Slim Rice...

I had read about this no calorie, no carb Slim Rice in the Daily Mail a few days ago, but only got around to getting a bag yesterday. Last night I used up the last of my Oh So Lean sauces, so I can't wait until next week when I can get another delivery! I still have three chicken breasts left though so I think I will make some low syn chicken and stuffing rolls tonight or tomorrow, we'll see how pressed I am for time today as I have an appointment for wedding dress fittings tonight and may not have enough time to cook them when I get home from work. It may just be a case of eating a couple of bananas while I take Turf a walk... multitasking at it's finest!

So last night I wanted to use the Oh So Lean speed curry pot. It was the last sauce pot I had left from the family deal and so decided to make a chicken and veg curry with it and include the slim rice as well to bulk it out without the carbs and cals.

I had frozen the speed curry and left it out overnight and all day while I was at work to defrost... now I really don't think I should have frozen the speed curry as when I tried to take it from the tub last night it had the consistency of a sponge, and I don't mean the cake-y kind, and I couldn't use it. It was my own fault really, but I'll know for next time not to freeze it.

The Slim Rice didn't resemble rice at all, it was more like noodles that had been cut up into little squares, but it really did bulk out my dinner and fill me up.

So without any further preamble, here's my recipe for Chicken and Veg Curry with Slim Rice... this makes a lovely big portion for one person.

Ingredients:

One Chicken Breast (chopped)
Two cups of Mixed Veg (I use Tesco Value)
Speed Curry Sauce (mine went funny when I froze it so I had to resort to my usual Goldfish Curry Concentrate)
1 large onion
1 packet of Slim Rice

First chop the chicken....

Spray a pan or wok with frylight and brown off the chicken....

Chop an onion (I used red as I had run out of white)...

Add it to the pan with the chicken and let it soften...

Measure out two cups of frozen mixed veg and place in a microwavable dish. Add boiling water and cook on high for 3-4 minutes...

Drain and add to the pan...

Open the packet of Slim Rice and tip it into a sieve... rinse it well under cold water until the smell has gone - it has a bit of a fishy smell, but this is just the smell of the water preserving it, it washes off really quick and it doesn't smell strongly in the first place...

Add to the pan and cook on a medium heat until everything is cooked and the Slim Rice is heated through...

Add the speed curry sauce... I had to use the Goldfish Curry concentrate as my speed curry had gone a bit strange in the freezer... do not freeze your speed curry sauce, lol!

Cook until everything is heated through and the Slim Rice has gone a bit mushy - this means it's absorbed the flavour!

Serve and enjoy!

This really was very tasty and filling. I would use the Slim Rice again in curries, but also maybe in soups instead of lentils and as a thickener in stews instead of potatoes. It would also be handy to add to a shepherds pie or a chilli as it really does fill you up! I don't know whether it would count as a free food, but at 15 calories for the whole pack and 0g of everything else, I would count it as 1 syn. It's a filling food with no carbs. A true little diet helper!

Oh So Lean update and longer days!

I am loving the longer days right now! Waking up to daylight and getting home while it's still light AND still having daylight to walk the dog before dinner... beautiful! I love this time of year... there's still the nip of winter in the air, but the sun is shining.

Turf on his very cold walkies last night

I also want to share with you two of the Oh So Lean dinners J and I had recently. The first one we had last week (I think we had it on Thursday) and the second one we had last night...

So last Thursday J and I decided to try the Oh So Lean burgers. Two steak burgers and two chicken burgers are included in the family pack. I tried the chicken and J tried the steak. Both were lovely! Very filling! Another quick thing I want to mention is the importance of plate size when eating. J and I have some quite big plates which came in a set we bought when we first moved in together. We try to keep the portion sizes down by only filling the plate to the first rim. I find this helps prevent us from over filling plates and wasting food - any leftover food goes straight from the pot to a tupperware box to cool before being put in the fridge.

Okay so we had beans, onions and eggs with our burgers. I'll not do a recipe for this as it's pretty straight forward. If you like mushrooms why not add some of those in to! The more superfree foods the better!

I peeled and chopped the onions. I've used 4 small onions here

Beans in a microwavable bowl

We had two eggs each. I know eggs are a superfree food, but they can also be quite bad for your cholesterol, so typically we would only eat eggs one or two days a week

Fry off the onions in frylight until softened

I fried the burgers in some frylight first (slowly on a low heat) before putting them on an oven-tray and oven cooking them to make sure they were cooked through

Eggs cooking...

