Lime Burgers and my treat day

After dieting for 3 months I have lost 2 stone, 6% of my body fat! Not only am I treating myself to a nice new haircut soon, but I had a massive fried breakfast this morning. 2 bacon, 2 sausages, 2 hash browns, 2 eggs, 2 portions of beans, 2 slices of black pudding mushrooms, fried bread and 2 slice of toast. :P I ate it all!! plus some bacon from my boyfriends sandwich and a milkshake! This was the appetite that lead to me weighing 17 stone in the first place. And it was great to revisit it for the day.

Today was also my sisters birthday, so not only did I have the monster breakfast, but she asked me to make my lime burgers for dinner. The recipe for the burgers is the first recipe I have made over and over again, I first made them about 4 years ago, and my family loves them. Just to let you know, they are in NO way low fat! was a treat for the sister.

Lime Burgers

Ingredients

• Coriander seeds
• Cumin seeds
• 1000g Minced beef
• A lime
• 1 large egg
• Breadcrumbs
• Plain flour

SERVES 4

 Steps

1. Plonk the beef, as much coriander and cumin as you want and the egg in a large mixing bowl. Grate all the lime zest into the bowl, then squeeze all the juice into it too.
2. Now squeeze all the mixture together, with your bare hands. Yes it may be gross, but I love doing it!! :D now add a small handful of breadcrumbs in. Just enough to make the mixture less soggy.
3. Now sprinkle flour on a side and spread it around, so a large area is covered in flour. Now quarter your mixture, and roll into four balls. 
4. Now get a ball and half it, pat one half down on the side and work into a burger shape, covering in flour. Shake off the excess flour by throwing a burger from hand to hand a little bit. Continue with the other half.
5. Do this with the next three balls, and you should end up with 8 burgers.
6. Pour a generous amount of oil into a large saucepan, and heat up. The flour and the breadcrumbs in the burgers will give them an amazing crunchy outside when fried.
7. Fry all burgers until the outside is crunchy looking. You can just fry the burgers until they are cooked through, however today I fried the outside and then chucked them in the oven for 20 minutes on a gas mark 6.
8. When ready serve in a bap or with some home made chips. They would go amazing with the sweet potato chips I made in a previous blog. 

 
 

Best brownies ever!

BBC GoodFood's Best-ever brownies, were literally that. They were moist in the middle, crunchy on the edge and sooo chocolately! And next time I will definetely add more chocolate chunks! I definetely recommend these, I made them for my boyfriend and my family yesterday, for valentines day. They have all been eaten already! Here's some photos...

looking good :)

Chocolate... what chocolate???...

My great little idea

One great tip for not eating the chocolate while making it, especially if your dieting like me, is to buy a huge tub of onken fat free vanilla yoghurt, its sooo good!!! Every time you feel like you want to nick a bit of chocolate, just have a spoon of this. Worked for me. Until twenty minutes in, when I ate the whole tub....

So today I fancied making a soup, something I have never made before, and I had no clue what to do. But it turned out amazing! It was a really warming dish, that had a good little kick to it.

Serves 2
Fat content: Basically NOTHING!!!

Ingredients:

• Thyme
• Cumin
• Oregano
• Bay leaves
• 1 Swede
• 2 Carrots
• 1 Leek
• 2 small onions
• 1 parsnip
• 1 Vegetable stock cube
• Golden veg cup of soup satchet
• A handful of rice

1. Dissolve the vegetable stock cube in a pan of poiling water. Once dissolved, plonk all the veg in and boil until they are soft
2. Now add as much or as little of the spices as you want. I put about a tablespoon of each. Also add the rice to the soup and boil for as long as the packet says to boil the rice
3.  Dissolve the cup of soup into the soup
4. Leave to simmer for about five minutes, and serve :)

It was so simple! And SO yummy!!

And thats it!

Potato day

I've had a potato day today. For lunch I tried a variation of bbc's good foods steak and chips. Unfortunately I couldn't find the red wine vinegar for the salsa so I made a tangy salad instead. And I used beef medallions instead of sirloin steak as it was cheaper and had absolutely no fat attached to it.

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 2 Beef medallions
• Large sweet potato
• 1/2 a red onion
• Cherry tomatoes
• Balsamic salad dressing
• watercress
• Cumin
• Paprika
• Olive oil

Steps

1. Cut the sweet potato into wedges, leave the skin on, plonk in a bowl and toss with a tiny bit of cumin, salt pepper and a drizzle of oil
2. Put into the oven on a gas mark 6, or 200C, for about 35 minutes, or until soft and crispy on the outside.
3. Rub as much paprika and cumin into the meat as you want, after cutting off any bits from the beef that you dont fancy eating, and put aside.
4. Now get a large bowl, put the watercress, cherry tomatoes and the chopped onion into it, then drizzle with as much salad dressing as you want.
5. I cooked the steak in a George Forman grill, and it took about ten minutes to cook all the way through. However you could also drizzle a bit of oil in a pan and fry it for about fifteen minutes, or until its cooked enough for your liking.
6. When the steak is done, put it on the plate with the salad and chips, and nom it down!

