Foodie Tuesdays: Leek and Potato Soup

Bit late today, Sorry guys!

So at Saturday weigh-in I finally got my Club 10. And I've just logged in to Slimming World Online to check some Syns and it says I've only 1lb to go to my stone and a half award :) 

Today I made some beautiful leek and potato soup. All slimming world friendly and free of course! Fresh leeks from my friendly farmer, still full of dirt, potatoes, carrots, thyme, vegetable stock and seasoning. Easy to do. But tasty. Plus you can still use your heb to dip into your soup. 

Dinosaur Day!

Hi there!

I love the summer and I also love my nephew, so the two combined make for fantastic time. During the summer we have done themed days and activities to reward good behaviour. On Wednesday it was Dinosaur Day! Rawr!

We had lots of activities to choose from. We had:

• A paint your own t-rex money box (theworks.co.uk for £4.99)
• A paint your own pterodactyl suncatcher (theworks.co.uk £1.50)
• Colour and create your own dinosaur (theworks.co.uk £1.99)
• Homemade Dinosaur eggs (Growing A Jeweled Rose)

The paint your own activities and the colour and create activity were pretty straight forward but he loved them, sorry I don't have a picture of the finished product!

Our eggs didn't quite work as well as i hoped, the mixture was too wet but he thoroughly enjoyed getting his way into the eggs. I added yellow food colouring and a bit of strawberry flavouring to take away the smell of vinegar in the solution, this worked quite well. 

We had a lovely dinosaur themed dinner consisting of noodles, dinosaur turkey shapes and broccoli. The nephew doesn't eat broccoli but he managed one piece for me. We also snacked on some juicy watermelon cut into "teeth shapes" (triangles).

And lastly thanks to the wonderful netflix we chilled out and watched Land Before Time. 

Hope you are all having a good summer, even though this weather cannot seem to make it's mind up!

Becky

Hi all,

Foodie Tuesday's are here again! 

This dish of deliciousness was Saturday night "treat tea". Every so often instead of having kebabs or takeaway we do fakeaway. We love the double bacon burgers in my earlier post and this is another brilliant one. Total syns: 6. For a kebab! 6 syns! It would've been less if I had bought the correct pitta bread.

This frozen hot and spicy chicken is from ALDI and is 2 syns for the whole bag. I cooked a couple of breasts, chopped them up and stuffed inside a Weight Watchers pitta, the wholemeal one can be used as a HEB but I couldn't find them in my local ASDA. So i just went with the white ones which were 5 syns a pitta. Bulk it up with some delicious slimming world chips and a side salad. Pop on whatever low syn sauce you want and voila! DIY takeaway. You can customise it with any chicken, any spice, any salad and any sauce. 

Becky

Our home: Renting vs Buying vs Council home

Hi all,

So I want to speak to you all about buying a house. It's difficult. It's expensive. It's hard work. But in the end I hope it will all be worth it. Me and my H2B still live at home with his mom and brothers to enable us to save a big deposit for our beautiful, lovely, perfect house that we are one day going to have. 

Renting in the UK is rather expensive, typical homes within our area can be near enough £500 a month and between a couple, one of which is a student without a job and the other on a just about minimum wage job. That rent does not include all your bills: electric, gas, water, food, TV licence, phone, broadband, TV package, mobile packages and council tax. Renting with the all the other bills would leave us in a tricky position financially every month and would not be able to save money to buy a house. 

The same can be said for council houses. Even if we were on the list for a council house we would only be given a one bedroom flat, which does not look to the future. Neither does it allow us to have all of our stuff in the flat (we have a lot haha). So again, council housing, not really a brill option for us.

And house buying, well. This is just as hard because we got to save for a deposit, I've got to have a decent job and we have to be accepted for a mortgage. Then we also need to have wills, life insurance and lots of other life assurance products. It will take a long time, but I hope when we find 'it' it will be perfect. I just wish it wouldn't take so long.