This was my meal (J also had some nimble toast with his. You can actually see the rims on our plates in this photo. this plate is slightly too full - some times our eyes are bigger than our bellies!

Last night we tried the Chicken, Stuffing and Ham Pie from Oh So Lean. I had heard great things about this pie and couldn't wait to try it. It is quite a big pie and you get a lot for your syns. There are 15 syns in the whole pie or 636 calories. That is quite low! As I hadn't had any syns at all yesterday I decided that I would just simply split the pie between J and myself with some free and superfree veg.

This is what the pie looks like in the carton...

It's very easy to cook, you simply open the carton, put it on a baking tray and place it in a pre-heated oven for 30-35 minutes. It does say to give it an egg wash first, although to save on time (and eggs) I just sprayed mine with frylight. It was ready after 30 minutes.

You have chicken and ham in the pie which are both free foods on EE (a red day food), then you have your syns in the stuffing and pastry. So to balance out the plate I added parsnips, free on EE (but classed as a green day food) and then the brussell sprouts are superfree, which means they are free on all plans - I hope that makes sense! I added some onion gravy over mine which was an extra 1.5 syns. All in all it was 9 syns for the whole meal (or 458 calories). Not bad at all for half a pie with gravy and veg!

This is just a wee look inside the pie, you can see the filling is layered, meaning you get a mouthful of tastiness every time!

J loved this pie and said I had to get two in the order next week, so I will add a chicken a leek to the next order. Out of the family pack, we only have the pack of five chicken breasts left along with one tub of superfree curry, so I'll be making up a curry tonight!

You can freeze any of the products (including the sauces) but the only things I froze were the superfree curry pot and the pack of chicken fillets. A wee thing to note with the pie that I have heard from other people is that if you are going to freeze it, cook it first, then freeze it, don't freeze it while it's uncooked.

Has anyone else been trying the Oh So Lean range? Please let me know how it has helped your weight-loss.

Who knew picking a wedding dress would be so difficult!

So I took last Friday off work so J and I could get the guys suits sorted out for the wedding - a big thank you to Danielle who suggested Balmoral Dress Hire - they had the perfect suit, just what we had in mind, plus they were a fabulous price! Focus Formal in Bangor had given me a quote of £100 per suit, which would have been £600 total for suit hire! Balmoral have a great deal on all their suits - £59 for a three piece suit of your choice plus shirt and cuffs, and you get an extra 10% off when you pay in full! It's a wee bit further to travel for fittings and collection than Focus is, but worth it for the brilliant value. They were also really fast and we had our suits sorted and deposit paid within 40 minutes.

After that it was on to mortgages... and an appointment with a mortgage adviser at our bank - Ulster Bank. They are totally useless for mortgages! I would avoid them at all costs and we will be changing both our accounts! Definitely wish we would have taken that free £100 per account with Halifax last summer when Ulster Bank caused all that trouble!

The consultation was a total shambles... firstly we were running late because of the traffic coming out of Belfast, so phoned to let them know we would be around 10 minutes late... we phoned the branch but were put through to a call centre who then said they would send the message to the branch... apparently they never did that, so we were left to wait for another 15 minutes after arriving while the consultant finished some other work that she had started doing! Then the whole thing really went into shambles... and we still think she was calculating wrongly... she kept using J's gross income but my net income... apparently that's how its done if you are self employed? It all seemed a bit odd and unorganised. We are planning to speak with an independent adviser we know through a family member, so hopefully that will sort things out, as at least we know they know what they are doing!

After all that I was too tired and annoyed to cook, so we had a chippy... very bad for the wedding diet! Luckily I still had 1/4 of the peppered shepherds pie in the fridge, so I heated it up and had it with a handful of chippy chips, while Turf had a sausage and J had a hot dog.

Saturday was Wedding Dress shopping day! We had booked an appointment with Pronuptia Bridal in Belfast and I was hoping that protests wouldn't disrupt my wedding dress shopping! Luckily they didn't. I had brought my mum and my aunt along and we made a bit of a day of it. The consultation started with me picking out 6 dresses I liked and trying them on, I then explained to the consultant what I liked about each one and what I didn't, she then suggested different dresses based on this and we came up with three beautiful ones that I liked. I loved the bodice of one in particular and the skirt of another... now just to find a dress that has them both in the one dress!

