Saturday evening, 20-04-24

Good evening, everyone!

Today's Vlog is one I have watched/subscribed to for quite a while.

https://www.youtube.com/@Mrsleannejames
Leanne has a had quite a journey - she joined Slimming World, was doing rather well and then she was diagnosed as having breast cancer so had to start treatment.  
Her vlogs became, understandably, rather infrequent, and they focused on eating for health rather than following any specific plan.  

However, she is now in complete remission (is that the right term?) and she is now back on the Slimming World plan, plus intermittent fasting when possible, and going great guns.

She does weigh-ins, what she eats in a day, health updates, general life stuff - oh, all sorts of things.

Leanne is lovely.  She comes over as a gentle, courageous lady who thinks deeply and expresses herself really well.  I always enjoy watching her vlogs and I hope you will too.  Go and take a look.

Here's a link to her latest vlog at time of typing.

What I ate today:

Breakfast was some fruit (an apple and an orange), eaten on our morning walk.  No photo.

I goofed over my lunch plans.  How can anyone run out of cans of baked beans?  Well, I did and I don't want to go shopping again so soon so I put baked beans on the shopping list and turned to the faithful Internet for a simple recipe.

Here you go - from the wonderful BBC Good Food site - I love that place.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/healthy-baked-beans

I had to do a bit of subbing.  I used cannellini beans, one carton, and reduced the other ingredients accordingly although it's really one of those 'chuck it all in and see' type recipes.  
I blended a can of chopped tomatoes and used some of it instead of passata.
I didn't have dates so I finely chopped some mixed dried fruit instead.  And I cooked the chopped onions long and slow so they almost melted in.

It does have synnable ingredients but I made between a third and a half of the recipe and it made three Joy-sized portions, I reckon it is comparable to canned baked beans in calories so I'm just calling it syn free

After taking out two thirds to freeze, I finely chopped a bacon medallion and added that with a squidge of brown sauce to the last third.  On pumpernickel toast with cheese on top it was absolutely gorgeous - and I have two more portions in the freezer as well as a new recipe I will want to make again.

Half a healthy extra A, one healthy extra B and one syn

Later on, I had an orange and a banana.

Dinner was a shop bought fresh chicken and pancetta tortellini to which IO added a tomato, pepper and mushroom sauce.
The SW site said the whole pack was fifteen syns which sounds awful - until you realise that it's officially two portions but I got three portions.
It was lovely - must buy that again sometime and, in the meanwhile, I have two portions in the freezer.

My freezer is taking a battering again, isn't it?

Earlier in the day I made a two portion batch of rice pudding in the slow cooker (for the post I'm doing about rice pudding) so I had one portion for dessert and the other portion is - guess where!!

Half a healthy extra A for cheese, half an A for milk, six syns for the main and one syn for sugar in the rice pudding.

Summary:

one and a half healthy extra As

one healthy extra B

eight syns

Tomorrow's meal plans:

B:  guacamole toast with egg, leaves and tomatoes

L:  roasted gammon, etc; fruit

I have some blended chopped tomato from the baked beans recipe so I will make some sort of sauce to go with the gammon.

D:  ham salad; fruit

Exercise:  a rest day.  I start back at classes again on Monday.