Showing posts with label turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label turkey. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 January 2011

Leftover Turkey = Yummy Curry!

After yesterday's 2nd "Christmas" Dinner, Liam and I spent most of the evening stripping the rest of the turkey for leftovers! We got lots...

I bagged this up into portions for the fridge/freezer (was clearly feeling organised for once!) and it made enough for 6 family size meals, plus there were already some slices in the fridge for sandwiches...yum...I love leftovers more than the actual roast! :)

On to this morning though and back to routine :( Liam starts work at 7am on Sundays and baby got woken by the alarm so it was an early start for all of us! After sorting out the kids' breakfasts I needed some fuel of my own to keep me going! I decided to do a repeat of yesterday's "pink porridge" with oats, Kara coconut milk and frozen black forest fruits...


topped with some dried papaya and a much needed blob of peanut butter!


to be honest the papaya was a bit unnecessary but the peanut butter was definitely a good addition...delicious! :)

Unfortunately an early breakfast meant I failed at the first hurdle with regards to no snacking. I need to buy some more fresh fruit to try to stave off the hunger/munchies! As it was I tried to prevent too much damage by having a Nak'd Cocoa Mint bar...


and then finished off the Nutella (luckily hardly any left!) and ate a whole 60g bag of dolly mix sweets...


bleurgh, I felt so sick after all of this junk! I've been really good at resisting the Nutella recently - admittedly because it's been so cold in our kitchen that the Nutella was solid until today so required chipping off and microwaving if you wanted it on toast!!

I bought this biscuit tin for Liam for Christmas, think it's more appropriate for me though!!


I filled it with Boost chocolate bars (his favourite) when I gave it to him and it's still more than half full...he has way more willpower/self-control than me!!

Anyway, back to today's food. I had no idea what we would be having for lunch as we were going over to my Grandparents to see my cousin who is visiting from Australia. They'd put on a buffet...

my main plate...


the mushroom quiche/tart was from Waitrose and really good, egg mayonnaise sandwich (I had another of these later), sausage roll (another couple of these found my way into my mouth later too!!), smoked salmon blinis and carrot sticks with dip. I also had one mince pie for pud and picked at some more of the carrot sticks and grapes. Lovely to see my cousin and nice food, only problem is that quantity of food wasn't huge but full of calories in form of pastry etc!

I had been looking forward to dinner all day...leftover turkey curry! :) I have to admit to cheating and letting curry paste do the bulk of the work for me. These were the ingredients...

2 small red onions, tikka masala curry paste, about 320g leftover turkey, tin chopped tomatoes and 2x 150g packs of mangetout, plus brown rice to serve with it. I have 5 more bags with the same amount of leftover turkey in for future use, so was pleasantly surprised to see how much turkey it contained once chopped up...


yum, can't wait til all the turkey inspired meals!! Anyway, back to today's curry! I first fried the finely diced onions in a little oil, added a couple of tablespoons of curry paste and the turkey, stirred all together then added the chopped tomatoes and another can's worth of water to get to this stage...


to finish the curry off I added the mangetout and once I'd taken the curry off the heat I stirred in a big-ish splash of double cream. This made a lot! I ended up having a bigger portion than I'd planned as I was worried about re-heating it again when it had already used re-heated meat, so had to eat it all up instead!


this was gorgeous, I do love turkey curry! :) does anyone have any suggestions for me to cook with some of my other turkey leftovers?? I have 5 more bags...I will definitely be making one batch of coronation turkey, and probably another turkey curry...so that leaves 3 more meals to come up with. Rest of the leftovers are in the freezer though so I have time for inspiration to strike!!

Once the kids were in bed, Liam and I couldn't resist some chocolate. We received a ridiculous amount of chocolate for Christmas, although worryingly a lot of it has now been eaten! Our baby "gave" our daughter a huge box of chocolates from Thorntons...


she had already opened them and eaten quite a few but tonight I had 4...or 5...must save the rest for her, although really I'm doing her a favour - her 4 year-old stomach would be sick on all that chocolate!!!

Liam and I then treated ourselves to a pud, he had his in a bowl but I had mine straight from the tub...

chocolate sponge pudding on top of half a tub of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream...


this was so good! :) the chocolate pud stayed warm the whole way through which was great, made the ice cream all lovely and soft :)

I started off today trying to be healthy...it rapidly went downhill though and by this evening I was kind of thinking "may as well eat up the treats now so I can have a fresh start on Thursday"...we have so much rubbish still left in the house from Christmas! We gave quite a few boxes of chocolates away to people we've visited since Christmas but it doesn't seem to have made much difference...I will just have to learn to ignore it all I guess!