For more information consult this website: https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/should-you-rent-or-buy

Any of you out there experiencing buying a house or have bought a house, drop me a comment and reassure me that it is all worth it please!

Becky

Foodie Tuesdays: Double Bacon Cheeseburgers

Good morning all!
Although the sad news of Robin Williams' death has spread across the world (I was heartbroken this morning, RIP such a wonderful actor and comedian) I am in a fantastic mood. I can't wait to get to the gym today and begin my first Body Magic Challenge. I'm starting small but I want to stay motivated so I'm doing the 'Walk around Central Park' first; not all at walking pace though, going to do a bit of running, walking and cycling. It's a distance of 9.1km altogether. I'll keep you updated on that :)

So to today's food. On Sunday we had our favourite burgers. Double Bacon Cheeseburgers. Now if you don't think they are healthy think again. On slimming world you can use your healthy extra A for your cheese and your healthy extra B for your bread roll: extra lean mince, onions, parsley and bacon with the fat removed are all free. So these burgers are syn free and so delicious.

I served mine with mushrooms for my superfree and slimming world chips seasoned with cracked black pepper. What makes this burger so amazing is that it is so huge and feels very very naughty.

To make these burgers you can find the exact recipe in the Fakeaways Slimming world book available at group. Or you can whizz together an onion, parsely, seasoning and extra lean mince in a food processor, shape into burgers and chill for at least 30 minutes and then get cooking.

Just thinking about them makes me hungry, time to go get some fruit and head to the gym.

Becky

Horse riding!

Okay so my horse riding tale is quite complicated. I used to ride frequently but when I moved I tried to get myself in at a new riding centre but I could only go every fortnight due to seeing my dad. They told me I couldn't ride there and I was devastated so I hide all my riding away and pretended I no longer cared. Since becoming a student I have the money to ride again and so wanted to take it back up. I got into contact with the same riding school, I was too heavy but this time I was determined! So I joined slimming world and now I'm under the limit but am hacking out with my friend and waiting to join the Equestrian Team at UCLAN in September. I absolutely cannot wait! Here is my and my friend out on the beach with a riding school in Cumbria who I couldn't more highly recommend. Murthwaite Green trekking Centre. Fantastic staff, really friendly and beautiful views. If we get to target next year we will be going on a riding holiday with them :D

To help aid my weight loss I set targets that involved horse riding, my first half a stone was a pair of boots and jodphurs, 1 stone was my own riding hat. My next target will be a 2 hour western ride when I get to 1 and a half.

Although I'm not a large rider I'm not a small rider either so I kinda don't fit into either category any more. I tend to keep to the larger rider groups on Facebook but I feel like I'd be judged to be "too small" to be part of that group. But I'm not too fussed anymore, for me its about the enjoyment of riding not about all the other people and what they think of me. I can't wait for the day I own my own horse. I'm working hard to get there but I've got to buy a house and get married first. Wow there's too much to do!

Becky

Foodie Tuesdays: Chocolate porridge!

Morning all,
I want to tell you a little about my weight loss journey so far; when I started I was in a size 18 and nearly 13 and a half stone and now nearly two months later I'm squeezing into size 14s and have just reached 11st 13lb. And I may have only been doing slimming world for a short amount of time but believe me when I tell I've had ups and downs. So I have a few go to meals for a pick me up which are low in syn but yummy. My two favourites: Big Mac in a bowl and Chocolate porridge.

Soooooo that picture doesn't make it look very appestising but it is! So good for a chocolate hit and reminds me of chocolate ready brek when i was a kid. Just one sachet of options hot chocolate (2Syns) and porridge oats (heb) mixed with water or milk or a little of both. I stick mine in microwave for one and half minutes. And normally I add a handful of raspberries but I ran out! So having melon as my superfree.

Let me know what your favourite pick me up meals are in the comments below,
Becky.