Blender Beware!

Over the last week or so, I have proved to myself that I should not be allowed near my food processor when trying to lose weight...at least where nuts are concerned!

It started when I made dark chocolate almond butter...

250g gone in 36 hours anyone?! It doesn't help that Liam dislikes recipes that include nuts (but will eat them on their own, odd) so anything I make tends to get eaten only by me, unless I fob it off on the children/other relatives!

Despite the addictiveness of the chocolate almond butter, on Sunday I decided to make Maple Walnut Butter. This was partly inspired by Maria's recent post about Maple Peanut Butter and partly by my love of Maple Walnut Coffee...

Unfortunately I only had 100g walnuts in (this was a sudden craving!) so my food processor wasn't too happy - it prefers larger quantities. Combined with about 25g maple syrup (after blending the walnuts for as long as I could take!) it still managed to produce this...

not quite nut butter consistency, but delicious nonetheless...it reminded me of the filling for treacle tart, yum. However, with the nuts alone being more than 700 calories, it really wasn't a good idea to eat the whole amount at once. Yet that's what I did, atop toasted soda bread and drizzled with honey - despite the maple syrup, the walnuts still tasted a little bitter...

Delicious, but the bread + the walnut "butter" + the honey almost doubled my calorie intake for the day...why do I keep sabotaging my weight loss efforts??!! I seems to manage one or two days of controlled eating where my weight goes down, then have at least two days of eating everything in sight so my weight goes shooting right back up again...this constant yo-yoing can not be good for my body!

Monday was another self-sabotage day...I decided to make Averie's White Chocolate and Mango Cookie Dough Bites. These were so tasty...

and even better with the recommended melted white chocolate on top...

Amazing! I loved the texture of the "cookie dough" and the chewy mango provided a great contrast. I don't have white chocolate often, usually preferring dark, but the sweetness of white chocolate went really well. These were extremely moreish...a couple of hours after making them I was down to my last six...

and by the end of the day (with all eaten by me except one by my Mum and one by my daughter) they were all gone! Why do nuts, which are so delicious and so versatile, have to be so high calorie?! :(

My food processor also made Katie's Naughty Girl Fudge on Saturday, this time with raisins added (which I partially rehydrated by soaking in boiling water for 5 minutes before adding to the cocoa "fudge" mix)...

but as all but one piece (tasty!) of this went to my Mum, it wasn't too dangerous!

So the conclusion of this post? I can't be trusted around blended nuts! I can't be trusted around whole nuts either - I've developed the habit recently of grabbing almonds & Brazil nuts from the cupboard whenever I go into the kitchen...but that's a different issue! I must try to stay away from the food processor unless I'm making something the whole family can enjoy or something more "meal" like, e.g. a smoothie, at least until I'm back to a weight I'm happy to maintain!

Bit of a random post, but I hope that by writing it down I will remember to step away from the food processor!! Plus I wanted to share the photos of the especially yummy maple walnut butter and mango white chocolate cookie dough bites! :)

Bagels and Enchiladas...

Today has been very bread based...must get more variety tomorrow!

Breakfast was an old favourite...raisin & cinnamon bagel with mashed banana and Meridian peanut butter...

Yum! I love this combo!

I had another bagel for lunch! After the Asda order yesterday we're seriously lacking in freezer space, so I was doing my bit to clear up some space!! This one was a multi-seed bagel, with egg mayonnaise...

so good! I loved the egg mayonnaise with the seeds on the bagel, delish!

I followed lunch by a hazelnut latte...in my new mug...how cute is this?!!

I kind of wish my blog was called "Porridge and Pears" so I could feature photos of this in my blog header!! I sweetened this hazelnut latte with agave nectar, sweet enough without being too sweet.
Note to self though: even if you get a little agave nectar on your hand, do NOT go back into kitchen to wash your hand, leaving mug on the dining table - baby is taller than you think, you'll screech when you walk back into the room to see the mug precariously balanced on the edge of the table, with him about to pull the hot contents onto his head!! Eeek, not the most relaxing coffee, my heart was fully pounding!! But luckily I got to it/him just in time... must take more care in the future - he's grown up so fast!

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Prettier photos from now on - Liam arrived home with the decent camera, I'm not looking forward to him giving it back to uni tomorrow!!

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Today's postman brought me a couple of great things - my Graze box...

Jaffa cake mix (dark chocolate buttons, orange infused raisins and roasted hazelnuts), whole imperial plums (are dried plums not prunes???), bento mix (jumbo chilli maize, satay broad beans and wasabi coated peas) and apple & cinnamon flapjack.

Even more excitingly, my prize from Celery and Cupcakes' Giveaway arrived!

inside were 3 lovely hazelnut crunch truffles...

These were really tasty! Completely different texture to the Booja Booja banana truffles I tried yesterday - these were a more solid praline texture (not surprisingly, considering they are hazelnut based!) whereas the banana truffles had a much softer, almost liquid, texture. Not sure which I prefer, they're both delicious! Thanks again Jemma for making me aware of this brand! :)

Eating the chocolates must have re-awakened my sweet tooth (as if it's ever asleep!) so I shared a pack of sesame snaps, unpictured, and the Graze flapjack with the children...I rarely get to eat things by myself!

this flapjack was quite nice, good texture, but I think I preferred the fruit & seed flapjack I received from Graze last week.

