Category / Food

by jo

Review – Tesco Finest* Lighter Pizzas

If you’ve followed this site for a while then you’ll probably know I love pizza. Pizza is my downfall, my weakness. I did Weight Watchers (still am!) and didn’t eat as much of the glorious dough-y stuff for a while, having occasional ones here and there while trawling the supermarkets looking for the elusive WW own brand pizza. I’ve still never found them.

Finest Pizza Low Calorie

 

Help is at hand though – Tesco have their own brand lighter pizzas in the Finest range – and we were sent two – the Finest Woodfired Chargrilled Pepper and Tomato & Chipotle Chilli Salsa (430 calories) and Woodfired Chicken, Mint & Coriander (445 calories) varieties. There are also Woodfired Margherita & Basil Pesto and Woodfired Salsiccia Marinara Pizza varieties available. (I don’t have any calorie information for those)

Finest Pizza Low Calorie

Weight Watchers wise they’d be approximately 11 points at the most which for me is great – given a regular Domino’s slice can be 7 points.

Finest Pizza Low Calorie

In fact, both pizzas are delicious and we enjoyed them tonight – the vegetarian one being the one I had (its spicy, I did have to take some of the chillies off, but it had a good taste to it, minimal cheese but you didn’t miss it and tomato so well sundried H didn’t complain about them which is a plus!), and the chicken one being the one Shaun and H shared and found the chicken to be just right, the sauce complemented the pizza well and the mint and coriander dressing was pretty good too. The base is really thin and crispy and didn’t get soggy (which I hate when that happens) and held the toppings well.

Finest Pizza Low Calorie - chicken

The toppings weren’t generous but they were adequate – the pizzas were filling without being too much. Had I been more organised we’d have had it with a salad, but we got in tonight quite late so had very little time to prepare anything.

Finest Pizza Low Calorie - pepper

These pizzas are available in store now – pick them up before I buy them all… I’m definitely trying the cheese and tomato one!  They cost £4 each or are on offer at £7 for two.

We were sent the pizzas for the purpose of review. My opinion is honest and full of huge relief at a decent low-calorie pizza at LAST.

by jo

Review – Shloer

While I was pregnant I didn’t miss wine – it tasted pretty horrid, but fortunately there was a substitute which tasted good in my all-out-of-sorts tastebuds – Shloer. Having something a bit different to drink was nice. In fact, I kept drinking it after I’d given birth – and there’s a fine selection of flavours.

The opportunity came up to review the new Raspberry and Rhubarb Punch, and with today being the sunniest day of 2013 and our bottle nicely chilled in the fridge, it was time to open it. (Actually, we were meant to go on a picnic but H still has a temperature).

Shloer Raspberry and Rhubarb Punch

But! What would go with it? We decided on some cheese biscuits we’d made for the picnic, as well as cheese on cream crackers – a nice simple summery kind of lunch – and it worked wonderfully! Even better, H could join us – which was nice. She said it was “yummy” (I think I need to work on her review technique here).

Shloer Raspberry and Rhubarb punch is a limited edition flavour, so keep an eye out for it. Alas, Ocado don’t have that variety in stock but they have plenty of choice of the other kinds. Each bottle retails around £2.29 for a 75cl bottle.

About Shloer –

The sparkling alcohol alternative
Shloer uses only the finest ingredients to create a delicious range of non-alcoholic sparkling juice drinks. All varieties make a tasty grape-based alternative to alcohol, suitable for all the family – including those who want to enjoy the Easter celebrations without drinking alcohol. Shloer contains no preservatives, artificial colours, sweeteners or flavourings and is available from all major supermarkets.

Summer Sunday’s On-pack Competition
Starting May 1st through the summer, Shloer is giving customers a 1 in 10 chance to win one of 200,000 prizes, ranging from BBQs and food hampers to cupcakes and Shloer with their Summer Sunday’s on-pack promotion.  To enter, pick up a promotional Summer Sunday’s bottle ofShloer from your local supermarket and find the unique code under the neck label.  Enter your unique code via www.shloer.com and find out if you could be one of many lucky winners this summer.

A flavour for everyone
Shloer is available in seven refreshing flavours including White Grape; Red Grape; Rosé; Apple & White Grape; White Grape Raspberry & Cranberry; White Grape & Elderflower; and now NEW Raspberry & Rhubarb Punch limited edition.  For more information, go to www.shloer.com

Shloer Raspberry and Rhubarb Punch

We were sent a bottle of Shloer for the purpose of review, all opinions are our own.

by jo

A Panicky Tea

If I don’t log this somewhere I’ll never find it next time I get home from work and realise there’s no bread! We have a breadmaker which is used 2-3 times a week so we never run out, apart from tonight.  Fortunately I had a recipe for Soda Bread I’d tried thanks to Jax at Liveotherwise, but I couldn’t find the recipe! Time was running out, and I knew it would take 30 minutes to cook, as well as 21 minutes to do the butternut squash, leek, sweet potato soup I had planned. Diasaster!

