TERIYAKI BEEF MOOLI BITES

We bought Marks and Spencer's teriyaki mooli bites and liked them so much, we thought we would make our own version.
What a lovely surprise - and you can make lots of these for very little cost. These mooli bites are great for a party especially if you are on a budget, and if your guests are trying to lose weight, these little bites won't harm them. They must be less than 30 calories each, as they are just vegetables and a small amount of meat.
Buying the mooli was probably the most difficult part, but here in Bristol we have a fantastic oriental supermarket. The mooli is a very long, white radish with a bit of a 'bite' and very crunchy texture. After peeling lengthways into strips with a vegetable peeler, we created these wonderful party bites using various other vegetables which we had in the fridge. We were slow cooking a beef for a casserole (or pie) and took a few chunks of the meat, shredding it and mixing it with some teriyaki sauce. Everything was easily rolled up into a nice little parcel. The resulting snack was satisfyingly crunchy and cost very little to make! You could possibly get away with some meat from the deli and fish or prawns if you prefer. We also think you could use tinned tuna fish too. Next time we'll try this with shredded crispy duck and bean sprouts along with other salad vegetables. The dip here is teriyaki - which you can buy ready made, but as we had already marinated the beef in the teriyaki, we experimented and found the mooli bites went better with sweet chilli sauce which complemented the teriyaki. If you don't marinate the beef (or other protein) first, then just use the teriyaki sauce dip.

***

Be who you want to be.

Do you know how many calories you can eat each day?

Our very first blog post about our weight loss journey - back in 2011.

You'll find our successful weight loss method and a few tips and tricks here: WEIGHT LOSS STORY.

Tweak what you eat and lose weight.

Copyright © forget dieting forever (2015), all rights reserved.

How to make sausage rolls

If you want to get ahead for Christmas, here's a very simple cheat's SAUSAGE ROLL recipe. It's one of our favourites and we make these ahead and freeze uncooked. Look out for good quality sausages with a lower fat content, as these will not only taste more meaty, but will also be lower in calories. Why not try flavoured sausages too?
You may have to make double the quantity because they are irresistible and disappear quickly! Here's the recipe:

FESTIVE SAUSAGE ROLLS

Ingredients

500g of good sausages with a high meat content 

500g packet of ready made flaky or puff pastry

one beaten egg (or milk) 

****

Roll out the pastry and cut into strips wide enough to take the sausage meat.  

Remove sausage skins, roll sausage meat into a longer sausage about 1.5-2cm diameter.

Place sausage meat onto the pastry.  

Wrap pastry around the sausage meat and seal the edges with a little milk or egg.

(At this stage, you can freeze on a tray provided you have used ingredients not previously frozen).

Brush the top with beaten egg or milk.  

Cut into whatever size you want and cook in a hottish oven, around 180ºC, until brown (approximately 20 - 30 mins).

****

Be who you want to be.

Do you know how many calories you can eat each day?

Our very first blog post about our weight loss journey - back in 2011.

You'll find our successful WEIGHT LOSS STORY here. Tweak what you eat and lose weight.

Copyright © forget dieting forever (2014), all rights reserved.

Please do not copy any of this material without our express permission.

What to do with MINCED LAMB?

This SPICY LAMB ROLL recipe is a take on a sausage roll, but it's much more than that. Turn a snack into a main meal without spending a fortune or investing a lot of time.
For a first attempt, the results were memorable and we couldn't get over just how soft and tender the lamb was.
We served with a quick and easy spicy coleslaw (recipe to follow).
Testing the spice level was most enjoyable: take a couple of spoonfuls of the mixture and lightly fry. Everyone's tastebuds differ, so adjust the spiciness to suit. Although we both agreed on the portion of spice (as per the recipe below), we could have been a little more adventurous and added more. Once the lamb roll had cooled down, the spiciness was less obvious.
The recipe can be adapted to make lots of small sausage rolls, and we're sure your guests will love them.
Making the pastry was easy enough using a small hand blender/chopper. It made light work of the old fashioned 'rubbing in' process; leaving behind sticky fingers with the finished breadcrumb texture visible in just seconds.
Here's the recipe:

BACON SANDWICH and CALORIES

What an excuse for a BACON, LETTUCE & TOMATO (BLT) sandwich. It's the Bank Holiday!! Who needs an excuse anyway, especially when the bacon is cooked in such a way you get to save around 150 calories. 

This sandwich is around 450 calories, yet it could have been more. We even weighed the fat that didn't go into the sandwich and were surprised at the results: For two bacon sandwiches today, we found there was 35g of bacon fat left in the frying pan - which, at 88 calories for 10g of bacon fat, saved around 150 calories per sandwich. Yet the resulting sandwich didn't suffer - it was as tasty as ever. 

