I thought I may have a diet nightmare today.  I had a bad nights sleep last night so I woke up tired.  Plus this is the first day I really have to face my half empty nest. This is the kind of a day where alarm bells ring and klaxons blast as Zoë over eats.  But not today!  No siree.  I decided to take it relatively easy to get over the tiredness and focus on healthy eating and track EVERYthing so I don’t over eat.

First thing, a very large cup of tea.  Using semi skimmed milk from the 140 ml I set aside each day for hot drinks (2 WW points).

I waited until 9am to have breakfast and decided I really wanted porridge.  50 g Jumbo Oats (5 points), approx 200 ml water, 140ml soya milk (1 point), 30 g clementine cashew nut butter (5 points) and a medium banana.  I don’t think you need another photo of porridge 🙂

I have had this tea in the cupboard for ages and decided to have a cup instead of a coffee so I don’t drink too much caffeine today which is always tempting when one is tired.  Dr Stuart’s Slim Plus tea.  On the side of the packet it says; “a delicious herbal infusion including fennel, linden leaves and galangal root believed to suppress the appetite”.  I may quibble with “delicious” but it tasted fine.

I had a pleasant potter in the garden and picked this crazy dahlia to brighten up a dull corner of the kitchen.

William, the tortoise got a big bunch of dandelion leaves, which are his favourite.

I put together a large salad for lunch.  I wanted to pack in as many nutrients as possible and aimed to have a lot of raw fruits and vegetables.  I gathered 2 types of lettuce, spinach, rocket and beetroot leaves from the garden.  I wanted to grate some raw beetroot in to the salad but my beetroot hasn’t grown. The radish (green stem and green leaves) was huge but the beetroot might as well have not bothered!  Check out the photo to which I added a matchbox for size comparison.  So to any veg growers out there – what have I done wrong?

Here’s a close up in case you can’t see quite how tragic that beetroot is:

I know the radish (on the left in the photo above) looks like a beetroot as I happened to pull up a purple one, but they are all white inside.  I will grow this multi coloured variety next year.  They are tasty and peppery and the different colours look really attractive in a salad.   See, it really was a radish!

Today’s lunch time salad was radish, beetroot, salad leaves, orange pepper, baby plum tomatoes, cucumber and a blood orange.

Topped with a tin of sardine fillets, drained of its olive oil, which left 67 g drained weight (4 points).

I made a mustard and honey dressing to go with it.

Mustard and Honey Salad Dressing (enough for 1 large salad)
1 tsp runny honey (1 point)
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp oil (I used walnut but any would do (1 point))
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
pinch of salt

I put all the ingredients in a small tupperware pot with a very tight fitting lid and shook it like crazy for a couple of minutes so all the ingredients were well mixed.  I was pleased with the dressing and the salad as it was so colourful and tasted really good.  The total WW points for this delicious and nutritious salad bowl was only 6!

Dinner was adapted from Hugh F-W’s ‘Veg Everyday!’ book; a Leek and Cheese Toastie.

Ingredients

• 1 tsp butter
• 2 leeks, washed and sliced finely
• Leaves from 1 sprig of thyme
• 3 tbsp Greek yogurt
• 50 g strong cheddar, grated
• 2 thick slices sourdough bread
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Melt the butter over a low heat and fry the leeks gently until tender.
2. Stir in the thyme, yogurt, 2/3 of the cheese and salt and pepper.
3. Preheat the grill and toast the bread lightly.
4. Spread the leek mixture over the bread, top with the remaining cheddar and heat under the grill until the cheese is golden and bubbling.

In terms of points, it had 10 g butter (2 points), 1 and 1/2 tbsp Greek yogurt (2 points), 40 g Cheddar (5 points) and 70g Sourdough bread (5 points).  That makes a total of 14 WW points.  The recipe book says to use cream instead of yogurt but I didn’t have cream.  I served it with a little Dijon mustard and it was lovely.  A very quick and easy supper.

I then spent a very pleasant time de-stalking and pricking sloes and plonking them in to a vat of gin.

There are squillions of recipes out there on the internet but I wanted to use one I had been recommended.  Thank you Andrew for sharing your family recipe.

Andrew’s Sloe Gin
3 lb sloes
2 lb sugar
3 litres gin

Pull the stalks off the sloes
Cut them in half ( I actually just pricked them with a small knife)
Put in large glass Kilner style jar or demi john.
Add sugar
Add gin
Shake it all up until the sugar dissolves.  You don’t want a syrupy bottom!

This is not a quick task so I settled down in the lounge with a large bowl of sloes and the gin in the glass jar ready and waiting.  My remaining little bird in the nest sat next to me and chirped a little about his day at school.  While I slowly pulled, pricked and plonked the sloes in to the gin.  Not a job to be done in a rush.  Slowly with the sloes.