Grill Winner!

But first, go check out my guest post on Sweet Tooth Runners Awesome blog, the comments have been amazing! So chuffed with them :-)

Aaaaaaaaaaaand the winner is, number 35

What a co-incidence, it's Emma at Sweet Tooth Runner! Congratulations Emma, email me your address and I will pass it on to the get grilling people!

Win a George Foreman Grill

Get grilling week is coming to an end and to celebrate it I have a George Foreman grill to give away. It's the same grill I've been cooking on all week, the family heritage grill which can cook 5 portions on it, or 1-2 portions plus veg.

You can expect to see more grilled recipes from me though, I think my new toy will become a regular piece of kitchen equipment now. It's so quick and easy, just what I need at the moment when I no longer have Mike around to do some of the jobs.. like the hoovering, ugh I hate hoovering, at the moment that is a major downside of his departure lol... I'm trying to look on the brightside heh anyway, I seem to have wandered off topic!

I was also going to include the Santa Fe veggie burgers in this post but.. erm.. I totally effed them up... not sure what happened but the mix was really sloppy and I just ended up with a hot mess on the grill!!

So to get your hands on this fab grill you can do 1 or more of these things

1. follow my blog - this is the only thing you have to do to enter but you can get extra entries via the following ways
   
2. blog about it, facebook it, tweet it include @boxruneat to your tweet (1 entry for each, leave separate comments)
3. tell me which recipe you want to try most from the george foreman website
4. add me on facebook
5. follow me on twitter

Sorry to my overseas readers but the competition is only open to UK readers. Competition closes 30/05/11 at midnight.

Get Grilling Week Bruschetta

How's everyone's weeks been? I'm thinking roll on the weekend even though I'll be working, I have other fun plans too, curry tonight with one of my besties and perhaps a night out on Sat.. God knows I'm needing my down time at the moment! I've been so thankful for my friends and blog support these difficult few weeks... Still feel like I'm going crazy about everything and can't understand anything that's happened but I have realised I have some great people around me.

Anyway, enough gushing! I made some fab grilled aubergine and cherry tomato bruschetta on my new toy.

First roast some garlic for 40mins-1hr in an oven at 180c

Squeeze it all out into a bowl, will be very soft and melt into a paste easily..

Add salt, black pepper, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar and olive oil, I also added a tiny bit of sweetener but on second thoughts it might have been unecessary... taste as you go people!

I grilled 1 aubergine and 5 mini aubergines on the grill

Added lots of cherry tomatoes and parsley

and poured over enough dressing to coat, yum....

Finally I grilled some mediterannean bread

And topped generously

Enjoy!

Definitely another keeper recipe! I'll be back tomorrow or Sunday with the Santa Fe Veggie burgers.... perfect hangover food I'm hoping haha... Oh who am I?! Drinking way too much since Mike and I split but hey-ho... life is for living and I'm having fun!

Predator Nutrition

I've been in talks with a great website lately I'm going to be trying out some of their supplements soon.. sometimes I find it's easier to drink something down than eat a complete meal. Not saying you should use them instead of food but having stuff like that available can really help. In the past if it's been too hard to face a full meal a high nutrition shake has provided an alternative. A girl I used to work with at Holland and Barrett swears by the weight gainer type drinks as she has a really fast metabolism and finds it difficult to put on weight whilst Mike always used to like to add avocados and peanut butter to smoothies to try and gain weight. I'm looking forward to trying some stuff out anyway! Especially at the moment, anything to try and keep my weight on as easily as possible is good in my eyes!

They also sell lots of different protein powders for example whey protein I still need to get some vanilla whey protein to try JAG's protein frappucino! (why haven't I done this yet) I have bags of soya, pea and hemp protein getting dusty in the cupboard I think the plain ones just don't work too well for me, only in pancakes which I haven't made for ages and I don't know when I'll next make them I have a phobia about touching raw egg, the consistency of it just creeps me out haha so I'm gonna have to figure out how to crack an egg without Mike lol... It's the little things!!

I've been also thinking about creatine and it's benefits lately I know some people swear by it but others can't stand the stuff. What do you think? Have you used it, like it, hate it? I must admit it sounds like something which would do me good especially as vegetarians tend to be lower in it than our meat eating friends.. I will admit, I'd always thought I would never take it but recently have been feeling more inclined to give it a try

*guest post for predator nutrition

Gym = Feeeeeeeeeeelin' Good

Hey guys how's everyone's day been? Mine has been better than the past few, I was feeling low as can be, despite spending time with some of my favourite people (my gran and Mike's little sister).. I was settling in for the night feeling rubbish and thinking of cracking open the Jack Daniels and my mum rung me to see if I wanted to go to the gym with her. At first I said no thinking I don't feel like leaving the house again but she twisted my arm... I went...

