Tuesday 31 January - Running Out of Ideas now

By special request from George, and because it's easy, we are having tandoori chicken tonight. Also a way to use up the first successful batch of yoghurt which I made this morning. Just marinaded some chicken breast in yoghurt mixed with a ready made tandoori curry powder and then baked in the oven. This will be served with my favourite salad for curry - cubed cucumber, tomato and red onion with a spoonful of mint sauce out of a jar and some lemon juice, steamed basmati rice and some shop bought chapattis. I think there is some home made mango chutney somewhere too, so will search that out.

Going to have a hunt round the internet and some other blogs this evening, as the inspiration is somewhat lacking at the moment.

Monday 30 January - Winter Warmer

The cold weather has arrived, so was glad I'd started the stew off yesterday. It simply needed to be reheated and left in the oven for an hour or so to finish off. Served with mashed potato and steamed sprouts.

George appeared and announced it to be the least appealing meal visually that I have ever cooked. ( I don't think it helped that he spotted one of the cats with his head in the casserole before it went in the oven, but I did scrape the top before reheating!)

He wasn't much keener on eating it, and agreed to sample the mash after adding some butter to his portion. Someone is going to bed hungry tonight.

I have to confess that it wasn't my greatest triumph of recent weeks, but it was filling, cheap and as low fat as a beef stew can get!

Sunday 29 January - Using Up Leftovers

Lots of the chicken left over from last night, plus a load of new potatoes. We did our weekly shop in Lidl - whole trolley full including such things as 3 months worth of washing powder for less than £70 - this not buying alcohol for the week certainly saves on bills!

Pastry was made as Bob is working away this week, so some pasties were knocked up with beef, swede, potato and onion - the left over meat from this was made into a stew for tomorrow - beef and butterbean - remains to be seen if the butterbeans were a wise addition.

The left over potatoes from last night were made into a potato salad and Bob has taken these back to serve with his pasties.

The rest of the chicken and pastry made up a pie for George, along with some mushrooms and dried tarragon, and the vile weightwatchers cream left over from last night, My pie was topped with mashed potato rather than pastry.

This was served with spinach, broad beans and rather nasty frozen roast potatoes - won't be using those again, although the fat content was within the boundaries I now obsess about....

As someone who is frankly very wasteful about food, I'm feeling quite chuffed about the using up of things in this meal, and I've tasted worse..... 

Tomorrow I will face my biggest fear - I bought a bunch of bananas - I have an intolerance (not an allergy) to them, and I'm determined to give them a go after about 20 years of not eating them, as I actually like the taste, and think they will be a filling low fat snack. If I don't post again the banana got me!!!

Saturday 28 January - Heston Blumenthals Roast Chicken...

Georges plan, Hestons roast chicken - this involved going to lots of shops to try and find a meat thermometer, but finally going to see the parents to borrow one. The meat was supposed to be brined overnight, but we wanted to eat this year, so it went in the brine for about 6 hours. It then had to go in the oven for 3-4 hours at 90 degrees. We didn't bother with the gravy, chosing bisto instead as the meat would have been ready 5 days before the gravy if we had followed Hestons recipe.

We hit Gosport Market for the veg - carrot and parsnip mash, some new potatoes, some roasted old potatoes, purple sprouting and some green beans.Plus of course a pack of paxo sage and onion - this is not as nice if you don't add butter....

Pudding -  a flan with fruit in - we found this cream in Morrisways, but it is not to be desired.

Made a chocolate 'fat free sponge' 3 eggs, 3 oz sugar whisked together and then 3oz flour and cocoa powder and a bit of vanilla essence folded in. Topped with some tinned mandarins and some orange easyjel. Served with the above dodgy cream.

Erm, what can I say - not to be recommended, unless you fancy some chocolate flavoured sawdust with tinned mandarins and skimmed creamy stuff on top. Ah well, we have to try these things, and at least I wasn't tempted to have seconds!

Friday 27 January - Rather a Naughty Friday Meal

Friday, and was Bob returning from a week away at an unspecified time. As he's been living off fish and chips and cup soups for a week, I thought it would be nice to cook something not quite so 'diety' for the evening.
We decided on Thai Chicken Curry - the bad aspect of this obviously being the coconut milk, although we did dilute this in the cooking process. I figure that every so often you need to eat something that you fancy! I'm afraid a handful of cashews also found their way in at the end - it has to be done!

