What I ate and Quinoa Edamame Salad recipe

So here's what I ate one day last week, including calorie breakdown and a recipe for the quinoa salad!

I started with a cup of the Califia Farms Almond cold brew coffee. It was actually the unsweetened one I had that day, but forgot to take a pic so here's a pic of the sweetened one. I added some agave to the unsweetened one.

I've mentioned before, I don't really eat breakfast that often during the week. So my coffee and a couple of litres of water was all I had in the morning. It was like 32°C that day! SO HOT. It was too hot to even go for a lunchtime walk so I had to go to the gym early and walk on the treadmill instead.

Lunch was (I know, I'm predictable) tofu scramble. I added some veggies (courgette and red peppers) into this one though. Served on some seeded toast with ketchup. (If you want to see my recipe for my go to scramble, check out this video.)

At dinner time I put on some quinoa to cook, because it was really hot, I didn't want to have to turn on the oven when I got home from the gym. I turned it into this yummy salad which I had with a couple of vegan Quorn fillets, that I just cooked in the microwave and then rubbed with some spices. Recipe for the salad is at the end of the post.

For dessert I had this Tesco Toffee vegan cornetto (so good!)

For snacks throughout the day, I had some of the M&S pea snacks and a Nakd strawberry crunch bar that I forgot to take a pic of!

And here's my MFP breakdown for the day; just under on calorie goal (I aim for 1400 during the week) and slightly over on protein (I aim for 70g a day).

And for anyone interested in the salad, it's so easy and if you're doing slimming world, it would be syn free! So here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
100g (dry) Quinoa
100g Frozen Soya Beans
150g Sweetcorn
2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons lime juice or rice vinegar
handful of cherry tomatoes, quartered or one regular tomato, chopped (I used about 85g)
1/2 a red or orange pepper

Method
Cook the quinoa according to package instructions and, if necessary drain off any excess water when cooked.

Defrost the soya beans by running under hot water then refresh with cold water. Mix all the ingredients together and taste for seasoning. I added some black pepper but some sriracha is a nice addition too if you like a bit of spice.

And that's it.

Hope you're having an awesome day
Sal xXx

Ps: hey, have you seen my latest vlog and subscribed to my youtube channel yet? No? Whaddya mean no? It's HERE!

Recipe: Mushroom Soup

Someone at work the other was heating up something for lunch that smelt delightfully mushroomy (sod off spellcheck, it's totally a word!). So I then spent the rest of the day fantasising about mushroom soup. I'm a sad bugger I know.

It's ugly. In fact it was so ugly I couldn't get a decent photo so I decided not to include one.
Here's what I came up with. Ugly... but tasty!

Mushroom Soup
Serves: (depends on how much soup you want but mine made about 4 servings)
Syns: 0.5 for the whole pot

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of dried mushrooms, any will do

1 Small onion, chopped

1/2 a cup (a couple of stalks) of celery, chopped
350g ish of mushrooms, stalks and all, chopped (I used a pack of chestnut mushrooms and half a pack of shiitake mushrooms that I had left to use up)
1 medium potato, chopped (I don't bother peeling, just give it a scrub)
Veggie stock
Marmite
2 bay leaves
A Pinch of dried thyme
1/3 of a pot (about 125-130g) of plain Alpro Go On Yogurt, optional
Salt & pepper to taste

Method: 
Pour boiling water over the dried mushrooms and leave to soak.

Hack up the onions and celery and fry in Frylight for a few mins until start to soften. Clean any mud off the mushrooms and hack them up - stalks'n'all. Throw in pan and cook until the water starts to release and they've cooked down a bit.

Chop up the potato and add to the pan with the soaked mushrooms and their soaking water. Add a couple of stock cubes and enough water to just cover the veggies (I added about 3-4 cups, including the mushroom liquid). Add a teaspoon or so of marmite (even if you're a hater like me, trust me!). Add the herbs and bring to the boil.

Turn to a simmer and simmer for 20 minutes, until potatoes are soft. Leave to cool a bit and then remove the bay leaves and blend.

Add the yogurt if using and blend again. Check seasoning and serve.

If you wanted to make this SP friendly you could replace the potato with cauliflower! :)

Sal xXx

Savoury Rice Recipe

It's less than 3 weeks til Christmas! I'm pretty excited, just put up a few decorations at work as my boss is out for the week. No more bah humbug for him! haha

Saw this yesterday on Facebook and laughed!