I found the recipe – I got the oven on and warming up (it’s meant to be 200 degrees), and started off the vegetables in the soup maker. Everything was going well – but I ran out of plain flour! Fortunately I had wholemeal which seemed to work – so I combined the two – but forgot to put the oven on full – and most importantly of all forgot to put a cross on the top of the emergency bread. I now know why this is – it won’t cook inside otherwise – I cut the bread into four and it needed another five minutes to properly cook.

Disaster struck again – the first blend cycle in the soup maker made the top come loose – the 21 minute cycle stopped – argh! My quick fix was to blend the vegetables anyway so they were smooth, then re-start the soup but only have it go for as long as was needed to complete the process – around eight minutes. Crisis averted,  I think….

Fortunately the bread was better for being baked that bit longer, and the soup tasted great too – so much so I scoffed the lot and didn’t take a photo. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

Soup :

3 sweet potatoes
half a butternut squash

(if you’re really lucky, you’ll have a super husband who will chop them all up into chunks the night before so you just throw it into the soup maker)

I chopped and added a leek, then three teaspoons of low-salt bouillon, water up to the maximum mark, and that’s it.

Bread :

200g plain flour
180g wholemeal flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
1 carton of buttermilk

put all dry ingredients into a bowl, and make a well in the middle. Add the buttermilk and mix with a spoon until it becomes a big dough-y ball – now put the large cross on the top (VERY IMPORTANT). Put into the oven and bake for 30 minutes. It’ll be ready when it’s hollow sounding when you knock the bottom. It will also be super-tasty when eaten with freshly made soup.

Extra bonus, the washing up isn’t too difficult afterwards. My jeans are a bit mucky though, dough stains…

full credit to Cherished By Me for the recipe in the first place, thank you. It’s so quick and easy, especially when I’m organised. I’ve written it up now, so I reckon it’s foolproof!

by jo

Souptastically Souper Carrot and Leek Soup

It’s been a while since I posted up a soup recipe – we’ve been lazy lately, just doing left over vegetables in our recipes and not thinking ahead – that was until last night when I prepared extra vegetables to be tonight’s soup. It worked pretty well too.

It’s a simple one, and actually I think could have been a bit sweeter (maybe add some parsnip?) so here goes…

I peeled and chopped up about six or seven large carrots

Wash and chop four leeks

Get a decent chunk of ginger and peel and chop it up.

Carrot, Leek and Ginger Soup with Goats Cheese

Do as you would with the soup maker, setting it to smooth, and once your time is up you’re left with a soup which has a nice thickness and taste. Now, the only reason I think  it could do to be sweeter was the addition of a gorgeous goats cheese we picked up from our local farmer’s market last weekend – I sliced it and the inside of the cheese was gorgeous and gooey – perfect for putting in the middle of the soup. This probably bumps it a few points, but considering the soup is 0 points I think we’ll let that one go – and of course add it at the end once the soup is in bowls!

If you leave out the cheese then it’s pretty good – and I’d never think of mixing leek, carrot and ginger. Total time taken was around 30 minutes, including the time in the soup maker.

by jo

Bramley Apple and Parsnip Soup

Well, there are many things I miss, but we got in just in time for Bramley Apple Week which ended yesterday. I know, there’s so many weeks, days, months for everything, someone somewhere has a ridiculously full calendar which is ready to explode. Lucky for us it was our local Farmer’s Market in Wallington, and the people behind it, Eco Local had a recipe to hand.

The recipe in question is a Hairy Bikers one. I’ve never watched the programme, but am seeing a lot of people talking about them at the moment. As we’re following Weight Watchers parts of the recipe had to be omitted (and partly too because we started cooking at 6pm and that bit takes about fifteen minutes in their version and we don’t have the time), and of course it was in the trusty soup maker anyway.

The original recipe serves six, there’s only three of us and one is a mere quarter of me so we halved the total amount and left out some bits (like gently frying at the start)

2 medium red onions (these are best in the soup maker for flavour)
300g parsnips
2 garlic cloves (we did the full amount there)
300g Bramley Apples
Stock
Milk

The onions need chopping, the parsnips cubing, as do the bramley apples. Everything was put into the soup maker with the water added, and bouillon on top (to make the stock while it’s in there). Shaun added the milk then as well (though the recipe says to do that at the very end).

