Monday, 06-06-22 (quite long - sorry)

Good morning, everyone.

The weekend back on plan has gone well, thank goodness.  It always amazes me how one can make not a lot of food look so much more by arranging it nicely.  It doesn't take all that long and, for me, makes such a difference to my enjoyment of the meal.

Yesterday's meals:

Sweeet eggy bread with fruit and yogurt - absolutely delicious and I don't have it often enough really.  You can also make it savoury and perhaps I will make some sort of 'croque monsieur' at some point with eggy bread and cheese inside.  M   - sounds good, doesn't it?

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this breakfast and have posted it as a recipe!

Lunch (or Sunday dinner) was so, so good.  I had two slices of the sliced beef and the gravy was from a can of M&S chunky steak (free/protein on SW) - I strained off some of the gravy and kept it for another time.  The roasted veggies were onion, squash, sweet potato, mushroom and a mini yellow pepper and I just Ninja-ed them in spray oil without adding any seasoning.  So, so gorgeous.
I added 50g 5% yogurt ( half a syn)and a tsp Groovy Food choccy and raspberry sauce (half a syn) to the fruit salad and wow!

Such a satisfying Sunday dinner.

Dinner was also really nice and loaded with protein and speed.  Extra carrot because I had cut some intending to roast it for lunch and then just forgot to add it.  Doh!

I had the other trifle although the custard yogurt topping had gone watery (lesson learned) and instead of the choccy crunch topping, I finished off some fruit salad.  It was still nice though!

Focus areas:

Sticking to basics:  tick

Plenty of speed:  tick

Syns in meals:  definitely

Today's plans:

B:  smoothie

I know SW doesn't encourage smoothies.  Their stated reason is that when you blend fruit, it becomes less filling and less satisfying (I think I've got that right).  Also it's something to do with digestion - or is that the same thing?  **
Anyway, I find a smoothies very satisfying and filling and there's no way I am synning the fruit, just because it's blended.
Just saying - because. whatever plan we are following, there are some things we make out own decisions about so it needs to be said that this meal is tiptoe-ing outside the SW plan.

Back to my smoothie.  It will contain 20g oats, berries, maybe some melon and/or mango and a banana, 50g 5% yogurt for one syn and some milk to the right consistency.

SW:  part of a healthy extra A for the milk, half a healthy extra B and one syn.  The rest is speed or free

L:  ham and split pea soup, croutons; fruit

After boiling the ham on Saturday, I used the stock to make a tasty and thick yellow split pea soup that contained onion, carrot, stock and yellow split peas (they don't need soaking) plus some seasonings (but no salt) and when it was all blended, I shredded some ham to add to my portion.
The rest is in the freezer.

SW:  half a healthy extra B for the croutons (home made) .  If I add some milk, it will be part of my healthy extra A

D:  cheesy potato penny pie, peas, cabbage; yogurt

The pie is a mince base (from the freezer).  The topping is cooked potato, cut into rounds (pennies) and laid over before spraying and popping in the oven to brown as the mince heats up.  Pop over some grated cheese and pop back in the oven to melt.  I will measure how much milk I use for breakfast and lunch and make the cheese up to two As-worth.

SW:  the mince is one syn (it says so on the container!), one A plus a bit more for the cheese, half a syn for a Mullerlight.

Exercise:  circuit training today

Summary:

two healthy extra As

one healthy extra B

two and a half syns

From the freezer:

mango

bread

cooked mince

**  I looked this up after writing the above and I can't do any better than to quote the Two Chubby Cubs on the subject.  They do have a very pithy way of stating things and a no-nonsense approach that appeals to me, although I wouldn't quite go for the metaphors they use! 

Anyway - this is what they say:

"BEFORE WE BEGIN – and partly because I’m feeling all bolshie from my moan about the heat – it’s up to YOU whether you decide to syn these smoothies. I don’t. Slimming World’s argument is that you should syn fruit if it is blended but there are no syns if you eat it raw. Ostensibly this is due to ‘changing the filling factor of the food’ or creating a situation where you might over-eat calories. Fine. That rule applies if you want to make orange juice – you couldn’t sit and eat eight oranges but you could easily neck the juice of eight oranges in one go. I keep reading from people in SW groups who say that blending releases the natural sugars, as though the strawberry is a spirit level bubble filled with syrup. Pfft. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know. All I know is this: none of these smoothies use any more fruit than you could cheerfully and comfortably eat in a fruit salad. If it makes you feel better, don’t blend the fruit in a Nutribullet or similar, push it all in your mouth with your sausage-fingers and frantically chew it up before spitting it into a glass. Technically, according to SW, that makes it syn-free. PFFFFT."

https://twochubbycubs.com/2016/06/06/six-slimming-smoothies/

(you need to scroll down for the quote and further down there are some delicious combinations of fruit to make smoothies, if you're interested.  Even better, buy their books.  They are a good read.