Disqus for Where Are My Knees

Review - Fruitdrop

Wednesday 29 February 2012


Before we were contacted by Fruitdrop I hadn't heard of them or their services.  Fruitdrop offer a fruit delivery service to offices.  Fruitdrop believe that eating fruit at work has a positive impact on business performance.  Natural sugars in fruit apparently allow us to think faster and remain alert longer which means no more afternoon slumps in energy and fuzzy brains.  Who knew?!


Fruitdrop offer two types of box, a basic box (as seen in the photos) and a seasonal box.  Prices start at £20 per box including delivery.  The box I received contained 50 pieces of fruit which was all in perfect condition and lovely and fresh.  I usually eat five pieces of fruit a day so this was a godsend for me meaning I didn't need to remember to bring my own fruit to work.  Now I've just got to try and convince my employers that they need to subscribe to this...


Baking Mad Monday - Raspberry Roulade

Monday 27 February 2012

The final instalment of the Baking Mad challenge is brought to you by Gemma.

Baking Mad provided the flour and sugar, the same types as in Sarah's post and then the rest was purchased by myself to make the roulade.

It was a complete cake fail!! I followed the instructions and the cake seemed perfect and tasted lovely but when I tried to roll it I split it and just had to fold it over. If you are a better baker than me (not hard) and want to give this a try here is the recipe:


You will need:

3 eggs
60g Half Spoon Granulated Sugar (Silver Spoon) plus extra for dusting
85g Self Raising Flour (Allinson Nature Friendly)
150ml creme fraiche low fat
125 fresh raspberries lightly crushed
cornflour for dusting

Method:
  1. Line a Swiss roll tin with non-stick parchment paper. Place a large sheet of greaseproof paper on the work surface and lightly dust with cornflour and a light dusting of half spoon sugar.
  2. Whisk the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until the mixture is pale and light in texture and a ribbon of mixture will leave a trail when lifted from the bowl.
  3. Sift in the flour, and gently fold in with a metal spoon in a figure-of-eight movement, until the mixture thoroughly mixed.
  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and spread out with a palette knife to cover the whole surface.
  5. Bake in the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes, until the sponge is firm and springy to the touch.
  6. Turn out the sponge onto a large sheet of greaseproof paper, then peel away the lining paper. Trim the edges, cover with a clean,damp tea towel and set aside for a few minutes to cool.
  7. Mix together the crème fraiche and raspberries. Spread the mix over the sponge. Roll up carefully and transfer to a serving plate with the long edge underneath the roulade. Cut into slices.

Sunday Summary #47

Sunday 26 February 2012

Hello all, have you had a good week?

Sarah - third week on Weight Watchers and it is going well! I lost 2.5lbs this week so am happy with my progress.  5.5lbs in three weeks is really good for me.  I have used more weeklies than usual this weekend so I am hoping I can still manage 1.5lbs off on my next weigh in, I would be made up with half a stone in a month!

Gemma - Another good loss this week with 2.5 off taking me to 4 stone 10.5 loss in total. I'm planning on treating myself to something flashy and a bit special when I get to the -5 stone milestone as a treat and incentive to keep going. I had brilliant week, tried a few new recipes and allowed myself to have a few pancakes but the weekend has been a bit of a disaster again. Too much vodka, oops. I'm off to London on Saturday to meet up with bloggers and have food and cocktails so I'm going to be extra good all week and save up all my weekly pro points to blow on Saturday.

Sarah V - I lost 1lb this week despite eating terribly. However, since then I've refound my motivation and feel like, for the first time in a while, I've had a pretty healthy week. I've finished the Jenny Craig diet trial and being able to eat whatever I want again has added to my motivation - rather than having a strict rulebook to keep to, I can make nice healthy meals. It's actually made me want to start cooking more again. I have a few weeks with nothing significant coming up so I'm hopeful that I can get back on track for the first time in ages. Next step is doing more exercise!

Lucy - I feel as though I've had quite a good week this week, I properly started my Maxitone diet (you can read blog posts I've been doing here) and I've been quite strict with myself at work, something that can be quite difficult because we're forever being sent sweets/chocolate/cupcakes/macaroons to the office! I don't have any scales to weigh myself though so I can't tell 100% how I've done but hopefully a little bit of difference has been made! Now to carry this on through to next week...

Over to you, how has your week been?

