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.

Slimming World Chicken, Veg and Pasta - eat your heart out Nigella!

I don't really like posting recipes and things, I prefer to just cook, eat and go! But since everyone I know is on Slimming World at the minute trying to shift those extra Christmas pounds, I thought I would post some recipes which I like to cook - maybe one a week - and hopefully you will share your recipes too! Nigella Lawson, eat your heart out!

This is a great way to make a big pot of slimming world friendly food for very little money. It's handy to have a big pot of something you know you can just grab a bowl off when your hungry without having to tot up syns/divide into thirds (superfree, green and red) etc. It's also a great way to use some superfree cottage cheese! I'm not a fan of it and have kept away from it, but I know a lot of people at my old Slimming World class found it really helpful to their weight-loss, so I've tried to use it in a lot of my cooking, especially as the base for cheese sauces - I do a mean free Italian Tagliatelle dish using cottage cheese. I'll post the recipe and pics for that next time I make it! 

Today's post is a really quick, simple and filling dish that I find makes 6-8 portions. When I get home from work at night I don't want to stand in the kitchen making a healthy meal that takes FOREVER... this one is really quick and simple and takes about 20 minutes MAX - and that includes my 5 min shower while the veggies are cooking!

You will need:

1 bag frozen Value Mixed Veg

1 bag frozen Value Broccoli

Frylight

2 packets of Tesco Chicken, Garlic and Wine Pasta

1 tub of Light Choices Cottage Cheese with onion and chive

4 chicken breasts

4 small onions

1 large pot with lid

1 frying pan or wok

1 colander 

Blender - handheld or other

This recipe has a total of 1 syn for the whole pot on extra easy, which should make 6-8 servings! Eat up!

This is the stuff you will need - as you can see I shop at Tesco, but any brand will do! I have here one bag of Value Mixed Veg, one bag of Value broccoli, Frylight, two packets of Tesco Chicken, Garlic and Wine Sauce Pasta (1/2 syn each), Light Choices Cottage Cheese with Onion and Chive and a four pack of chicken (which was on offer for £4). I also used four small onions (Tesco Value), but these aren't pictured

First thing first - boil your kettle!

Put the frozen mixed veg and frozen broccoli in the large pot, the frozen mixed veg has peas in it, which are classed as a 'green day' food so remember these are not superfree like the carrot and cauliflower in the mix. This is why I make sure to add the same amount of broccoli as I do mixed veg - approx three cups.

 

Pour boiling water over the veg and bring to the boil... this is where I popped off for a quick shower, and when I returned...

The veg was cooked! Tip it into your colander.

Boil your kettle again and tip both packets of pasta into the now empty pot.

Cut up your chicken - I like to cut mine into strips as they cook faster - and add them to a wok/frying pan with some frylight. Put it on a very low heat and let them cook (doing it this way means you will get tender chicken that's not dry)

Empty you cottage cheese into a dish - as you can see it doesn't look good at all!

Get your blender - I have a handheld one, but any one will do...

And give the cottage cheese and good whizz... it will turn out lovely and smooth and creamy!

Pop a lid over your wok/frying pan and let the chicken steam in it's own juices for a few minutes

Tip the chicken into the same colander as the veg, give it a shake and leave to drain

Meanwhile add 900ml of water to your pasta and bring to a simmer

Chop your onions...

And add them to your pasta pot...

The onions will soften as they cook with the pasta

Once most (not all) of the water has evaporated the the pasta is cooked add the colander of mixed veg, brocolli and chicken to the pot and stir

Cook for a couple of minutes then add the cottage cheese - you can use more than this to make it really saucy, but I found that the pasta packets have enough flavour in them that you don't need to much

Give it a stir and leave to cook for a couple of minutes until there is only about 3cm of juice in the bottom of the pot

You can eat it on it's own or bake some superfree butternut squash in the oven as a side dish with some mixed leaves.

NOTE: You can also add spinach to this dish (I just didn't have any in my fridge) - cook it in the pan with the chicken until wilted.

I hope you enjoy this! We certainly did!