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Ritu’s Healthy Eating Week 34 – #icandothis

31 Mar 2017 37 Comments

by Ritu in Health, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Healthy Eating, Recipe, Slimming World, Weight Loss

Another week, another set of scales saying I maintained! Wow! I don’t know how!

I have attended a baby shower, with cake and lots of food! Some cake came home withme and I have eaten bits on and off too!

Here’s me being silly at the baby shower!

Then there was Mother’s day and a Chinese meal out….

And we had a colleague’s leaving do at a great Turkish place!

And I can’t forget that Lil Man has been cooking and baked cakes!

But I still stayed on track the rest of the time (except the ice creams, and chocolate cakes, and chocolate nests…Shhh!)

And so to my recipe for today. I only started to eat prawns in September, and found a great dish that is Slimming World friendly. In fact it was a recipe from one of their magazines! So yummy!

Pak Choi Prawns!

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Ingredients (serves 4)

400g dried rice noodles
Low calorie cooking spray
6 spring onions, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tsp finely grated fresh root ginger
1 red pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
1 red chilli, deseeded and thinly sliced
400g pak choi, roughly chopped
400g large cooked and peeled prawns
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce

Method

This one is so simple!

Cook the noodles as per the instructions
Heat your wok with the low cal cooking spray.
Stir fry the onions, garlic, ginger, pepper, chilli and pak choi for a few minutes, or until the pak choi has wilted.
Stir in the noodles, and prawns and add the soy sauces, Stir frying for 1-2 minutes.
Serve!

And so there you have it!

I hope you have a wonderfully healthy week Peeps, and I’ll catch ya next week with another recipe!!!

Ritu’s Healthy Eating – Week 33 – #icandothis

24 Mar 2017 20 Comments

by Ritu in Health, Recipes, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Comic Relief, Health, Healthy Eating, Pizza and chips, Recipe, Slimming World

Another week down, and guess what… I stayed the same… again!

Managing this maintaining pretty well to be honest!

Here are a few meals I had this week…

And as it is Comic Relief today, and we were all wearing red for Red Nose Day, I treated myself to a new top… my first size 10 top in a long time!

And today’s recipe will be …

Wrap Pizza and ‘Slimming World’ Friendly Chips

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For 1 person

For Chips

1 potato peeled or withskin, chopped into chips.

Frylight Spray

Preheat oven to 220 degrees celsius
Parboil chips for 5 minutes.
Drain and allwo to stand for around 10 minutes.
Spray baking tray with Frylight spray, spread chips evenly and spray oil lightly again. Season with salt and pepper, and place in oven for 30 minutes.
Turn occasionally.

For Pizza

One tortilla wrap (I use BFree Wraps as they can be used as one of your fibre healthy extras in a day)
Tomato Puree
Passata
Dried mixed herbs
Whatever topping you want
Grated cheese (I use 40g light cheddar as it is a calcium healthy extra in Slimming World)

Place wrap on baking tray
Mix a little passata with tomato puree, season with salt and pepper and add a sprinkle of mixed herbs. This makes a simple pizza sauce base. Spread on the wrap
Top with your choice of toppings. I use lots of vegetables, like tomatoes,peppers, mushrooms, onions, sweetcorn and add cooked chicken too.
Sprinkle cheese on top and scatter a few mixed herbs on top
Place in oven for 10 minutes until the cheese has melted and is turning golden

Plate up and enjoy!

I hope you like the choice of recipe this week! As I mentioned last week, if there is anything you want me to post a recipe for, from my previous pictures, just drop me a line and let me know!

Off to a baby shower tomorrow, so will catch up soon!

Stay fit, healthy and safe Peeps!!!

Ritu’s Healthy Eating – Week 32 – #icandothis

17 Mar 2017 46 Comments

by Ritu in Health, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, healthy, Healthy Eating, Quark Pancakes, Recipe, Slimming World, Weight Loss, Weight Maintenance

Quick recap… I have reached that target weight, and I am happy to announce that I have stayed the same again this week! My food has looked a bit like this…

Last week I said I would try and share some recipes that I have been using over the last few months. There is so much that I have made, simply by throwing things into a pan, but if you have any specific requests,I would love you to ask, so I can see what I can do!

I thought this week I would start with a simple breakfast recipe of Quark pancakes.

