Wednesday evening, 02-10-24, pondering on jam, a book and Nicky in a Vlog

Good evening, everyone!  

Seeing as I now have some frozen peach and nectarine slices, I decided to thaw some out and have a go at using them for chia jam.  
I've now tried raspberry, strawberry, cherry and plum and apple and they were all delicious although the raspberry was too seedy for me - I prefer seedless jams.

I'm also considering blackberry and apple although I would sieve out most of the blackberry seeds (but I still wouldn't syn).

And, nearer to Christmas, perhaps something with an orange and mixed spice vibe.  Or cranberry - now there's an idea.

Plenty of options anyway!

See what arrived yesterday.

A big thank you to Eloise for mentioning this to me.

I got it from World of Books, a second hand book selling site

World of Books

It was described as in very good condition and it certainly is.  A hard back, originally priced at £16.99, looking as if it had hardly been opened - that will change now!! - and under £4.00.

OK, so it is meals from Mediterranean countries rather than conforming to the Mediterranean 'diet' principles but if I have learnt one thing while doing SW, it is how to adapt a recipe and I have a lovely long list of recipes to adapt.  Use some evoo, chuck in a few seeds, up the veg if necessary and Bob's your uncle!!

What I ate today

A delicious breakfast of strawberry chia jam yogurt, mixed fruit (raspberries, kiwi, peach and nectarine slices and an apple) and some mixed seeds on top.

Two syns in total for the syns.

I was lucky enough to get some whole kale yesterday, not all chopped up with the hard stem part still included.  SO, today, I cut out the hard vein from a leaf, sprayed it with a bit of evoo, added some ras el hanout and air fried it to make some very satisfying crispy kale.  It was nice - obviously I like some kinds of kale.

One syn for the evoo.

Lunch.

Oh.  My.  Gosh.  How delicious was this!  I stuck pretty much to the recipe, roughly reduced down to one.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/halloumi-salad-orange-mint

So, so good!  I will be making this again - maybe as a starter when I have guests - it would be perfect for that in smaller amounts.

A bit SW heavy, mind you.

60g halloumi was two healthy extra As

15g walnuts (plus on straight in the mouth) was one healthy extra B

four syns for 10mls evoo

It's been such a delicious day.  Dinner was also absolutely lovely and very 'healthy' too.

This recipe is also on the wonderful BBC Good Food site  

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/spicy-cajun-chicken-quinoa

Luckily, I had a pouch of puy lentils; the only changes I made were that I used frozen peach slices as I didn't have any dried apricots and I didn't add any leaf coriander, yucky stuff!  Oh, and I used half a boneless chicken fillet - I always cut them in half to freeze them - half is more than enough for me.

I had some melon slices for afters.

Two syns for some evoo and I think that's it as far as SW is concerned.

I think I might use the basic mixture of quinoa, lentils and onion to go with the sausage casserole I plan to make on Friday.  I really liked the flavours and the textures.

Summary:

two healthy extra As

one healthy extra B

eleven syns, two for seeds and evoo accounted for the rest.

My meal plans for tomorrow:

B:  fruit - just fruit as it's a busy morning and I will be eating lunch earlier than usual;.

L:   I have a friend round and am planning to make a crustless quiche, a few air fryer chips and a nice choppy salad followed by fruit (of course).  

D:  Spanish omelette, tomatoes and mushrooms; fruit

Edit - not an omelette, there will be leftovers of quiche!

Exercise:   SET class online

The Extra Bit

I want to give a shout out to Nicky's vlog today.  It's called Nicky in a Vlog and it's a sort of weight loss/family/recipes/general life/holidays sort of vlog, really lovely to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/@nickyinavlog/videos

Nicky's on a weight loss 'journey' and has used a variety of plans and structures over the years.  Recently, having tired of constant weighing and measuring to count calories, she changed to Slimming World and is doing really well.
In a couple of weeks, she is off to the USA on holiday (to Disney) and I'm really looking forward to seeing what she and her family get up to there.

Something else I'm looking forward to is some air fryer recipes/ideas as she won an air fryer in another YouTuber's video yesterday.  Big congratulations, Nicky.

She's also in our lovely Slim Win group.

Do pop over, take a look and like/subscribe if you like what you see.