Ratatouille-Style Mince

I'm in the thick of exams still and realised yesterday that I've barely seen a vegetable this week, except at church supper on Sunday night. So I decided to use up the remaining third of a courgette and the aubergine which have been languishing in Lakeland Stayfresh Bags (which are seriously brilliant, I think I bought this veg two weeks ago at least and it's still totally fine, it looks no more than two days old). I chopped them up, and threw them into my slow cooker with a bag of meatfree mince and a carton of creamed tomatoes.

Once it's cooked, I'll eat it with a serving of easy cheesy lentils to get plenty of protein in. I'm planning a run later this evening, so lots of veg and protein is the order of the day.

One of the fellows at my college tells us every exam season "don't eat beige meals". It's a simple rule of thumb, but an excellent one. I fear my diet has indeed been rather beige this week, but things will change the day after tomorrow when I'm finally free! I'm envisaging a mountain of spinach, I've been hankering for spinach all week.

Delicious Stew

Using another of my beloved packet mixes and my wonderful slow cooker, I made a delicious stew today. A leek, some frozen broccoli, half of the largest onion I have ever bought, two Quorn fillets and some random pieces of Quorn, all thrown into the cooker with a packet of chicken casserole mix (once again meat-free, although I had to check carefully) and cooked for seven hours. It was amazing to come into my room and have a hot, tasty meal ready for me - especially since for some reason I am feeling very wobbly this week. I haven't fainted at all but I keep becoming light headed. Coincidentally I've got a health check up next week so if I haven't wobbled all the way over by that point I'll bring it up.

Slow-Cooker Curry Experiment

The end result was bright orange and delicious

Because of my mission to empty and defrost the freezer, I haven't been cooking and freezing anything lately. Meals have been whatever I can get together quickly; risotto a couple of nights, sausages and salad in burger buns on others, until I have reached the point where my freezer now contains three almost-finished Quorn packets of various types, some broccoli, some bread and the last two pieces of spinach quiche. The trouble is that with term in full swing once more and my new schedule involving very early mornings but not much earlier nights, I'm not managing to cook dinner before I fall asleep. Last night I found myself eating a Graze box as my evening meal, after a lunch of salad leaves between mayonnaise-smeared bread, and I decided it was time to get sorted.

Snacking

It's Tuesday and I have almost finished the bunch of radishes and two packets of cherry tomatoes which I bought just a few days ago. I've been snacking on them every day, alongside a packet of ginger candies which sadly I finished this morning. Off to the market I go again to stock up on more healthy snacks! I don't have any weighing scales but my waistline confirms that this is working, albeit it very slowly.

A Morning Stroll to the Market

This morning I woke up at 8am to sunlight streaming through the curtains. I had set my alarm for 9, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was ready to get up the first time I woke - unusual for me.

I spent my usual hour faffing around and then I strolled into town with a mental shopping list: some dice (for a language game in my ESL lesson), a bottle of oil for my pile-of-rust bike, a pair of scissors and whatever vegetables looked interesting at the market.

I love my market veg stall. There are several different stalls which are at the market on most days - one serves the local restaurants, so imports a lot of hot-housed stuff from London, one sells glossy packaged vegetables which probably were flown in from abroad, and one prides itself on sourcing locally-grown produce, often things grown in their own allotment. You can probably guess which one I go to (hint: it's the latter).

Tracking Nutrition

As I mentioned before, I've started using MyFitnessPal to track what I'm eating, and how it compares to what I need. There's a certain amount of estimation involved, as I don't weigh out the portions I eat but I'm getting better at guessing, but the food database is very impressive and I've added the recipes each time I eat something I cooked myself.

So far, I've discovered that my diet is very random and I eat far too much one day, far too little the next. I also eat way, way too much sugar - although today I had a banana and a boiled egg for breakfast, and according to the food diary that contained 15g of sugar. I think I shall take their figures with a pinch of salt, so to speak.

Lately I've definitely not been eating enough fruit and vegetables so I'm hoping to improve that. At the moment I'm staying with my dad and his partner, or alternatively my brother who is living on his own in the house my dad is going to sell fairly soon. He's still at school and doesn't get in until 7.30 most nights (sounds familiar to me!) so my project for next week is to cook him a stack of freezer meals to get him through next term on something more substantial than toast and biscuits. It will be good practice for my own freezer stash which will need rebuilding once I've emptied and defrosted the freezer.

Slow-cooker Vegetable Stew

When my mum came to visit we decided to make something in the slow cooker, and she decided it should be stew. So we raided my cupboards, stocked up on a few things and flung a bunch of ingredients into the slow cooker.

A colourful selection of ingredients (not exhaustive)

National Vegetarian Week: Sunday Lunch

Sunday lunch is such a traditional British meal: a roast joint of meat, roast potatoes, vegetables, gravy. But it isn't just meat eaters who can enjoy a traditional Sunday meal. My mum and I are both vegetarian, my stepdad a meat eater, and we eat a Sunday lunch every week.

A winter-time Sunday lunch (sprouts and parsnips)

National Vegetarian Week - Vegetable Curry

Today's recipe isn't a recipe exactly, because it is a great way to use up left-overs! The vegetables in this curry were cooked on Sunday – half were roasted for our Sunday dinner (more about that at the end of the week) and half were boiled and kept in the fridge.
So, left-over vegetable curry. I cheat and use a jar of curry paste, because frankly life is too short to be mixing your own.

It wasn't as orange as this in real life! Not far off though.