So here we are: week 38 of Meatless Monday 2020… It’s amazing how much the weather has changed in the last week, it really has gone from summer to autumn, just like that! Summer dresses and sandals, to gloves and coats! I was quite enjoying our Indian summer, so I wonder if it will become warmer again or not, but equally so I do love love love autumn colours and hot drinks and snuggling under blankets, but I don’t think I’ve ever known a year where the transition from one to the other was so quick, anyone else thinking this?
Here’s what we wore:
Me: Jumper= Intimissimi {thrifted from the British Heart Foundation}, Vest = Miss Selfridge, Jeans = GAP {thrifted from eBay}, Shoes = Clarks/ Sheepskin Slippers = New on eBay
Boys: Shorts and Hoodies, T-shirts: Various sources/gifted/thrifted or supermarkets, Backpacks = Skiphop, Shoes = Clarks
What’s in my ears:
This week I carried on with my audiobook of the month Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert from Audible, I’m in up to the Bali part of the story :). I absolutely love both the film and Elizabeth Gilbert herself, so I thought it was high time I listened to the book which made her so famous! And to my delight it is read by her too which always makes me enjoy an audible book so much more when it is read by the author, it always has so much meaning :). I am absolutely loving it so far and how much extra information and insight into her true story you get from the book 🙂 – definitely a good use of this months credit. Definitely worth a read.
Here’s what Amazon has to say about this monumential book:
It’s 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.
Amazon
Here’s my week in 4:
1. 
2. 
3. 
4.
- Raised bed progress: I got the gardeners to stay for an extra hour this week as they have been working on this salvaged wood wall around our wild flower bed and it absolutely paid dividends, we’re now almost done and it is so nice to have one big thing progressed in the back garden, it has so much potential the space, but is going to take a lot of time, money and effort to get there. Next on my list though is a picket fence for along the other boarder before the frost so that we can really see the boarders of the space and we can work out flower bed layout etc from there…
- Wonderful play dates with wonderful friends: We had a few really lovely small play dates with friends this week which made me feel much better about the whole rule of 6 thing, as we go into winter and colder weather we all need to make sure we check in with people regularly – check they’re ok and don’t leave them alone presuming that they are ok, these are still unprecedented times and it is a balance between health and safety, the economy and mental health and all of these things need to be taken seriously. PS. I’m more than a bit in love with this photo <3
- Next generation to climb this tree: This weekend we had a lovely meet up with my parents to celebrate both my and and Dad’s birthdays, we went to a park which I went to when I was the boys age and it was lovely to share it with them and climb the tree together which I loved to climb as a kid with them, it was surreal but so lovely to pass this place on to the next generation. 🙂
- Pre-Birthday meet ups: On Sunday I had a meet up with a small groups of my in-laws for my pre-birthday, we ate pizza from the wonderful AJ Rustic Pizza Co and went for a lovely local walk in the woods. My lovely Mum-in-law bought me this beautiful card (I introduced her to yoga and I’m so happy that she now practices regularly too), but the words on this card so resonated with me I wanted to share them with you:
Yoga is not about touching your toes, it is what you learn on the way down. Yoga is like life – it’s a balance of holding on and letting go. Yoga does not change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees. Yoga is not for the flexible, it’s for the willing. Warning: yoga has been know to cause health and happiness. Bend, so that you don’t break. In yoga, obstacles do not block the path, they are the path. Don’t practice yoga to get better at yoga; practice yoga to get better at life; life is all about balance.
Happy Birthday Yoga Enthusiast card
Video(s) of the week:
I actually managed to negotiate watching a programme for me whilst my kids were around this week! – an actual miracle – any other parents hearing me on this?! I have always loved Kirstie & Phil and this programme Love it or List it (available on 4OD) is such an interesting one to watch as it follows families deciding whether they will do up their houses and stay put or sell… a very real dilemma for a lot of families and often with people disagreeing which way to go within the same household…
What we ate this week…
Breakfast:
I actually managed a cuppa in the garden and a yoga video before breakfast with the boys this week, and its something which I definitely want to get back into doing regularly. Then we all had cereal and fruit, the boys had milk. Then after the school run and before heading home for work I had a quick cuppa with a neighbour, which was nice to catch up a bit 🙂 and then late morning I had a final caffeinated tea before lunch.
Lunch:
For lunch I had some Pombears to keep me going as my mid morning snack, then I had vegetarian crepes again as they were so tasty last week and so nice to cook for lunch whilst I’m working from home. On the way home from school we did some blackberry picking and eating. When we got home I had a nakd bar, a handful of nuts and an apple.
Crepe Pancakes with Stir Fried Garlic Vegetable
Ingredients
Pancake Batter
- 250 ml 1 free range egg mixed with organic semi skimmed milk
- 100 g Plain Flour
Pancake Filling
- Selection Vegetables, whatever you have Examples of ones which work well from past experience: Bell Peppers, Mushroom, Onion, Peas, Carrots, Mixed Leaves, Tomatoes, Broccoli
- 1 clove of Garlic finely diced
- Salt & Pepper to taste
- 1 handful Grated or thinly sliced cheese
Instructions
-
Mix the batter and whisk well until fully smooth then leave to one side
-
Dice all veg and garlic before stir-frying
-
Add a swig of oil to the frying pan and fry off veg, garlic and salt and pepper to taste until golden before setting aside in a small bowl
-
Meanwhile slice/grate your cheese as needed
-
Then make sure your pan is nice and hot, before ladeling in a 1 large ladle of batter and cooking your pancake then flipping/turning (depending on how brave you are)
-
Once the pancake is on its second side, turn down the heat and arrange the veg followed by the cheese on one half of the pancake, then fold the other half over the filling, serve and enjoy 🙂
Recipe Notes
This quantity of batter will make two large crepe pancakes (enough for an adult portion) but this recipe can easily be doubled up if more batter is needed. 🙂
Dinner:
For dinner I took inspiration from this post from Miguel Barclay on instagram to create this simple vegetarian stroganoff. It was actually delicious, I would cook it again for sure :). I had some plums for afters.
Please check out my Pinterest meatless inspiration board: #MeatlessMonday to gather some pinspiration:
Along with the official Meatless Monday board which I am also now sharing on:
Find out how I got onto Meatless Mondays in the first place by watching this video:
And check out #meatlessmondays on this blog to see all my Meatless Monday posts and recipes. Hope you have a lovely week. 🙂
Go on Pin it!
I loved the book Eat Pray Love. The movie was good too, but I think the book was better.
Oh I love it too! Listening to the book gives me a much more in depth understanding of her story, but I think I will always love the movie in its own right too 🙂
I looooooooove Meatless Monday !
Me too 🙂 having a set day each week to be meatless definitely helps me stick to it and has opened me up to trying so much veggie food that I then often chose to have it outside of Mondays too 🙂
I love yoga, and I will definitely be trying that Instagram-inspired recipe! Lovely post! X
If you love yoga, do sign up for my newletter – I suggest new videos to try each week on there. It’s amazing what’s out there for free, but it can be a bit of a minefield of choice 🙂 – definitely recommened that recipe – it was yummy <3
Yay for going meatless! It’s a bit easier in my house because cooking meat has always made me nervous so we don’t have it often in the fridge. This is a great initiative for our bodies and planet, though!
Hey Lillie, it really is – great for our bodies, for waste and for the enviroment. And I love the premise behind if everyone does a little it really does make a difference 🙂