Saturday 4 February - A Charity Shop Find, and Stuffed Chicken Breasts

When we were out and about this morning, we popped into the book section of the Rowans Hospice shop wondering if they sold sheet music. Found these books, which are as good as new and hopefully will give me some new ideas as it's becoming increasingly difficult to think of different meals now.

First page that fell open was a recipe for chocolate and banana brownies, containing no fat, but some oat bran. Strangely I had some bananas to use up, and we had bought a bag of oat bran earlier in the day to sprinkle on cereal. However, this did lead to a fruitless search for 'low fat cocoa powder'. This is allegedly available in health food stores...
During our hunt the market was closing down, and we got a bag with about 2 kg of apricots for £1 - decided to stew some, and add some to some low fat vanilla custard icecream to serve with the brownies.
I changed the brownie recipe slightly - the ingredients stated 5 egg whites, but as these weren't whisked up at all, I added 2 whole eggs instead, not being too worried about the amount of fat in 2 egg yolks, and not wanting to waste 5 egg yolks.
It turned out rather well, although we didn't get round to eating it last night it will keep and improve with the keeping

So to supper - we decided on chicken (again) as it's something that all of us enjoy, and decided to go Mediterranean for the evening. The chicken breasts were bashed out flat and made into one long piece of meat, and then stuffed with  a spoon of no fat fromage frais, some basil, some oven dried tomatoes, some low fat feta and a spoonful of toasted pine nuts. All this was rolled up, and then rolled in some smoked cured german ham. I poached the clingfilm wrapped roll for about 20 mins, and then it was finished in the oven.

I was a bit concerned that this would be a bit dry with no sauce, so made up a tomato vinaigrette - lots of dijon mustard, some vinegar, olive oil, thinned out with some water, and then stirred in cubes of deseeded peeled tomatoes, and some capers and black olives.
This was spooned over the sliced chicken.
Served with sliced potatoes baked in a stock, wine and saffron mix, some asparagus, and some carrots. There was supposed to be spinach too, but I burned it!!!