The soup maker was set to blend, and when it was finished it was really sweet – we were advised to cut back on the apples a bit, and I think slightly more parsnip and less apples would work better. Shaun felt like it was a bit like a thick apple juice whereas I liked it and it was our first time trying a soup with fruit in it.

I spotted this recipe for spiced carrot, cardamom and orange soup earlier this year so may well try it out next weekend…

Bramley Apple and Parsnip Soup

by jo

Easy Vegetable Stew – A Sickly Child Edition

H isn’t well at the moment – a high temperature that Calpol and Nurofen are barely containing – so I’ve been making sure she has plenty of good food to eat which is nice and tasty too. Tonight I asked her what she fancied for tea, she opted for a vegetable stew.

I get my weekly food delivery on a Tuesday, so by Wednesday anything that’s left from last week needs to be used – and this is a good recipe for doing just that; plus my trusty Morphy Richards Soup Maker means I can leave it to cook with minimal preparation beforehand.

an easy vegetable stew - ingredients

So, I used… (Weight Watchers PPV in brackets)

3 sweet potatoes – diced (356g – 9 points)
one red onion (for flavour) (0 points)
frozen peas (1 point’s worth – I weighed until it went to 2, then took back each pea until it was at 1)
frozen sweetcorn (1 point’s worth – same as before)
one red pepper (0 points)
one teaspoon of Marmite Gold (I’d have used Aussiemite but we’ve almost run out – I think this would work too with the onion) (0.5 point)
one vegetable stock cube (we’ve run out of bouillon) (0 points)

Serves two adults – generous portions – plus one three-year old.

stew

I chopped everything up into cubes and added to the soup maker. After that, water was added to the minimum line (I wanted to get plenty of onion in the juice as I knew H would pick those bits out) and I set it to the chunky setting, which takes a bit longer – 28 minutes.

While the soup is cooking I measured a good-sized portion of whole grain rice (250g – 7 points) and had that cooking (as it takes about 25 minutes). I hadn’t eaten a lot today being at home and H losing her appetite, so I needed filling up!

Once the rice was cooked I drained it and put it at the bottom of our bowls. When the stew was ready I added that on top, making sure the liquid came out first, then evenly putting the vegetables on top of each serving.

an easy vegetable stew

Weight Watchers points for an adult serving come in at 14 points which sounds a lot, and I have gone over my daily allowance (but I had activity points stored up). Yesterday I had 8 points left, so while I can’t get them back, I figure going into my activity allowance isn’t the end of the world. A lower point version would be to switch sweet potato for butternut squash which I think would work really well too.

The taste verdict? It worked pretty well – the onion helped give it a bit of a kick without being too overpowering (and H picked them all out)! It feels quite wintery, some ginger would have worked as well although might be better in a smooth soup. Give it a try – let me know how you get on!

by jo

Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash curry

Shaun made this last night, and oh boy it tasted good – it was spicy but not too much. It was adapted from one of our WeightWatchers cookbooks.

You need :

an onion (0 points)
half a butternut squash (0 points)
sweet potato (allow 70-80g per person) (2 points)
peas (35g) (2 points)
three carrots (0 points)
green beans (as many as you fancy) (0 points)

Quorn pieces – 40g (1 point)

passata (as much as you need)
Curry powder (as much as you need)
200ml bouillon stock (0 points)
teaspoon of cumin
garlic granules

oil for frying (ideally in spray)

basmati rice (allow 40g per person (4 points)

simple Vegetable Curry

 

Chop the onion and put in a pan with the stock (so it’s softened rather than fried) Lightly spray your large pan/frying pan add the quorn. Add the curry powder, cumin and garlic and cook gently until heated through.
Boil the butternut squash and sweet potato for five minutes until it’s soft but not too crumbly. Add to curry mixture and make sure it’s covered in curry powder
Cook the rest of your veg as you would, and add to the mixture.

Cook rice – one way with basmati is to put boiling water in the pan with rice (washed and drained), bring to the boil then turn off the flame. Put a lid on the pan and leave for ten minutes – your rice should then be perfect.

Add passata and the rest of the stock to the curry mixture and serve quickly.

It tastes pretty good too. We also added some Gourmet Garden Ginger to the curry which gave it a good taste alongside the herbs too – the preparation time was no more than five minutes, and overall cooking time was around ten.