Pancake Day

Tuesday 21 February 2012

I'm sure you all know how to make pancakes but I thought I would share a Weight Watcher recipe for them so you know exactly how many points you will be using from your daily allowance. I tend to go a little crazy with pancake day, frying them in butter and thinking nothing of spreading some nutella on them but I want to stay on track this year so I have come up with two low point combinations.

Basic Pancake recipe
Makes 8 pancakes
2 Pro Points per pancake

100g plain flour
a pinch of salt
1 egg
200ml skimmed milk mixed with 5 tablespoons of cold water
calorie controlled cooking spray

1 Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the egg, Pour in a little of the milk-water mixture and begin to stir, gradually drawing in the flour as you go until you have a smooth batter.

2 Heat a 7 inch non stick pan, spray the base with the cooking spray and then pour in enough batter in to coat the base of the pan. Tilt the pan to spread the batter and cook for 1 minute. Flip the pancake and cook for a further 30 seconds, or until spotted with brown.

Simple!

On my first pancake I kept it classic and went for lemon and sugar but I chose half spoon sugar which is 0 pro points for 1 teaspoon. This meant that this pancake was only 2 pro points.

For my second pancake I put some frozen berries in a pan and heated them with a little lemon juice and artificial sweetener which is 0 pro points and added this to my pancake along with 30g of the Weight Watchers thick cream. For 3 pro points this tasted amazing but there was no guilt.


What are you going to eat with your pancakes today? Can you suggest any low point/calorie toppings?

Baking Mad Monday - Blueberry Muffins

Monday 20 February 2012

Week four in our Baking Mad challenge and it's Lucy's turn this week!

Baking Mad provided the flour and sugar, the same types as in Sarah's post and then the rest was purchased especially to make these muffins.







So, I chose to make healthy Blueberry muffins and THEY WERE SO GOOD. I've never actually made normal blueberry muffins because, for some reason, I always thought they'd be really difficult to make. I'm not sure where that thought process came from though because these were probably the easiest muffins that I've ever made! Admittedly they don't make for the prettiest end result but that small fact can be overlooked as far as I'm concerned and if I didn't know they were low fat then I certainly wouldn't ever have guessed. If you have a spare 45 minutes or so then I definitely recommend you knock some up, promise you won't regret it! AMAZING.

Here's what you'll need:

  • 250g self raising flour (Allinson Nature Friendly)
  • 1 & a half tsp baking powder
  • 50g low fat margarine
  • 75g Half Spoon granulated sugar (Silver Spoon)
  • 100g blueberries
  • 2 large Happy Eggs
  • 235ml milk
  • lemon juice from half a lemon
Method
  • Preheat the oven to 18°C, fan oven 160°C or Gas Mark 4
  • Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cases
  • Sieve flour and baking powder into a large bowl, add the margarine and rub gently until it resembles breadcrumbs
  • Stir in the sugar and blueberries
  • Whisk together the eggs, milk and lemon juice. Add to the flour mixture and stir gently but do not over mix
  • Spoon the mixture into the pre-prepared muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes.
  • Serve warm for breakfast or afternoon tea. Yum!

Sunday Summary #46

Sunday 19 February 2012

Another week done & dusted! How are you all getting on?

Sarah V - I'm doing terribly with dieting at the moment. I can't seem to get motivated, and even doing something as structured as Jenny Craig isn't helping - actually, I find that it makes me eat extra badly if I have a day away from home (and therefore away from the diet). But I do find myself looking forward to cooking more when it's over and making lots of yummy healthy dinners - something I've got really bad at doing over the past few months!

Gemma - Another 1lb off this week, slow and steady progress! I've had a really good week and then went a bit off the rails again on a night out. I find it easy to measure drinks before I go out and then just stick to small glasses of wine in the pub. What I do find tricky is saying no to drinks inside a club, people buy you drinks and don't think anything of ordering something with full fat coke or getting you a bottle of beer and these drinks soon start to eat into my points. I try not to worry about this too much, I would rather have a slow steady loss and still have fun.

Sarah - Second week of WW has been good, had lots of nice food and loads of treats. Too many treats maybe as I only had 10 of my weekly points left at the end of the week! I lost 1lb but hopefully if I cut out a few of the extra snacks this week I can double that and get 2lbs.  I still haven't managed any structured exercise.  It's been months (maybe even 6!!) since I really did anything.  I keep saying I will rectify this but I can't see that happening til the evenings start getting lighter.

