April 3rd Review

Having done six miles running this morning, I have achieved a decent level of activity for today.

This morning, I tried a second recipe from the The Happy Pear book, Happy Heart Pancakes - think blinis and you are roughly there.
I replaced the rice milk with cow's milk and forgot put in the tahini but the key problem I had was the batter was burning too quickly when I put it in the frying pan - I had to turn the heat down considerably before it would stop burning, and even then they were browning before the batter on top could start to set.
Whilst the 12yr old did not like the banana taste (there was a third of banana in the batter) I wonder if that was because there was no tahini taste to complement it.  Anyone I did enjoy them with some 0% style greek yoghurt, the rest of the banana, raspberries and blueberries.

So lunch was Roast Pork with plenty of veg at the in-laws which was very nice followed by a slice of lemon tart, and tonight I have had some more of yesterday's coconut, sweet potato and lemongrass soup.

I finished reading A Sense Of Direction by Gideon Lewis-Kravs, which is a mixture of travel memoir and personal healing - it is a mixed book in that I found his experiences of living in Berlin, and his three pilgrimages very interesting but where he sought to understand different philosophies it got very dry and I found at these points I needed to stop reading before willing myself page by page past these bits - it is still worth a read, and I would love to take on the Camino de Santiago (in Spain) pilgrimage one day.

Review of 2nd April

I will not normally posting daily or in today's case twice a day but I wanted to finish up a review of today.

My step count is a paltry 4000 but I did do about 40 minutes of gardening (mainly mowing the front and back lawn) and spent a good two and half hours cooking (both the coconut, sweet potato & lemongrass soup from my post earlier today, but also another vegetarian meal of indian sweet potato and dhal "pie" with broccoli.

I forgot to take a photo of the "pie" but the recipe can be found at the BBC Good Food website (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/indian-sweet-potato-dhal-pies).   To be honest I think creating the "pie" element is a waste of time and you would be better off serving it as curried carrot & lentil with mashed sweet potato rather than putting the mash on top of the carrot and lentil.
The wife and I liked it but the 12yr old was not keen on the mash but did at least like the curried carrot and lentils - one to think about as a curry with rice, or even turn the sweet potato into an Aloo.....

My calorie intake is roughly equivalent to the my alleged calorie burn as despite all the good food I had today, my failing point was having a large of amount of mint choc chip ice cream, which I decided to eat rather than throw out, as I needed the space that the large tub occupied in the freezer.
I am not a fan of throwing food out no matter how unhealthy the food is for you.

So two vegetarian recipes with extra notes will now go into my book of recipes made and liked.

Best Soup Ever (according to my 12yr old)

I purchased a book called The Happy Pear by David and Stephen Flynn who also have a YouTube channel called the Happy Pear, which I am fan of and since I managed to get the book for £4.50 on Amazon, I have been looking forward to trying out some of their recipes.
I believe they are vegan twin brothers but the recipes in the book are both vegan and vegetarian with an emphasis not to convert meat-eaters but to encourage more people to cook vegan and vegetarian meals - there is no moral pious "bible" bashing of meat-eaters in the book which is good.

My timing was good because I persuaded my daughter to look through the recipes in the book and she picked out a list to be tried - not many are main meals from her choices but its a start and I am less likely to get any backlash when I cook them.

Anyhow, I did the Thai Coconut, Sweet Potato and Lemongrass recipe for lunch and she declared it the best soup ever, and insisted this is one I must put in my book of recipes to do again.

In terms of calories, I reckon it serves six rather than four (as stated in the recipe) but on the basis of six it is probably about 300 calories per generous serving,

If you are interested in knowing more about them, their website (with recipes etc) is https://thehappypear.ie/ and their youtube is https://www.youtube.com/user/happypeargreystones 

Hello, Welcome To Mike's Reboot

So I have been doing a running blog on and off for a year now and more recently I noticed that some of posts were not really about running but my wider health and mental well-being, so I've decided to have a go at doing a regular blog around this.

The reboot is a reflection that having trained and eaten well for three months last year culminating in doing my first ever ultra-run of 100km, but then I effectively stopped both the running and the good-eating, and in the space of eight months I piled on a stone and a half.
Also it is the reality that not only was I not being that active I was also not doing anything worthwhile for me, so there is a secondary aim to be more specific with my spare time rather than mindless drifting into doing something I will think afterwards, Why?