When I saw Jemma's post last night, I knew I had to try out her choco-peanut butter-banana pud soon! So before dinner I got the ingredients ready in the blender (I may have done x1.5 of the recipe!)...

and whizzed it up until smooth, then put it in the fridge to chill until after dinner. I obviously had to eat the leftovers from the blender (with the help of my daughter, she thought it was delicious!)...

Yum! I was looking forward to tasting it once chilled...

Dinner first though - turkey enchiladas. The ingredients...

First I heated a little oil and fried the leftover roast turkey (about 300g, I bagged up the leftovers from New Years' Day to put in the freezer for future use) and sliced peppers with the fajita mix...

and use it to fill the wraps (I used 4)...

whilst I was doing this, I heated the passata in the wok, adding in the extra peppers and turkey that wouldn't fit in the wraps. I then used the sauce to cover the wraps...

before covering with grated mozzarella and cheddar...

I then baked it in the oven at 180C for about 20-25 minutes, until it looked like this...

This was really difficult to serve up, I basically had to plop it from dish to plate! Worth the effort though - declared a success by all!

This was delicious, the wraps went all soft and yummy, and I love the amount of cheese! :) a little too spicy for me and daughter, I would probably use my spices next time so I had more control over it. I'll also try to play around with the fillings next time - the turkey gave a nice texture but didn't really add much to the flavour. Would be nice with just lots of roast veggies I think.

I was pretty full after this, but couldn't resist trying some of Jemma's chocolate pudding...

Oh my gosh! The fridge did wonders for this! It was so rich and fudgy and decadent! I could only eat about half of this straight after dinner, but ate the other half whilst writing this post. Delicious, it tastes so much "naughtier" than it really is...so glad I came across this idea! :)

Now I'm off to watch the new series of Masterchef/help Liam with the finishing touches of his project! Hand in tomorrow morning, eek! Baby and I are going to go with him to uni tomorrow so we can all go out to lunch after he hands it in - he literally just has to go and hand the finished project in, so it will be nice to spend some time together somewhere different afterwards :)

Healthy Blending!

Hello!

Firstly, many apologies for my recent absence, can't believe how long it's been since I last posted!! I came down with a flu type virus, then children got ill etc etc...we're all better now though so hopefully I can get my eating and my blogging back on track!! :)

To try to get out of the habit of grabbing whatever junk is lying around, last night I decided to get out my as yet un-used blender (donated to me by my Grandma when she upgraded!) and blitz up some healthy snacks! Inspiration for these came from Laura at Keeping Slim Getting Stylish, thanks Laura!

Last night, as I had an avocado that needed using, I decided to make her frozen chocolate avocado cups, albeit adapted slightly. I used 220g avocado flesh, 25g cocoa powder, 30g agave nectar and 20g pecans as that was all the nuts I had in. Blitz the first three ingredients in the blender and then mix in the chopped nuts. Before going in the freezer...

Laura says to freeze them for at least 2 hours but as I made them quite late last night I didn't get to try one til this evening. Had a taste of the batter pre-freezing though, yum!

And when frozen and ready to eat...

apologies for the appalling photo, the lighting in my sitting room is rubbish! You can see much better pictures of them in Laura's post! These tasted ok but I'm not sure I'll make them again to be honest. They would definitely have benefitted from more nuts, and perhaps I should have put more cocoa and agave in them too...they didn't really taste of anything, not offensive in any way but a bit disappointing. Sure the original recipe would taste lovely - I think my downfall was lack of planning - I didn't have enough nuts and my agave nectar ran out too, nightmare!

Not to be deterred, I got out my blender again tonight. Inspired by Keeping Slim Getting Stylish again, although this time it wasn't her recipe...yes, tonight I made... [drum roll please!]... Mama Pea's (light) chocolate chip cookie dough balls. First I blended 60g cashews and 60g almonds until powder-like...

then I removed the nuts into a bowl, blended 6 pitted medjool dates with a tsp vanilla extract, then added the nuts back in...

blended again to form a dough...

before adding 30g chocolate chips and forming into dough balls. I made 17 mini ones out of my batch...

Again, apologies for the photo quality, I can't believe how poor the photos look...I definitely "need" a new camera!!

I tried one of these before popping the rest in the fridge to chill...I think I'm in love!!! :-D These taste amazing, like little sweeties...the problem will be stopping myself from eating them all at once...definitely something I will be making again, and again...delish! :)

That's it from me today, I have so many photos to wade through that I've randomly taken while I've not been blogging...will try to do a catch-up post tomorrow, but if not I will definitely get back into the swing of blogging what I eat...if nothing else it encourages me to make more interesting food choices rather than just mindlessly grabbing something from the fridge! I've really missed reading other people's blogs too...it's good to be back! :)