A cheeky drink clean & lean style

It's Wednesday and occasionally that means a cheeky mid-week drink. Since going clean and lean I've had to think about this a lot more about which beverages are appropriate. Strictly clean and lean means no booze at all, however realistically I don't think that will work for me. Working in recruitment means the odd drink slips in to work events and my friends spend a lot of the time in the pub. The absolute no-no's are beer and cider which I can deal fairly well with as I'm not a huge fan in the first place - although a cold cider in the Summer may be tricky to resist. Other than that everything at least fits in the 'Better' category!

Below I've broken down my three favourite tipples in order of the cleanest and leanest of the bunch.

In at number one we have vodka and lime juice blended with frozen blueberries and raspberries. If it's not sweet enough add a bit of honey or maple syrup but I like it as it is. This 'recipe' is as simple as throwing everything into a blender and waiting until you have a lovely boozy smoothie. If you want a more authentic cocktail you would need to sieve this but as we're going clean and lean I feel the fibre in the seeds makes it much healthier!

In second place we have the trusty G&T, in this case jazzed up by a few drops of orange bitters. For the one below I've used a 1:2 gin to tonic ratio, I've then added a slice of lime and a few drops of Bob's Bitters' Orange & Mandarine - yum!

Finally, in third place is the humble - or not so humble depending on your price range - flute of fizz. In the photo below you are looking at Prosecco and Mimosas surrounded by our brunch at Hotbox in Spitalfields. I should point out it was my cheat meal and it was absolutely amazing!!! I've also included a couple of cheeky photos of what we ate. I know it's not clean and lean - as I said cheat meal material - so if you are in full clean and lean mode I'd probably stop here as even the Prosecco is surrounded by food! :)

Don't say I didn't warn you...

This is Prosecco, a couple of Mimosas, a side of avocado, a side of immense macaroni cheese and a half view of Polly's beef tacos - there's a better taco picture below.

This one is the brunch burger and is what I ate with the side of avocado. I will admit it was so massive and I did eat a fair amount of macaroni cheese so I left some bun but it was absolutely delicious. The copious amounts of bottomless drinks may have helped but I think the photo speaks for itself.

This is a better picture of Polly's tacos. At this point I should point out Polly is my housemate so she - or at least her food - may be featured a lot! The tacos were really good, especially the crispy onions over the top.

I hope I've helped with clean and lean drinks and not spoiled your happy diets with the brunch photos but I do think it's important to keep the cheat meals in there too. Nobody needs to stick to one food group the whole time!

Steak, chickpea and avocado salad

I've always found it tricky to find good things to take into work for lunch, so tempting to just resort to buying something but my favourite sushi place leaves me nearly £10 worse off a day (not totally clean and lean I know but I let that one slide)! I find the best option is to use leftovers, better yet to transform leftovers into a brand new lunch. The below was after we had steak and salad for dinner. Having been veggie for years I still don't manage a full steak so I used my leftovers to make a very tasty lunch!

Steak, chickpea and avocado salad

Ingredients:

Steak cooked rare

Chickpeas (tinned are fine)

Avocado

Cherry tomatoes

Grilled pepper (I use the ones out of a jar but if you are strict then you can do a DIY version)

Little gem lettuce

Jalapeños (again I use jarred)

Toasted pine nuts

Zatar spice mix

Dijon mustard - 1 tsp

Balsamic vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Method:

Take your leftover steak (or cooked and cooled if you are doing this from scratch), place it between two sheets of clingfilm and bash it thin with a rolling pin - always a satisfying task!

Once you've thinned your steak out cut into small strips and set aside.

Drain your chickpeas, put them in the salad bowl with a little of the oil and the zatar power, stir through.

Slice up your remaining salad ingredients (avocado, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, jalapeños) - I like to shred the lettuce then artfully (aka randomly) chop everything else!

Add your salad ingredients to the bowl with the chickpeas and stir through so everything gets a bit of seasoning on.

Put your mustard, a good glug of balsamic and about twice the amount of oil into a jam jar (or any receptacle you might prefer) - if you need some kind of measurement I'd say 50ml balsamic and 100ml olive oil as a guesstimate (you will have a lot of spare dressing) - add your salt and pepper, put the lid on and give it a good shake.

Dress your salad, toss through again, add the beef strips and toasted pine nuts and serve (or if you're doing it for lunch at work follow the method above but keep your dressing and pine nuts separate until you're ready to eat so your salad ingredients don't go soft).

NB: If you want to do your peppers from scratch you will need to blacken them under a very hot grill or on a gas flame cooker, once the skin has turned black transfer to a bowl (carefully!) and cover with clingfilm. Let them cool then it will be easy to peal off the blackened outside, you can remove the stalk and any easily accessed seeds and you'll have your lovely roasted peppers ready to use!

Clean and Lean Snacks

Back at the beginning of January I started the clean and lean diet. I've become slightly obsessed with Instagram and since I seem to be taking lots of photos of my food I thought it was high time I record some of the recipes. I'm aiming to actually stick with the blog this time so here's hoping!

To ease me back in I thought I would just share some of my favourite snacks I've been making - many of these are other people's recipes so you will be able to find on their websites :)

First up is a childhood favourite that requires no explanation whatsoever, simply put I love apple slices and cheddar cheese! A crisp eating apple and good mature cheddar are my favourite but try experimenting with different options.

Next up is something I've made from Deliciously Ella, she has lovely Raspberry and Banana breakfast bars, I think I got the recipe from the Telegraph. Next time I think I might make them a tiny bit sweeter and bake for a bit longer but they were really yummy. I wanted something a bit more substantial so topped with goat's milk yoghurt, berries and some local honey in a bid to combat my hay fever this year!

Finally another one from somebody else, this time the lovely Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I've been pouring over his Light and Easy cookbook as it has some great clean and lean options in there - the beetroot chocolate cake is particularly good! A couple of weekends ago I made the rye and fruit loaf which was lovely - I might tinker with a couple of things for the next one but made a lovely snack topped with nut butter and honey.

That's it for now but I will attempt to keep this better updated and add in some actual recipes to follow shortly!