Thursday, 26 September 2019

Thursday, 26-09-19

Good morning.  Long message alert!

No photos from yesterday, sorry.  It turned out to be busier than expected and I just forgot.
The ratatouille with crumbled feta turned out to be delicious and, as I defrosted two portions, that's today's lunch as well.

I made up a large batch of savoury mince with some pork mince and beef mince I bought when shopping yesterday morning.  It's a great way to use up bits and bobs and is such a useful thing to have in the freezer.
This is what I did, using the sauté and slow cooker functions on the Instant Pot.

I heated one tbsp of veg oil (six syns but, per portion, negligible) and fried two onions, one red pepper, one carrot and some baby corn, all chopped/sliced.  Then I added the minces and fried, stirring, until it was all browned (it takes a while).

After that I added, in no particular order, some Moroccan spice mix, some garlic granules, some Marigold bouillon powder, some pepper, some salt, a beef stock pot, one of my wow chillies (chopped) and some mixed herbs (I forgot about a bay leaf or two, annoyingly) and stirred it all well for a few minutes.

Then in went two and a half cans of chopped tomatoes (I had the half can left over), a pot of left over rice, a handful of lentils, a handful of oats, some soy sauce, some Lea and Perrins and a really generous squidge of tomato puree.  I think that was it.

The beauty of a 'recipe' like this is that you can add whatever you have.  I used Moroccan spice mix because I had some but any spices (or none) would be fine - cajun, curry, chilli, whatever.

Then I stitched the IP over to slow cooker, high, six hours, popped on the lid and left it, stirring occasionally when I remembered.

Out of all that I have:
enough mince to take to taster evening
enough for Sunday when I'm feeding five
five single portions and
five pots of beef gravy/sauce that I strained off before portioning out

. . . so you can see that the six syns worth of oil becomes nothing really, not per portion.  Everything else was SW free.

Phew!  Are you still with me after all that?

Today's plans:
B:  protein pancakes with fruit and yogurt.
I came across this pancake recipe while looking for something quite different (Google works in mysterious ways sometimes).  It requires oats zizzed into flour, cottage cheese, egg whites, baking powder and cinnamon (I will use the pumpkin spice mix, seeing as I have it).  I have all of that so - worth a go and see, in the interests of discovery!
SW:  one healthy extra B

L:  ratatouille with crumbled feta, Mullerlight
When shopping, I saw that Muller have brought out two more 'special edition' (that's what they call it) yogurts, an Irish coffee flavour and a blueberry muffin flavour, which sounded nice enough to try.
SW:  On the pot of ratatouille I had written '3 syns per portion' so I guess that's what it is, plus one healthy extra A for the feta.  The yogurt is half a syn.

D:  It's taster evening at SW group so goodness knows but it should all be low or no syn.  I'm taking mince and pasta with grated cheese to sprinkle over.

Ss:  none (I can hope!)

Body Magic.  It's my hour with my personal trainer today.


After getting the email reminding me about Heart and Sole, I looked up where and when the walks are.  Unfortunately, a number of likely looking walks clash with personal training or aqua classes, but I've scheduled one on Monday, half ten, a mile and a half, along the Riverside in town.  I'd like to get into this so it's a start.


Also, yesterday, I did the first session of the Couch to 5K thing but at home, either on the spot or round the house and garden, with a great big stopwatch thingy on the PC screen.  It was good but I can see that I will need proper shoes to do this outside on the hard pavements (if I ever get up enough courage).  Still, it's a start, even if I never get beyond the first few weeks.  The whole programme is nine weeks but I reckon it will take longer than that!
I still have to sort out whether I can manage the podcast on my phone!

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