Menu Planning Monday.

I've just realised that I've been calling it Menu Planning rather than Meal Planning - sorry MrsM!

Monday - home-made mushroom soup and ciabatta

Tuesday - jacket spuds with bacon and sun-dried tomatoes

Wednesday - Jamie's 15 minute chicken Laksa with noodles

Thursday - Usual prawns

Friday - Quorn shepherds pie with sweet potato

Saturday - the pheasant that has been on the menu for 3 weeks running but is still in the fridge!

Sunday - roast possibly

Still no sign of the weather turning, nor our house selling, nor any weight shifting. Must Try Harder.

Silent Sunday.

It's the weekend!

And I'm curled up on the sofa on a Saturday night with a cup of lemon tea!

The kids had friends over last night for a sleepover, and the parents are good friends and drinking buddies of ours too so they stayed for the evening. Polished off a vat of meatballs and rice (with tons of chargrilled peppers and garlic) along with some rum, several bottles of wine and beer and a large packet of chocolate biscuits. Amazingly didn't have a sore head this morning and managed to rustle up some pancakes with Nutella for the kids, and then ran around like a crazy thing getting the house ready for yet another viewing. Oh, forgot to mention that after agreeing the house sale before Christmas, our buyer pulled out last week after getting back together with her estranged husband. Very nice for her of course but leaves us back at square one - but very luckily the people selling the house we want are willing to wait for us.

Then popped to the pub for lunch and conveniently forgot that I'm back on WeightWatchers - and managed to order the worst thing possible on the menu! Lovely gammon, egg and chips though, and am sure the walk we had negated some of it;) A nice nap on the sofa followed by watching Robots with the kids, and think an early night with a book is in order now.

Tomorrow Little Legs is off to her first proper party, I'm hoping she'll stay by herself as softplay is my idea of hell. There is a Magnet showroom nearly so we'll pop in there to browse for kitchens - I know we're way off agreeing the move but we can still dream! The Husband is cooking lamb tagine from Jamie's 15 minute meals for dinner, and we might open a nice bottle of Barolo to go with it.

So, although we are still desperate to get this new house, we're still aware that we might lose it and so need to fall back in love with this house instead. Last night we agreed that if we end up staying, we are going to install a cocktail bar in the kitchen! Probably won't be as flash as it sounds, just a breakfast bar with some funky red leather bar stools, but we'll stick a couple of optics up and dress it with an ice-bucket and my new chilli fairy lights that I got for Christmas - and probably have a party to christen it! Suddenly excited about staying here...

Menu Planning Monday.

Hola folks, yet another week in this god-awful weather, I for one cannot wait for some warmth and sun! I feel it in my skin, body, chest and mood, so spring returning sees a huge improvement all round - no more asthma, acne, depression or numb digits! And no MrsM, no snow for us down on the coast!

This week is as follows;

Monday - polenta crusty chicken and bacon Caesar salad (from Jamie's 15 minute meals)

Tuesday - turkey and cabbage madras (a true leftovers meal, from Sunday lunch and the very last piece of the Christmas turkey!)

Wednesday - Vietnamese meatballs with a tangy carrot salad and lettuce wraps

Thursday - Something with prawns for me, usual kebab for The Husband after his pub cycling night out 

Friday - kids are having home-made chicken nuggets, peas and skinny fries, we are having a lamb and aubergine tagine; first time we've used the lovely terracota tagine my sister bought us for Chrimbo

Saturday - pheasant. That's as far as I've got with that meal, I have a freshly shot one in the freezer and thinking about pot-roasting it with lots of red wine

Sunday - possibly a roast, again it's too far away to think about properly

Have not had the best of weeks as far as diet is concerned, the Chinese takeaway that sneaked through the door on Saturday was the culprit - or can I blame the kids who didn't like theirs so I had to eat it? For the very time ever whilst on the WeightWatchers program, am probably not going to my weigh-in tomorrow night; to be fair it's forecast to pour with rain here and The Husband will have the car at work - and I'm not dragging the kids a mile up the road in the pitch dark just to climb on the scales. Fingers crossed for a double-whammy weight loss next week instead!


Just a quick edit to say that Jamie's polenta Caesar was excellent and very quick - and can be tweaked very easily to make it low in points!

Menu Planning Monday.

Nice new badge MrsM!

This week is a mix of new recipes, leftovers, freezer goods and even a packet meal in there!

Monday - pasta fagioli (pasta and beans, good Italian staple)

Tuesday - boiled ham and savoy cabbage

Wednesday - cod with a bacon crust and chilli greens

Thursday - hot and sour prawn soup

Friday - duck risotto (that we didn't eat last week)

Saturday - Singapore noodles with turkey

Sunday - probably a roast but can't think that far ahead!

Back into WeightWatchers with a vengeance, weigh-in day is tomorrow so we'll see if I totally blew it this weekend...probably!

Silent Sunday.

Weight Watchers.

Something I've mentioned briefly before in this blog, but never really addressed properly, is weight loss. I've been a big eater (and drinker) all of my adult life. I love food, love cooking, and love socialising around it all. It all started when I went to uni, and discovered beer and curry; after gaining freedom to do what I wanted for the first time in my life, I kind of went a bit mad! The weight crept up and up slowly and I never saw any reason to do anything about it. Even when I finally got hitched in my 30's, it was to a man who wasn't exactly skinny himself and who a) loved eating and drinking as much as I did, and b) loved me regardless of my size!

So, what made me change habits of a lifetime, at the ripe old age of 40? It was partly my oldest child starting school and me not wanting to be the oldest AND the biggest mum at the school gate, partly a realisation that I had virtually no photographic records of me with my kids as I didn't ever want to be photographed, and partly because of a friend who had just lost a stone on Weight Watchers in just a few weeks. I joined, attended meetings regularly, and eventually got there! It took over a year, but I lost 3.5 stone and went from a large size 16 to a size 10/12. Cost me a blummin' fortune in replacing my entire wardrobe twice over though!

 So, tonight I was quite sheepish when I reluctantly admitted that I can't maintain any more without some help - and have actually put on a stone over the last 18 months. Back I went to WW, signed up to a monthly pass again and will be going to weekly meetings until I reach goal. Again. And won't be going that far above my target weight ever again!

Here's the embarrassing bit - the before and after photos as far as I can, bearing in mind there are precious few of me at my heaviest as I just deleted them - the wonders of modern digital technology! The first picture was in summer 2010, bursting out of a size 16 tankini; the next was August 2012, feeling confident in a relatively skimpy size 10/12 bikini! OK, I'll never be super-skinny as I'm a mum of 2 in my 40's with wobbly bits but it's made a huge positive difference to my life!

Apologies by the way for the size of the photos - you may want to view on your phone and not a laptop as they may put you off your dinner;) Any hints for resizing welcome!