Sunday Summary #45

Monday 13 February 2012

Another week done! How was yours?

Gemma - After the disaster of last week I lost 3.5 lbs this week taking me to -4.5 stone all together. I had another big night out this weekend and I didn't even bother to count points after my 4th large glass of wine. I had veggie burger and chips the next day to cure my hangover and a wispa gold. I've got two days to turn it around before my weigh in on Tuesday. I'm really enjoying all my new found confidence and enjoy wearing all my new dresses but I'm trying not to slip back in to old habits and undo all my progress so far. Why is weight so hard to lose but so easy to put back on?

Charlene - I've finished the Jenny Craig diet and lost a total of 4 inches and 6lbs throughout the 28 day trial. I've got mixed feelings about the diet, but I'm posting an in-depth review later this week so I'll save my thoughts until then. It's back to eating my own foods now, and it'll be hard not indulging in things I've missed. I'm going to try and stick to the eating pattern and bulk up on vegetables like Jenny Craig taught me, so here's hoping for more losses...

Sarah -  WW got so much easier for me after the first few days, a couple of the days I didn't even want all of my daily points.  I am eating loads of fruit and veg, wholegrains and lean protein but getting the sweet treats that I crave at the same time and life is good!! I still weigh in on a Thursday and lost 2lbs in my first week.  I still had 30 weekly points left last week and was hoping to better that this week but after visiting the chip shop on Friday (250g chips - 16 pro points) and a trip to Nandos on Saturday I have already munched my way thru 30 of my weekly points.  Ooops.

Sarah V is in the wilds of Scotland this weekend, trying to stay away from fried breakfasts!

Baking Mad Monday - Banoffee Layer

It's Charlene's turn to take part in the Baking Mad low calorie baking challenge this week!



As with the rest of the girls, Baking Mad sent me most of the ingredients, and all I had to add were bananas, dates, low fat spread, lemon juice and crème fraiche.

I was impressed with how quick this was to make - it was ready within 15 minutes, most of that time was spent poking at the dates and trying to get them to turn to 'toffee' as the recipe suggests. I'm not a fan of dates, but the addition of a little bit of sugar made them almost like toffee and a small amount in the layered dessert was a nice addition!



INGREDIENTS:
4 low fat oatcakes
3 tsp half spoon granulated sugar (silver spoon)
1 tbsp low fat spread, melted
75 grams pitted dates
2 bananas
Lemon juice
2 tbsp crème fraîche low fat
1 dark chocolate square

DIRECTIONS:
001. Place the oatcakes in a food processor and process until the become crumbs. You could also put the biscuits into plastic bags and beat with a rolling pin.

002. Mix the crumbs, 2 tsp sugar and melted low fat spread.

003. Place the dates, remaining sugar and 4 tbsp water in a small pan and heat gently until the dates have become soft. Beat the mixture so it resembles toffee.

004. Slice the banana and toss in the lemon juice to avoid browning.

005. Spoon half the biscuits crumb in the bottom of two glasses. Top with sliced banana then the date puree followed by crème frachie. Repeat the layers until all the ingredients have been used finished with a dollop of crème fraiche and banana.

006. Grate the chocolate over the cream and serve immediately.



Mmmm, it felt really indulgent eating these, and it was guilt free knowing that there was no fatty cream, biscuit base or sugary toffee to sabotage my diet! I will definitely be making these again, and also trying them with different fruits. They look great too, so would be a perfect way to impress if you're having friends over for dinner!

Guest Post - Exercise and the fight against depression by Liz

Saturday 11 February 2012

This weeks guest post was written by the lovely Liz from distract me now please.


2011 was pretty much the year from hell. I had a massive bout of anxiety and depression; I had to spend time in hospital, I felt completely unable to function, and I went from being a workaholic to being someone who couldn’t go to work for five months.

By November I decided I felt able enough to start doing some exercise. I always knew that exercising would help, but it took me a long time (and several changes in medication) to find the motivation. I went for a trial at my local gym and honestly haven’t looked back since. I manage to go three/four times a week (unheard of for me, even pre-depression). I’ve found it amazing for beating stress, getting out my extra (anxiety-causing) adrenalin, distracting me, and helping me get to sleep better at night. It’s also given me extra energy; a few months ago I was unable to do anything apart from work and sleep, and now I can normally get to the gym and sometimes go out to meet friends afterwards. That might not sound like much but it’s helping me start to feel like ‘me’ again.

