PigPog

I came up with this recipe when I was a student, which probably tells you most of what you need to know about it.

I had a big bag of rice. One day, I found I had no money, and nothing in to eat. In the fridge, I had a jar of Marmite and a jar of English mustard. I like mustard. I bought the Marmite with the intention of trying to like it, but I failed.

I decided I’d better come up with a recipe that used Marmite, mustard and rice. So Marmite and Mustard Fried Rice was born.

Most people have been pleasantly surprised on tasting it, though it usually comes under the heading of ‘not bad’ rather than being a gourmet delight. It’s easy and cheap, though, so it was good student fuel.

I usually use basmati rice, but long grain should be fine too.

Cook as normal. For basmati rice, I just cook one cup of rice per two cups of water – the measure you use doesn’t matter, as long as it’s 2:1 by volume. As you start boiling the rice, add Marmite and mustard. I generally use a generous spoon of each, but it depends on how much rice you’re making, and how strong you want the flavours to be. A reasonably generous amount of Marmite is important, as it helps the textures later.

Boil until the rice is done, stirring often to make sure the Marmite and mustard mix in well. Get a pan heated up as it’s finishing. Either a frying pan or a wok will do the job, with a little oil.

Chuck the rice in the frying pan/wok. Pat it down, and let one side cook well, then flip it over. You’re aiming to get quite a bit of the rice to go crispy.

Once both sides are crispy, serve it. If you’re doing a lot, and it’s quite thick, you may want to break it up to get the crispy bits mixed into it, then cook it again, so more of the rice is crispy.

Serve with the beer you’ve been able to afford because you spent so little on food.

We’ve made a new tradition. Shopping for the Christmas food shall be done on Christmas Eve, and we will try to buy as much of it as possible when it’s reduced to clear.

After a very quiet half-day at work, I tried to call in at Tesco, but the queue was too much. I tried to call in to the town centre, to see what Somerfield/Co-op had to offer, but the queue was all the way through the town. I succeeded better at Morrisons, getting quite a few reduced bits, but no meat.

I managed to get parked surprisingly easily in M&S, and got more extras, but still no meat. After Sam finished work, we tried again at M&S, but they still weren’t reducing their very expensive prepared joints. We found a friendly member of staff (most of them are), and were told that it didn’t look likely that they’d be reducing any of the things we wanted.

We decided to brave Tesco. They weren’t reducing the meat either, but we got a few other bargains, and their full price prepared joints were still a fraction of the price of the ones at M&S. They probably aren’t as fancy, but we’re not fussy. A lump of meat, some potato products, and lots of little sausages wrapped in bacon – the important things.

The biggest problem was arriving home with everything – it was a lot of shopping to carry all the way up to our flat!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a merry Christmas, or enjoys whatever else you like to celebrate around this time. If that’s nothing, have a fun Friday.

This week Hubster celebrated his 35th birthday and I celebrated my 29th week at Slimming World. Although I’ve settled into the plan, I am aware that getting too comfy can be a problem, so in a lot of ways I’m still acting as though I’m a complete newbie. I still read my book, still look things up and I never assume I know syn counts and measurements off by heart. There have been times recently where I did slip into a bit of comfy complacency, only to discover that I’ve misunderstood or plain forgotten some fundamental fact that could have upset the apple cart a fair bit.

Take mince, for example. Lean meats are free on Original. So, I assumed that lean steak mince would be too. Not so. A 100g portion of Tesco’s lean steak mince comes in at 3 syns. Now, on a 15-syn a day allowance that’s not too bad, unless you take into account the sheer hugeness of the burgers I made for birthday boy and myself last weekend. Whoops. I guess until I find an extra lean steak mince, I cannot has cheezburger.

Bearing that in mind, plus the cream tea I had in Sidmouth last weekend, I guess I was lucky that all it did was result in a slightly less spectacular weight loss than previous weeks. Still 2lb is certainly better than a smack in the chops with a wet halibut, so I ain’t complaining. This takes the total weight loss so far to 6st 4.5lb or 88.5lb or 40kg.

This week, I have been mostly eating beans, vegetables and Quorn. So has hubster. Our home has been very tuneful this week and we certainly haven’t had any problems keeping our bed warm on a night. I created a dish so damn good we’ve had it four times this week. Here’s the recipe:

Aubergine, Quorn and Bean Bake

What’s in it

• 1 large aubergine
• 3 potatoes
• 4 carrots
• 2 onions
• 2 peppers
• 2 packs of Quorn Chicken Style Pieces
• 6 mushrooms
• Half a pack of green beans
• Tin of baked beans
• Tin of mixed beans
• Half a pack of grated mozzarella
• Fry Light Spray
• Soy sauce
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Oregano

How it’s done

• Pre heat your oven to about 190C/375F/ gas mark 5.
• Cut the aubergine into thick slices, spray a baking dish with fry light, arrange the slices in the tray and spray again with fry light, put the tray in the preheated oven while the potatoes are parboiling.
• Cut the potatoes into thick slices and parboil in salted water for about 10 minutes, drain and add to the baking tray.
• Cut the carrots, onions and peppers into chunks and add to the baking tray, spray again with fry light and sprinkle oregano on the top, and put back in the oven for about 20 minutes.
• Take a large frying pan or a wok, spray with fry light, and add the Quorn pieces. Cook according to the instructions.
• Cut the mushrooms into chunks depending on size and add to the pan.
• Add a generous amount of soy sauce.
• Add the green beans, snapped in half.
• Add the tins of beans and leave the whole thing to cook for about 10 minutes.
• Stir through a generous amount of worcestershire sauce.
• Remove the baking tray from the oven and pour the contents of the pan on top of the roasted vegetables.
• Top the whole thing with grated mozzarella and put back in the oven for a further 20 minutes.
• Serve, eat, fart triumphantly.

There isn’t a syn in the whole dish if you count the cheese as your healthy extra choices. And it’s bloody delicious.

What this does to my weight loss journey remains to be seen, and I’ll tell you about that next week. Until then… the journey continues!

I thought it would be a fun idea to take pictures and blog about some of the meals I eat nowadays, as a reminder to myself when I’m short of ideas, to help other Slimming World members and to show off just how much you can have on this plan. So here is my first offering, tonight’s evening meal which was consisted of:

• 100g wholemeal pasta – today’s an Original (or Red) day, so I’ve had to weigh out a portion of pasta as a Healthy Extra. Had I been on Green, I could have had a bowl full, like Michael did.
• Bacon – free on Original. On Green it would have had to be weighed and counted as a Healthy Extra or Syns.
• Red Pepper – free on both.
• Mushrooms – free on both.
• Onions – free on both.
• Cherry Tomatoes – free on both.
• Tinned chopped tomatoes – free on both.
• And the dish was seasoned with white pepper, Tabasco sauce and oregano – all free on both days.

The dish was pretty easy to cook, I put the veggies in the wok and stir-fried them in a little Fry Light (a Slimming World essential item), added the chopped tomatoes and left it all to simmer as I cooked the pasta. I weighed out my portion after cooking, which left Michael with a huge mound of pasta to eat. He didn’t complain. It seemed like a fairly minuscule amount of pasta, 100g cooked weight doesn’t amount to much at all, but mixed in with everything else it was enough for me to think I ate too moishe by the time I was done.