Ingredients Lists

I’m trying really hard to eat proper home cooked meals, start putting more vegetarian meals in to our weekly meal plan, count calories and to also cut back on the amount of processed rubbish I eat, so as you can imagine, I have my foodie hands full at the moment 😉 luckily I have three men in my house (inc. The Toddler) and they are all great eaters so that makes life so much easier.

I’ve also been cutting back on my dairy consumption, I’ve been pondering it of late and it seems a little bit funky to drink the milk of another animal. Hence the different milks in the last post. With that in mind while I was wandering around my local health food store today, I stumbled upon some Carob and have to give it a try, I was also mightily impressed by how short the ingredients list was.

3 ingredients! Still need to watch how much of this I eat!

The Toddler LOVED this. He couldn’t get enough. I opened it while we were at the barbers waiting for The Husband to have his hair done (on a side note: he looks very nice with a short back and sides!) and after trying a square didn’t think The Toddler would be that interested. To me it has almost a slight burnt taste. Although it isn’t at all unpleasant I though The Toddler might reject it because it looked but didn’t taste like chocolate. He ate 4 squares and would have had more if I had hidden it from sight. I also picked him up some of these:

Dark chocolate rice cakes

he really likes these too and they are a nice treat for him without having too much chocolate. His friends don’t seem to like them – maybe because it is dark chocolate and therefore quite bitter. No one can say The Toddler doesn’t have broad tastes.

Breakfast was much the same as other mornings – Rude Health Porridge made with half water and half vanilla soya milk, topped with rasperries.

Mid morning snack looked like this:

Grapes and Strawberries

The Husband made lunch which was some sort of rice and chicken concoction. However, by the time I remember to take a photo, this was all that was left:

Husbands lunch leftovers

And finally….

Ideas for what to do with this marrow! I put it on the online shop because it was on offer and now have no idea what I can cook??!

Milk!

Monday Night Dinner: Couscous and chicken cooked in veggie stock (I had no chicken stock!) onions, garlic tumeric and garam masala

Last nights dinner was chicken thigh and cous-cous one pot. That’s what recipe said it was, I’m not sure you could call it a one pot meal considering the number of times I had to get that chicken in and out of the pot. I guess you can say I have “rediscovered” cous cous of late. I used to eat it fairly regularly before I had The Toddler but when I was pregnant I once made the mistake of eating it in the middle of a bad bout of all day sickness. Ewww.  Nearly three years later I’m able to eat it again! This turned out really well, so much flavour. All my boys liked it. Mind you I think the only boy in the household likely to let me know if they actually didn’t like it would be the Toddler. The Husband and The Nephew would be too scared too 😉

Tuesdays Breakfast: No added sugar museli with almond rice milk and fresh pear

We seem to be mostly out of food in the house today, bad times. The shopping is being delivered tonight so we’ll be restocked soon. Basically all I had in for breakfast was fruit or museli – so why not have both. I usually just have standard milk on my cold cereals but I haven’t used it in so long it smelled – not good 😉 The Toddler entered the kitchen while I was making breakfast (I’d saved a slice of bread to make him some toast and peanutbutter) and with much banging of fists and yelling of “MORE TA!” I got the idea that he wanted some too. I really didn’t expect him to like it but before I’d even finished pouring it in to the bowl he was dragging his high chair to the table to eat. He LOVED it. Polished off his portion and tried to move on to mine. Nothing is your own when you’re a mother.

The Toddler enjoying his breakfast! Note the pyjamas - no need to mess up his day clothes!

Dinner and Overnight Oats

I have a couple of dinners to show you (or as we call them back in my good old home county – tea!) and also my new favourite breakfast – the husband loved it too but the toddler wasn’t so keen. He mostly just tried to cart it around the living room and feed it to anyone he could find. Then 30 minutes later he was hanging off the fridge door yelling “CHEESE!” – I’m telling you, my toddler has a cheese problem. Usually I’m quite mean about these things, if you don’t eat it, it’s you problem but since this was a new meal and he did try it I let him have some cheese and a fig roll (nutritious huh?!)

Oh and on a sidenote: This weeks weigh in: 5lbs down 🙂

Saturday Night Dinner: Cripsy Chicken - chicken thighs, chickpeas, peppers, cannellini beans and cherry tomatoes. A family favourite

Sunday Night: Fish Pie. I took the picture without the topping because it looks all blah and boring once the topping is on. New addition to this fish pie - curly kale.

Last night I cooked a really good lasagne (if I do say so myself!) but because I’m vacant I forget to get a photo of it. Bad times because I think it was my prettiest creation to date. I usually make a cheat recipe and instead of making the bechamel (spelling??) sauce I used creme fraiche and put some parmesan on top. Thing is – those are expensive and I’m feeling cheap. Since I had the ingredients for the actual sauce I made that for the first time. Everyone told me it was hard but I thought it was dead easy and really tasty 🙂 I also didn’t have parmesan for the top so I just added sliced low fat mozerella – that worked really well. I was running low on veggies so I added some curly kale to it also. Curly kale is my new favourite veg 🙂 it tastes great raw or cooked.

Breakfast: Over night oats. 1/4 cup oats, 1/4 cup vanilla soya milk, 1/4 cup home made low fat greek yoghurt. All mixed up and left in the fridge overnight. Here it is topped with some Agave Nectar to sweeten it up a bit.

Finished product: topped with an apple and some sultanas. The husband has his topped with seeds and dried fruit and the toddler had his topped with sultanas.

Two out of Three Ain’t Bad

So, I did a little better today with my photos. I managed to remember Breakfast, Lunch and Snack but somehow in my great hunger and desire to eat my crispy chicken at dinner time the though of photos totally flew out of my mind. Ah well – as Meatloaf would tell you “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad”. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get all three meals!

Breakfast: fruit and nut museli (sugar free), low fat vanilla yoghurt and a small banana

Lunch: half tin tomato soup, side salad (olive oil and balsamic dressing) plus pitta with 1tbsp onion hummus! Yummy!

Just wanted to show you my favourite cup of the moment 🙂

After Lunch: Cup of herbal tea

Mid afternoon: large glass of water and 2 small satsumas

For dinner I had Crispy Chicken. It’s basically chicken legs, cannellini beans, cherry tomotoes, new potatoes and some herbs all slow cooked in the oven for about 90 minutes. Yummy. I removed the skin from my chicken leg to make it healthier. This dinner is one of my favourites because it is so easy to cook. The original recipe is one from Jamie Oliver who I love! He is the only reason I can cook anything at all. Now I’m gaining a little confidence in the kitchen I’ve started tweaking it here and there to suit my tastes. This one is always a big hit with the rest of the family. My mother in law even complimented me on my cooking – now that was most definitely a first! 😀

And since I had the calories left and it’s Saturday night I also had a chocolate flake. Om Nom!