Thursday, 16 February 2023

Thursday, 16-02-23: low spend February and why I count wholemeal flour as a B

 Morning, everyone!

I did a bit of research yesterday.  
As my regular readers know, I have no qualms about 'bending' or even ignoring some of what I term Slimming World's sillier rules - synning cooked fruit comes to mind straight away and ditto for pureed fruit as long is you are using everything that you would have if eating it cold.  There's a few other things I do that are not strictly SW too.

For a while now, I have been allowing 40g wholemeal flour as a healthy extra B because that's how much wholemeal flour (more or less) there is in 60g wholemeal bread which is a B choice.
Healthy extra Bs are all about fibre.

So yesterday, I thought I would just check this against 40g of the oats I use, just to see.
40g Mornflake creamy oats is 147 calories and 3.6 g fibre
40g of the SR wholemeal flour I use (Dove) for pancakes, etc, is 133 calories and 4g fibre
So there you are - my SR flour is lower calorie and higher fibre than the 40g oats.

I will no longer feel even slightly guilty about this particular bending of the 'rules'!  😇

Yesterday's meals:

Bacon and mushroom in the omelette and tomatoes spread over.  Delicious and satisfying too.  Yum.

Just beans on toast, really ordinary and so nice.

Later on, I had an easy peeler.

Ten mls of Elmlea (or cream) really lifted this carbonara and was well worth the one and a half syns it cost me.
The sauce was one egg, beaten, 35g grated Italian hard cheese (with another10g sprinkled over the top) and 10mls Elmlea plus a little bit of salt and a grating of pepper.  I wonder if nutmeg would have been nice.
The side was some chunks of butternut squash (thanks for the idea, Sooze) air fry roasted with tomatoes and one baby corn that needed using up.
No room for dessert.
Today's plans

B:  fruit and yogurt
Nice and simple.
SW:  half a syn for yogurt

L:  Mexican pork one pot, side salad; fruit
I have my friend, Val, over for lunch and this seems to be one of the few on the SW data base.  The whole pack is twelve and a half syns and, as everything used to make the dish is either speed or free and it has given me four very good portions (It's supposed to be for two), I'm calling it three syns.
I'll be using wraps and my shaped tins to make two 'bowls' to serve it in to make it look a bit fancy and, just maybe, I will ask Val if she minds me taking a photo because it should look really nice.
SW:  one healthy extra A for grated cheese, one healthy extra B for the wrap and three syns for the pork one-pot.

D:  chicken kofta kebabs, roasted veg, tomatoes; yogurt
From the freezer, they are one syn each and, as there are three of them, I'll have them all.  It's time they bwere used up anyway.
SW:  three syns for the kebabs plus half for the yogurt

Ex:   a jog round the garden.  I know that sounds daft but I'm starting the couch to 5k, am at the very earliest stages and don't have the confidence to run on the street - yet.

Summary:
one healthy extra A 
one healthy extra B
seven syns - pretty good when one has a visitor!

What do I mean by low spend?

February is a low spend month.

Through January, I spent very little on non essential food and other items.  The idea was to spend nothing on non food things and I didn't quite achieve that but I was happy with how it went, all the same.
I was so pleased to be able to make some charitable donations as a result; it's so nice to see positive outcomes.

'Essential' means  food such as fresh fruit, veg and dairy/eggs and other essentials including things like cleaning products and toiletries although I think I am fine for the latter, plus anything necessary that comes up through the month

As for all other spending, there are a few items I need but not an awful lot so I'm really hoping it will also be low spend.

(Of course, all regular bills, direct debits, etc, will still be paid as usual)


No comments:

Post a Comment