1km on the dreadmill with 4 incline in just over 5 mins (not too much running due to sore legs and a run planned for tomorrow)
10 mins on the x trainer (cue sweating like mad)
5 Clean and press each arm with 12.5kg... some beefy men were using the 10kgs haha I hate using the free weights section when it's full of men, I feel silly :/
5 side bends with 22.5kg each side
A few machines... not sure which lol, some my mum was using
Lots of assisted push-ups and dips
5 minutes on the vibratey machine which felt horrible.... Don't usually use this but I couldn't go on anything else 'cause I got really dizzy towards the end of the pull-ups (I thought I'd eaten enough, maybe not...) so I decided to give it a try rather than just sitting and waiting for my mum... don't think I'll do it again it was so strange!

Anyway I got home and ate my leftover tofu from yesterday (nom) and had a nice hot bath... thoughts of Jack Daniels melted away... hurrah for healthy endophins instead of boozy highs! Plus since then I made another little meal and enjoyed it so much I went back for more! That 10 miles yesterday and gym sesh have done wonders for my appetite! oh yeah and hash browns on my new toy (George Foreman) are delish!! Just what I was craving! Night all.

National Get Grilling Week

In celebration of National Get Grilling Week 2011 the guys at George Foreman sent me a grill and lots of yummy food!

Over the week I'll be testing out a warm Asian style noodle salad, Santa fe veggie burgers, and lots more! I also have a fab giveaway coming up so you can get your hands on your own grill and join in the fun! I will be giving away the same grill I was sent, the Heritage family grill, so far I'm well impressed with it!

Here's what they sent me; the grill and all the ingredients for the tofu salad and veggie burgers, plus you can expect to see some of my experiments over the next few days too... I'm thinking aubergine and cherry tomato bruschetta... And I just combined two of the recipes for a fab pitta bread.. I'll post the recipe for that when I make it again 'cause it was too dark to get any decent pics right now..



I chose to make the tofu dish first... I've wanted to try tofu from one of these grills before and let me tell you, it did not disappoint!

First I dried off my tofu and added the chopped garlic and chilli, I added a little more than one clove of garlic 'cause the cloves looked kinda small and I loooove garlic!

Then I added the wet ingredients, sweet chilli sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil...

Sticky close up! I left this in the fridge for about 5 hours...

When I came to cook it I grilled the tofu whilst chopping the veg and cooking the noodles..

First up pak choi...

And then I show of my knife skills (or lack thereof...)

Ooooh look at those pretty grill marks! Love it!

Wilting the veg... I left it on slightly longer than the recipe recommended 'cause I wanted the pretty grill marks heh

I tossed the noodles through my leftover marinade liquid... (I wrote threw then at first, my brain has officially turned to mush through this break-up)

Topped with the veg and chopped coriander

And finally the tofu, which was definitely the star of the show!

Check that out!!
If I were to make this recipe again I would leave the coriander out.. I don't really like it, just personal taste, and I would add some more sweet chilli sauce to my veg and noodles or make up some more marinade to coat the noodles in. The tofu flavour was brilliant but the noodles and veg needed a little extra ooomph! I'll definitely be making this again though, scrummy! The recipe in full can be found on the get grilling website, here. There is also a new facebook page with more info and the food doctor Ian Marber will be doing a Q&A on Thurs between 11 and 12pm, get your questions in on twitter with the hashtag #getgrilling. Or leave them as a comment on here and I will post them in early, I am working whilst the Q&A is on unfortunately.

Do you have a George Foreman grill? Do you have any veggie recipes to share or any recommendations? If you don't have one, or you want a new one stay tuned this week, the giveaway will be here soon!

p.s. I almost forgot to say I ran 10 miles today. I'm so happy I managed to eat enough to get round it and I've done fairly well refuelling today playing on my new toy... Fingers crossed I can keep on top of this this time!

Update

Sorry I've not been around much at the moment. I'm going through a really hard time. Those of you on my facebook will know that Mike and I have broken up. After 5 years of living together it's been really tough on me. My emotions are all over the place I'm so close to having a full blown relapse into my eating disorder that it's a bit scary. I don't want to end up in hospital over it.. Stop reading here if you are in recovery from an eating disorder or don't like brutally honest rants about being crazy/depressing rambles!