My tips for using exercise to help depression:

* Do it when you’re ready. It’s easy for people who haven’t been depressed to think that the solution is easy, and that sufferers are able to cure themselves if they ‘put their mind to it’. This is simply not true. It takes some people a long time to be able to start helping themselves (it took me about 10 months).

* Be realistic about what you are going to do, and about your levels of motivation. For example, I love swimming but hate walking home with wet hair, so I gave up on pledging to swim three times a week. Popping to a gym that’s just down the road is far easier!

* Remember that it won’t always be easy. Bad days will still come (and go) and when they hit you need to be easy on yourself: just because you miss a couple of sessions doesn’t mean you’ve gone back to square one.


* Reward yourself. Sad fact: I give myself a star on the calendar if I go to the gym (and a tick for going to work). I can’t explain why this works, but it just does. Find a reward that suits you.
Good luck and (I know everyone says it) things will get better. Honestly.

A Day in the Life of Weight Watchers #5

Wednesday 8 February 2012

I have been following the Weight Watchers plan for over a year and I am not bored of the plan yet. You get to eat varied food and you can still have all of your favourite things. For me Weight Watchers is about portion control and gaining a better understanding of you eating habits and what you can do to change them.

This is an example of what I ate yesterday on my day off. I wouldn't normally have such a big breakfast on a work day but I go to my Weight Watcher class on a Tuesday at 9am then come home and have breakfast much later than normal. Some of the combinations are a little odd but I don't like to waste food so I tried to use up all the leftovers in my fridge.



















Breakfast

Quorn Sausages - 4
Nimble bread - 1
Egg - 2
Mushrooms - 0
 WW Bacon - 2
Ketchup and fry lite  - 1

Total - 10




Lunch
Pitta - 3
Roasted peppers, onions, carrot, tomato - 0
Red pepper and Chilli houmous - 2
Quorn pieces - 2

Total - 7


Dinner

Scallops & Chorizo - 5
Potato - 3
Coleslaw - 2
Salad - 0

Total - 10




Dessert

Meringue - 1
WW cream  - 1
Fruit - 0

 Total - 2

Snacks


Orange & apple - 0
WW Rich toffee choc bar - 2
Milk for tea - 1
Yogurt - 2

Daily total - 34

Are you a Weight Watchers member? What types of food do you like to eat on your day off?

Baking Mad Monday - Chocolate Brownies

Monday 6 February 2012

It's Sarah V's  turn to take part in the Baking Mad low calorie baking challenge this week! 

I haven't had much free time lately. Well, ANY. But I managed to grab half an hour yesterday to put these brownies together. It was a good thing as they were super quick and easy to make, and only used one bowl!

As Sarah said last week, the point of the Baking Mad challenge is to make lower calorie treats with Half Spoon granulated sugar by Silver Spoon. Baking Mad provided me with some products to use:


In addition I had to supply baking powder, low fat margarine and an egg.

I chose the brownies as I LOVE chocolate. I was quite interested to try them as my favourite brownie recipe is incredibly decadent, with a whole block of butter in it - these are a lot better for you!


Low Calorie Brownies

Ingredients
70g Margarine (low fat)
25g Good quality orange 70% dark chocolate, broken up
1 Happy Eggs lightly beaten
0.50 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract Blend (Nielsen-Massey)
60g Half Spoon Granulated Sugar (Silver Spoon)
25g Plain White Flour (Allinson Nature Friendly) sifted*
1 tsp Cocoa Powder
0.50 tsp Baking Powder


1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/ 350°F gas 4.
2. Grease and base line a 14cm square tin.
3. Put the chocolate and low fat margarine in a large bowl over a pan of just-simmering water, making sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Stir until the chocolate has melted, remove from the heat and stir until smooth.
4. Add the other ingredients to the bowl and mix well. Spoon into the tin, levelling the surface with the back of a spoon. Bake for 25 minutes or until risen and firm around the edges but a little soft in the centre. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes. The brownie will continue to cook as it cools.


Although the recipe stated plain flour, I'd actually been sent Self Raising. Based on the small quantity, I tried it with Self Raising and it was fine. I think the brownies needed a raising agent to bulk them out a bit.