We made the curry paste - I used the coriander stalks in the paste, and saved the leaves for adding to the finished dish. Wasn't sure about how fresh the shrimp paste was, not something you can do the 'sniff test' on, so we just bunged it in anyway. I grated the galangal and lemon grass before adding to the processor as I've found they sometimes stay in one piece regardless.

I dry fried the chicken then added the fresh curry paste and the tin of coconut milk along with some water. The paste was pretty hot due to Georges insistance that I use at least 10 whole birds eye chillis - I don't really see the point of eating thai curry that isn't hot though so went along with his plan . As it started cooking it made my eyes water though! The mixture was left to simmer, and then 5 minutes before it was ready I added some raw mange tout to warm through and cook slightly. Two bunches of chopped coriander, some fish sauce and lime juice went in right at the end, along with a handful of toasted cashew nuts.

This was served with some steamed thai rice, and a salad of sliced cucumber left to marinate in grated ginger, salt, sugar and rice wine vinegar - this is drained and a tiny drizzle of sesame oil over the top before serving.

For afters we had made another batch of mango sorbet, but this time added the juice from three passion fruit which sharpened it up a bit, and yet another tin of lychees - our new favourite thing.

Wednesday 25 January - Turkey Teriyaki and Noodles

Quick meal required tonight as George out ice skating, and as we are out tomorrow evening I also needed to prepare some soup to eat then. The soup went on first - Mulligatawny as requested by George as Uncle Andrew  had made some a couple of weeks ago. Used up the last chicken breast from the pack we opened on Monday and it went in the pan along with some chopped vegetables, curry powder, red lentils, sultanas and chicken stock.

This will sit in the fridge tonight for the flavours to develop, and tomorrow I'll pop a loaf of bread in the bread machine and we can grab a bowl of soup before heading off to the concert at school.

On with tonights supper - some turkey breast steaks have been marinading all day in a jar of Teriyaki marinade

To serve with these, some pak choi left over from my trip to the Chinese Supermarket at the weekend - I just halved these as they were tiny, and simply steamed them.

In addition some simply boiled fine egg noodles - did far too many as usual, but we have found that chickens love a bit of pasta, so they won't go to waste.

Wasn't sure how to cook the turkey, as the marinade was remarkably sticky, so I dry fried it, then added the marinade and a glug of soy and water to the pan and heated the turkey back through. 

Certainly not the tastiest meal we've had recently, but not unpleasant - it required a bit of additional soy over the noodles and the pak choi to make it bearable and don't think I'd buy that brand of teriyaki sauce again.

Tuesday 24 January - Supper at my Parents

Another day out with work , so supper at my parents as they had collected George from School.
They were having sausages and cauliflower cheese, but had cooked me a special meal of crab linguine as they realised I wouldn't eat what they were having. It was absolutely delicious, but surprisingly filling!
I also had a tiny quiche that George had made in food tech at school, which was a little bit off the diet plan, but he had used 'light' cheese so that was fine.

Monday 23 January - Piri Piri????

The plan was to cook Jamie Olivers Piri Piri from the 30 minute cookbook (in my opinion the most user unfriendly cookbook ever written!). I made the sauce - George and I peered at the horrible pinky purple mixture, and had a sniff. I then poured it down the sink, and set off to Morrisons to buy a bottle of hot Nandos sauce.

Not worthy of a photo tonight then - a bed of red peppers, some chicken breast and a bottle of hot sauce poured over. I am serving with the sweet potato, coriander, chilli and feta concoction as recommended by the Pukka one, but managed to source low fat (7%) 'Greek Style Cheese' - it looks like chopped up candles, but it will be my first cheese for a few weeks, so I intend to enjoy it!!

22 January - Ramen for George

Georges' favourite meal is Ramen, so we used up last nights chicken stock. Except it was rubbish and bland, so we added lots of extra garlic, ginger, chillis and soy to make it actually taste of something!

