Tuesday, 21-11-23: Mini Spicemas day 21

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to my maintaining on Slimming World blog where I talk about the meals I enjoy while maintaining my target weight and keeping a healthy balanced diet.

Today's spice sachet is Balsamic Dressing Mix.  Different!

It says:

Delicious dressing in seconds
Just mix with oil & vinegar
Wonderful with tomato & mozzarella too

It contains sea salt, tomato, yellow mustard seed, basil, garlic, oregano and black tellicherry pepper (whatever that is) an you are supposed to mix

1 teaspoon of the blend with 2 tablespoons of your choice of oil (e.g. olive oil or rapeseed oil) and 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, then drizzle over your salad. If you like your dressings a touch sweeter, just add a little honey or agave syrup. 

Maybe - at some point over Christmas, I will splash out on calories and give this a go.

Yesterday's meal photos:

I nearly forgot to take a photo.  A nice, simple breakfast of melon and easy peelers.

When I got back from circuits, I had three biscuits (eeeek) but, big but, just three and then I stopped.  Maybe it's not too late to be developing some

control in this area.

This was good.  Beef cassoulet (and I added a bit of pasta to the pot too) with croutons.

I was going to have the other half today for lunch but it's going in the freezer for another time now.

Later on, I had three plums and about half a dozen grapes.

The cheeseburger pasta was delicious but I could only manage half so I will have the other half tomorrow.

This was because . . . 

. . . I wanted room for this.

I had an egg white left from making the rich shortcrust pastry for the mince pies so I made my frozen fruit foam.  It makes loads and loads (there was a bit left that wouldn't fit in the dish) but it was just 150g frozen cherries, one medium egg white and some skinny syrup.  Plus lots and lots and lots of air.

It was so nice but I was stuffed afterwards and rather burpy in the Purple Ronnie sense (if you will excuse the expression) for a while until it all settled!

It's a great way to use up an egg white though.

All you do is process some frozen cherries until they are all powdery (as they are still frozen), add the skinny syrup and the egg white and whisk it for ages until it turns into lovely, light foam - like when you make meringues.  I do it all it Thermione but it can be done with other equipment.

Today's meal plans:

B:  fruit and yogurt

SW:  syn free

L:  the other half of the cheeseburger pasta, side salad; fruit

Yummy!

SW:  one healthy extra A for cheese.

D:  mushroom and bacon risotto, broccoli; fruit/yogurt

Made the usual way with a home made chicken stock.  Nice.  I might try out one of the Italian themed spice mixes

SW:  one healthy extra A for parmesan

Exercise:  Groove class today.  I'm looking forward to it as I missed last week's class.  Weather permitting, Chris and I will walk down rather than driving so that's extra steps.

Summary:

two healthy extra As

no healthy extra Bs

may be syn free

For information:

The Slimming World structure:

While following the plan, you can have . . .

Any amount of speed and free food - BUT try to have a third of your plate as speed food as a sub for free food, NOT as well as . . .  Eat to satisfaction, not to stuffed-ness!

Two healthy extra As (calcium) and one healthy extra B (fibre) - details in the SW pack and on the SW web site/app.

Between five and fifteen syns-worth of synned food - again, details in the pack, site and app.  They are a limit to stay within, not a target to hit.

As a target member, I can also have . . .

Another two healthy extras each day
Another fifteen syns up to three times each week

BUT - only if I need/want to.  It's a limit, not a target

. . . with the ultimate aim of not needing to count healthy extras, syns, etc at all but just knowing and eating well instinctively.