I phoned J on the way home from the bridal consultation and asked him to put the Oh So Lean chicken, ham and stuffing pie in the oven because I was starving! Of course, when I arrived home it was still sitting uncooked in the fridge, so it was a chinese takeaway that night, which is definitely not on the wedding diet - it was delicious though!

Sunday was another busy day for us... we went wedding band shopping! I have already picked mine out, as it was quite difficult to get a band thin enough to fit under my engagement ring, but J hadn't had a proper look yet. It was a bit disastrous (but totally hilarious) at first as J got the ring sizer stuck on his finger and he had to use hand sanitizer gel to help remove it... I laughed... a lot :)

In the end he opted to have two different metals and designs ordered into the store and we will go try them again when they arrive.

We had a lovely, and very synful, dinner at my mum and dads last night - roast chicken, stuffing, sprouts, colcannon, roast parsnips and gravy - a big Sunday splurge, but oh so worth it! My dad sure can cook!

The Oh So Lean sausages and bacon have been devoured, both the curry flavoured sausages and the pork and leek ones were eaten for breakfast on Saturday and Sunday along with a slice of thick bacon! Tonight we will be having the Oh So Lean burgers with fried eggs, onions, beans and nimble bread and I will cook up the pie to have it for lunches for the rest of the week. We split a tub of the carbonara on Sunday for lunch - delicious! I still have the speed curry left, which will do another dinner during the week. Hopefully that will last us through to the weekend again and I'll put another order in with Oh So Lean to collect in Bangor next week. I think I will add an extra three pots to the order though as the sauces are so handy to make up a quick dinner without starting to make a free one from scratch - the pepper sauce is my favourite! I think I'll also order the mixed meat pack for £6.99 and freeze it, as the sausages don't last long with J around!

Delicious!

This morning Turf decided he would eat the top of J's lighter... the little metal u-shaped bit that easily pops off when he gets his paws on it. J threatened him with the slipper... so of course he ran in to me and jumped on my knee... the cheeky scamp! I had a look to make sure he didn't have it in his mouth while J hunted the living room floor for it... but there was no sign... we think he may have swallowed it, the little devil! J is off work today, so he will be keeping an eye on him to see if he passes it, or if he's hidden it somewhere in the living room for chewing later! If neither happens, no doubt I'll be bringing the scamp into the office tomorrow and if nothing happens then, then it'll be off to the vet! What a cheeky boy!

First Recipe using Oh So Lean...

So I picked up my very first order from the Oh So Lean delivery van last night. I ordered the family deal for £25 which includes -

1 pie - I chose the chicken ham and stuffing (15 syns for entire pie)
1 two pack of beef burgers (syn free)
1 two pack of chicken burgers (syn free)
2 packs  of sausages - I chose the chicken curry and the pork and leek (both syn free)
1 pack of 5 chicken fillets
1 pack of rindless bacon
3 pots - I chose 1 pepper (2.5 syns for pot), 1carbonara (syn free) and 1 speed curry (syn free)

I thought this was a brilliant price for all that! All I need to buy in in my normal shopping this week is some fruit, bread, diet coke and frozen veg, which I can get for under £10! A total of £35 for a weeks grocery shopping is really excellent!

The first thing I used out of the Oh So Lean order was the Pepper Sauce. I made a Shepherd's Pie with it last night - it had a total of 2.5 syns for the whole thing (as long as you use the cheese as a HEa), or 684 calories. You could easily split this into four and serve it the sweet potato wedges or slimming world chips and a big heap of free salad. I had half of it with my HEb of nimble bread - yummy!

Ingredients -

150g Quorn Mince
2 cups Value Mixed Veg
4 Value Onions
1 small butternut squash
25g Light cheddar cheese
1 pot Oh So Lean Pepper sauce - only 52 cals / 2.5 syns for the entire pot!
frylight

I was so hungry buy the time I got home last night that I whizzed round the kitchen and had most of this recipe done before I had thought to take a photo....

So first I measured out 2 cups value mixed veg into a microwavable bowl and added boiling water. Put in the microwave for 3 minutes.

While that is in the microwave, peel and chop the butternut squash and chop the four value onions.

Tip the onions into a large pot coated in frylight and cook for a few minuted until softened.

Put the butternut squash in a pot with boiling water and cook.

Tip the veg into a colander to drain when it's finished in the microwave.

Add the quorn mince to the onions. I used frozen so I let this cook for a little longer than I would if it was chilled.