The plate makes it look like its bleeding...

As I cooked the steak in a grill, which meant alot of fat came out of the meat, I estimate that one portion contained 6g of fat. However if you fry it, it will obviously be a little bit more, but still pretty low. 

Took me about ten minutes to cut that potato!

Jemma's cat Bobby was taking interest

Bobby... in the sink...

Then I had some cheesey potato skins for dinner:

A great healthy alternative, to a normally very fattening dish.

Ingredients:

• Medium potato
• Extra light philadelphia
• half a red onion
• Sprinkle of cheddar
• cumin

Steps:

1. Stab the potato all over, and rub some salt and a knob of butter over it, then chuck it in the oven for about an hour, or until the skin is crispy and brown, on gas mark 6 or 200C.
2. Cut the potato in half, scoop out the inside and plonk in a bowl. Add enough philly to make the potato moist, then the onion and dash of cumin, and salt and pepper, and mix. 
3. Now scoop the mix back into the skins and sprinkle a little bit of cheddar on top.
4. It will take another 10 or 15 minutes until the cheese has browned.
5. When done, serve and chow down. :) It can be served with grilled tomatoes or salad.You could also add chopped up bacon into the mix.

 I would guess that for one portion the fat content would probably be around 6g of fat.

Cupboard Pasta with Chilli sauce

One of the easiest dishes to make is tomato pasta. Just boil pasta, heat chopped tomatoes, and add whatever you want to add. So it's also one of the easiest meals to expand on. I usually chuck in some trimmed bacon, garlic and herbs, but a few days ago I decided to try something different from my usual as I had noticed some new spices in the cupboard. My friend the day before had shown me how to cook chilli con carne, so I blended the two. I wasn't too sure how well it would come out, but it tasted good, so if you fancy something different here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

• Pasta, any sort, and as much as you like (i don't tend to measure)
• Tin of Chopped tomatoes.
• As many Mushrooms as you like, chopped.
• Paprika.
• Cumin.
• 2 cloves of Garlic, crushed or chopped as small as possible.
• Beans (as you can see i used baked beans, I just washed the sauce away).
• Salt, pepper.
• Lea and Perrins
• Tsp of olive oil.

Excuse dirty oven...

Steps:

1. Boil the kettle, pour the water over the pasta, and set on the back burner to boil for as long as it says it takes
2. Heat the chopped tomatoes in a saucepan and add the Lea and Perrins, cumin and paprika. (You could really add any spices you like, for instance chili is usually used, but I didn't have any)
3. Grab a frying pan and add a tsp of oil, and start to fry the mushrooms
4. If you only have baked beans like me, then pour them into a sieve over the sink and wash the sauce away, then put into the saucepan with the sauce.
5. When the mushrooms are done put the garlic into the frying pan with the mushrooms, and after a few seconds put into the saucepan with the sauce. It doesn't take long for the garlic to burn, which will ruin the sauce completely! Believe me, I have a habit of burning garlic :)
6. Now leave sauce to simmer, serve the pasta on a plate and pour the sauce over it. Sprinkle a bit of cheese on top, and enjoy :)

Yum!

As I said before this recipe was completely done spare of the moment, hence the name cupboard pasta, if I had had some minced beef I would have added that in too, or some chilli or proper kidney beans instead of baked beans. I'm also aware that the Americans have a version of this called Chili Mac, but this is still a little bit different (I think).

I hope you enjoy it, and don't be scared to experiment with food. I experimented with this dish, and came out with something new I will cook again and again.

My Start

On December the first I weighed 17 Stone, was a size 18 bordering on 20, and was becoming increasingly unhappy with my looks. So I started my crack down and within the first week I lost eight pounds. Since then I have lost about a stone and a half, and currently weigh 15 stone 8 pounds, I'm also now fitting into size 16 clothes. I don't have a 'target weight' but I have an idea of what I want to look like, and to wear a bikini in the summer and feel good in it would be brilliant.

Me in September 2011

So a few weeks ago I started to get bored and I felt my willpower dropping. Meals were becoming dull and repetitive, it became a pattern of weight watchers ready meals, soups and cereal. So I've started to experiment with anything I had in the cupboard and try different recipes online and from the numerous books we own at home.

                                                               Me in January 2012



My first experiment was BBC's Good Food Healthy egg and chips. It was an easy meal to cook, and turned out brilliantly. It was apparently only 10g of fat per portion, however me being a big foodie, I normally have large portions. Here are my pointers for the recipe:

• Use a little bit more oil if you like your potatoes crispy, it will be more fattening, but worth it.
• DEFINITELY parboil the potatoes before you put them in the oven, otherwise they will be way too hard!
• Add bits of smoked bacon into the pan when you add the mushrooms, for a bit more flavour
• It goes great with lea and perrins!!

And this is how it turned out! :D