Wednesday, 01-12-21: Festive Challenge day 1

 Good morning!

Well, here we are in December and the Festive Challenge has begun.  It's not really much of a challenge really, it's just that I have challenged myself to have at least one festive type meal or item each day. 
What constitutes 'festive' is quite broad ranging from where I found the recipe or idea to specific ingredients that strike me as festive.  The syns will perhaps go up a little bit but will remain well within the SW programme.

I wrote about the rules, such as they are, here.

So let the challenge commence. 

Yesterday's meals:

The pear looks a bit manky but was lovely.  The apple was brown all the way through so I subbed it for another and it's now resting on the compost heap, poor thing.

I always love this tomato and roasted red pepper soup and am so glad there's a second portion in the freezer.

The heart shaped croutons may seem a bit of a faff but they took precious little time and were fun.  I will do that again, for sure.

I then had a couple of easy peelers.

And this Tastily meal was gorgeous.  If I get any more from them, I will look out for it.  It was plenty, I didn't have to cook any more veg.

Dessert was a kvarg.

Today's meal plans:

B:  festive spice porridge with oranges and yogurt
I found the recipe for festive spice mix on the good old BBC Good Food site.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/festive-spice
. . . and have made up a quarter amount which I intend to use within the fortnight (assuming it's nice) so I have added the citrus zests after leaving them out to dry a little bit.
Oranges always strike me as a most festive fruit, probably because when I was a little girl we always, but always without fail, had an orange at the bottom of our stockings on Christmas morning - an orange and a thruppenny bit which changed to a sixpence as the fifties went on and then I can't remember what it changed to after that.  It always felt the heights of Christmas richness - early morning, an orange to eat (in bed too - amazingly luxurious), money to spend and a couple of gifts of something I could get on and do in bed (clever Mum and Dad), usually a book and something a bit crafty with plenty more excitement to come later.  This was before the days of millions of presents and we were always more than satisfied with it.  It was a wonder!
SW:  half a healthy extra A for milk and one healthy extra B for oats

L:  Christmas canapés; salad nibbles; fruit
This is possibly what I will make for our group's Christmas taster in a couple of weeks .  It's not nearly as posh as it sounds.  I will use my smallest cookie cutters to cut out 60gs-worth of wholemeal bread, spray and bake them to crisp and on them have some soft cheese, some smoked salmon or thin cut beef and something garnishy.  All finger food, like a buffet!
(I'll zizz the off cuts of bread and freeze the resulting breadcrumbs for another time)
SW:  I think I am going to bend things a bit and have two Bs and one A today.  Half an A for some Primula soft cheese and/or 25g Philly light is two syns

D:  turkey and mushroom stroganoff, konjac rice (if I have it), veg; yogurt
(Festive because - turkey!)
Eileen inspired this, thanks, Eileen.  It's just the usual SW happy stroganoff which I think is really nice but with bits of turkey breast steak and chestnut mushrooms instead of beef.  I could, perhaps, add one crumbled chestnut over the top - I understand you can freeze sweet chestnuts so I have no worries about opening the whole pack while the SW site tells me that one vacu-packed chestnut is one syn - yay!
This is the recipe I will use, converted to turkey.  I've made it before and it is really nice.
https://www.supergoldenbakes.com/beef-stroganoff/
SW:  half a syn for a bit of cornflour and one syn for a chestnut.  The konjac rice is one syn and the yogurt half a syn

E:  an hour of personal training

Summary:
one healthy extra A
two healthy extra Bs
five syns (not at all bad)

From the freezer:
turkey steak
maybe some veg
smoked salmon