Add the drained veg to the pot, then add the pot of peppered sauce (this is where I started taking photos!)...

Mix everything together in the pot and let the sauce heat for a few minutes before tipping it into a casserole dish...

Check that the butternut squash is cooked before draining and mashing...

Gently spread the mashed butternut squash on top of the mince mix and sprinkle with the cheese...

Put in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the cheese melts...

 Serve, eat and enjoy!

It was really very tasty! I ate half of it as soon as it came out of the oven, and it was very peppery. I split the other half into half again for today's lunches, and when I heated it up some of the peppery spice had gone out of it, still delicious though! So if you prefer less pepper spice, cook it the night before or in the morning to reheat later. I wish I had ordered more of the peppered sauce and frozen it as I would use it quite a lot, it's so tasty!

You can of course top the pie with potato (or sweet potato) mashed with parsnips and some healthy living cottage cheese with chives, this would made it a proper comfort dish... I just didn't happen to have any of those in the house, so used up the butternut squash I did have - a bonus being that butternut squash is a superfree food.

My Net Diary Weight Loss App

My cousin told me about this great new app that can help you lose weight by keeping a proper record of how much calories and fat you consume. It's called MyNetDiary and you can get two versions, a free version or the pro version which costs £6.99. I have been using the free version, and I have found everything I need on it. You can get the app for ipad or iphone, but you can also just use the online website version if you don't have an apple product.

You can see the app here on my iphone... it is the green icon of an apple with a tape measure around it

I know that it can be quite annoying to have to stand (in a shop or in the kitchen) and work out the calories of everything we eat and then try and remember how many we have already eaten, so I find that the best thing about this app is that it already has the nutritional values of most foods recorded... all you have to do is search for the item and type in how much of it you intend to eat to get the calorie and fat count and other nutritional info such as protein and carbs.

If there is a product that the app does not already have stored, you can use the camera of your iphone/ipad to scan the item barcode. The nutritional information of the product will then be stored in the app - very handy when you're on the go and need to grab a quick supermarket sandwich! 

I use this app alongside the Slimming World plan. I feel it helps me control my portions sizes. I am sometimes tempted to add a little more chicken or just a spoonful more rice to my meals, when really I don't need them. I found that this was were most of my extra calories were coming from and why my weight-loss sometimes stalls with Slimming World.

When you first download the app it asks you to type in your gender, height, current weight, goal weight and age. It then asks you to select on what date you would like to achieve your goal weight, but this is the important bit - it will only allow you to lose up to 2lbs per week and will adjust your goal weight date to fit this - this is so that your body loses the extra weight in a healthy way. Crash dieting doesn't work in the long term.

It is possible to lose more than the recommended 2lbs per week if you don't use up all your calories in one day - for instance, I am on track to lose a further 2.2lbs this week, as yesterday I was 152 calories below my suggested calorie intake for the day.

The app takes into account all the factors you type in and tells you how many calories you need to consume to stay at your current weight - this can sometimes be a shock! It then tells you the defect of calories needed to help you lose weight and the recommended amount you consume daily.  It also records the exercise you do daily and the amount of calories you burn doing each exercise.

It is also helpful for meal planning. Every morning I can type in what I plan on eating for the day and it will tell me the amount of calories that will use up and the amount that I will have left.

For instance, this is my 'overall' plan for the day -

You can see that I still have 156 cals remaining and have not factored in any exercise - I prefer to type the exercise in after I do it, as the number of calories available increases with exercise.

This is the breakdown of each meal -

I usually use most of my calories for dinner - I work in an office and sit at my desk for the majority of the day, this means I don't use a lot of calories and am often not as hungry. I usually exercise after work and do some housework etc which means I use more calories and am hungrier, so therefore my evening meal is usually more filling.

This is what my dinner will look like tonight -

As you can see I am having chicken and veg curry with boiled rice.


I would recommend everyone to give this a go as it is free and could work really well with helping you on your weight loss journey!

A Little Monday Update on the Weekend...

I did not eat healthy at all this weekend, Slimming World went right out the window and I've only let it back in this morning! Weekends are always hard for me - especially when J says "lets get a Chinese takeaway"... I can't resist the smoked chicken!

Apart from being very naughty in the food department, we had a great weekend... I have decided on my wedding band and J has 'almost' decided on his. We were able to view a couple of houses together on Saturday and are hoping to see a few more in our area this week. Although getting a Saturday appointment for a mortgage is much harder than I thought - they're booked up until the end of March!

