Dinner: Malay Beef Curry

Today’s dinner was a last minute “I WANT FOOD”. It only took 6.5 min to cook, which made me happy.

As I cooked it I could smell rice. YUMMY.

Ok, so it looks a little like… bad stuff… But there was a great variety of vegetables, with big chunks of spices in there. I have had some lean cuisine meals in my time, but this stuff is more gourmet, and a better size (then again it does cost a bit more!)

The meal was filling, beef tender enough, and the curry had a slight kick. Kept me full. I would have this again, although I do question its authenticity.

7/10

Dinner: McCain Healthy Choice Plus; Creamy Chicken Pasta

After having such huge meals with Lite N Easy, I decided to pick a few bigger frozos. This cost me about $5.50 on special.

As you can see it came in a special steam heating container, to “lock in the flavours.” That implies there is flavour… ok, being a bit harsh. The chicken pieces did taste like real chicken and there was a decent amount of it (but looked like that 91% chicken 9% filler/stabiliser/sawdust stuff) I do love penne, and the veg didn’t taste like normal soggy frozo veg. Its just the sauce. I know it says creamy, I just expected a bit more flavour, cheesy even.  See the box is yellow, not pasty. And more mushrooms.

All over I ate all my dinner and felt satisfied.  But really I could have made the same meal last night (a few times and frozen it) pretty easily, but boosted its health profile with wholemeal pasta. So I think I might just do that next time and pick frozos that I couldnt make easily (Coles Risotto is really good, I forgot to take photos, so a review is still coming!) 6/10. Good but not a fav.

There may also be some old LnE reviews I never got to publish before I went on my crazy baking/eating spree. I dont blame LnE for that. I blame me making 3 different decadent baked goods in a night.

On hiatus

Haha, its ony 3days and the blog is on hold!

my second delivery didnt comeand i fell off the wagon big time.  I did keep eating on plan, but judt never got to posting.

Tomorrow is a new day and i will post on my old blog, but will be back on Thursday with the new delivery!

Day 3: Dinner – Chicken and Prawn Pad Thai

I am not very nice to LnE.
I can barely find a restaurant around me that does good Pad Thai, and I am trying to get it from a box. The night after a delicious mac cheese dinner? I am picky with my Pad Thai, and its something I order EVERYTIME I got to a Thai place that I know has good Pad Thai cos its so rare to find. But its a calorie BOMB – peanuts, oils, noodles, very little veg….

The meal was done in 7 mins as I cleaned my house (I only got in 20 min of a fitness video today because I had to pick up groceries for work coffee etc)

As it cooked I smelt… food? But not the lovely smell of Pad Thai…

It certainly didn’t look like pad thai, containing spinach and no egg or peanut I could see.  I poured it into a bowl so I could stir the sauce – weird globs of herbs but it didn’t help.

And the taste? Sad to say, did not taste like pad thai. Not bad, but I would prefer to call this dish "Asian Coriander Noodles".

I splashed on a bit of fish sauce and ketchup to try and make it taste something like pad thai, but that didn’t do anything.

There was a LOT of noodles – opposite of yesterday’s dinner. Which is great if you are craving noodle box, minus the abundance of calories. A fair bit of prawn, not much chicken (or was that the saucey blobs?)

I tried to eat slowly by using chopsticks, but I ate so fast I got "pad thai" in my eye…

I think LnE is being unfair on itself. I dont think ANYONE could freeze Pad Thai and have it taste ok – its full of bean sprouts!  And try and make a super healthy version… good luck. I take my chances healthyfying Thai Green Curry and that has coconut milk in it!

Pad Thai – 310. Does not help the Thai craving at all
Coriander Noodles – 7/10 – Yummy, filling, tho I usually add more veggies, less noodles, and would consider this again.

Day 3 – Lunch mess

Today I was meant to have Thai chicken rissoles with salad, and  custardy apples for lunch.