Points-wise, I logged this and it came in at seven points, the bulk of it being the basmati rice. If you wanted to lower your points more, swap your rice for brown which may save you a few points!

by jo

Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

It must be around a month since I last declared love for my Morphy Richards Soup Maker, so I’d better redress the balance right now. IT IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER BOUGHT! (okay, that may be a bit OTT)

Tonight we had a really simple soup which tasted delicious. Last night (and I’ll post that one too) we had a butternut squash and sweet potato curry, so Shaun peeled and chopped the entire squash for me for tonight – which is where another part of WeightWatchers works – planning ahead, knowing what your meals will be from night to-night (I’m still tired out after the Christmas break, so thinking about organising is a real use of my energy right now, though I do try) and prep your vegetables the night before. If you’re anything like we are, you’ll have drawers of Ikea and Tupperware containers, and very little time when you get in from work – so having everything ready in the fridge is a good thing – we always cook from fresh every evening, and rarely have takeaways.

So, the soup:

soup1-2

As much butternut squash as you fancy, though remember the Soup Maker only holds so much. This will be 0 points.

A cube of ginger – and by a cube I mean a dice size of cube – this will also be 0 points
2-3 teaspoons of low-salt bouillon. Oh, and yeah, that’s 0 points too.
One spoon of Aussiemite, the new Australian yeast spread – with its fruity taste I thought it was worth putting in, and it made a difference! Marmite would also work. 1 point.

Add water, press the buttons, have a nap, 21 minutes later you’ll have a nice runny soup which tastes pretty damn fine – the ginger is subtle and the Aussiemite gives it a slightly fruity taste – the bouillon isn’t too overpowering either. It was nice and filling – and if you divide one point by five, then multiply it by two (as I’d say H has a fifth, we have two fifths) then you may well end up with 0 points again, making a (possible) 0 points soup. Cool!

Spicy Butternut Squash soup with a dollop of Aussiemite

We had it with WeightWatchers Naan breads which are lovely and soft and three points per Naan – I had one and a third, so let’s call it four points.

I’d say that was pretty good going there, easy to make, easy to clean up afterwards, and filling too. If you’re really starving you could add some pasta shapes to pad it out a bit, maybe?

by jo

Too Easy Cheese and Vegetable Lunchtime Wraps

Wednesday is my day off work in the week, my day with H. Pre-WeightWatchers we’d have pitta bread with falafel and tzaziki plus some vegetables to dip into the tzaziki, which I thought was fairly healthy. THEN I did WeightWatchers and found that meal came in around 15 points (over half of my daily allowance). We like a sandwich and will often do cheese toasties, but after swimming we’re usually quite tired and need some good energy food. This seemed to work, and was part-inspired by Sally’s comment on the quesadilla post.

So, chop your veg – we went for a red pepper, a courgette and two carrots. I chopped up the pepper then grated the courgette and carrots. After that I added some ginger Gourmet Garden to add some extra flavour, let it lightly warm in my pan (with one oil squirt) until it felt warm, but not too warm. It looked something like this :

Pepper, Carrot and Courgette

So then it was just a case of lying the wrap down, keep it unbuttered (as the veg is quite moist anyway), and putting a good mixture of the veg on top.

veginthewrap

Then just wrap them up and leave for a couple of minutes to let the vegetables melt with the cheese. Voila, one cheesy vegetable wrap – and low saturated fat too (if you use WeightWatchers cheese – I can’t compare to other brands, so check beforehand).

Points-wise, I calculated them to be 7 points total for the Vegetable wraps, as long as you use Weight Watchers wraps – each wrap comes in at 3 points, but if you have two it lowers to five. I used WeightWatchers Mature Cheddar slices (1 point each) and all the vegetables were free. The oil was such a small amount it doesn’t register on my tracker. That’s more food than I’d eat at work for lunch and I felt good and full afterwards!

Even better, H loved them – she wanted more and wasn’t fussy about any of the vegetables. We’ll be doing these again… I guess the next challenge is doing some for my lunch at work…!

cheesevegwraps

Disclaimer – this isn’t sponsored by Weight Watchers – I need to lower my cholesterol and lose weight,
so am sharing recipes I’ve found work and are quick.
I am a Weight Watchers Blogger Ambassador, but this hasn’t affected my opinion.

by jo

Easy Quesadillas

This recipe is a so-obvious-I-can’t-believe-we-haven’t-done-this-before one.

You need :

Tortillas (we used the Weight Watchers ones, 3 points each, though 5 points for two which was good)
cheese (I had a WW cheese slice – 1 point)

Whichever vegetables you want (we did a red and yellow pepper)

splash of oil

Spray the oil in your pan and cook the vegetables a tiny bit – add spice here if you want some.

Get your tortilla – put the cheese on it, then when the pepper is cooked add that.

Put a second tortilla on top

Weight Watchers Friendly Quesadillas

Place into oven, which should be on a low heat – enough to melt cheese and warm the tortilla, and leave in there for five minutes

Take out, and slice into four or six pieces. Eat straight away. If you want to add some cream to it, Quark is a good substitute and is low points too.

Yum! They’re a slightly more interesting variation on toasties too.