After viewing the first two houses we had a loooong discussion about what we are really looking for in a house... it's terribly hard to think of what you really need in a house - space, number of rooms, parking, area, neighbours, layout of house, outside space incase you need to extend, do we get the 'home' feeling, how many bathrooms (for when we start a family), family sized kitchen and spaces, privacy...  these are only some of the things we have realised we need to think about.

Choosing to rent our apartment was much easier... and a lot less complicated, we walked in, liked the space, got the 'home' feeling and signed the lease!

So the search continues!

The bridal fair on Sunday at the Clandeboye Lodge was brilliant. I found a lovely little home-run company that makes the most beautiful hair clips for bridesmaids... almost exactly the same as the ones I had originally seen (and fallen in love with) on Pinterest!

The suits for the guys are still proving problematic, but J said we will just pick one day he is off work and book an appointment for as many places as we can and go around them all.

I've also got my first appointment with a bridal consultant! This is very exciting! I was under the impression that I could easily pick up a wedding dress a couple of months beforehand... but I was very wrong... it can take up to 6 months for a wedding dress to be ordered and made! Yikes! Talk about leaving things a little late!

I have also just this very minute put my order in with Oh So Lean, which I will collect from Bangor on Wednesday evening! I'm very excited to try their stuff and will post what I got and how I used them! Hopefully it will be of some help to fellow Slimming World followers!

I baked some cupcakes! I hadn't baked anything in a while as I was sticking very strictly to Slimming World but I gave in at the weekend as J had requested I make him some Easter Cupcakes a little early - a tester, as he called them! Cheeky!

Turf the destroyer (as we now call him) got a new toy on Saturday (Mr. Snakey)... and destroyed it last night by pulling out his tongue and ripping a giant hole in its head and pulling out the squeaker!

Looks like butter wouldn't melt... toys beware!

Mummy will be playing doctor tonight and stitching Mr. Snakey's head back together (the tongue is a goner)... along with re-stitching bobo (for the third time) and babybear - who is missing a limb!

The Governor Rocks Review...

Jayne and I went to The Governor Rocks last Friday night to a girlie catchup session over some good food and wine.

Baby brother to Coco in Belfast, Governor Rocks can be found on The Parade in Donaghadee - in fact it is in the old Dee Fun House building (if anyone remembers that?!) serving up delicious local produce, seven days a week.

It took a lot of hard work to make the place look as good as it does now....

The menu is heavily seafood based, but it's not the only thing on the menu! When we dined there, it was 'Game Week' and there was a selection of game inspired dishes on the menu, such as Pigeon or Venison Sausage - although non-fish menu regulars include a Goats Cheese and Beetroot starter and a Sirloin and Hispi Cabbage main. The non-fish items on the menu can vary, but I'd be happy to give any of them a go!

As it happens, Jayne and I are both fish fans, so we had no problem choosing from a fish heavy menu! I had the Fish Chowder (minus the mussels). Everything is cooked fresh to order, so this was no problem at all. The chowder - haddock poached in milk/cream with potatoes - was incredibly creamy and very light, which is a change, as I have often found chowder to be a heavy dish - usually due to the amount of potatoes used. It can often end up more like a stew, but the one served in Governor Rocks was had more of a soup consistency. This meant I wasn't left feeling full having only had a starter!

Jayne opted for the Fish Goujons - two lightly battered pieces of cod fillet served with a lemon side salad. she said she would recommend them as they were light, well seasoned and the portion size was just right for a starter.

For mains, I chose the Haddock in Batter with chips, mushy peas and tartar sauce. Jayne picked the Crab Linguini with chilli and coriander.

My Haddock portion was huge and absolutely delicious! The batter was light, crisp and dry (no one likes an oily soggy batter) and the mushy peas and tarter sauce complimented it beautifully. The chips was chunky and came served in a separate dish... great for sharing, especially as the fish was so big!

Jayne's Crab Linguini looked heavenly. I liked the look of it on the menu, but was worried about choosing crab, as sometimes it can be overpowering. Jayne assured me that it wasn't overpowering at all, it just gave a slight hint of flavour to the pasta, and the chilli and coriander added slight heat, but not enough to put off any chilli-phobes. You can also request it without the chilli, or with more chilli if you're a chilli head!

