Meal Preparation!

This was the image on my kitchen table on Sunday. I now spend two hours every Sunday evening, preparing meals for the rest of the week.

Recipes for each of these meals will be up in the next couple of weeks, but here we can see:

• Marinated turkey breast with chickpeas and vegetables
• Marinated turkey breast with roast sweet potato and vegetables
• Roasted lemon chicken breast with roasted sweet potato and vegetables

They are all super healthy and filling lunches, perfect for reheating at work. They can also all be frozen and reheated after defrosting in the fridge overnight.

I also prepared some gala melon into little tupperware bowls and some stewed rhubarb. Nice little sweet treats to finish off a healthy lunch. 

Three Ingredient Pancakes!

Technically it's four, but I'm not counting water, and you can substitute a lot into these too.

Basically, my breakfasts everyday for the past I don't know how long have simply been porridge made with water with a variety of added treats; blueberries, granola topping, peaches, nutella, honey, peanut butter, bananas...you get the picture.

But I wanted something that had a little more protein in, which is where these pancakes come in!

They're super simple and I can whip them up in the same time as a bowl of porridge, which is ideal when I don't have too much time on a morning.

You will need:

• 1/3 cup porridge oats - this is just the size scoop I use, but you could do it with a full cup and make more
• 1 egg
• Dash of cinnamon
• Enough water to make a decent looking pancake batter - you could substitute in coconut milk, almond milk, normal milk! Anything that will make it more liquid. 

Pop all your ingredients in a jug (or a bowl, like I use), whisk everything together, then pop it in a hot frying pan sprayed with low calorie cooking spray (or coconut oil! I tried that yesterday and it worked really well). 

You could also add in frozen blueberries if you'd like, which I may in the morning. But just top it with whatever that'll make it taste yummy. Here it's just with honey, but get adventurous!

Ginger, chilli and lime chicken breasts with harissa and chorizo chickpeas

Super-long-blog-post-title is long!

I work later than my fiance, and as such we generally like making meals that are quick and easy and require the least number of ingredients possible. This fits that bill completely!

It's so yummy, and warming! Technically with a low-FODMAP diet, you're not supposed to have chorizo and most other sausages, but I bought it, had it in my fridge, and I refuse to let food go bad!

You will need:

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 lime
• Chilli flakes - as many as you like
• Half inch of grated ginger
• 1 can of chickpeas
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 2 little chorizo sausages (50g) chopped
• 1 teaspoon harissa paste

So I cut the breasts in half and flattened them a little, then rubbed them with a mix of chilli, lime zest and ginger, then grilled them until cooked. While cooking, I drizzled them with lime juice, too.

Meanwhile, chop up the chorizo and heat in a pan until the oils begin to run, then add in the chickpeas, tomato and harissa paste. It only needs to cook for about 5 minutes, as that all it'll take for the chorizo to be cooked through and the chickpeas, too. 

Then you simply plate it up! Very yummy, protein filled, low calorie meal. Ideal. 

Coconut Prawn Curry

I love a good curry. I enjoy a little spice, as I feel like I've eaten more if there's a lot of flavour. This certainly fits the bill for that!

It's super creamy and yummy, and you could switch out the prawns for some chicken easily enough. This was made in approximately 20 minutes in one pan on the stove.

For it you will need:

• 1 can coconut cream
• 180ml vegetable stock
• Garam masala
• Cauliflower
• Prawns

So first I boiled my cauliflower in the vegetable stock until cooked through, then I added in the rest of the ingredients - simple as that really. You could add some curry powder in too if you wanted a bit of spice to it. 

This was made, placed in the fridge and then reheated and it tasted just as good reheated as it did fresh!

Progress Report

It's been about two weeks since I set off on this diet journey. I've cheated some days, eaten some things I know I shouldn't, and honestly, I've felt the worse for it.

One of the first days I caved and we ordered a Dominos pizza for tea. I got a gluten free base and low fat cheese, but I just felt awful afterwards. Feeling like that is all the motivation I need to continue in this direction.

So far I've been pretty good at preparing meals for lunches ahead.

Mostly though I'm feeling great.

And the scales are reflecting this change in diet. I've so far lost 8lb. I'm not really feeling it yet, but one of my colleagues at work commented on the fact she thinks I've lost weight, which is lovely to hear!

Here's hoping I can keep it up in the following weeks.

Lemon and Thyme Chicken

The butchers near where I work is excellent. The people who work there are so friendly and helpful, and they have some of the nicest cuts of meat and are always there to offer advice for what to do with them!

So the other week when they had 10 chicken breasts on for £10 I of course had to jump on it. They were all big, from free range hens from a farm only 2 miles down the road from the butchers. Now that's what I call local produce!

So the next easy meal had to be chicken, and it couldn't be simpler.

You will need:

• Chicken breasts (I used 4)
• Dried thyme - or fresh
• 1 lemon zested 
• 200ml chicken stock

Rub the chicken breasts with the thyme and lemon zest, then place in a baking dish with the stock and the lemon cut into quarters. Then bake in the oven at about 150C Fan until the juices run clear - about 30 to 45 minutes depending on your oven.

We served them whole in our little tupperware lunch boxes with mashed sweet potato and roasted carrots. 

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

I might have bought the biggest butternut squash I've ever seen in my life. I wish I'd taken a photo of it next to my head. Seriously it was enormous.

Anyway. As it was so big, I decided to make a few different dishes out of it...well two. The first was this, a super yummy and low calorie butternut squash soup, and it has only two ingredients! (if you don't count spices)

For this lovely soup you will need:

• Half a large butternut squash (or one whole one if you'd like to make more)
• 5 carrots
• Dash of turmeric

So I halved my butternut squash - which was not easy so I had to ask Rob to help - and removed the seeds, then I placed it skin side up in a roasting dish and left it in the oven at about 150C Fan for a bit over an hour. 

Once removed from the oven, I removed the skin, cut the squash into cubes and placed it in a large pan.

Meanwhile I cut the carrots into rounds and boiled them till nice and soft, then drained them and added them to the squash. Then with my immersion blender I blended them all together!

It was super simple, took no thought at all, and I left it all to go as I tidied the house and played board games with Rob.