Hairy Dieters Week 16

This week the Hairy Dieters cookbook threw a couple of cracking recipes up. Firstly the gammon and parsley sauce…we have gammon quite a bit but usually with egg, beans and chips, so the parsley sauce was a new one to me, It tasted fantastic and worked really well with the smoke in the gammon. I served it with a small jacket instead of new potatoes as It’s just what I had in the cupboard. Next up I used some of the Hairy Dieters burgers I froze a few weeks ago, instead of using mozzarella I topped them with  a bit of halloumi that I’d griddled along with some red onion and I only used 1/2 a bun each.  The burgers had frozen really well and kept their shape when I defrosted and cooked them. The final recipe I made from the book was the cottage...

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Dieters breakfast, lunch and snacking.

I’ve been getting asked what I’ve been doing for breakfast, lunch and snacking, I’ll be honest I’ve not been doing an awful lot. Breakfast usually comprises of cereal, Muesli or a couple of slices of brown toast with lighter spreadable butter, jam or honey. If I’m feeling a bit different I’ll get some crumpets or tea cakes. I have made the hairy dieters full English and that was delicious but not something I could have every day. Lunch is generally a warburtons square wrap with either ham, chicken or a sandwich filling in plus lots of lettuce and salad. When I’ve not fancied a wrap I’ve used pitta breads or had a bowl of soup. Generally lunch comes in between 200 and. 300 calories which when you compare to a lot of...

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Hairy dieters week 15

This week was all meals id made previously although i tweaked some of them. First up I made the Thai coconut chicken with the left over coconut milk from last week, I added some extra vegetables and chilli to bulk and spice it up a little bit, it’s a cracking recipe and is really tasty and even quicker to actually make so perfect after a hard day at work. Next up we’re the stuffed peppers, I made them the same as I did last time by using less breadcrumbs and just sprinkling them on top the peppers, I served them with a nice big filling salad. Finally I made a risotto which used the recipe out of the book as a base, but left out the chicken and put some ribbons of courgette in a little bit of spicy sausage meat that I fried then crumbled in. This week...

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Hairy Dieters Week 14

This week has been a rather busy one but I managed to squeeze 4 recipes from the Hairy Dieters, They were all recipes I’d cooked in previous weeks but I tweaked a couple of them because of what I had in the fridge, I also knocked up a new pasta recipe then blew all the hard work with home made pizzas on Friday and a Thai meal on Saturday but like i’ve said on a few occasions, it’s the treats that help keep things real and keep cravings away. First up was the Cajun chicken, I had the spice mix left over from version one and some yoghurt in the fridge so decided this was the one to make, It’s still one of my favourite recipes from the book, it’s really quick, easy and filling.  I didn’t have any chives so used a bit of dried mint...

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Hairy Dieters Week 13

This week I didn’t cook an awful lot from the Hairy Dieters book as I’ve been really busy and had a fair bit of stuff to use from the freezer. I did however make the Chicken Korma for the first time, which was really tasty although being a chilli head I preferred the jalfrezi. I also re made the beef in ale stew that I cooked in week 10 but used Truefitt’s Holgate Red as the beer as I had a cask of it. As a bit of a treat I cooked the famous Teesside Parmo (recipe here) but in a nod to the Hairy Dieters I used the bechamel sauce from their Lasagne recipe that I cooked all the way back in week 2, I also baked the chicken instead of frying it as well as using smaller chicken and less cheese…still not exactly healthy but nice as a treat. Oh I...

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Hairy Dieters Week 12

11 weeks in and I’m now running out of main meals to cook so I’m going to start re visiting and tweaking some of the ones i’ve already cooked as well as trying to make some more recipes up of my own. Week 11 was 3 new meals from the Hairy Dieters plus some pasta and some felafel, the felafel was Simon Rimmer’s packet mix, it’s pretty tasty and goes great with hot sauce. First up was the pork and prawn noodle broth, I almost didn’t cook this one because I thought the dumplings looked a bit insipid and grey in the book, but I am so glad I did now as it was absolutely delicious. I couldn’t get any really thin rice noodles so ended up using thin rice ribbons instead which soaked up a bit more of the sauce the flavours were...

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