Muscles I never knew I had!

Wowsers! That’s all I can say about how I felt when I woke up yesterday morning. That Edain can really work you hard in a boxing class. As much as I love my body pump and I am getting fitter and stronger with my weight training, there were muscles used on Wednesday nights class I don’t think I have ever worked out , and that is the whole point of mixing your workouts up I guess. I hope to get to her class on Sunday, because I am off on a work trip on Monday, then I get back Thursday just in time to pack up another bag and head off home for New Year. Wahooo!!! Busy busy.

Yesterday I had some leftover smoothie from the day before in the fridge so slammed that back before heading out to Khobar (off camp) to do some Christmas shopping and check out an Asian supermarket I have been meaning to find. It was ok, plenty of Korean, Japanese, Filipino and Chinese ingredients, but made it difficult as everything was either in native language or arabic. I managed to get some Vegetarian Oyster sauce however and some rice noodles. Stay tuned for what comes of them.

I snacked on these whilst shopping:

For a treat for lunch, we headed to my friends restaurant and one of our favourites:

Grill Restaurant – Dhahran Street, Khobar……….. Telephone: +966 3 894 3047

They are having a Bukhara food festival for the next month, but I stuck to my usual order of vegetable curry and roti, because their naan simply is made with white flour and the roti is made with brown.

Afterwards I came home and put together some food for an evening of marital arts. Although food was supplied chances were it was going to be arabic bread, lots of meat (fried chicken actually) and all cooked, so I decided to make a large salad, some guac, took some veggie crudites and what I had hoped was going to be my Adzuki beans cooked with mexican spices. Yeah how wrong was I? Even after 2 days of soaking the beans, 1.5 hours of boiling them, they were still rock hard. Yeah so now they are sitting in Lucy’s dog bowl and I really don’t think she even likes them. Back to the drawing board.

No piccies of dinner, but here are some of the boys showing off their Kuntaw (Ancient Filipino Martial Arts) skills. The main purpose of the night was to present some new belts to participants and celebrate their 24th anniversary in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Really fun night. Although I loved my boxing the other night, despite requests, I won’t be signing up anytime soon.

Here was the result of my Pina Colada fruit leather – 1 whole pineapple blended with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of dried coconut. Not so bad, but I preferred this one much more. The critics – Becci and Patrick, think it is delish. Maybe I will have to hand it off to them.

Also made some Chocolate Coconut balls inspired by Averie here. I used agave and not maple syrup and they were still quite a bit too sweet for me. Think I will reduce the amount for next time. These are reminiscent of Aussie Chocolate Crackles. Pretty yum though.

I’ve been wanting to sample the highly acclaimed Breakfast Cookie from here for a while too, so last night I made my own version and sampled it this morning. It was really yum and certainly light enough to have before a work out which is where I intend to buzz off to shortly. I made double the quantity for two of us, and although that was enough for me, I would recommend making more if you are feeding a male!

I made this one with almond milk, half a banana, stevia, cinamon and maca.

Rightio peeps, I had better get this puppy out for her walk/jog and I’ll be back later with my recipe for the lentil soup!

Have a great Friday!

What are your plans for your last weekend before Christmas? Last minute shopping or are you all up to date?