On the plus side I managed more than half an hour's reading this afternoon while the kids were playing happily together, so that's one resolution completed for the day! I was given a Kindle for Christmas which is great, has got me back in to reading and makes it so much easier to get back into a book whenever I get a spare 5 minutes. I used to love reading before baby #2 came along but don't usually manage to find the time these days!!


Saturday, 1 January 2011

New Year, New Blog

Happy New Year Everyone! As it is the 1st of January 2011, I thought it was as good a time as any to launch my new blog...hopefully not a yearly occurrence but for various reasons I had to leave my old blog behind and relocate to this name! Hopefully those of you who read my old blog will recognise my posting style/the layout of my blog. Anyway, technicalities over, on with the post...!

I was totally lacking in inspiration for a name for my new blog!! The first part, "Porridge", is a huge part of my new, healthier life...I love a big bowl of porridge to get my day off to a great start!

After going out for a curry (king prawn pasanda, divine) and a few drinks last night to celebrate New Year's Eve, I needed some fruit in my porridge this morning to give me some much needed vitamins! I made up my porridge with oats, Kara coconut milk, a little vanilla extract and a lot of frozen forest fruits. I then topped it with Dorset Cereals chocolate granola with macadamia nuts, plus my last square of Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt for extra chocolateyness! This porridge was a lovely pink colour...my daughter thought it looked great!

Apologies for the lighting on this photo...I so need a new camera this year! :) This porridge tasted great, not that chocolatey but it had a lovely freshness to it, with a bit of crunch from the granola for extra interest...


not bad for a bowl that started off with me not knowing what to put in it...I will definitely be using frozen fruit more in future...health without the hassle...plus both my freezers are bursting at the seams so need to start using up what's in them!

So...the other part of my blog title, "Parsnips", bit more random this one as, whilst I do love parsnips, I don't find myself eating them that often. Like I say, I was really lacking in inspiration!!

Some of you may remember from my old blog's Christmas post that Liam brought home lots of freebies from work on Christmas Eve, including a giant turkey...


and today was the day to cook said turkey! We had a few of our friends and family who hadn't made it on Christmas Day over for dinner (as well as my Mum who helped me cook it), it was a lovely 2nd Christmas :) and of course, no roast is complete without parsnips...


these were roasted in turkey fat with the carrots and potatoes. I'm so annoyed with myself - with all the cooking and guests arriving, I didn't take any more photos after this...bad blogger! The parsnips looked much better than this once roasted obviously!! I didn't even take a photo of my plate so will have to cheat and use the photo of the very similar meal a week ago...


today's meal had broccoli instead of red cabbage and lots of parsnips instead of roast potatoes (the benefit of being one of the chefs, did I mention I love roast parsnips?!!) delicious! :)

No Christmas pudding today but Mum did bring her delicious chocolate torte...

I think it is a Delia Smith recipe - I will have to get the details off her someday - but it is basically lots of melted chocolate, glycerine, rum and lightly whipped double cream, with a crust made from crushed amaretti biscuits and left in the fridge to set...simple, tasty, but not so healthy!! An occasional yummy treat...we think we may have this as the dessert at our wedding, can't wait! :)

Bit of an odd post today, I hope to get back in to my usual routine of posting over the next few days now that the "introduction" is out the way! Have any of you made any New Year's Resolutions this year? I've made a few general ones:
  • lose 1-1.5 stone by my wedding in July (would be less but gained 9 lbs in December, oops!) - weight loss wouldn't usually be my main aim but I have gone so overboard with my eating this last month, so now I'm very aware of my need to lose weight as none of my clothes fit properly!! I enjoyed every mouthful at the time, but will try to be a little bit more restrained with my portion sizes from now on! 
  • exercise (gym/swimming) 3 times a week - I try to do this anyway but have struggled in the winter
  • drink at least 2 litres of water each day - again, I've been struggling with this lately
  • do more housework - Liam will be pleased!!
And slightly more specific ones until April:
  •  no snacks except fruit & veg - aim to achieve this 5 days a week
  • exercise - 3 days a week
  • at least half an hour reading - every day please...the peace would be lovely!!
for these goals I will be putting money into a jar each time I manage it to sponsor a family member who is running the London Marathon in April...a way to support him and improve my health at the same time. The no snacking aim will be the hardest for me, but will also help with my weight loss. Not starting properly until Thursday though - want to enjoy my baby's 1st birthday first...will try to reduce my food consumption in the meantime though!!
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