Chicken curry

Hi guys

 

I've not been writing lately, I apologise for that, the last few weeks have been very rough.  I would LOVE to share with you what is going on, but I'm afraid I might jeopardise a big project!

 

I've also been very bad lately and I've gained 3.8 kg, I can't tell you how angry I am at myself for doing this, it's like I can't stop myself!  But today I'm back on track again :)

 

BUT, tomorrow my sister-in-law and my cousin and myself are going to the SA Cheese festival, I'm super excited about that, I never miss a year!  So obviously tomorrow is a TOTAL write off, but I've made my peace with this day a long time ago already.

 

It's a strange thing about cheating on a diet, isn't it?  I always feel like just giving up completely after just a minor transgression.  It's always all or nothing with me, that's a really bad attitude to have on a diet.  I think the ideal way to go about it is to accept what you've done and carry on with eating well for the rest of the day, ad not like me - just blow the lid off and have a pig-out day (okay, well, more like a pig out 2 weeks).

 

Anyway, moving right along:) As always, I have a delicious recipe for you to try out and tell me what you think.  This one is a chicken curry by one of my favourite South African chefs, Cas Abrahams.

Funny story - I actually ate this particular curry for the first time at the above mentioned SA Cheese Festival in 2008 and fell so deeply in love that I found her email address on the Internet and asked for the recipe - and she obliged!

I've had to dukanise it a little, but as usual, most curries are so easily Dukanised, you just have to be a little creative!

 

 

Creamy Chicken Curry

• 5 filleted chicken breasts, cut into strips
• 5 ml curry spice mix
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• salt to taste
• 15ml oil
• 2 onions, sliced
• 10ml cumin seeds
• 10ml fennel seeds

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 can whole tomatoes

• 10ml curry spice mix

• 5ml tumeric

• 10ml garlic and ginger paste

• salt to taste

• 1 cup of fat free yogurt

• ½ bunch fresh coriander, chopped

Mix together masala, cornstarch and salt. Coat the chicken with this mixture, shaking off any excess cornstarch mixture.

Heat the oil in a saucepan and lightly fry the chicken breasts on both sides.

Remove the chicken and set aside.

Add the onions, cumin, fennel and bay leaf and sauté until the onion is soft and transparent.

Add the tomatoes and the juice as well as the tumeric, masala and garlic and ginger paste.

Cook until a thick sauce is formed. Return the chicken to the saucepan and simmer until the chicken is cooked, about 5 minutes.

Pour over the yogurt and garnish with coriander leaves.

This is surely my favourite curry in the whole wide world, and it would most definitely make it onto my death row meal list!  I hope you'll love it as much as I do.

 

Have a wonderful weekend and God bless

Janie B

 

 

Thai red curry

Hi guys

I have not been writing so frequently as of late, but my job has been taking the life out of me lately.  I'm sure it's just a phase though, I'll get over it :)

Monday's bliss from my weekend weight loss was rapidly obliterated on Tuesday morning, as I expected, I weighed 2 kg more!  Fortunately I'm back to my Monday weight now and things are going full speed ahead as always.

Tomorrow I have to go jeans shopping, I'm looking for a fairly cheap pair that I hopefully won't be fitting into for too long.  You see, I'm sort of in between ex-fatpants at the moment, currently I have only one pair that fit me properly and it's zipper broke today, it's also a cheap pair, so I'm not even going to bother to have it fixed.

Do you also have fantasies about what you're going to buy when you're thin?  I want to get a pair of 7 for All Mankind jeans, I just think they are the most gorgeous thing a woman can wear and I can't wait to get a pair!

The weather is really taking a turn here currently and it really feels like Winter is descending it's icy paws on us...I LOVE it!  Winter means warm soups, stews and curries - and there is no better diet in the world to be on than the Dukan diet to take full advantage of winter food!

This evening I decided to make a large pot of Thai red curry,  I must say, the green curry (a few posts ago) is still my favourite, but my husband FREAKED out about this one, he says it's the best curry he has ever eaten!  That is quite a big complement for a fat free Dukanised curry!  I googled it and found this one on the Daily Mail UK, it's Jamie Oliver's base recipe, but I Dukanised it.