We boiled some noodles - I pretended they were ramen, but really they were udon that I'd bought yesterday - no flies on George though, despite my trick photograph with the ramen pack, he knew they were udon!

Then optional extras were placed on a plate so we could each choose from our preferred toppings this way George can avoid eating pak choi, which is green. We I also had some chicken breast that was dry fried and sliced up.

Both of us chose what we wanted, and then the noodles and the toppings had the broth poured over - George recommended the egg, I'd never have thought of this, but a very good extra!

It was very tasty, and surprisingly filling - I should give in to requests from George more often!!

Saturday 21 January - Sort Of Chinese New Year

Lovely trip to Chinese Supermarket in Portsmouth (Sun Hung Chang) this morning. Lots of impulse buys of course, including a very necessary calligraphy paintbrush and some simmering granules for an oil burner.

We bought some wonton skins, and also a pack of ready made dumplings to steam for comparison purposes.

First course was Bobs favourite - crab and sweetcorn soup - we had bought some crab claws a couple of weeks ago, and extracted the meat, and some was frozen so we used this up. Home made stock using a pack of cheap chicken wings - all the meat was removed and fed to some very happy cats, then the bones put back into the stock and simmered for another hour or so. We used half the stock in the soup, and the other half is going to be used tomorrow evening.

For main course the shop bought Dim Sum dumplings - pork and black mushroom, and two varieties of homemade Wontons - we had to do some without prawn as George thinks he doesn't like them.

Chicken breast processed with an egg white, and then various flavours added - coriander, ginger and garlic paste, chopped dried chinese mushrooms, coriander, water chestnuts, spring onions and white pepper. Then split into two portions and chopped raw prawns added to half.

We steamed these and served them with four different dips - from bottles we had hoi sin (not very nice), some plum sauce and some sweet chilli. Best of all was the home made dip - this is one of the few recipes I follow - it's the Rick Stein dipping sauce recipe that he serves with his thai fish cakes and consists of sugar, vinegar, fish sauce, and finely chopped carrot, cucumber, onion and chilli

One thing we have noticed, is that with low fat eating we don't get nearly so stuffed, so tonight we manged three courses!

Desert was another no fat effort - home made mango sorbet - some sugar syrup, the flesh of two mangoes and the juice of one lime blended together and into our wonderful ice cream machine. Sorbet is definitely much better eaten as soon as possible after churning.

We served this with lychees (from a tin, and much, much nicer than I remember them being) and a portion of fresh papaya - something I will certainly never be buying again - really quite unpleasant, although it looked nice on the plate.

Friday 20 January - Pork Saltimbocca and a replacement for dauphinoise

On Fridays treats are deserved. I didn't want to go mad, but a few rules can be relaxed with Friday suppers.
Pork fillet made into saltimbocca - great fun bashing out the medallions at the end of a busy week at work. Also managed to find enough sage in the garden for the top of these, and a small bottle of marsala in the cupboard with a glassful left in it for the sauce. I always have parma ham in the fridge as bulk buy it in Lidls as find it so useful to at to many things, and it keeps forever.

I really love dauphinoise potatoes, but obviously they are off the menu at the moment, so I layered sliced seasoned potatoes and onions and covered them with chicken stock mixed with a dash of white wine. Started them in the microwave, and then transferred to the oven to absorb all the stock. For a special treat a sprinkle of low fat cheddar on the top for the last 10 minutes.

Lack of presentation skills on display for this meal, as served with three vegetables - steamed spinach, green beans, and a pack of asaparagus tips that were reduced so needed to be purchased.

We are off today to the Oriental supermarket in Portsmouth, so tonights meal will be planned around whatever takes our fancy in there - possible some Dim Sum - either ready made, or made when we get home this afternoon.

Thursday 19th January - A Long Day At Work

Working in Newbury for the day, so at the mercy of rush hour M27 and M3 and not sure what time I'd be arriving home. Skin off chicken breasts were marinaded in yoghurt and some ready made Tandoori spice blend for several hours. These were then oven baked and served with a sort of pilau rice - basmati cooked with twice the volume of water and some added cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, a couple of cloves, bay leaves and a bit of turmeric. Salad of chopped cucumber, onion and tomato was dressed with a squeeze of lemon juice and some mint sauce out of a jar. No added fat at all in the ingredients, and no loss of flavour at all.
One to do again although I can still smell tandoori in the air and in my hair the next morning....