1 tbsp of Quark
1 tsp of sweetener
1 egg

Whisk the ingredients together to make your batter.
Heat up a pan. I use Frylight spray, or a few sprays of olive oil to grease the pan.
Pour a little batter in at a time to create small pancakes. This is easier as a large one is quite hard to turn, without it falling apart!
Turn, and cook on both sides until golden brown,then put on a plate and serve with whatever you wish!
For a slightly savoury twist, I add bacon that has been cooked with the fat cut off, and then drizzle Agave Nectar on top instead of Maple syrup.
For a sweet alternative, I place mixed berries on top, sweeten some quark with a little sweetener, and dollop that on top of the berries. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top and you have a lovely sweet breakfast that feels quite decadent!
For those that are slimming world followers, you just have to syn the sweetener, and any agave nectar you use! Pretty low syn breakfast if you ask me!

Enjoy! And remember if there are any requests for specific recipes, do let me know!

Synfully Delightful Oreo Cheesecake!

11 Mar 2017 94 Comments

by Ritu in Recipes, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Oreo Cheesecake, Recipe

Ok, so I promised a recipe this weekend, that was not one of my healthy dishes…

My kids both love Oreo cookies, and after sampling the Oreo Thins, I wanted to use them to make something, or at least decorate something, so I went on the hunt for a recipe, and this is what I found, and subsequently, made.

Oreo Cheesecake

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Ingredients for Base

300g Original Oreo Cookies
140 g butter, melted and cooled slightly

Cheesecake topping

500g room temperature full-fat cream cheese or mascarpone
300ml double cream
85g icing sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 pack (14 cookies) Original Oreos crushed into small pieces

Decoration

1 pack Oreo Thins or Mini Oreos
250ml whipping cream

Method

For the base, melt butter. Blitz the Oreo cookies to a fine crumb. Add the melted butter and combine well. Tip crumb into a 23cm springform cake tin and press down firmly. Ensure the top is smooth then place in the fridge to chill while making the filling.

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For the filling, beat together the cream cheese and icing sugar until softened. Whisk the cream and vanilla in another bowl until soft peaks form. Fold cream into the cheese mix. Take the crushed Oreos and fold into the mixture.
Spoon over the base, smooth on top, cover and refrigerate for around 6 hours, or overnight.

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Before serving, whip cream to pipe on top, and decorate with additional Oreo Thins.

Yum!!!

Decadent? – ✔

Naughty? – ✔

Tasty? – ✔

Enjoy!!!!!

Ritu’s Healthy Living – Week 24 #icandothis

20 Jan 2017 24 Comments

by Ritu in Recipes, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Baked Oats, Bhangra, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Exercise, Healthy Eating, Recipe, Slimming World, Weight Loss

Another week, another bunch of wonderful meals… and some exercise!

I have had some naughty things,

I have had some extra healthy things…

And I discovered baked oats! Ooooh! So good!

Simple recipe

40g plain oats
Half a Muller light vanilla yoghurt
1 teaspoon sweetener
1 small egg

Mix together
Bake at 180 C for 30 mins.
Enjoy

You can bake fruit in it too but that adds syn values to it as the fruit is cooked (an SW thing!) so I just ate it separately. And for one of them, I added chocolate chips too which made it rather sumptuous!

And I attempted my first Bhangra class too this week!

I am by no means a beginner to Bhangra. I have been dancing pretty much since I started to walk (though if you ask my mum, she’d say I started in her tummy!). But whatever I have learned has come from observation, practice and a natural rhythm inherited from my Pops!

But this class was a ladies beginners class, and at the same time as the kids’ Dhol drum lesson. It was convenient, and one of the other mums wanted to go too. I went, all dressed in my fitness gear, and sports bra (a must for the more generously chested of us. Bhangra involves a LOT of jumping!) and it waws 45 minutes of great fun, breathlessness, and realising I really needed to get fit! We were learning a routine, and remembering the moves in the correct order was hard enough!

True bhangra has never been touted as a ladies dance in the Punjab. At functions, we would probably do a more sedate version. The real ladies dancing is called giddha, which I also do, which has song rhymes that you dance too. Nowadays, however, you have more female bhangra teams and they use more or less the same moves as the men. It is very energetic, and some would say not that ladylike!

I survived it, though, and was told my body moves naturally to the beat (as I said, it’s in the blood!) so I hope to try it again next week. At least I will be managing one physical activity a week! (This class was on Wednesday evening… I am still aching!)

And on to the important announcement…

This week…

I lost another 1lb!

That makes 22.5lb down since I started Slimming World, and 27.5lb in total on this journey…That leaves 0.5lb to go until I hit my 2 stone loss!

I have not been this weight since university I think!

I am so proud of myself!

And I am off to finish my chicken and chips… not diet at all, for my dinner now! See, now I have that control in place, I can still eat naughtily, and make up for it in the week!

Until next week my dear peeps!