Recipe of the week: Lunch

So I did one of the recipes way sooner than I thought I would. I got home and realised I hadn't left out meat for dinner and that my dear boyfriend had gone off and gotten subway so he wasn't eating!

I wasn't feeling like a dinner to be honest so I decided to give the Cauliflower crust toasties a try. Of course as is typical of me I forgot to charge my camera and could not find the charger and had made them by the time I realised I hadn't so long story short no pics.

It won't always be like this I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it today but I really, really, really did make them! I swear!

Anyway I'm going to go ahead and give my little review.

First, the instructions were super clear and easy to follow. To put it shortly there was no bullshit about the recipe. However the process itself was a bit time consuming. My blender wasn't great and it took a while to make the cauliflower rice. I then had the surreal expierience of pouring food from a bowl onto a tea towel. I won't lie, I felt wierd. And I looked wierd and I really didn't want to explain to my housemates when they asked what the hell I was doing!

I pushed passed my thoughts that were screaming "This is not normal!You don't put food in your tea towel and then EAT it!" and I squished as much water as possible out of my cauliflower.

Now maybe you're supposed to leave it cool down first or something because I damn near got third degree burns trying to squish the water out and without gloves, opted for wrapping another tea towel around my hand and then I squished away!

I was supposed to get around a cup of water from the rice but I only got around 3/4s of a cup, probably a bit less and the mext time I'd try squish a bit harder. My "bread" wasn't soggy like I feared but I wouldn't have minded it a tiny bit crispier.

So I squished and squished then I mixed in the other things and started to form my "slices of bread" on the tray and I popped them into the oven quite convinced these were not going to work!

Anyway fifteen minutes late I took out some thngs that to my surprise actually looked quite like they were supposed to!

I used a spatula to peel them up in case they were soggy but they held up and then I buttered the less crispy side and threw in some cheese. I also buttered the outside and then I threw them onto the pan.

5 mins later they looked just like the picture from the blog!



I cut them in half and threw them on a plate and asked my boyfriend to trust me and just eat (he's not very adventurous!). One was a little more blac and it turned out that was actually nicer but it's a learning curve!

They were actually quite delish! Now I defintely wouldn't claim that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference! I mean you'd definitely know it wasn't bread and I can forsee some people having a problem with the texture...it's unusual but I definitely would try it again! Maybe a bit more salt the next time but aside from that they even got the Boyfriend Seal Of Approval.

So I'm sufficiently happy! Honestly it's a weekend thing cause it does take a bit of time but I will definitely be trying cauliflower crust pizza! So thumbs up!

Recipes of Interest.

I'm sure I, as someone who loves food and yet wants to lose weight, am not alone in looking up millions of recipes I hope I can squish into my daily diet in order to make it a bit less dull.

I am not necessarily the worlds greatest baker/cook but I love doing it and I love trying new things! 

I have pinterest boards dedicated to food and I am a regular trawler of foodgawker(great website for foodies out there!) and I find that a lot of the time "Healthy" recipes are either super super complicated or have ingredients that are difficult to find in Ireland with out going to a health store and spending €10 for a small packet of something or other.

Now I also am not a fan of all these things that people use that are apparently healthy and then I find the recipe is full of "such and such an extract" or xanthos gum or other things that I cannot pronounce and have no interest in. I just don't trust these things. They may or may not be beneficial for your health but honestly I have no idea, and honestly I am not going to go to the time or effort of locating these (often expensive) things when I am not interested in gluten free or vegan or any of those things. I simply want good food thats low calorie and either low sugar or sugar free. The only thing I give in and use is stevia and stevia products. Honestly even these I am wary about. I would like to do a bit more research into finding a good one thats as natural as possible because frankly the thought of all those chemicals scare me!

So if I look at a recipe and its fairly free of all those things that sound like they would be in a science lab and it has sugar I just sub in a stevia product and I'm ready to go, with it being low enough calories obviously!

So this week I'm planning on trying a few new recipes. I'm going to go ahead and pick a breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner from the web this week and in my amateur kitchen try them out and see how well or horrendously they turn out!

So first and foremost, Breakfast:

 I love breakfast time, I love something nice and wholesome and  interesting for my brekkie and my meals usually center around fruit and maybe some carbs and almost always yogurt. So I found a lovely parfait that just sounds yummy so I'm going to paste the original blog and recipe and then I'm going to make my own substitutions.

Found on Dalia's Kitchen http://www.daliaskitchen.com/2014/05/how-it-all-started-and-maple-apricot.html

It looks beautiful doesn't it?

I want it now. Like right now.

I'm seriously hungry looking at it! 

Now the recipe calls for whole milk and for peaces! I am going to make the substitution of unsweetened Almond milk purely because I like it and also mango instead of peaches purely because I love mangos and they were 39 c for one in Dunnes!

Now I'm also going to omit the toasted almonds also but that is just personal preferrence. I think I might also add some linseed because it's good for you!

I think I'll make this one tomorrow morning and I'll snap a few pics and post how it turned out tomorrow!

Lunch:

I love my carbs and there is nothing better than a good old grilled cheese toastie. However unfortunately for me I only have to so much as look at a sliced pan and I pile on six million pounds. Obviously not literally but the moral of the story is I avoid carbs as much as possible (or at least I try) and I have been very interested in cauliflower crust pizzas and other cauliflower subbing for bad nasty bread!

However up until now I've been put off each recipe I've looked at for one reason or another, until the day before yesterday when I found a recipe for toasted cheesy's over on The Iron You. The pictures looked nothing short of incredible.



Doesn't that look melt in your mouth delicious?

Naturally being a cheese toasty fan I immediately stuck this on the list of recipes I want to try.
I'm not going to make any subs to this, I am going to follow it step by beautiful step and aside from the fact I might sneak in a bacon medallion just 'cos!

Here's the link to the original (ingenious) recipe over at The Iron You, Grilled Cheese Toasty

Dinner

Myself and Paul are exceptionally fond of take out, who isn't? Chinese would be a favorite, closely following Pizza, (stay tuned for cauliflower pizza) and I love to try make take out dishes at home and a bit healthier. So when I stuck this original recipe into my fitness pal (the original is from Iowa Girl Eats) it was still a bit too heavy on calories for me! I made my own substitutions for example I won't be using vegetable oil but low cal cooking spray, I also have a little less chicken because I eat smaller portions than the original recipe. Paul will have a regular sized portion of chicken but admittedly it is skimming a few extra cals off this recipe.

Oops...I forgot to say what the recipe was...I'll be cooking Sesame Chicken!

And here's what it will (hopefully) look like!



So as I said I'm making some subs and omissions to make it lower calorie for example I will not be using as much honey. Unfortunately even with the cutting of the honey this is still very high in sugar but for a treat once a week I won't die!

So now with breakfast, lunch and dinner covered I'll move onto the snack. now I have two snacks a day, one at 11 which is generally savory and one smaller one, under about 150 cals in the evening. That one tends to be sweet. Now on work days they're all fairly standard, average things (although I might be having my cheese toasty tomorrow, we'll see!) so on weekends I like to go big or go home as they say here!

So I found these tasty treats on Girl Who Bakes and I am dying to try them!



I will definitely be trying these on Saturday morning! I really look forward to trying them and I'm also going to attempt to make a chocolate sauce from Soya cream to add to these!

I want it to be Saturday now god damn it!

Anyway after that exceptionally long entry I am going to take my leave! I will be posting as I try each recipe and will let everyone know what subs I made, how they were in comparison to their full caloried counterparts etc.

Excited to try all these now!