18th January - Fish Cakes and a Very Strange Salad

Not having to cater for George tonight, so can cook a meal containing things that he claims to hate, despite him never having tried them in living memory....
Fish cakes made with tinned tuna - mixed with baked potato flesh, touch of dried dill, and some small capers. I would normally egg and breacrumb, but as the mix seemed quite firm I baked them with just a brush of oil and no crumb casing.

Was going to serve with peas, but decided this would be a bit dry, so invented a salad to serve alongside - tinned butter beans mixed with tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and olives - lemon juice and a dash of olive oil. Had a taste, and altogether too bland - so a large dash of tabasco was added which was an improvement.

This wasn't the worst thing I've ever cooked, but having finished a plateful have to confess to still feeling rather hungry, and beginning to yearn for cheese.... I think I need to be very determined now to keep going.

I did give up smoking though, and if I could do that, losing a few stone can't be that hard surely....

Good news is that I've lost 5lb so far, so at least I can say it's working.

Monday 16th January- Plenty of Lentils

Back to an old favourite for Monday evening- Delia Smiths lentils with marinated chicken kebabs - the green lentils are cooked with red wine and a bit of onion and rosemary. Chicken marinated in lemon. olive oil, garlic and rosemary. The recipe stated 3 tblsp oil, I used around half a spoonful and upped the lemon juice.

Tonight is going to be a beef stew. I know this doesn't sound like diet food, but what I'm doing is changing how I cook. So whereas three weeks ago I would have used vast amounts of meat, added dumplings and served with mashed potato laden with butter and maybe even cream, this weeks stew will be a different dish altogether!
The meat has been cut down to a small portion - I'm actually using frying steak which was fairly cheap, and is very lean. To this will be added a 'stew pack' of carrots, swede and parsnip. I'll cut all these up and make a sort of hotpot in layers, with some sliced potato at the top. Served with some purple sprouting - of course far too much was cooked, but the chickens enjoyed the stalks and the leftovers of this.

14 Jan - Homemade Pasta

Very lacking in Saturday inspiration - all our normal Saturday meals were out of bounds - I'm really missing cheese now after two weeks!

George decided homemade pasta was the way to go, so I made a ragu in the normal way, but using a mixture 5% fat minced beef and the lowest fat minced pork we could find -8% free range pork mince from Waitrose. Our other option would have been to mince a pork fillet, but that seemed rather a waste! If I make a chilli I would use Quorn while watching my fat intake, as I can't tell the difference, but bolognese requires meat to taste decent!

George wouldn't use the food processor for his pasta dough, insisting it had to be made by hand.
These are his ingredients - he also added some salt and a dash of olive oil.

All mixed together using his trusty spirtle, and then kneaded for around 8 minutes until stretchy. Then vitally rested in the fridge, wrapped in clingfilm so as not to dry it out.

Then through the pasta machine, until the correct thickness to cut into tagliatelle - then dried on our improvised pasta drying rack - we set off yesterday in search of wood to make one, and ended up buying a rack designed for hanging off a radiator  to dry pants and socks...

13th Jan - The Weekend is here!

I like to cook on a Friday night to celebrate the start of the weekend. Not my  main cooking day, as that is reserved for Saturdays, but one to find things in the cupboard/freezer and have an inventing session.

Today I decided to make use of another of my Christmas presents - this beautiful and useful tagine.

I found some chicken breasts on the bone in the freezer and decided to use these, along with various other stock cupboard things that were available. I did have to stop on the way back from the school run this morning though to buy fresh coriander. I addicted to this, and see it as essential when I'm cooking spicy food.

One of my favourite shops is Akram Stores in Southsea. I always ensure I stock up on preserved lemons when I visit, as they are far cheaper than buying them in the supermarket. Another addictive flavour, and I always add it to Moroccan inspired stews - I quarter the lemons and remove all flesh, then finely chop the skins. I used two in todays stew.

Other flavourings I added to the onions, ginger and garlic were lightly toasted and then crushed cumin and coriander seeds. dried crushed chillis and some saffron strands. The harissa paste will be added to some reserved cooking liquid and served seperately for those who like added heat.