Thai Red Curry

• 2 stalks of lemon grass
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 red chillies
• 4 kafir lime leaves
• big hand full of fresh coriander leaves
• 2 roasted, skinned red peppers ( I used the tinned variety, in brine, NOT OIL)
• 1 teaspoon of tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon of fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 2 cm of peeled fresh ginger
• 2 packets of Mange Tout

Combine everything in a food processor and blend until you have a fine paste.  Cut about 700g of skinless chicken breast into bite size pieces and marinade in the curry paste for a few hours.  Tip it into a heated wok and simmer till the chicken is cooked, add the Mange Tout and cover for about 3 minutes until the Mange Tout are just cooked and still crispy.

Once again, like with the green curry, we aren't allowed to have coconut milk, so fat free yogurt and coconut extract is used.  Once your curry is cooked, remove from the heat and let it sit for 5 minutes before stirring in 500ml of plain fat free yogurt and a few drops of coconut essence.

This curry blew my husband's mind, but I still favour the green one.   But I must say, I love this diet more and more every day - the possibilities are endless!

Lots of love and God bless

Janie B

Best mushroom sauce EVER

Hi guys

I haven't blogged in a while, partly due to work and partly due to Easter festivities - we had a nice long weekend and went to visit my mom, she lives about 400km from us, so we don't visit her that often.

Fortunately she's very health conscious and was more than accommodating in terms of food and drink!  However, we did falter severely this weekend, in fact, I wasn't even going to blog today since I was sure that I would have gained so much weight over the weekend, that I was too embarrassed to come on here...

But determined to face my demons and deal with the consequences of my indiscretions, I got on the scale the moment I set foot in my house - I had lost 1kg over the weekend.

I can't describe to you the high that I'm on right now, the last thing I want to do is condone my behaviour this past weekend, but I have thought about it and came up with some theories as to why this was possible.

Now, there were 2 major transgressions - firstly, on Friday night we went to a buffet restaurant, we've been there before and we knew the food was always of impeccable quality - I decided to take an off evening and ate SO much, I felt like I was about to burst at the seams by the time we left, and it was so good!!

The next morning naturally I felt guilty as hell, but when I reflected on it, I realised that we were actually remarkably good about it, without even realising it.  My husband and I talked about what we had eaten and it turns out we just went for all the meaty stuff anyway - none of the carb stuff, naturally it was rather high fat meaty stuff, but none the less, almost no carbs - I was kind of impressed with how the Dukan diet had already started to influence both our food choices, even this early on in our diet.

The second transgression came the next day at lunch time when some good friends that we haven't seen for ages invited us to lunch.  We all chose a restaurant that we knew had terrible service and even worse food, but is such a spectacular venue right on the beach, that we didn't care.  The menu options were very limited and prompted by everybody saying "aw screw it - you guys can diet again tomorrow" we both ordered a pizza.  It was definitely THE most vile pizza I had ever eaten in my entire life,  there was so much grease lying on top of it, I had to blot it with a serviette!  I decided to stick with diet soda, my hubby and our friends, however had several bottles of our favourite Sauvignon Blanc :)

I think my saving grace this weekend was the fact that we stuck to our guns the rest of the time, I'm sure you're all very familiar with the attitude of just going crazy with food for an entire day/weekend after a single transgression, I sure as hell am very proud of myself!

So, after all the grease and carbs of Saturday, my mom plucked the most gorgeous slab of beef fillet from her fridge for us to barbecue, I marinated it in some balsamic vinegar before hitting the grill and my husband, who is simply a genius with a grill and some coal (seriously, he'd probably scare Bobby Flay...),  grilled it to a perfectly rare finish.

I left it to rest for 20 minutes, wrapped in tin foil before slicing it and serving it with my amazing (first time invention, made up as going along) mushroom sauce!

Mushroom Sauce

•  1 punnet of mushrooms of your choice - sliced
• 1 cup of fat free milk
• 1 tablespoon of corn flour
• salt and pepper
• 1 cube of beef stock dissolved in a little water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 tub of smooth fat free cottage cheese

Brown the mushrooms in a non stick pan, taking care not to crowd them, otherwise they won't brown.  Mix the milk and corn flour in a cup and add to the mushrooms over low heat while stirring constantly.  Add the stock fluid and cook through.