The brownies were yummy! Very light, and a bit more cakey than full fat brownies, but still chewy in the middle and lovely and chocolatey. The orange chocolate added a nice touch. I took them to work today and no one realised they were low fat!

Yummy!

Sunday Summary #44

Sunday 5 February 2012

Another week already, phew! How are you all getting on with your goals? We'd love to hear!

Gemma - Bit of a disaster this week, I put 1lb on when I weighed in class on Tuesday. I had a bad weekend before and I couldn't reverse the damage in one day. I have weighed at home this morning and I have lost this lb and a little more so I'm not too disappointed. I have stayed within my points this week but I have used a lot of them for coffees and treats rather than food and this is not a trend I want to see continue. I will put it down to the cold weather this week and try and snack on more healthy food next week and have more filling meals.

Charlene - Feeling really un-motivated with my Jenny Craig diet now, I'm almost finished though. I'm trying hard to stick to it but I'm getting bored of the same foods. I spoke to someone else who is doing the diet and they've got a different food for every day of their 2 week trial, whereas I only have 7 different main meals so it's the same things every week. I upped my hours at work so I'm now doing 12hr shifts and having to take breakfast, lunch AND dinner into work with me. Does anyone have any healthy ideas except from soup? I have access to a microwave.

Sarah V - I lost 1.5lbs at weigh-in this week, but have seriously fallen off the wagon since then. A combination of celebrating my best friend's engagement and a ridiculously busy and stressful week at work has lured me off the healthy path and towards alcohol and naughty food! I'm going to try and get back on it this week, although like Charlene I am struggling with Jenny Craig, it's only Week 2 but I'm getting bored already! Just got to try and stick to it, I guess!

Lucy - Had a bit of a nightmare this week, if you read my blog or Twitter you'll know I'm in London for two weeks. My accommodation didn't work out as planned so I am now in a house-share with at least five other people and the kitchen is disgusting and the fridge is mouldy, thus meaning I don't want to buy things that need refrigerating or use many pots and pans, so I am having to spend a small fortune on meals for one every night. Certainly not the most ideal of situations but not a lot can be done unfortunately. I am starting my Maxitone diet not this week but next, so hopefully we'll start to get back on track then!

Sarah - I have been struggling to get back on track since the honeymoon :( I am just not in the right place at the moment for Slimming World.  I love the diet and I know it works but you have to want that more than you want cake and at this moment in time cake is winning hands down each time... So, I still want to lose weight (23lbs or so more please) so I have decided to give Weight Watchers a go for a month or so and see how I get on with it.  I have joined Weight Watchers online via Quidco (thanks to Mrs Sock!) and will get £30 cash back meaning 3 months membership will only cost me £2.85, a bargain hey!  If any of you are thinking of doing the same thing let me know and I will send you a referral email :)  I am now on day 4 of WW and am constantly hungry even though I am eating loads of fruit and veg and am hoping that my body gets used to 26 points worth of food quickly!

Guest Post - Sally MyFitnessPal

Saturday 4 February 2012

I've never exactly been a small person, I've always been somewhere between a size 12-16 since I was about 16 years old. And only recently I've found my weight increase for a number of reasons (got a new job which means I can afford tasty food AND share it all with my lovely man!) So before Christmas I knew that I needed to shift a bit of weight because I eat like a HORSE at Christmas (don't we all though?) and I wanted to join the post-Christmas dieters in the new year. So I looked into a few ways of losing weight. There were two problems with me doing this:


1) I LOVE food. I really bloody love food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, afternoon tea, elevensies. Really offer me some food and I'll take it. I LOVE FOOD.


2) I'm SO lazy. I love nothing more than having alone time with my laptop or watching movies with my man or even when I feel productive and do some drawing it's not exactly like I'm being active. These past times do not aid me in any way for weight loss.


Upon further research into ways to aid weight loss I heard of a little app for the iPhone called "myfitnesspal" and boy, is it good.



It's basically an app that calorie counts. I've read/heard lots of things that make this sound like a bad thing, for example Pauline Quirke on the new Lighter Life advert, but really this app makes it so incredibly easy.


You put in your starting weight, and where you want to get to. It gives you the option of how many lbs a week you want to lose (as a guide-I think it's pretty impossible to lose 2lbs a week every week) and then tells you your new calorie goal for the day.


