Holy Macaroni!

Bonjourno!

After having a bad week last week and having a gain, I decided that this week all my main meals would be syn free so I could use my syns for snacks. I don't know what it is but lately I've just been in the mood to eat everything in sight - which doesn't help when there is Easter Eggs all around the shops! I haven't given in to temptation yet, but when Easter does roll around, I'll be sure to save all my syns and enjoy a delicious Easter Egg.

As most of you know, I'm a big fan of cooking syn free meals, it's easy to plan meals ahead of time and use ingredients that are completely syn free. Check out my previous recipes, all of the meals that I have posted are free. 
Anyway, I don't know about you, but I always feel like mac and cheese is the ultimate comfort food. There's just something about it that just makes you feel all warm and comfy inside, probably the high fat content! I've been looking and looking for something that tastes just as good with a low syn value, and I've found it. So I've decided to share it with all of you.

You will need:

Dried macaroni

2 skinless boneless chicken breasts chopped

Garlic Powder

Mushrooms 

400ml vegetable stock

4 tbsp tomato puree

200g quark

2 eggs beaten

100g Mozzarella

Cook the macaroni as per packet instructions.

Brown the chicken in a pan with frylight, then add the mushrooms and garlic. Fry until it's done.

Mix the cooked macaroni into the chicken mixture.

Mix together the stock, tomato puree, quark, and eggs, pour into the pasta, add half the cheese and mix together.

Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top and bake for 20-30 minutes, till golden and cooked through.

The whole thing is 12 syns if you don't use the cheese as a healthy A. The whole thing can be split into as many portions as you like, I had half! 

Hope you all enjoy.

Ciao!

x

A Saucy Affair

Bonjourno!

I'm so sorry that I haven't been posting that often, but I'm so happy that my blog has reached over 1000 views! It really makes me happy to know that people are keeping up with my progress, and hopefully trying out some of the recipes that I post on here.
Now I'll admit that I haven't had the greatest of weeks - I managed to get food poisoing last week, which meant that although I had a brilliant weight loss (6lbs!) that week, I ate literally ANYTHING I could get my hands on the week after and suffered a gain. It was only small, but since it's the first gain I've had on Slimming World so far, and I know exactly why it's happened, it's still a little disheartening. I know that I can be really good this week and have it off by next week, I guess I was hoping that since I was ill that eating bad food wouldn't count!

Anyway, since I've had literally no time to cook this week, the other half thought it would be nice to treat me with some syn free burgers to celebrate the end of a long-ass week. I'd already used my syns for the week by this point, and didn't want to waste syns on sauces like ketchup and mayonnaise. I know that really light mayo (the purple one from Asda) has about 1 syn per tablespoon, but still I wanted to make something that I didn't have to measure. So, I took some fat free natural yoghurt and mixed it with some garlic granules, and honestly what came out was amazing! It tastes like the garlic mayo you get from takeaways, and it's completely syn free. Made my burger taste AMAZING! 
As for ketchup, I find that simply adding a little bit of sweetener to some tomato passata tastes exactly like a good ketchup! 

Finally, a bit of natural yoghurt, mint, lemon juice and cucumber makes the most delicious tzatziki, and it's also completely syn free. Perfect for dipping chopped up veg in, as well as with a toasted pitta bread. My favourite is dipping some ryvita in it!

Hope you all enjoy some syn free sauce this week. :)

Ciao!

x

Low Syn Cookies and Questionable Sausages

Bonjourno!

I'm sorry that I haven't been updating this blog as much as I'd like to, unfortunately life takes over sometimes! However, I'm very pleased to share with you all that in just 8 weigh ins, I've managed to lose an amazing 1 stone and 12lb! My original goal was to lose 2 stone before Easter, which with 4 weeks left and only 2lb to lose seems like a very attainable target.
So this week hasn't been the greatest one for me, as you all know Slimming World very recently brought out some frozen ready meals that you can buy in Iceland - a very amazing idea. However, after trying the sausages, I don't think I'll be having them again. There must be something in them that just disagrees with me, I managed to get food poisoning from them :(
Don't let this put you off trying them! A lot of people have tried them and been absolutely fine, I don't know whether I just didn't cook them enough or there was something in them that I just didn't like, but either way, I won't be having them again just in case! I think I'll stick to Linda McCartney red onion and sage sausages.

On a slightly lighter note, it was taster week once more in the Lancaster class, so I scoured long and hard over recipes that I wanted to take with me, something that I thought everyone would enjoy. I finally decided on Salted Caramel and Vanilla Cookies.

I know what you're thinking... Surely these cookies are high syn, high sugar, high badness??
I kid you not, they are only 1.5 syns each - compared to the Nutella Cookie that Starbucks sell, a staggering 19 syns per portion!

Here is the recipe for these tasty treats.

Makes 6(ish) cookies

1.5 Syns and 1 HEXB

or 2 syns each.

Ingredients:

50g Porridge Oats

4 tbsp Sweetener

1 Sachet Salted Caramel Chocolate Options

Vanilla Muller Light (with Sprinkled Chocolate if you like!)

Butter Flavour Fry Light

1 Egg

1. Preheat the oven at 220° / Gas Mark 7 and prepare a large baking tray lined with foil or non-stick baking paper – Spray with Fry Light.

2. Add the porridge oats, sweetener and 1 tsp of yoghurt to a large mixing bowl and crack the egg into the centre of the bowl and immediately whisk.

3. Add a little more of the yogurt as you’re whisking until the mixture is firm and thick. Literally add a drop at a time, it's easier to add more yoghurt to a thick mix than more oats to a runny one!

4. Empty the Chocolate Options sachet into a mug and add 1 tbsp of water, stirring well into a thick and creamy chocolate sauce.

5. Add the chocolate into the oats.

6. Stir well until the chocolate has blended into the the oats

7. Using a spoon, arrange 6 cookies onto the tray.

8. Transfer the tray to the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown, turning them over if you need to.

Definitely worth the syns, I'm not much of a sweet tooth but these definitely did the trick! You can change the flavour of the chocolate options to make any flavour cookie you like. I'll be trying the white chocolate one next! I hope you all enjoy :)

Ciao!

x