The salad serve looked pretty small when I packed it into my bowl – I am a volume eater at lunch and dinner.

PROBLEM: I was invited to lunch the day before, but my friend assured me I could take my own. But it wasnt the casual cafe lunch out on the patio she mentioned – it was a sit down lunch, from a limited menu. *Cue dramatic music*

I browsed the choices – roast pork with crackling and mash, creamy chicken pasta, tikka lamb with rice and papadams, grilled eye fillet with mushroom sauce and veg, and quiche. Sounded like winter dinner to me…

I went the grilled eye fillet, thinking how great I was. My “medium-well” steak was very rare, fatty/marbled, smothered in a CREAMY mushroom sauce with a soggy slice of garlic bread, served on a huge pile of creamy mashed potato with deep fried sweet potato crisps.

The meal took 20 mins, and I was HANGRY (so hungry I was angry) so I just ate it, and planned to have my salad later. But then, as I thought we were done, my friend announced "now comes my favourite bit! Fi, you’re going to love it. Your favourite," – free dessert.

"I can resist, I have made a change in my lifestyle. I feed my body good nourishing food to energise me" I told myself. I could not. It was sticky date pudding. With butterscotch sauce. And ice-cream. And I was still hungry. And that is my favourite dessert in the world – I ALWAYS make exceptions for this dessert.

It was delicious. Overly sweet and buttery. But now, only an hour and a half later, I am in a sugar slump, forcing my eyes open.

I am full of my rich lunch, and full of regret. *Sigh* I want to blame my friend, the restaurant, even myself, for not just eating my salad. But I think I just have to let it go. All I can do is solider on and not let this extra 500 calories prompt me to think the day is ruined and binge at night, undoing the work of the past 4 days. I always forget that as I am elbow deep in chocolate ice-cream smothered with peanut butter…

A co-worker forgot her lunch so I gave her mine. She was shocked at the small portion (I kept the custard for arvo tea, it was ok, not custardy enough for me, custard guts, and saved the yogurt and bikkie for another day) I saw her eating a packet of chips 20 mins after my lunch. At least she washed the dish (and said nothing about the meal)

Day 3: Breakfast – Ham, cheese, tomato Soy-lin sandwich

I was actually hungry this morning. Hooray. I cut out a slice of toast – about 100 calories, because my total for today went over by about 250 calories (I am eating between 1200 and 1500, but the meals provide up to 1600), and I will save this afternoon’s muesli cookie for another week.

It was hard fitting all the toppings on here (falling off the bread as you can see) – generous with ham/tomato. If I were to stick to two slices this would have to be an open faced sammo, but then its a bit stingy on the cheese. I like cheese slices for such things because they are thinner and spread more, but on my breakfast there was enough cheese.

This was good – all familiar to my taste buds. Healthy eating plan? I’d eat this if I were a size 6 or a size 16, on LnE or not! I didn’t feel that full, but I stayed full at work until about 1045, when I hate a few bites of my own rockmelon as I was about to go to lunch and didn’t think I could fit in their apple. It was a good type tho – not the cheapo Red delicious, a Sundower I think, which I love!

Day 2: Dinner – Homestyle Macaroni Bake

Some people say I should have been born American, or at least my tastebuds are from the US. I scoff because I LOVE vegemite and meat pies, lamb etc etc, but I guess its because I am OBSESSED with a few key parts of modern “American” cuisine. That is Peanut butter + chocolate, cookies (but seriously who doesn’t love those, I just call them cooies) and Mac n Cheese. I loved the Kraft Mac and cheese, I love American luminous orange Mac and Cheese, I love enricos Mac and Cheese, and Hard Rock cafe side dish Mac and Cheese. Other than Mac and Cheese, I dont like creamy pasta, and I dont like fancy cheese like brie. I just like plain tasty, cheddar and maybe gouda.

8.5 minutes of shower later, it smelt good and at the end the cheese started to burn brown. Love-love-love!! But no real crumbly bits like on the photo. Maybe this is an oven meal? Or at least on micro/grill.

