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.

Shopping Trip

Yesterday we did our shopping!

I feel like we bought a ton of food, for not an awful lot of money, and all of this should do us for all of this next week, and hopefully into next week too.

Here's what we got:

• 4 avocados
• 2 courgettes
• 1 butternut squash
• 1 cucumber
• 1 broccoli
• 1 cauliflower
• 4 sweet potatoes (big ones)
• 1 bag of spinach
• 2 melons
• 3 lemons
• 2 cod steaks
• 4 salmon steaks
• 500g diced lean beef steak
• some prawns
• 1 jar of capers
• 1 can of coconut cream
• 5 bananas

All for £39!

I am unbelievably chuffed with that, so I'm now hoping that not only will our waist become slimmer but our purses will be a bit fatter too :).

Going to get on with some cooking today, so hopefully I'll have some recipes up over the next few days.