Remember Popeye and his spinach? How mental is this?!

“He might have well eaten broccoli,sprouts,cabbage or any other vegetable, Why Spinach ? It is widely believed that there was a study with a displaced decimal that said spinach contains ten times more iron that it actually did. The Creator of Popeye succumbed to this belief of High Iron content in Spinach and hence chose it as the ‘instant power source’ for Popeye. This myth is known as ‘SPIDES’ – Spinach,Popeye,Iron,Decimal,Error Story.”

As IF there is an entire story behind some cartoon character eating spinach?! That’s cray. To be honest though I don’t care why Popeye ate spinach. The only thing I care about is the AMOUNT you can eat…. wowee. That stuff is LOW calorie. However, not exactly a party on the palate is it? Well now it is. Check what I made last night…

I got home from work and my new saviour for “I’ve been at work, I’ve walked home, I’m worn out and I need some bloody food right bloody now” are my blueberry yoghurt lollypops. Like the frozen kind. They are brilliant. You can’t cram twenty of them into your mouth at one time but they are sitting there in the freezer waiting to be enjoyed on the sofa whilst the FEEDMEFEEDME demon in my head chills his beans for a few minutes (Chris will be freaking out that I just said I have a demon – we watched Paranormal activity – all four of them – at the weekend… he did NOT enjoy pahaha).

I’ll include the recipes for both dishes at the bottom of this article. Sharesies.

Anyone else find Mondays are awesome for eating clean and feeling inspired? It’s that age old “ohhh I’m on a diet” but then by Wednesday you’re like “balls to this – I’m gettin’ a cake…and some crisps….and a glass – no wait – a BOTTLE of wine”. Yeah I get it. It’s always hard when you’re breaking bad habits or just trying to be slightly better to your body. The other flipside is your head is putting out the bunting and celebrating your willpower and then out of NOWHERE this pizza arrives and it’s party over.

The only thing I find that works is bloody stubbornness. I am stubborn. Sometimes its a bad thing. Sometimes its a good thing. For example – I point blank refuse to give in to temptation and laziness this week. I said I’d do a week of eating good clean food and training hard and I will damn well do it. I should work for Nike. JUST BLOODY DO IT. Commit to that. Get it done. Kapow.

Oh the other thing that winds me up. Chris and I both agree it takes a week for your body to catch up with what you’ve eaten and the training you skipped. So whilst I’m chowing down on the lean protein and the kilos of spinach this week my butt is like “ha – dream on – you ate 6 easter eggs last week – no way yo jeans are fittin’ today”. DAMN YOU giant ass – and whilst I’m at it – DAMN YOU chubby tummy…..

To be fair though – we should still love our bodies. Seriously though. Yeah ok sometimes they’re not so firm or fast or lean or whatever. Sometimes they don’t look good in bodycon but at the end of the day they do a pretty bloody awesome job. After Ironman I vowed never to hate on my body again. My body went through hell and back to get me over that finish line. I have massive amounts of respect for these thighs!

Back to the spinach – I went off on a bit of a tangent there sorry….By the way, never google spinach, the wikipedia article is unbelievably boring. So the mighty little green leaf! Per 100g this bad boy has a mere 23kcals. TWENTY THREE!!! When you consider I had nearly 400g of spinach in that dinner last night and I could barely eat it all that’s insaneio. Less than 100kcals. Well – not quite when I added some grassfed butter, some super low fat cream cheese and a grating of parmesan but STILL – it was huuuuge amounts of food for hardly any kcals and it tasted awesome. If you like creamed spinach you will LOVE this. Oh and if you haven’t tried creamed spinach then get on that band wagon cos it’s the dogs dangles, but mine is better, obvs… I mean the spinach, not the dogs….  MOVING ON.

Oh and buy your spinach frozen. Sainsburys do like 2kg for about £1. It’s mad cheap and way easier than cooking and chopping those giants bags of leaves when it’s fresh.

Before I go, here’s a little list of other foods I swear by because you can eat loads for hardly any impact on your booty:

1. Raspberries – amen
2. Tzatziki dip – the greek cucumber stuff but make it yourself cos it’s dead easy
3. Salad leaves – sounds dead boring but if you’re going to have salad for dinner use the whole damn bag of leaves if you’re mad hungry
4. Courgette (Zucchini) – grate it or spiralize it and go to TOWN with it instead of spaghetti or whatever
5. Butternut squash – any recipe that needs sweet potato can basically use butternut squash. Way lower in carbs if you’re looking to keep it lean(er)
6. 0% Total Greek Yoghurt – those little tubs have less than 100kcals. I had that with TWO packets of raspberries for breakfast. Loadsa food #boom

So here’s how I made the lollies and the spinach and I’m off to do an online foodshop for our weekend away – wine, chocolate, crisps, croissants…. Jokes

C xx

Lovely Faux Creamed Spinach (Serves 2 or one CatMac)

• 350g cooked spinach that has been squeezed in a clean tea towel to get rid of the water. This weight is AFTER the water has been removed, it was about 700g when it was straight out the freezer, it needs a zap in the microwave to get the water content oot of there
• 2/3 tub of Extra Light Philadelphia
• 1 Tablespoon butter (Did you know Kerry Gold is grassfed? Me either. Fact of the day)
• Half a teaspoon grated nutmeg
• Tablespoon grated parmesan
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• Big splash of milk to get the consistency you prefer e.g. more for sloppier
• Salt and pepper

Mix the whole lot together over medium heat and then chuck it on your plate.

Berry & Yoghurt Ice lollys (Makes 16 lollys)

• 800g Frozen berrys (I did blueberries)
• 600g 0% Total Greek Yoghurt
• Teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 Teaspoons powdered stevia (You can buy vanilla flavour stevia drops from Amazon, I use them, you need 5 drops instead of the extract and powdered stevia)

Blend the whole lot together in a food processor and then freeze in whichever lolly containers you have. Roughly 70 kcals per lolly in the size I made below…