Anyway, I thought I'd share a super easy, regular weekday dinner of ours. This recipe has evolved over the years from something I used to make, with some additions my mum made... and this is the most regularly used version, but tweak it to what you have.

This made 4 decent sized portions and worked out at 3 syns for the entire pan. I counted it as 1 syn per portion, rounded up and had I not been feeding 4 of us, I would've had a third of it and kept a third for lunch today. You could also use curry powder instead of paste, if you want to keep this free, or leave it out altogether and add some herbs and spices instead. But here's how I made this version.

The beans etc are approximates, if you want to chuck in a whole can do it. If you want to add more or less peas/sweetcorn or any other veg, do it!

Savoury Rice
Serves: 3-4
Syns: 3 in the whole recipe; omit or swap the curry paste with powder to make this syn-free

Ingredients
Frylight
1 onion, diced as finely as you can be bothered
1 pepper, colour of your choice or a bit of both, diced as above
1/2 a tin of kidney beans
1/2 a cup or so of sweetcorn
1+1/4 cups of basmati rice, dry
Veggie stock
2 tablespoons of korma (or other curry) paste (I used Pataks)
1/2 a cup or so of peas
Salt & Pepper to taste

Method
In a non-stick frying pan (the non-stick bit is important!), fry the onion in frylight for a few minutes, then add the peppers and fry a few more minutes. Place basmati rice into a sieve and rinse under cold water. Add to the pan. Add 3 cups of stock (or in my case 3 cups of water and two vegetable oxo cubes) and the curry paste. Stir well.

Add the beans and sweetcorn and mix through. Turn to a simmer, cover* and leave to simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After 15 minutes, add the peas, stir through and switch off the heat. Replace the lid and leave to sit for around 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork, taste to see if it needs salt and/or pepper and then serve.

I love the leftovers cold the next day but if you are going to do this, make sure you keep refrigerated until you eat it or if you're going to reheat, make sure you do so until it's super mega boiling hot. Like liquid hot magma-hot! Reheating cold rice is when it becomes a danger zone, so either eat really cold or piping hot!!

*If your pan doesn't have a tight fitting lid, use foil.

What's your favourite easy weekenight meal?

Sal xXx

Syn Free Gravy

A syn free roast is easy to do but it's the gravy that adds syns if you use bisto, albeit only a few. But if you want a syn free version, here's one I made to put on my sausage and mash last night:

I just made 1 serving as it is just me that is vegan / on SW in our house. I sliced a shallot and fried it off in frylight until it had a bit of colour. Then I crumble in a veggie oxo cube and then added around 1/2 a cup of hot water (add more as you cook it if needed).

I also added a tsp of marmite and a tsp of tomato puree - both of these help to thicken the gravy a bit. Then just turned down the heat to low to keep it warm until the rest of the food was cooked. Season to taste.

I think the stock cube you use is key here, as it gives most of the flavour, so use one you like the taste of. Also, Oxo cubes are pretty salty (and marmite is too) so I only added pepper as it didn't need salt, but you may need to add some if you use a lower sodium stock.

Sal xXx

Shepherd's Jacket Potatoes

OK you need to make these TODAY!

Shepherd's Potatoes!

I wish I'd taken a pic of the inside! But anyway, I got the idea from the Bosh! Facebook page, which is a must-follow, if you're not already! I didn't follow their recipe because I wanted to keep the filling free and I also didn't have any mushrooms, but what I did was:

Bake a jacket potato at 200°C for an hour.

Cut a hole in the top and scoop out the innards. Mash that with salt, pepper and a splash of soymilk.

For the filling I cooked an onion in frylight and then added a chopped carrot, half a chopped courgette a couple of handfuls of soya mince (make sure you get a free one) and then added some veggie stock and tomato puree, a bay leaf, some dried sage, a bit of garlic powder and a squeeze of marmite and let it simmer away for 20 minutes or so.

Then fill the jacket about 2/3 of the way up with the soya mince mixture and then top with the mashed potato.

I added some Sainsbury's vegan cheese* on top and then popped it under the grill for 5 mins or so until the Gary was bubbly and starting to brown.

These were delicious. I added extra speed veg on the side. I am about to devour the leftovers for lunch but I could easily have eaten both.

Sal xXx

Original inspiration from Bosh! on Facebook - HERE.

*I made 2 potatoes and shared 30g of Gary between them; it was kind of a lot and I could have used less but I shoved it all on there! haha. I counted these as 2 syns each.