Meat-free Monday

As I went to write this post, I realised that today has been completely meat-free...not deliberately but hey, it makes a good post title! :) We try to have meat-free meals 2-3 times a week, mainly for cost reasons although I like that it gives me an excuse to try out new recipes/vegetables. To be fair dinner is the only "real" cooking I've done today, so more on that later.

First, breakfast, porridge. Once Liam and daughter were off to uni/school so that I could eat in relative peace! Today I was trying out a new brand of oats and a new peanut butter...

I used to eat Quaker oats as a child but have been favouring Scott's oats recently, when the shop has them in stock at least. Quaker oats seemed smaller when I poured them into the bowl. I made up my porridge with milk, tinned peaches and cinnamon...I love this combo!!

The Quaker oats seemed to make a more creamy/gloopy texture...not sure which I prefer to be honest, but they both taste great so all good!

I topped this with a simple blob of peanut butter...

I'm pleased to report that this peanut butter was much more to my taste! :) less liquidy texture so that I was able to have a blob, a nice salty taste, and the fact the it is "wholenut" made me feel it was slightly healthier...plus the flecks of peanut skin look nice with the flecks of cinnamon in my porridge!!! :-D

Mid-morning, when baby went for a nap, I treated myself to a latte and time on the sofa reading a book...bliss!!



After work on Saturday, I was absolutely exhausted so bought a couple of Innocent Veg Pots that were on offer, to save me cooking lunches when it's just me and baby during the week. Today I actually had a lot more energy, but decided to have one anyway...Italian Mushroom Risotto...

this looked lovely and fresh inside...



didn't look quite so vibrant once it was cooked but was still really tasty...

I loved the variety of vegetables in it, the green lentils being a surprise favourite. My only criticism would be that for a mushroom risotto it wasn't particularly mushroomy! Had bits of mushroom in it but not much mushroom flavour. Great general vegetable risotto though and so easy to cook - 4 minutes in the microwave and it's done - great way to increase your veg intake without much effort! :) Realise I sound a bit like an advert, oops...can you tell I really enjoyed this??!

Mid-afternoon I chopped up a couple of carrots to have with some of Tesco's Caramelised Onion Houmous...now this stuff I really do love!

delicious! If only all my snacks are all this healthy and tasty - I usually just grab whatever's near me (spoon of peanut butter, chocolate buttons etc) rather than taking the time to make something I'll really enjoy.

Dinner was something I'd been looking forward to all day :) No recipe to follow although it was inspired by a meal out I had recently - vegetable lasagne. The version I had in the restaurant was supposedly red pepper and portobello mushroom lasagne but all the vegetables were finely chopped into the sauce so you couldn't really distinguish any flavours, and the whole thing was instead covered in cheese! It also used meat-free mince which was ok, but I wanted my lasagne to be based on vegetables.

I first put 4 peppers into a roasting dish with a little oil and put them in the oven at 190C for 30 minutes...

I then started making the sauce. I first simmered a carton of passata (at this stage I realised Liam had used the last of the garlic when he cooked on Saturday, grrr, so I popped a chopped red onion in with the peppers to make up for lack of flavour) and when the peppers were about 15 minutes away from being ready I added a tin of green lentils (drained and rinsed first) and 250g of mushrooms - I did chop these quite finely so they were part of the sauce.

this is what the sauce looked like when cooked...

and the roast veg...

I also made a white sauce by melting 40g butter, stirring in 40g plain flour, cooking for a couple of minutes and then whisking in 350ml skimmed milk until the sauce was thickened and smooth...

Then it was time to layer up the lasagne...apologies if this gets a bit repetitive, I want to have a good account of this recipe so I can make it again...it was definitely a success! :) So, roast veg first...

then a layer of the lentil/mushroom mix...

3 dry lasagne sheets...

then half the white sauce...

and repeat... rest of the roast veg...

rest of the lentil/mushroom mix...

lasagne sheets...

rest of the white sauce - try to make sure you've left enough to fully cover the lasagne sheets...

and then finally top with about 70g of grated cheese...