The stew prior to going in the oven - I guess it will take around 45 minutes to cook. I've also added a tin of chick peas, and some black and green olives. I was going to add butternut squash cubes too, but ran out of space. Also toyed with the idea of dried apricots, but decided it was olives or apricots and the olives won.

This will have to be served with cous cous - my cupboard contained the normal variety, but also a box of giant cous cous, so both have been prepared, and I've mixed them together.  I'll microwave to reheat once the stew is cooked through. The difference in size can be seen below - the giant cous cous is not far off looking like tapioca, and from an initial taste, possibly not worth the extra cost over supermarket standard cous cous.

Diet cooking wise, the only added fat in the cooking was a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil to fry off the onions at the start - I think this adds flavour, so not too worried about a small amount. A few weeks ago I would have added loads of butter to the cous cous when reheating, but have not added anything at all this time. 

It feels like a decadent meal, but all in all, I think this is probably pretty low in fat, and if it tastes as good as the smells coming from the oven at the moment should be one to repeat.

12th Jan - Not Much Cooking, and A Look At My Kitchen

No posting for yesterday, as was in London for a meeting and didn't arrive home until 830, so not really in a mood to think about food or to cook properly. Supper was wonton soup made with left over homemade wontons filled with prawn and chicken that we had frozen for just such an evening. The stock was a Knorr Stockpot with some added garlic, ginger and soy to make it a bit more Chinese flavoured.

Tonight is also not really a cooking night, so we are going to invent a sort of fish pie, but using tinned tuna. Will make a parsley sauce but using cornflour instead of the usual roux to thicken it, and use up the last of the potatoes from our most recent sack. I know it doesn't sound the most appetising thing in the world, but hopefully should be fairly filling as the cold weather is setting in again.

For someone who is obsessed with cooking, I think my kitchen is probably slightly unusual, but I love it. I think it was probably last updated cupboard wise in the 1950s, and we have worked around this by adding odd bits of shelving etc, most of it purchased from Lidl (my favourite shop!)

The oven is housed in the old chimney breast - note my lovely kettle which was my Christmas present.

TV - this is necessary in the kitchen so I can cook whilst watching cookery programmes

In the top right hand corner is my PG Tips Monkey Tree - we don't even like PG Tips, so this is a very good example of me being influenced by marketing - many boxes of nasty tea were purchased and cups of watery PG Tips forced down in order to obtain all those knitted monkeys in t-shirts.....

The lefthand glass cupboard is the reason I don't get a fitted kitchen as I wouldn't want to lose it. The problem with not having a fitted kitchen though is the lack of storage space. My kitchen doesn't look like this because I'm untidy - not at all!!!

Just outside the kitchen door lots of tabby things start to gather and make a noise at about 430 pm

Julia, Leonard and Derek are the greediest cats I've ever met, and would probably eat 24  hours a day if they could open tins themselves.

The thought of a fitted kitchen is always at the back of my mind, but I rather love the quirkiness of it
The main problem is that no one else understands my 'system' and so can't find anything when I'm not here.

10th Jan

Lunch was artichoke soup from our home grown artichokes (less said about the side effects the better) served with homemade (ok, from the bread machine) bread.

Supper was from an old favourite book which has been brought out of mothballs after quite a few years.

Chicken Chana became Turkey Chana as that was lower fat/cheaper when we did the shopping at the weekend.

To serve with it yoghurt and cucumber. Our homemade yoghurt was a bit on the watery side, so we drained it through an old baby muslin in a sieve before mixing it with deseeded grated cucumber.

The curry had 1 tblsp of oil in the recipe, added half way through, but I couldn't see this added anything really so just added a drizzle I used tinned chick peas as it is midweek and can't bear the smell of cooking chick peas -  reminds me of wet dogs.

I bought this for Bob a few months ago, as if he cooks when I'm not here he can never find things in my spice cupboards, and has to go out and re-purchase things. It was supposed to be a present for him, but I've stolen it, and I imagine he has no idea what the spices in it are at all 

The finished curry, served with very wholesome brown basmati and wild rice 

Leonard liked it too........