Thursday, 26-10-23

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to my maintaining on Slimming World blog where I talk about the meals I enjoy while maintaining my target weight and keeping a healthy balanced diet.

Today sees the start of work to change my garden shed into a garden room with a sheddy bit on the side. It's a long planned for, hoped for and saved for project so pretty exciting but I am sure the day will bring some challenges, not the least of which is having biscuits in the house for the lads.
Please send 'I-don't-like-biscuit' vibes in my direction, if you have any to spare . . . ta!

Yesterday's meal photos:

Well, the hash brown waffles were an outstanding success. I had a couple (half) and the other two are now in the freezer.

I think it is worth posting the recipe as a separate post because I know I will be making these again and again. I can think of plenty of variations and they would be lovely with baked beans.

The main thing I was concerned about - well, two things, really were:

- will the potato be cooked? There's nothing worse than not-quite-cooked potato

- will it stick on the waffle plates.

And the answers are - yes, it was, totally, with a bit of crunch on the outside and no, it didn't stick.

I was out at my lunch time (2:00), at a Everyman cinema watching a film of the live performance of Prince of Egypt with Beth and Alex. I forgot to take a couple of apples with me so I got a 'small' container of salty popcorn and, shared three ways, and instead of lunch, that shouldn't have done any harm at all.

Ooops. I was going to cut this wrap pasty in half and display it nicely but it stuck to the baking tray so the underneath isn't terribly pretty and I didn't bother.
The inside is corned beef, softened chopped onion, finely grated cheese and brown sauce, all sort of mashed together - and it was really delicious. I might try it as a sort of quesadilla type product - lighter on the corned beef and therefore more economical.

I was hungry so I had baked beans and it all went together really well as well as being filling and comforting.

Dessert was a couple of pears.

Today's meal plans:

B: warm spiced fruit and yogurt

Like I had on Saturday but without the toasted muffin and butter

As I have often said, one of my non-compliant with SW things is that I don't syn cooked fruit which will be from the freezer rather than fresh.

SW: should be syn free

L: mushroom and butterbean soup, croutons; fruit

I made this soup a short time ago and popped it in the freezer. Time to see how well it has frozen!

SW: the soup is syn free, the croutons will be my healthy extra B

D: steak, mushrooms, roasted vegetables; fruit/yogurt

I bit of a splash out, I know, but it's likely to be a bit of a stressful day (not in a bad way though) and a nice steak will provide a 'reward' feeling for having coped. The roasted veg will probably be sweet potato, parsnip, onion and, maybe, carrot.

SW: should be syn free

Exercise: unsure but probably plenty of steps

Summary:

no healthy extra As
one healthy extra B
no syns - that's a bit unrealistic really; I'm sure a few will creep in.

For information:

The Slimming World structure:

While following the plan, you can have . . .

Any amount of speed and free food - BUT try to have a third of your plate as speed food as a sub for free food, NOT as well as . . . Eat to satisfaction, not to stuffed-ness!

Two healthy extra As (calcium) and one healthy extra B (fibre) - details in the SW pack and on the SW web site/app.

Between five and fifteen syns-worth of synned food - again, details in the pack, site and app. They are a limit to stay within, not a target to hit.

As a target member, I can also have . . .

Another two healthy extras each day
Another fifteen syns up to three times each week

BUT - only if I need/want to. It's a limit, not a target

. . . with the ultimate aim of not needing to count healthy extras, syns, etc at all but just knowing and eating well instinctively.