Stressed Mum

Posts Tagged ‘healthy eating’

I decided I wanted a little variety in my diet after 56 days of Diet Chef food, good as that is. I have made lots of soups before but I was trying to find something low in calories, healthy and satisfying. I used my trusty Vitamix blender and a mixture of raw and lightly cooked ingredients to conjure up this vibrant green soup at only 150 calories a bowl.

I used raw spring onions, celery, courgette and spinach with lightly cooked potato and broccoli and blended it with water, an organic vegetable stock cube, some lemon juice, salt, pepper and basil. When it was steaming hot I added a drained can of chick peas and blended it again briefly. It was delicious and filling and I have some in the fridge for tomorrow too!

Just over a month into my diet and I have lost 15lbs. I’m really pleased. It hasn’t really been all that difficult as the food has been pretty good. The porridge or muesli keeps me full till lunch and soup with a mini wholemeal roll set me up for the afternoon. A mid-afternoon snack from the Diet Chef selection is a nice treat and then it’s time for dinner. That has become a little boring as I’m vegetarian and there aren’t so many choices for me. I’ve found that adding some cauliflower and grated low fat cheese to the macaroni cheese certainly adds something and a wide variety of vegetables and salads help. I’ve enjoyed the curries too, spicing them up a little as I like a bit of heat! I’ve been able to add basmati rice, a low fat yogurt, some ryvita and cottage cheese or some extra fruit and kept easily to my calorie limit. Seeing the weight loss at the end of week is enough to keep me motivated for the moment so I’m carrying on.

The problem this week is that it’s Easter and the house will be full of chocolate! Wish me luck!

As I said in my previous post, I have decided to use Diet Chef to lose some weight. I have now been following the diet for a week and have lost 5lbs.

The diet has been easy to follow. The portions are weighed out, the food is tasty and there is plenty of choice although I may get fed up after a few weeks! Most importantly, I have not been hungry. I’ve had a choice of porridge, muesli or granola for breakfast, soup or pasta for lunch and lots of different dinners such as macaroni cheese, vegetable curry or vegetable chilli. I can add rice or bread, 2 portions of fruit and 1 of vegetables, milk and a snack.

One of my favourite soups was the carrot and butterbean, really tasty and filling.

The chick pea tagine with some low fat cheese and a big salad made a great dinner.

I’ve so far enjoyed the food and have enjoyed even more seeing the weight loss at the end of the week. This is a good solution for me as I have been able to make a meal for the family and then pop mine in the microwave and just make a big salad or some veg to go with it. The soups at lunch have been great too, quicker than making a sandwich and much better for me.

The biggest problem was finding somewhere to store 35 days worth of breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack!

I have made a big decision. I have decided to try Diet Chef to help me lose the weight that has piled on in the last few years. I am a bit worried about the meals as I am vegetarian, usually cook everything from scratch with fresh ingredients and I don’t like ready meals but I have heard good reports of Diet Chef and decided to give it a try. I hope it will take away the problem of making a non-veggie meal for my family as well as something for myself, I usually end up reaching for cheese or eating all of something which is enough for 2! I don’t tend to snack or eat sweets or chocolate anyway and I always like to have plenty of fresh fruit and veg so I’m hoping this will be a good way to get rid of some of that excess weight without lots of weighing and calorie counting. The meals are ordered and should be here in 2 or 3 days so wish me luck and watch this space!

What better lunch can there be on a cold day than home made soup? Of course it can take a while but not with my new Vitamix blender.

I bought the blender just before Christmas after watching a demonstration at the Good Food Show. It is big and powerful. It makes light work of making smoothies with as much ice as you like. It’s fab for houmous and makes frozen desserts in minutes but the most amazing thing is watching it make hot soup from raw ingredients in a matter of minutes. There is no heating element, the soup is heated by friction from the blades. Take a look at the soup I made today.

I started by washing the raw ingredients and throwing them into the blender, whole or halved. There was a slice of onion, a garlic clove, a couple of small carrots, a couple of baby plum tomatoes, a stick of celery, a slice of butternut squash, a slice of cabbage and a mushroom. With some water in the bottom of the blender, some powdered bouillon, chilli powder and cumin it was switched on and turned to the highest speed.

After five minutes there was steam coming out of the top of the blender and it was switched to a low speed while I threw in a couple of spoonfuls of red kidney beans and sweetcorn. Ten seconds later I switched off and lunch was ready.

The soup was delicious and healthy too! There was hardly any preparation, no stirring and the Vitamix is cleaned in two minutes by running it with some hot water and washing up liquid.

I recently discovered a great new product. It’s a Graze box. It’s delivered to the house each week full of lovely healthy snacks. So far I’ve had pistachios, olives, seeds,spicy rice cakes and crackers, dark chocolate, nuts and dried fruit such as mango, cherries, blueberries . My daughter and I look forward to it dropping through the letterbox each week. We get to try a few healthy treats and enjoy the surprise element. You can rate the foods on the website so you don’t get anything you hate and get more of what you like.

The first box is free if you use a friend’s code and the friend gets £1 off their next box or can donate it to charity.

