A week of healthyish eating before Christmas

I want to eat a bit more healthily this week, as we won't be next week!

Sunday we had a normal roast - chicken, stuffing, mixed roasted root veggies all done together in a big tray (potatoes, carrots, parsnips and onions), cabbage, peas and gravy.  It was slightly less calorific than usual in that we didn't have Yorkshires and had less of the root veggies and more green veg.   And no pudding.

Yesterday I did a sort of hash/bubble and squeak thing.  4 rashers of bacon left in the fridge from something I made towards the end of last week, a small chorizo sausage, an onion, an aubergine and half a punnet of mushrooms, all diced and fried together in a little olive oil.  Served it with a dessertspoon of reduced fat sour cream and chive dip and some garlic bread - ok, not particularly low cal!  But delicious. 

For today we're having savoury mince with lots of veggies cooked in, I've just made it.  A 500g pack of 5% fat steak mince from out of the freezer, bought some while back reduced to half price.  Low fat steak mince tends to be a bit dry, obviously because of the low fat content, so to make it moist and juicy I've added a load of grated carrot and an aubergine diced up small, as well as onions and mushrooms, with some beef stock and Italian herbs.  Then I had a brainwave - in the freezer I had a sachet of fresh peppercorn steak sauce.  I defrosted the sachet in a jug of hot water and then stirred that into the mince.  It smells and tastes wonderful.  We'll have it with a little brown basmati rice and some long-stemmed broccoli.  There'll be enough to freeze for another couple of meals.

I've been making a few things for the freezer - several dinners we've had recently I've made extra of deliberately to freeze, but have also made a load of Yorkshire puds this morning - a dozen individual ones and 2 large ones, they freeze beautifully and crisp up lovely straight from frozen in a couple of minutes.  A week or so ago I made lots of mince pies and sausage rolls to freeze for the holiday period, yesterday it was ginger biscotti - the recipe made a lot so half of them have been frozen.

Tomorrow we'll have a carbonara, Thursday will be salmon chowder, Friday a crustless quiche.

Trimmings soup

We're having our main meal at lunchtime today, as husband has a late afternoon hospital appointment and we're not expecting to be home until 6pm or gone.  I don't like to eat our main meal too late in the evening or it might give me indigestion when I go to bed.

So lunch will be a jacket spud with spicy pork and beans....the pork left over from Sunday lunch, the beans our favourite Branston ones from a tin, with a shake of smoked paprika and sage stirred in.  And probably a sprinkle of grated Cheddar on top.  

For supper I'm making soup.  I've kept a bag in the freezer for the past month or so, of the stalks and trimmings of cauliflower and broccoli, adding more to it whenever we've had them.  This morning I chopped up a leek (home grown, we have lots now) and a large potato and softened them in a little oil, the potato gives a bit of body to the soup.  I then added the chopped cauli and broccoli trimmings and stirred it all around for another couple of minutes, before adding some dried Italian herbs and sage.  A litre of hot vegetable stock was poured in, and it's now simmering for 20 mins or so.  Once cooled, I'll whizz it up with my stick blender and reheat this evening with a splash of cream and some crumbled blue Stilton stirred in to melt.

Whilst the oven's on for the jacket potatoes, I'll put a couple of slices of our homemade bread in there to dry out, drizzled with a bit of olive oil and sprinkled with garlic granules and smoked paprika.  They'll make croutons for the soup.

Day 14 - Shopping

So we didn't last out as long as I was hoping for without going shopping, we went and got quite a bit of stuff yesterday, along with the fresh whole salmon that was on offer in Morrisons, which is the reason why I went.  I did plan on getting other stuff as well though, I even wrote a list and more or less stuck to it, just adding 3 or 4 items that were in the reduced cabinet and too good to miss.

I spent £39.46 yesterday....considering we got a whole salmon that will do us for at least 8 meals included in that price, along with lots of fresh veggies and the reduced items that will make another couple of meals, I'm pretty pleased with that.  We got the fishmonger to fillet the salmon for us and I asked for the trimmings, I boiled and flaked them up for Betty as she loves fish.  The stock I've frozen to make a fish chowder, so that's another meal.  The reduced extras were some cooked chicken pieces reduced to 75p, which I'll use in a risotto or pasta bake, mushroom & cheese arancini balls down to 50p from £2.20 (they'll make a nice light meal with a jacket spud and salad), a small block of blue cheese and a little pot of single cream, both less than half price and will be used today to make soup.