In the oven at 200C for 30-35 minutes and it should come out smelling great and looking like this...

this tasted so good...Liam was a bit wary at first when he spotted the empty tin of green lentils on the side, but he went back for seconds! Divine...

definitely a new family favourite, so healthy and tasty too :) made enough for me, Liam and daughter plus seconds for both of them and leftovers for me and baby to have for lunch tomorrow or Wednesday :)

Today has been a really good day :) really enjoyed spending one-to-one time with the baby and, during the day at least, my food has been both healthy and delicious. Sadly, despite what the photos suggest, behind the camera there has been other food going into my mouth - a tsp of peanut butter, a handful of granola and the last square of dark chocolate whilst cooking dinner, plus a chocolate covered flapjack I'd originally bought for Liam (well I bought 2 because they were on offer, but they were both meant to be for him!) this evening, oops!

I'm having a real battle in my head at the moment - on the one hand I know I should be trying to lose the weight that I've put on recently, but I just love my food too much! I don't want to keep gaining weight though, which is what is happening at the moment...I need to get to the stage where I can maintain my weight (preferably with little or no effort from me!!) until my head is ready to start losing again. Otherwise by the time I get my head together I'm going to have a lot more weight to lose!!

Porridge, Porridge, Porridge!

Today all I have eaten is porridge! I hadn't intended today to be like that - I'd been planning to have poached eggs on Vogel's soy & linseed toast for lunch...but we'd run out of eggs. I couldn't decide what to have for dinner as Liam is at work and the children were having leftover's from last night's cottage pie...

Last night's dinner

sneaky picture of (one of!) my portions last night - it was so good, and made by Liam whilst I was at the gym! :)

Anyway, back to today, by the time I'd fed the children, put them to bed, tidied up, washed the dishes etc, I had no energy to cook anything for me...so another bowl porridge it was!

First things first though, this morning's bowl was a repeat of my recent peach cobbler style porridge, this time with mashed banana, oats, milk, cinnamon and chopped tinned peach (I really fancied this again when I woke up this morning and after hunting around the back of the cupboard I found a tin BBE Oct 10...doesn't seem to have done me any harm!). I kept the toppings simple this morning and stuck to peanut butter...

Unfortunately I'm not overly impressed with this jar of peanut butter - too runny and not salty enough for my liking...I prefer a blob of cheapo regular peanut butter I think. Good chunks of peanut though, and porridge was still delicious so can't complain! :)

Lunchtime...after faffing about the lack of eggs and deciding no way was I dragging the baby out in the pouring rain, I didn't end up eating until about 3pm! For this porridge bowl I chopped up an apple, sprinkled with cinnamon and zapped in the microwave for a minute to soften...

while I prepared the rest of the ingredients - oats, milk, other half of mashed banana, more cinnamon and the apple, topped with (suet free) mince pie filling...

yummy, this was so good! Natural sweetness from the apple and banana, and tang from the mince pie filling. After a false start to the healthy eating yesterday (toffee popcorn and chocolate once the children are in bed anyone?!) and yet more weight gain, I decided to count calories today as the amount I've been eating has been ridiculous. I think the strong flavours have been key to helping me feel full...hence the need for saltier peanut butter! :)

Dinner was my 3rd and final bowl of porridge for the day. Back to the peaches, this time with frozen raspberries to make a peach melba type porridge...

I topped this with some leftover brandy butter my Mum made for me...

delicious...

this tasted so fresh and summery! To be honest the brandy butter got a little lost in it as it melted really quickly, but was a nice surprise when I came across a bit! I'm quite surprised that none of my bowls of porridge have involved chocolate today - I just went with whatever I fancied so would have happily added cocoa powder/chocolate but no, these were what came to mind. Now I've said that I'll probably have major chocolate cravings tomorrow!!

As I said earlier, I decided to count calories today. I sometimes use a site called Weight Loss Resources so set my loss for 1 pound a week (I've been on maintenance or not counting for ages but need to do something about the weight that's piled on!) and have added my 3 bowls of porridge to today's diary, the only other thing I've had today is lots of glasses of weak sugar-free squash. Anyway, after my 3 bowls of porridge, which in my mind isn't a huge amount - ok quite sugary/carby but not that bad - I only have 57 calories left for today! No wonder I've gained 10 lbs in a month considering all the snacks I've been scoffing as well as bigger meals! Admittedly no exercise today to give me extra calories, but then yesterday was first time I've been to gym in 3 weeks so probably another reason for weight gain!

