Loving Lately

In honour of it being Valentine's day today, I thought I'd do another of these posts as there are a few different things that I've been loving lately. Some food, some YouTubers, some items of clothing or places that I've been shopping lately.

The first thing has been halloumi cheese.  I've never bought it before, but have eaten it a couple of times in restaurants or round at friends' houses and after having some in a Turkish restaurant a few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and buy some. I got a lower fat version and fried a couple of slices (without oil), then chopped them up into small pieces and added them to a salad.  Very tasty. I'll definitely be  buying this more regularly from now on.

The second food related thing was a recipe I followed to make some 'Happy Pantry Slice' for OH for Valentines day.  I used lots of different things I had in pantry i.e oats, flour, butter, raisins, goji berries, dates, honey, chia seeds and combined them all according to Sophie's recipe found here.

I knew this recipe was a keeper the first time I made it.  Here's a picture of the resulting slice, chopped and bagged up, with some left over for the rest of us.  I really must get into the habit of making things like this more often.

One other food item we've all been loving lately is rye bread.  I've started buying it every week instead of normal bread due to it being lower in gluten.  I was surprised when LB and OH liked it. I rarely eat bread, so I don't eat too much of it, but they seem happy for me to continue buying it. The one we like most is by The Village Bakery and is sold at Sainsbury's.  I do still buy one loaf of wholemeal bread per week, but mostly everyone eats the rye and it is very tasty.

I've also been loving a couple of new to me YouTubers, who I've started following recently. Cookie who posts videos about her raw food diet on Reach4Raw is a lovely cheerful soul, who is on an ongoing journey to lose weight and get fitter and healthier.  She has a lovely sweet and positive personality and I enjoy her videos. It is interesting to watch her progress and find out more about her unorthodox lifestyle as a full-time house sitter, composer of music and vlogger, amongst many other talents she seems to be endowed with.

A second YouTuber I've recently subscribed to is Jen and her channel How Jen Does it.  There's lots of cleaning videos, really useful organisational tips, dollar tree organisation hauls as well as recipes and other videos.  Good for motivating you to do those jobs that don't really appeal as she breaks them down into 15 minute tasks.

Similar to Jen, I've been loving shopping at the UK's equivalent of Dollar Tree, namely Poundland lately, especially now one has opened up quite near to where I live.  I'm always popping in and looking to see if they've got any new lines.  I have to admit that a few organisational items have been finding their way into my basket.

I've also been enjoying the benefits of shopping at UK supermarket Sainsbury's lately, as they have been issuing lots of nice points vouchers at the till every week, which have quickly been adding up and allowing me to get £5 or £10 off my grocery shopping, almost every week.  I also like Sainsbury's as they have a very good range of organic foods, which makes them almost a one stop shop for me.

My final like has been my slimmer belt that I bought from TK Maxx the other week for £4.99.  It's a wide neoprene belt that you wear when you exercise and is purported to enhance your workout and smooth out lumps and bumps amongst other things. I've found it very comfortable to wear on the couple of occasions I've worn it to date.  It does seem to get me perspiring in the area of my waistline, so I'm hoping it's doing some good and will help melt a few pounds in that area.  Worth a try anyway.

Well, that's it for now, quite an exhaustive list really.