feeling more energetic, and brighter all round.

And I leave you with a picture of a wee elf/reindeer.

I am missing most my wee cuppa tea.  I am a sucker for a cuppa tea at any hour of the day.  Instead I am sipping on my water bottle whenever I can.

Day two and we hosted a bbq at lunchtime today.  While I spent plenty of time flipping meat on the bbq I wasn’t tempted by any of the steak or pork.  I was very happy with my salad and carrots to munch on.  Oh yeah!

I am taking part in….

Meghan had Crohn’s.  No that is not a type-o, Meghan had Crohn’s. She has healed herself and now has the awesome job of nutritionista and is helping people over the globe find their healthier self.  Go Meghan!  I am so excited to have this opportunity to give this bod a clean out as Summer approaches.  I’ll be blogging my way through the detox, so readers let the fun begin!

Spring time, oh how I love the signs of hope you bring to my world

Around came the next Sunday night and I knew it was time for me to show my stuff.  I even had my own mathematician on hand who kindly calculated portions of sweet potato (kumara) and the other ingredients on the blackboard.  My blackboard, that is a whole other post in itself. I so love my back door/blackboard and he proved himself invaluable during the pizza challenge.  But anyway, back to pizza talk.

I am not a fan of pizza but the people in my house are so I agreed to the challenge knowing I could make a healthier and hopefully better tasting pizza for them.  I wasn’t so sure about doing it for less than $15 but I was sure willing to try.

Keeping track

Chicken, olive and sweet potato

Chicken and mint

Hawaiian 

Mission accomplished with a few cents to spare so on went some sauce and parmesan  after cooking.

Cheaper, healthier and a lot of fun.  Do you have pizza night at your home?  

Thoughts have power, you may be like me and need to consider switching to a new provider.  In an effort to change I have surrounded myself with people who have made healthy changes to their diet and lifestyle.  These people are encouraging just as they are; themselves.  They are not paid to be inspirational or paid to lose 50 kgs in record time.  These amazing people I speak of are hard-working normal everyday people who one day dared to believe in themselves and have decided they liked what happened that first day and then the next and the next.  I owe a lot to the bloggers who are blogging their way to better health.  I have to face the fact that some days I really need a kick in the pants and healthy blogs are doing the kicking these days.

My attitude toward food and portion size in particular of late has been stinky and I realised I haven’t been getting my daily fill of healthy blog reading.  Connection?  I think so.  I just can’t trust my own habits round food and I need to draw on the wisdom of those losers who have gone before me, there is so much wisdom amongst these brave people.

There is not a perfect ones-size-fits-all diet out there, that is my belief.   Listening to one’s body is the way forward, I mean really listening. Ignore the screams of your taste buds and tune into the needs of your amazing body.

Perhaps we all are a bit rusty on the language of our body?  I know I am…. but I am working on it.  

The beans I saved from Dad’s crop last season have been busy beneath the soil and are now 10cm high.  One of my first growing from last season’s crop victories :0)  Fingers crossed the Korean green seeds we have take off this year.

We are new to this garden malarkey, last year’s small garden was put in so late.  Despite its late start it brought much joy to us to grown a few greens in our very own plot of land.  This year’s garden is going to be FANTASTICALLY yummy.

While there is much growth in our garden, today I say goodbye to a dear friend who lost her fight with cancer last week.  Cat, a british lass with a love for New Zealand, brought craziness to life with her humour and a spade is a spade outlook.  I will miss her take on life.

A very talented lady she was, below is a picture she shared with me in the early days of ladybugbeauty.  

I know it is Friday and I usually do the thankful thing on Thursday, but today I am thankful for the good friends the Lord has brought into my life.  I am thankful.