Dessert was a must... it was a girls night out after all! We both opted for the Apple and Gingerbread crumble with Cream Anglaise. I'm not a big gingerbread fan, but even I enjoyed this one. It had an excellent fruit to crumble ratio, which is very important in a crumble... or is that just me? With every spoonful you got just the right amount of chunky apple and gingerbread crumble topping.

We also had a glass of wine each. The wine is very reasonably priced by the glass - my white cost only £2.95 while Jayne's rose cost only slightly more at just over £3.

All in all our bill came to just under £50.

All of the starters on the menu cost £5 - with the exception of the specials, all of the mains come in at £10 - except for specials, and all the desserts are priced at £5 - with the exception of the cheese board.

My favourite fish restaurant to date is the Quays in Portavogie, but the Governor Rocks is right up there with it on the top spot.

A note on lobster - living beside the sea, I am used to eating fresh caught lobster and crab, straight from the sea to our boiling pot and to the plate. It still shocks me the price that restaurants charge for lobster - no matter where I go!

The is the best way to eat lobster (in my opinion) is drizzled with garlic butter and eaten with a big chunky of crusty baguette! Yum!

THANK YOU!

When I logged on this morning with the intention of doing a quick review of The Governor Rocks in Donaghadee I was met by this:

What can I say - 1096 page views - wow! I really can't believe it, thank you all so much for taking the time to read this blog. I'm really enjoying writing it, and hopefully you are enjoying reading it. I think I need a cup of tea now to get over the shock of this! Really, thank you all so much. It's so nice to know that someone out there is getting something useful from what I write on here. I'll post my review of Governor Rocks this afternoon.

If anyone is near Bangor (Northern Ireland) this Sunday, don't forget that the Bridal Fair starts at 1pm in the Clandeboye Lodge. There are usually some great bargains and discounts to be found at these fairs, and an insider informed me there will be free champers (champagne ;) ) and canapes for everyone, tip top, tallyho!

Slimming World Chicken Curry with Vegetable Rice...

I count this as six syns because a normal chip shop/chinese curry sauce is classed as six syns, although it could be less than this. To be on the safe side though, count it as six!

This makes three servings - dinner for me and J plus lunch for me the day after!

Ingredients:

2 chicken thighs (skin, fat and bones removed) - I buy these in Tesco for £3.50 for approx. 5/6

value mixed veg OR value stirfry veg

value broccoli (optional)

Goldfish Curry concentrate (check out my Chicken Veg Curry with Noodles for a photo of this)

value long grain rice - 40p in tesco

4 small onions

First get your wok out, your kettle boiled and your rice cooker on (If you don't have a rice cooker read the rice to water ratio on the back of the pack and use a large pot)

Next put your veg in with your rice. I used the value stirfry mix, value mixed veg and value broccoli - put an handful of each (or the veg you are using) in the rice cooker/large pot -

I used about a cup of curry concentrate... put it in a pot with some water...

Simmer until dissolved... you can always add more water to dilute it if its too thick....

Chop your chicken and onion and simmer together in the wok on a low heat... once chicken is cooked add the curry sauce and leave to simmer until the rice is cooked... you can see in the picture below that J sneekily added some peas to the chicken and onion, naughty naughty!

When the rice and veg is cooked, use a spoons to mix it all together...

Dish up the rice and veg into a bowl and put a couple of big spoonfuls of the chicken curry on top...

I gave J most of the curry sauce to try and save on some syns.

I'm not too great at writing out recipes and stuff, so I hope this is not to much of a jumble to follow. I am not too sure what is on the menu tonight in Casa del Wilkie/Johnston, but I will post a recipe shortly of the Butter Fish and Rice dish when I next make it. I will also be trying out some Oh So Lean goodies next week when they are delivering around the Bangor area and will review them on here.

Before the week is out I will do a super quick review of Governor Rocks in Donaghadee - sister restaurant to Coco in Belfast. I went there last Friday night with a girlfriend and had a wonderful dinner... but more on that later! Unfortunately we were having such a good time I forgot to take any photos of the food, so a quick recommendation will have to do!

This is quite a busy week for us, with house viewings tonight, bridesmaid dress fittings in Dublin tomorrow, a special Valentine's dinner in Pier 36 on Thursday night, cupcake baking on Friday/Saturday and a bridal fair in the Clandeboye Lodge on Sunday. I'll try my very best to squeeze in a few quick slimming world recipes that I've been cooking up - you don't have to be bad just because you're busy - and to also do the restaurant review before the weekend, and also show you all my new shoes, lol!