Tuesday's Twitterings

I seem to have lost two weeks somewhere... anyone know where I can find them? Anyhoo...

Did I get my three stone award last week? Yes! Yes I did. But I didn't receive my certificate until this week as it was a sub leader and she'd forgotten to bring them.

Mr G had a maintain this morning at another group as our son had a hospital appointment yesterday, and I lost another 1.5 lb yesterday. So our current weight loss tally is 3 stone 4.5 lb (him) and 3 stone 4 lb (me).

We are both gunning for our 3 and a half stone certificates. Ideally I'd like this in the next two weeks. But. We know what happens when I make plans like that.

So, we've done our meal plan for the week, and I have shaken things up a bit and included some new recipes.

Monday - Prawn, Mango, Avocado Summer Salad with Lime Dressing (link to recipe here)

I can't put into words how lovely this was. Mr G - he who thinks fruit with savoury food is 'wrong' absolutely wolfed it down and said he would want it again. It was a really nice take on a salad, the orzo made it very filling, even though it didn't look filling. The combination of flavours was different with every mouthful. The salad worked out at 5 syns each, taking into account the avocado and one tablespoon of olive oil that I used in the dressing. Worth every bite.

Tuesday - Cock and Bull with Basmati Rice

Wednesday - Hunters Chicken with vegetables

Thursday - Balsamic Braised Beef with vegetables and roast potatoes

Friday - Crispy Chilli Beef with noodles

Saturday - Beef Burger Salad

Sunday - Cottage Pie Tortilla boats with vegetables

So, five completely new recipes to try and two old favourites. An 'easy' tea for Saturday (the day that I hate cooking!).

I also had one hell of a shock to find myself nominated for 'Woman of the Year'. My friend Denise told me that she wished she'd had a camera on me, because the look on my face, apparently! I didn't win, but I'm glad, because I would have felt very uncomfortable doing so. This year, anyway.

The two other women who were nominated had worked much harder than I have, one was at goal, one has had one heck of a journey. Me? I just decided I wanted to lose weight, started cooking and eating better food, and the weight is dropping off me. That's not to say it's been easy, but still. It was enough of a privilege that someone thought I was enough of an inspiration to the group to be nominated. That's more than enough for me :-)

Last week, I made a lovely Nando's fakeaway (which didn't cost around £15 a head like the one in Manchester!)

I used the Nando's Bag and Bake that you can buy in Iceland for £1. The Pinch of Nom Syn Free Nando's Savoury Rice. I made homemade 'fries' in the oven using the seasoning for the wedges. And to round it off, salad and my trusty Tenderstem broccoli. Lush.

Another meal from last week, actual battered cod. And I mean proper batter, too, not that omelette type, eggy looking weird coating. This is a recipe from Slimming Eats (find it here) and although there's not a lot of batter on mine this time (the pieces of cod were quite big and thick and I probably should have doubled up), it hits the spot when you're craving battered fish. Tastier and much lower syn than frozen supermarket bought pieces. I used Tesco Finest Cod loin for this, it's the nicest supermarket bought fish that I've found so far.

We've both noticed that more than any other carb accompaniment, potato really impacts on our weight loss, or rather, a lot of potato does. So we're curbing our potato intake this week. See if that makes a difference.

And to finish off today's post. Three words. Cotton Candy Grapes :-) I've always been too tightfisted to buy them in the past, but this week, Lidl have them. They are pretty awesome!

Done it

Like a boss ;-)