As I said before, we could still carry on with no shopping, but were both missing fresh veg (that's something I never thought I'd say, seeing as I didn't really eat much in the way of veg until I was in my mid-30s, except for peas and spuds).  And I did want to get that salmon whilst it was on offer....it's supposed to be on offer until Christmas Eve, or whilst stocks last, so I didn't want to take the chance that they might run out.

I'm now sure I can resist the urge to just pop into a supermarket whilst we're out and about, and confident that I can stick to my shopping list instead of just picking up whatever takes my fancy.  Although if I see any reduced bargains on things that we would normally have anyway, I will get them - it'd be silly not to if they're going to save us money in the long run.

The key thing for me is - don't go shopping unless I really need to.

So my grand total on this no(!) shopping challenge, which lasted 14 days, is £48 exactly.  I consider that to be not bad at all.  Ok, so it's a bit of an abject failure really, in view of the fact that it was supposed to be no shopping!!  But I'm still happy about it, we still spent a damn sight less than we would have done normally.

Day 12 and still going strong

The spicy butternut squash soup was delicious, I'm glad we still have several huge homegrown squashes, each one makes at least 3 or 4 different meals.

For lunch yesterday we had cheese, mushroom and ham soufflé omelettes, scrumptious.  Dinner was homemade chilli out of the freezer, with a jacket potato and a sprinkling of grated cheese.  Must cut down - I do eat too much cheese!

Poached eggs on a slice of wholemeal grain toast for lunch today.  For dinner I'll get a tub of homegrown tomato pasta sauce out of the freezer, to go on top of wholewheat tagliatelle.  I'll fry some chopped chorizo (got a bag of frozen ones) to mix in with it, along with some other veg....I think there's some courgettes in the freezer.

I might be going shopping today, we've run out of a few things and Morrisons are doing a special offer on fresh salmon, £5 a kilo - they do it every holiday.  I do love salmon.

Running total - still £8.54.

Day 10 and back on the diet

The slightly relaxed diet weekend went quite well.....I did have some gut issues Saturday night which I'm fairly sure were down to Saturday's meals being a bit (well, very) carb heavy.  Yesterday was better, we still had a higher than ideal carb day but not so much.  Breakfast was cereal with warm milk, lunch 1 slice of homemade (we only ever have homemade now) grain toast with baked beans.  Dinner was pork belly slices, slow roasted in a grainy mustard and sage gravy, with roasted carrots, parsnips and red onion, peas and a Yorkshire pud.  Delicious.

Today I'm making spicy butternut squash soup for lunch, husband's working outside this morning and it's very cold, so he'll want something warming at lunchtime.  Dinner will be Cumberland sausages on a bed of brown rice and things - I'll stir through some lentils, pumpkin seeds, chopped walnuts and chopped sundried tomatoes.  We'll have it with some veg out of the freezer.

I've reduced our portion sizes by about a third, which is working quite well.

We're going to have to think about getting a bit of shopping soon....husband has run out of the sugar-free squash he drinks quite a lot of and hates drinking water, and I'm getting low on my coffee.  Although we have quite a bit of root veg still and plenty of frozen veg, we have no fresh green veg left.....frozen is alright, but not particularly appetising unless I smother it in a sauce, and the texture of frozen green veg is always too soft.

I think this experiment is teaching me that we can manage quite happily on food stores we already have, with a bit of 'make do' mentality.  We could still manage quite well without buying anything...it's more a case of wanting rather than needing.  I'm also breaking my habit of going shopping every few days and ending up buying stuff just because I see it, rather than because we actually need it.  Gemma's Person, no we went into the shop together, so I'm quite proud of myself for only buying the milk and nothing else! 😁

Didn't go out yesterday so nothing spent again, so the running total on Day 10 is £8.54 still.  Considering we would normally spend probably around £50, sometimes more, during 2 or 3 shopping trips in one week, I'm very pleased with that.