If you want to try it you can use my friends code for your free box. The code is K47MM4M
http://www.graze.com/p/K47MM4M

Let me know what you think.

I’m still trying to eat healthily most of the time.

Needing a quick healthy lunch I decided to make a quick butter bean dip to have with pitta bread and carrot sticks. I used a 400g tin of butter beans but if you have more time you can soak and cook your own. I added the juice of half a lemon, 2 generous tablespoons of low fat creme fraiche, a crushed clove of garlic and a heaped teaspoon of curry powder. I whizzed mine in the food processor attachment of my Kenwood Chef but it can easily be mixed by hand. Make it smooth or chunky depending on your preference. A generous handful of chopped coriander finished it off and it made a delicious lunch with toasted pitta bread, carrot sticks and baby plum tomatoes. Low fat, healthy and delicious, perfect.

I have made a start on my healthy eating plan. I know I
have to improve the diet of my family so I decided to incorporate
lots more vegetables into some of their favourite meals. This is
not a new idea but I have let it slip recently.

Today I have made a large pan of bolognese sauce. Not terribly exciting, you may think,
but at least everyone (except veggie me!) will eat it. As well as
the usual minced beef, tomatoes and herbs this one contains onion,
carrot, celery, yellow pepper and mushrooms. Of course my son is
not keen on any of those so I gave them a good whizz in my Kenwood
food processor attachment first until they were all a similar size
to the mince. Cunning, yes? In the finished sauce most of the
vegetables really cannot be seen and what cannot be identified is
much more likely to be eaten. I used up a glug of red wine hanging
around since Christmas too.

As part of my plan to eat more
economically I have made more than I need and will get a few single
portions stashed in the freezer for those days where I need a quick
meal for someone, hopefully this will save on requests for fast
food as there will be something ready in just the ten minutes it
takes to boil the pasta.

This year I have decided to break with tradition and actually make some New Year’s resolutions. This is not something I have done in the past as I never felt the need, I don’t smoke, gamble or drink too much so I didn’t have anything major to ‘give up’. This year, though, I have begun to feel there are positive changes I could make to improve my life and those of my family. Obviously I don’t really need to make those resolutions public but putting them here on my blog will, I hope, make me more likely to stick to them!

Here goes then. The resolutions are in the form of instructions to myself, reminders to keep me on track, I want them all to be positive so there is nothing to give up. (I couldn’t give up my two main obsessions – Manchester City and Twitter – anyway!)

Don’t do anything for the family they could easily do for themselves. I know it sounds negative but it isn’t really. Having three adult children living in the house as well as a teenager and a husband creates a lot of work. They all need to be independent so I am going to encourage them to take greater responsibility for clearing up after themselves, getting themselves to where they need to be and doing a share of the household chores. It will be good for them as well as me!

Eat more healthily. As a vegetarian I consider myself to have a fairly healthy diet, although it could be improved, but I cook for the family and don’t think they eat as healthily as they should. So I am going to make an effort to plan and cook cheap, healthy meals which suit everyone. This is something which I have let slip recently so family beware, I am going to be working on this one. More veg, less meat, proper home-made meals. If they don’t like it they can always buy and cook their own, so long as they clear up after themselves!

Get more exercise. Since having some problems with my foot I have walked much less and I can tell! So the plan is to take a walk every day for thirty minutes. This is no problem on match days as there is a long walk to the stadium from the car park, no problem in the summer when it is lovely to get out in the fresh air but will be more of an effort in rain, snow and wind. I have a new camera so I will take that with me and hopefully persuade someone to come along for company but I will still go whatever the weather.

That’s all. Nothing too difficult but it will take some effort on my part. All of these things will have benefits for myself and those I love and I hope to be seeing those benefits sooner rather than later. It will not be a great failure if I slip sometimes, I will be able to get back on track and hope the benefits I see will spur me on.

Happy New Year to you all and do share your resolutions.

It has been a while since my last post. Life has been busy, and stressful. I have been ill and one of my daughters involved in a car accident, fortunately she is ok just a broken ankle.
I decided it was time to get back to my blog and back to baking so this post combines the two!
Latest fun thing for me to make is bagels. I have to follow a low fat diet at the moment and they are great for that. I have tried out different types of flour and different toppings and decided that I like fennel seeds as a topping and 75% white, 25% wholemeal mix for the flour (although all white is good too!).
I use 450g flour, 1tsp quick yeast, 1Tabsp sugar, 2 tsp salt and 300ml warm water to make the dough. My trusty Kenwood Chef makes short work of the kneading and then I leave the dough to rise for an hour.
The fun aspect is dropping the bagels into boiling water with three tablespoons of sugar dissolved in it. After the dough has risen and the bagels shaped (twirling them round the handle of a wooden spoon is quite fun too!) they are dropped, 3 or 4 at a time into the water. They rise up to the top and you turn them over. After a couple of minutes you lift them out, drain off any water, sprinkle them with yummy seeds if you like and then bake them for 25 minutes. Delicious!
Check out my photo and give them a try, they really are easy. Let me know how you get on