You can make it up to this point and leave for later, reheat in the microwave if you like.  Just before serving, stir in the cottage cheese and serve with what ever meat takes your fancy!

I hope you enjoy this one!


Have a great evening and God bless
Janie B

Barbecue chicken

Hi Guys

I've started to lose weight again - man, it feels so good!!

A lot of you have inspired me to also make a list of mini goals on my blog, like a check list I can tick as time goes on.  You will see it to the right of my posts.  Yes, I know it looks like I'm having a nationality identity crisis, but if I use the different units of measurement, it makes it more interesting than just goals of 5kg increments, and between pounds, kilogrammes and stones, there are about 4 increments in a 10kg space!  It certainly impressed me :)

I've decided not to dwell on what I've achieved, but rather on what is yet to come, you'll see I'm super close to my first goal!

I think it is very important to find as many ways as possible to motivate yourself, even if it seems a bit silly, I know I certainly need a lot of motivation some days! 

Currently I'm working a weekend of nights, and on Friday evening before work, I found a uniform in my closet that I haven't worn in over 3 years 'cuz I was too fat... I tried it on, since I couldn't remember how much I last weighed when I fit into it, and to my surprise, it fit!  Still a little tight around the butt area, but totally wearable - I went to work on SUCH a high!

You know how certain smells get you all salivating and ready so succumb to the deliciousness that gave life to that aroma?  On Wednesday evening I got home and someone in our apartment building was having a barbecue - the entire parking area smelled of barbecue chicken and lamb chops.  I nearly couldn't swallow my saliva fast enough - and to boot, had a very busy day and by 6pm still hadn't eaten ANYTHING - very vulnerable!  Fortunately, my awesome husband stepped in and saved me from a sure cheat and got us some gorgeous grilled fish from a local fish and chips shop.

But still, all I could think about was that meat, lying there, grilling, dripping juices on those red hot coals, filling the air with their intoxicating aroma...(I was really into this - can you tell?)

So the next day I prepared to have our own BBQ - Dukan style!  I took lamb chops from freezer and defrosted those (don't worry, they were nice and lean) and went and bought some skinless fatless chicken thighs and drumsticks.

Enter Mom's portugese-esque BBQ chicken marinade - I've had to severely Dukanise it, but I'm glad to report it survived the surgery and still tastes AMAZING.

This time I thought I'd keep the name of the recipe in Afrikaans, my home language, just for fun!

Ma se Braaihoendersous

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons of paprika (I used 1 smoked and 2 regular)
• 3 teaspoons of mustard powder
• 3 tablespoons of chili sauce
• 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
• 1 onion
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 3 cloves of garlic
• some freshly ground black pepper

Chuck it all into the bowl of your food processor and blend till smooth.  Put your chicken in a zip lock bag and cover with the marinade, squeeze out most of the air before sealing it and marinade the chicken overnight in the fridge.

This hits the coals the next day and just a small word of warning - you may need an old broom stick to keep your neighbours at bay :)

I hope you LOVE this!

Happy barbecuing and God Bless!

Janie B

Thai Green Curry

Hi guys

I hope you have all been very well.  I'm still stuck in my rut, all though it looks like I might be moving out of it, I've finally, after 2 weeks at the SAME weight, lost 400g in the past 2 days.

If I knew this 3 months ago, that I'd be in this situation right now, I'd have been very hard to motivate!  But, as always, I'm taking it one day at  time and ALWAYS looking on  the bright side!

Today I am wearing a pair of pants that I haven't worn in about 3 years, it's still an enormous pair of pants though, a size 16 (that would be around a size 12 in the USA from what Google tells me), but that's beside the point, the point is they FIT ME NOW! And soon they'll be too big for me!

Going back to dress sizes - I was looking around on the Internet the other day, I'm intrigued by the concept of the Size Zero dress...