The point of the app is not to discourage you from eating (oh no, I got told off by it one day for NOT EATING ENOUGH CALORIES - it literally shouted at me) but to encourage you to work off the calories. It's good that it's all there in red and green for you as it's so incredibly simple.


So you basically tell it everything you eat throughout the day, and it has a MASSIVE database of food, I have always found everything I've eaten on there. And what's helpful is that it has a super good barcode scanner so that you can just scan what you've eaten and it'll load it in automatically. You have to work out the weight and portions of bits you've eaten to get the calories but really, the maths isn't that hard.


The same goes for any exercise you do. It has two categories, cardio and strength. I'm not really one for strength-induced workouts so I usually just put in the cardio. As I said I'm really lazy so I put in any sort of exercise that I do throughout the day:


Walking the dog
Walking in general (we don't have a car at the moment-boo)
Hula-hooping
Cleaning (it doesn't burn a lot but it counts!)
Zumba class


Daniel and I treated ourselves to an Xbox with Kinect for Christmas and got ourselves a few dancing games including Zumba and Just Dance 3. Just 20 minutes on Just Dance 3 burns about 100 calories! That's worth about 10 peanut butter m&ms :)


I even cheekily added "standing - playing guitar" once after we rocked out at an Adam Ant concert for a few hours. That burnt a lot of calories!

The last great thing about this app is the progress you make can be seen on a little graph. You just have to remember to weigh and measure yourself regularly and put it in. Seeing the little graph drop gradually is very encouraging!


So I did this for a month before Christmas and lost a total of 1.3kg. I went from 79.9kg (12.6 stone) to 78.6kg (12.3 stone). My target calories for each day was 1270 - so I could eat what I wanted as long as I burnt it off.

I took a break over Christmas because -let's face it- it's impossible to diet over the festive season. So. Many. Good. Thiiiiiings. But I started again on January 2nd and I didn't dare weigh myself over Christmas so waited until the weekend after and was pleased to see I'd lost a bit more! 

I've gone down to 1200 calories a day and am currently at 77.5kg (12.2 stone) and have lost 2.4kg in total!! Having the Kinect has made it much easier to find fun things to do to burn off some calories, and best of all it's in the comfort of my own home with only my puppy dog watching me :)


So that's where I'm at right now, so far so good! A few of my friends use the app too so we can see how each other is doing and send each other little messages of encouragement! If you don't have an iPhone then you can use the website www.myfitnesspal.com and I believe it's now available for lots of other types of phones too!

My own personal aim is to get down to a healthy weight. It's not about looks for me, just feeling healthy - I have far too many dresses that I couldn't bear to part with if I lost too much weight!!

Happy exercising!


Diet Friendly Restaurants - Tibits, London.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

There are few phrases that strike fear into the heart of someone in their first week of a diet than 'Let's grab a bite to eat!' Let's face it, the majority of eateries out there are calorific. Or, the only low fat option is a plate of leaves and a little bit of meat, which doesn't do a great job of soaking up half a bottle of white wine.

I asked on Twitter for recommendations for somewhere healthyish to go in London last weekend with a friend, and Harriet suggested Tibits, off Regent Street. It was an EXCELLENT suggestion.

Tibits is, essentially, a big salad bar. There's a huge selection of dishes - all vegetarian - mostly cold, but some hot, and most of it is really healthy, too (I must confess a couple of beer battered onion rings found their way onto my plate). It's measured by weight, so you take what you fancy from the buffet and then take your plate to get weighed and pay. If you want to try a bit of everything, you're looking at around £10-15 a plate, but you can take as little or as much as you want. Here's my plate:





The selection is huge - but my favourites were the butternut squash, green beans, the quinoa and the falafel. Oooh, and the red pepper houmous. And the goats cheese foccacia! My companion also said the curry was excellent.

I can't recommend it enough - it's so rare to find something healthy, filling and yummy and Tibits was all of those things. It's also fast and - crucially for a buffet - fresh, with the dishes replaced regularly, which so many places don't bother with! If you're in London for the day, I highly recommend. They also do takeaway - if I worked nearby I think I'd be in there every lunchtime!

I'm thinking of making Diet Friendly Restaurants a regular feature - I have a few in mind but if you can think of any please do make recommendations in the comments!