So lessons learnt... I will keep up with my exercise (ideally 3 times a week) and I will reduce snacking/have smaller meals. I knew all this already but seeing how little I supposedly should be eating was quite a shock today! Haven't felt particularly hungry today, and my percentages of carbs/protein/fat are about right - WLR recommend 55% carbs 15% protein 30% fat and today I had 60% carbs 15% protein 25% fat so not bad considering I only had porridge! I don't want to get hung up on constantly counting everything but equally, I'm now the heaviest I've been since mid-September...what a waste of the last 3 months!! 2 months eating sensibly ruined by 1 month of pigging out on everything in sight!!

This post is turning into a bit of a ramble, sorry! Time to go relax in the bath and have an early night ready for a day on my feet at work tomorrow. Apologies for the repetitive food/photos today...good thing I love porridge!! :)

Peach Cobbler Porridge & 1st Birthday Party

Ok, I have a confession...I don't actually really know what peach cobbler is...didn't stop me having my version of it in porridge form for the last 2 mornings though!! A while back I was looking through some of the blogs I follow for porridge ideas and came across Clean Eating Chelsey's Peach Cobbler Oatmeal. I adapted it slightly as I didn't have any bananas in but did the basic porridge mix of oats, milk, chopped peaches (tinned in my case) and cinnamon...

yesterday I topped it with almonds, dessicated coconut and peanut butter...

this was delicious :) the coconut was a bit unnecessary but the almonds and peanut butter worked great with the peaches, and I loved the taste of the cinnamon in the porridge.

This morning I decided to have the same base porridge again - oats, milk, cinnamon & peaches - (not least because the remaining tinned peaches were taking up precious fridge space!!) but I topped it with peanut butter and Jordan's raisin & almond granola for extra crunch...

this was amazing, I added extra cinnamon which tasted so good, and the combination of flavours was great...definitely a new favourite porridge idea!! :)

Tomorrow is my baby boy's 1st birthday (sob!), but it is also my daughter's first proper day at school (double sob!!) so today was a bit of busy one - we had baby's party this afternoon as would be too tiring after school tomorrow, but we also went swimming as that was thing daughter chose to do on her last day of hols (plus now she's at school full time, I work Saturdays and Liam works Sundays...we're not gonna have much family time for a while, well until the school holidays at least!!) Anyway, self indulgent ramble over...we had a lot of baking to do today! But first swimming and then a quick lunch to re-fuel - pasta with a sauce made of passata, leftover sausage meat from our New Year's Day meal, and frozen broad beans...

yum :) sausage meat stuffing is one of my favourite parts of a roast and it worked really well with this pasta dish.

Now, onto the baking...in Blue Peter style, here's one I made earlier...

A basic chocolate 2 layer sponge cake - 200g sugar, 200g butter, 4 eggs, 155g self raising flour, 45g cocoa powder, 1 tsp baking powder and 2 tbsp milk - into 2x 20cm sandwich tins and baked for 20 minutes at 170C fan. I also added "ears" made out of shop bought swiss roll to make a teddy bear face. I was organised and baked this first thing this morning that it was cool and ready to ice straight after lunch.

I filled and covered with chocolate butter icing (I did 125g butter, 250g icing sugar, 20g cocoa and a little milk...would probably do 150g butter and 300g icing sugar next time though as was only just enough)...

crumbled 3 Flake bars over it for "fur"...

and added features using white and milk chocolate buttons and a bit of messy white icing...

the mouth went a bit wrong but I'm quite pleased with it, especially considering it was just cobbled together in my mind rather than following instructions for a teddy bear cake!

We had a bit of a teddy bear theme going on - Liam made teddy bear shaped choc chip biscuits...

and I made teddy bear shaped sandwiches...

what a waste of time and bread...definitely a one-off for a party rather than something to do for everyday packed lunches!!

The party table looked teddy bear-tastic though I think!

from nearest: pom bear crisps, teddy shaped egg mayo sandwiches, maple glazed sausages, carrot sticks and dip, teddy shaped ham and cucumber sandwiches, teddy bear biscuits.

And of course the cake...

with the teddy bear that was the Pass the Parcel prize, I may have gone a bit overboard (!!) but seeing as this is probably my last baby (yet another sob!!) I wanted to do a special 1st birthday party...not that he noticed of course but his big sister enjoyed it! :)

One more day before healthy eating starts - baby's real birthday tomorrow. There probably won't actually be that much unhealthy eating involved - Liam and I are going out for lunch with the baby but apart from that the main celebrations were today. I'm quite looking forward to getting back to healthy eating really anyway - feeling very blobbish but just don't have the willpower to resist "naughty" foods when I have an excuse like birthdays...it will be a different story come Thursday though...I hope!