I felt kind of ok about things the other day. Ok we had broken up and I felt awful but I signed up for a half marathon (not the one he proposed to me at ha!) and thought well I need to train, that will keep me wanting to eat. Well it worked to an extent. I made a pretty healthy meal, full of veg, balanced, something I felt ok with. Got upset about something, made myself sick and then started drinking. I don't feel like I know how to get out of this even though I have before but my life was going so well when I recovered before. It's so difficult. An eating disorder is so hard to beat and it seemed to come back so quickly. I ran 5 miles the other day at a not too awful pace... It's gone down though and the last mile was sloooooooow, I haven't been running 'cause I haven't been eating enough. Ughhhhhhhh I don't know what to do about stuff...... So that's it, my running is going down the pan, I probably won't PR at the half marathon I've signed up for, that's if I even make it round and I'm struggling to eat right. I don't even know whether I should post this or not but I've always kept it real on the blog before so I'll keep it real now. I'm thinking trying to start boxing again would be a good plan, I'm just not sure which club to go to, decisions, decisions!

Anyway. I should have some more upbeat posts coming soon! I have my alpro vitality review and next week is National Get Grilling Week and I'm being sent a George Foreman and some food and recipes for it which I'm really looking forward to trying out. Just a shame I will be eating them by myself instead of with Mike, he would have loved this blog perk! :-( I'll have to rope in some friends instead, I'm sure they won't be too disappointed!

So, that's it really... I hope you guys have all had better weeks than me!!

A Few Workouts

I'm really quite late posting this one, I'm sorry to be so sporadic at the moment, my life is a bit crazy right now. I know I'm always cryptic but the things causing me upset and problems involve other people and it's not really fair to be blogging about it - bear with me and hope it's over soon!

Anyway... this workout was done 2 days after the hill race and I experienced dead legs in a way I never have before. It was so incredibly frustrating not being able to punch with any force!

I did one round of pad work 3 minutes non-stop combinations, I love how tired this gets me! My punching remained strong in this round...

Then 10 rounds of 1 minute on, 1 minute off on the bag.. this is when I really started to feel my legs go and got so frustrated that even though I was putting my all into it my punches just weren't being executed with any power! This must be so bad when it happens in a fight or in sparring, I've heard people talk about the effect on your punching when your leg strength has gone but my legs have always held up for me!

After this I did 2 rounds of this circuit 20s on each station with a 1min rest in between rounds..

• Shrugs (2 x 10kg)
• Push-ups
• Star Jumps
  
• Rows (2 x 10kg)
  
• Dips
• High knee DB press (2 x 2.5kg)
• Lunges
• Punches (2 x 2.5k g)
• Mountain Climbers
• V-ups
• Push-press (2 x 10kg)
• Leg raises
• Burpees
  

On Tuesday I went out for a poorly fuelled run... I managed just over 3 miles with a break in the middle to dry heave at the side of the road. Not good. My body is not happy and I need to try and give it better nourishment. I went out yesterday and stocked up on wholefoods and 'safe' foods in the hope of upping my calories. I've also started logging them on the Alpro soya vitality app on facebook I've often shied away from such things thinking when I'm eating 'normally' they can be a bit of a trigger but at the moment it's helping me to realise how little I'm eating at the moment and how much I need to make an improvement... Anyway, check it out, I'll be properly reviewing it once I've used it a bit longer.. It looks like a great free resource for people wanting to watch their weight or just be a bit more aware of what they're eating on a day to day basis. It also includes stuff like time spent with family which is pretty cool as it takes into account the fact that health and vitality isn't just about nutrition and exercise.

Well I've just managed some breakfast and ate fairly well yesterday in comparison to previous days so I'm hoping to head out for a better run soon... as I said in my last post I've signed up for a few races so it's time to get things in order!

April Recap

April goals
Continue doing the push-up program Fail - don't know what is stopping me here?
Run 3 x weekly Half done, did it when leg was ok, but had to stop 'cause of my shin
At least maintain March mileage, would love to increase it a bit.. lets say 65! Fail
Beat last years time in the Good Friday Hill Race, the very first race I ever ran. Done :-) Recap here I knocked 6 minutes off last years time and didn't come last (like last year!)

April totals
Push-ups 205
Miles - 43.2

Well overall not too shabby... I really need to get back into those push-ups.. I seem to have some kind of wierd mental block stopping me and I'm not sure why! I'm not worried about the decreased running, I would rather be careful than injure myself in a way which would stop running for a longer time... Last night I signed up for a half marathon on June 5th so May will include a taper.. I also signed up for race for life with a few people from work, I'm excited to run it, they're both new to running I'm so pleased they signed up when I suggested we did it! I would love to break 23 minutes in this race, I think that's just about do-able! My legs feel fine now but my eating has taken a turn for the worse again so I signed up to try and motivate myself to eat enough to run! It would be sad to miss a PR 'cause I hadn't been eating enough to train properly... Anyway... May Goals

May goals
Maintain April Mileage
Stick to this bl**dy push-up program!!
Eat enough to train
Run three times a week