Plus its uber carby. I am not afraid of carbs (I know, my faux-sotto says otherwise, but honestly) I love me some brown rice, and turkish bread, wraps, seedy bread etc, but for me its about balance. I can no longer happily sit down and eat half a fresh loaf of bread with butter. My body actually doesn’t like it. When I eat like that travelling, the lack of veggies kills me (try a 20 hour road trip, Mm McDonalds to KFC to Oporto)

I like to pimp my mac cheese, with peas, corn, tuna, whatevs. I had leftover salmon and I am trying to eat fish three times a week, so I cut out the same amount of calories earlier in the day to add this yummy fishy.

Added some chopped chives and pepper too, and plopped it in a bowl – just wanted to curl up on the couch with my din-dins!

It was fantastic and yummy comfort food. But remember I love Mac Cheese, so maybe I am biased. It was runnier, saucier than other mac cheeses, but I still  like it. Anyway, that meal is going to be repeated and I will try to mimic it – gourmet Mac Cheese, with cauliflower (to pad out instead of pasta) salmon, and a crunchy panko bread crumb topping.

I ate it so fast I had to wait to get full 😦 But I stayed full until bedtime.

An easy 8/10, maybe more, but will be getting it again (if I keep all this up)

Night!

Day 2: Breakfast and Lunch

Today was bircher muesli, two slices of grain toast with marmalade. I don’t like marmalade. And as I said before, two slices of toast just isn’t me.

So I subbed a piece of toast, marmalade and flora spread for leftover salsa.

 

The bircher was a lot smaller than I am used to, but also a lot creamier and tart/fruity – I guess I add more water and oatmeal, so if you wanted to halve the breakfast for later you could add you own rolled oats and fruit and a bit of water to stretch it out. I would then add fresh berries and some flax seed oil to balance the meal.

It had lots of crunchy bits (I found a whole hazelnut), then yummy plump sultanas but it was pretty small and I am happy to have one course breakfasts.

Was filling though, (with green tea and water) until 10am, when I had my kiwi. My rock hard kiwi. Note to self – check the fruit before you pack it.

Lunch was Schezwan Hokkein Noodles (that is HARD to spell!). They were “fresh”, and microwave heated.  The sauce was full of flavour, but overpoweringly sweet chilli/ salty. From what I can tell the noodles were actually Udon, and there weren’t much, but that’s why its lite, right? My favourite part was the chicken, which actually tasted and felt like fresh chicken (unlike lean cuisine, which tastes 5% filler) The meal is probably smaller than I’d usually serve myself, but thats exactly why I got LnE – to re-portionise my eating brain.

When I ate this I realised, maybe hundreds of people were sitting down to the same meal, at about the same time, and some people in Brisbane were probably eating from the same wok (or whatever they use to cook it) That was kinda cool.

It came with a little tub of pears (for some reason I LOVE these)

Arvo tea was yogurt and an apple cranberry muffin. I will post more on this tomorrow, but I decided not to eat Mr Muffin (who was a bit like a yummy looking un-iced frozen cupcake) because I am eating a few too many calories.

The yogurt was Greek yogurt with berries and this time i followed the instructions and stirred in the sauce. DELICIOUSO! And less grainy/tart. Om nom nom, loved this! And it kept me full until after my Body Pump Class. Weird, usually I am ravenous.

I thought today’s line up was pretty good, although I will try to avoid picking toasty breakfast options in the future.

7/10 for today – I would order this again

Sunday, yummy Sunday

Another non LnE day. Once I get my other blog going I will probably post these over there.

I tried to stick to the same sort of calories as the program – don’t want to just give up on weekends.

Breakfast illustrated that I am not a volume eater in the morning. LnE is pretty good, in that you get two courses with breakfast and lunch, and a big meal at dinner.