This is our favourite way of cooking bacon and you'll get to enjoy all the flavour while eating less calories. 

First snip off the fat from the bacon slices and put this fat to one side. Most standard bacon is full of water, and the aim is to remove it.
Place the trimmed slices of bacon into an oiled saucepan. Now fry the lean bacon until you see the water escape - it looks like milky liquid. As soon as this starts happening - remove the bacon (which is only half cooked).  Wipe the pan to remove the liquid.
Next, put the fat pieces into the pan and fry these on a very LOW heat. This turns the fat pieces into oil. Once the oil starts to appear in the pan, add your half cooked bacon and fry to your liking.
This will give the bacon ALL the flavour you would want without overloading on calories. Don't forget to toast one side of the bread, which gives the sandwich that all important crunch!

***

REMEMBER: We all have a calorie allowance - do you know yours?

We began our weight loss journey in January 2011 - and began our blog in June 2011. Here's a link to the first post. (here's the link).

Read about our UNIQUE METHOD of weight loss and find out how you can lose weight eating the food you love.

Copyright © forget dieting forever, all rights reserved

How to cook rhubarb

I love fresh, new season RHUBARB, as it's slightly sweeter. I'm a bit fed up with the lack lustre and tasteless fruit on offer at the moment so when I saw this,
I thought it would make a tasty COMPOTE to top my Greek yoghurt in the morning. You could also eat this with custard or cream? This should make four good servings at around 50 calories each and it's very simple and quick to make.
Why not try another of our rhubarb recipes - here's a link to our dinner party RHUBARB & CUSTARD  that great British classic with a twist. If you love experimenting in the kitchen and have a little more time, then this recipe is one to try. Refreshingly different.

WALKING FOR WEIGHT LOSS

It's GET WALKING WEEK, so why not incorporate walking into your daily routine and reap the weight loss rewards?
After two years of slow and steady weight loss, we know this form of exercise has helped.
Apart from the health benefits a lot of people forget that walking translates into CALORIES. Just half an hour of walking could mean you burn 100 calories or more per day. This could equate to 10 lbs in weight loss per year.
Why not take a look at what we said about CALORIES.
WALKING is not just a social activity either, because quite often I'm on my own. Shopping is a good example.
I've got a small pedometer and can track just how far I walk and on a shopping trip I can clock up 1.5 miles easily by parking a little further away and wandering down a street or two before going into the shops. I also get to

MAKING CALORIES COUNT

Lunch was a beef salad with buttered new potatoes - a great start to our week.
Having lost all our weight slowly but surely over the last two years, we tend to use our 'method of weight loss' as a guide now. We haven't put the weight back on, but strangely enough, we keep getting asked if we have lost even more weight. The answer to that is

HOW TO MAKE GNOCCHI

Our home made GNOCCHI was simple to make - after our first attempt, we wondered why we had never made it before! Why not have a go at this over the weekend?

GNOCCHI (serves 2-4)

500g floury potatoes

100g fine flour

1 egg yolk

400g tin chopped tomatoes

60g mozzarella (or add your fav cheese or meat etc)

basil

garlic

olive oil

Peel 500g of floury type potatoes (such as King Edward) and boiled until very soft. Drain and let all the moisture come out of them, as that's an important step. We drained and let them steam in the pan then mashed until very very fine. Leave to cool.

****

As the potato cooled, we made a simple TOMATO SAUCE using a 400g tin of tomatoes, some chopped garlic and a handful of basil. Fy the garlic in a little olive oil, add the can of tomatoes and basil then cook until thickened (about 8 minutes should be enough). This should give enough sauce for up to 4 portions.

****

Back to making the gnocchi - take the cold mashed potatoes and add an egg yolk plus 100g of very fine flour (one used for bread making or pasta). Mix together to form a dough. Roll out some sausage shapes, and cut into small pieces. Mark each piece with the back of a fork. (There are plenty of websites out there that give step by step instructions for making gnocchi and are useful if you are unsure).  

Just drop into salted boiling water until they rise to the surface (about 2 minutes) then add to the tomato sauce.

****

Gnocchi is surprisingly low in calories. This recipe made 35 large pieces - estimated at around 1200 calories for all of them. If you divide the mixture into four portions, this is a low calorie meal. 

Lose weight eating the food you love and forget dieting.

REMEMBER: We all have a calorie allowance (see our page on calories) - and we like to post our main meals to show you what we are eating. You won’t find us posting every last morsel though – but we hope this gives you an idea of how far calories can go!

Read about OUR UNIQUE METHOD of weight loss and find out how we have lost weight eating the food we love.

Copyright © forgetdietingforever, all rights reserved.