Peaches with raspberry coulis

I borrowed this rather luscious cookbook from the library a few weeks ago before I decided I had to clean up my diet.

Fortunately, not all the recipes are loaded with sugar and fat (although most of them are, so I will just have to dream about eating those ones).

But there is a fantastic and super-easy recipe in it for peaches with raspberry coulis. We made it for dessert tonight.

All you have to do is blitz up in the food processor 250g of raspberries (I used frozen ones) with around a tablespoon of sugar (you could probably use a little less if you're trying to cut down) and the juice of two oranges and half a lemon.

Strain the mixture into a serving bowl (a white bowl or a clear bowl lets you see the gorgeous colours of the fruit really well), or if you don't care about having little raspberry seeds in the sauce, don't bother with this step. Stir in a punnet of blueberries and three or four perfectly ripe peaches, stones removed and cut into 2cm wedges. I used up a few spare raspberries that were in the fridge as well. Serve at room temperature but you can pop it in the fridge for a bit if you want to make it before dinner. It's so quick to make that it's easy enough to whip up afterwards.

Obviously it works better with the free-stone variety of peaches because it's really easy to get the stones out.

I guess you could put some vanilla ice-cream on it if you weren't worried about consuming too much sugar. But it is pretty yummy on its own. It really didn't need any accompaniment. And a healthy choice too. Peaches and berries are both really good low GI foods.

A big winner all around here. The kids loved it. Everyone wanted seconds. I even had a teeny weeny second spoonful myself.

Diet and exercise progress

I've found a lovely steep hill to climb that is just around the corner from our house. A handy discovery.

I've walked up it nearly every day now. One day there was a large dog sitting halfway up so I didn't go up that day. I wasn't going to put in all that effort getting there only to have a dog jump on me and knock me back down. Yesterday, I took a different walking route but it didn't have a hill so I didn't feel like it needed as much effort to do. So this morning I went back to the hill again.

I was really excited because today I made it up without stopping (all the other times I've had to stop at least twice).

And I can now hold the plank position for 30 seconds. I'm trying to get up to a minute.

This afternoon, we are going to take the dogs for a walk. The park at the bottom of the big hill is an off leash dog exercise area. So after we walk the dogs, Chris will pack them and the two little kids (the two big kids are visiting grandparents this week) into the car and drive home.

And I will tackle walking up the hill for a second time today.

The diet is going okay. I'm trying to concentrate on eating more low GI foods so I feel fuller for longer. And reducing my portion sizes. This is where my struggle lies. I may have to do a bit less baking for a while. Today I made some sugarless chocolate blueberry muffins. They weren't bad. But you could tell they were sugarless. Without the blueberries they would have been very dull indeed.

I've noticed I'm feeling more energetic since the morning walks started. And eating the right kind of food always helps me to feel better too. My goal is to get into a good routine now so it doesn't all fall into a big heap when I go back to work in a couple of weeks.