 

I had Burgen Pumpkin seed toast with about 1/6 an avocado, a piece of short cut rindless bacon and half a glass of milk. That’s 330 cal and kept me full until lunch at 12 (I did eat that at 830 though!)

Lunch was an Ali Baba Morrocan Lamb “Rapp”. (Phone photo, sorry. Thats a small coke, but you can see the rapp goes off the page!) It was HUGE – stick to a k’baby next time I think. They have a whole new range of foods, and I think is much better than the average kebab place. The plates for $10 look good (to share, or save some for later) and the meat was quite lean. The website says 375 cal but I reckon with sauces it was more. I didn’t finish it all, just pulled out the lamb at the end.

I wasn’t hungry at 3pm but I thought frequent meals are part of LnE, so I got a King William chocolate kids size from boost. WOW, 250 cal?!?! The lite ones are much better. As is making your own. Mine wasn’t that great anyway.

Dinner was a lot lower cal than usual, but not intentionally. I bought a huge head of cauli last week before the delivery, and had no idea what to do with it. Usually I make mashed fauxtatos (pureed cauli tastes v similar to mashed potatos) but there was just too much, so I kept looking. Until I found a recipe for faux-sotto!! The cauli-head was broken up into lumps then blended quickly until grainy. I used up some freezer chicken, bacon, peas, lite cheese, and some leftover fresh shallots and mushrooms, and added some low sodium chicken stock, and right at the end some parmesan, lemon juice and rind.

Will put the recipe up on my other blog later, but if you are curious, you can google low carb cauliflower risotto. I didn’t use butter or cream, and added 1/4 c parmesan. It was a pretty huge serve for about estimated 300 calories, and took a lot less time (and stirring) than real rissotto.

I ate half and saved half.The bowl doesn’t really look full here, but it was over the top of the lip in the middle there. Yum.

Tastes similar to risotto – I was tricked at the start. By the end I felt like I ate a bowl of fibry cauliflower, I missed the lovely bite to real risotto, and didn’t keep me full as long. Did not miss the huge calories though. You could easily cut the bacon – it didn’t add THAT much. This is good comfort food, keepers for next winter.

So today was good. I even stayed on track. CRAZY for me. Usually shopping is an all you can eat affair for me, or I at least press my face against the glass of Mrs fields cookie store, so hard I can practically absorb the calories of the peanut butter brownie (OMG so good). Or at least get ice-cream. Regretting boost as 1. wasn’t hungry and 2. wasn’t that great but what is done is done. And I even bought tim tams today for a friend and did not eat them!

Weekends

I think I mentioned before, I am only doing a breakfast-lunch-dinner 5 day plan. Gives me more flexibility to have work lunches now and then, and still keep up my cooking skills!

I didn’t take photos because I was in a rush, but breakfast and lunch and snacks have already run past for me today. Dinner is pan-fried crispy skin atlantic salmon, with a fresh salsa, and garlic stir-fried snow peas and carrots. Stupid shops sell salmon in huge portions, but not huge enough for two pieces. 230g of salmon is about 500 cal! $6. Do I halve it, two thirds it? Do I cook it all and save the rest frozen?

So just cut off the end, so the photo is not as gorgeous as Linda’s Citrus-Glazed Salmon With Avocado Salsa at Eating Well Living Thin (suggest if you like the idea of my meal, use her recipe!) I love crispy skin salmon (hidden by the veg)

I usually eat off side plates, not big dinner plates. I will try and keep a fork in the photo for perspective’s sake.

The salsa looked quite dull but tasted good. I made it with fresh tomato, cucumber, avocado and spring onion, canned mango (what I had on hand), splash of balsamic vinegar and lemon juice, a sprinkle of cumin and chilli pepper, all mixed up. Sometimes I add corn or capsicum (peppers)  to the mix, but I do it all by judgement – no real recipe. I like to make a big mix, and use it on salads, grilled fish or chicken, or in wraps or sandwiches throughout the week.