Motivational Meal Plan Mondays

Hello my lovelies!

I don't know about you, but weekends can be my downfall. It's very easy to fall off the Slimming World bandwagon when your other-half offers to buy pizza... and garlic bread... and chips.... *ahem* on a Saturday night. So today I just wanted to do a quick Slimming world Monday meal plan for you all. I know a lot of you have very busy lives and need something that is not only quick and tasty, but is also SW approved - especially on a Monday! 

When I have a lot on my plate (no pun intended) I revert back to the good old green days - for me carbs are a little gift sent from heaven to make me feel full, satisfied and full of energy.

This is my typical busy day meal plan:

BREAKFAST - HEa & HEb

Two Weetabix with sweetener and semi-skim milk

Coffee and semi-skim milk

LUNCH - 3.5 syns

Uncle Ben’s Vegetable Express Rice (2 syns)

Small can of Heinz curry flavour baked beans (1.5 syns)

Water or a Diet Coke

DINNER - 2 syns

Batchelor’s Pasta ’n’ Sauce Macaroni (2 syns)

Water or a Diet Coke

SNACKS

Muller Light Fat Free Fruitopolis (1/2 syn per pot) - I would normally have a coupe of these.

In general a busy day for me would use up more syns than if I had time to make completely free meals but I don’t think this really matters. SW is about learning how to eat healthy no matter how much time you have and it gives you plenty of options to help you do that. Of course a little preparation would help me stay syn free on these days, but to be honest sometimes I’d rather use a couple of syns and have an easy life than struggle around an already busy schedule to prepare meals in advance. 

Today’s total syn count will be 6.5, which keeps me well under the 15 syn recommendation and I’ll have used 1 HEa and 1 HEb. If I’m feeling a bit luxurious tonight I might add another HEa worth of cheese to my Macaroni… the frivolity!

I hope you are all having a happy and healthy Monday! Don't worry if you've fallen off the bandwagon over the weekend (or even with that cheeky Mc D's on the way to work this morning), every meal is a fresh start!

Big love, 

Kiki x

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.

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.