When I'm at my thin weight ( which I've basically only been for 3 months of my entire life about 6 years ago) I wore a size 35 jeans.  My hip measurement was 92 cm.  A size 35 is equal to a UK size 11, as I understand, which should be about a size 7 US.

Now, I  was watching Fashion TV the other night (I like watching skinny people - is this weird?) and they profiled some models and showed their measurements, their hip measurements are 88-90 cm as an average, theoretically making them a size 6, or conservatively a size 5.

So can any one please explain to me how on earth there are so many woman in the USA that wear size zero's and two's?  How can so many women be 5 dress sizes smaller than the average catwalk model?  Surely I must be understanding the USA sizing wrong?

I can't help but chuckle about this, I don't think my decomposing skeleton 10 years after I've died will fit into a size zero :)

Enough about that, lets talk food.

Last night I made the most heavenly Thai Green chicken curry - Dukanised of course and it was so gorgeous, I can't wait to have it again.  I found the recipe on Google at http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaicurrypasterecipes/r/greencurrypaste.htm

but adjusted it a little bit so it's Dukan friendly.

Thai Green Curry Paste

• 1 stalk lemon grass
• 1-3 green chillies
• 1 shallot
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• 1 thumb sized piece of ginger
• 1/2 cup of coriander leaves
• 1/2 cup of basil
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon of coriander powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of cumin
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 2 tablespoons of lime juice
• sweetener to equal 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 4 tablespoons of fat free yogurt

Put all these ingredients into a food processor and blend till you have a paste.  I find that this is enough for 8 cubed chicken breast (normal size ones), so I only used half and put the rest in the fridge for the weekend.

I cut the chicken into cubes and mixed it with the paste and let it sit for about 2 hours, I then put it in a non-stick pan and cooked it gently. Then I added 2 big hand fulls of mange tout - I love these in Thai curries!

Once everything is cooked, you need to take it off the heat and let is sit for 10 minutes.  Now you add a cup (or more, depending on how you like it) of fat free yogurt.  Remember, you can't still be cooking it when you add the yogurt, it will curdle!

Now for the piece de resistance - we can't have coconut cream on this diet, yet Thai curries are so dependent on that lovely sweet fragrance that coconut milk lends to it.  My solution - coconut essence at the end after the yogurt was added - the result is simply PHENOMENAL!

Of course you can use any meat/fish that you like and for PP days you can just omit the mange tout.

I hope you enjoy this!

Have a great day and God bless

Janie B

Mmmmmmmmeatballs

Hi Guys

I have been out of action for a few days now, I had two very stressful exams, but they're over now (for the time being anyway) and I am back to Blog forth.

This morning I had a startling realisation, and not the good kind.  And what is even more shocking about it is that an entire month passed and it only dawned on me at the end of it.

In this whole month I only lost 2 kg.

I don't understand how this is possible!  Could it be exam stress related?  I sure hope so, but in that case I'd better brace myself for a bad month of May too...and this in spite of being soooo good!

A few posts ago I told you about my friend that told me to do it one day at a time to take every day as it comes, and avoid getting overwhelmed by the bigger picture.  I now have to pay heed to her advice more than ever and just take every day as it comes.  I know if I persist, I will be rewarded. (insert concerned but hopeful face)

And, I just went back and read Flamidwyfe's post again about Gandhi, this will really make my day better, as she promises! :)

My hubby suggested this morning that we do 3 days of attack again, not that we're doing anything wrong, but just to loose some again, not for the sake of loosing, but to get our spirits up again - he's also only lost about 3kg this month.  I think he has a good idea.

So now I suppose I owe you a recipe... :)

I had to really scour my brain now, since I haven't cooked anything fun for a while now due to exams!  But here you go:

Meatballs

• 1 kg of ultra lean mince, such as ostrich or venison, or just buy the lean beef yourself and ask for it to be ground, you'd be surprised to learn the amount of fat that is allowed by law in lean mince you buy pre-packaged.
• 1 large or 2 medium onions, grated coarsely
• 2 teaspoons of garlic salt
• 3 tablespoons of oat bran
• 2 cups of finely grated carrot
• 2 packets of lean bacon, diced finely( translates into about 340g. lean bacon packages are smaller than regular bacon in this country - like no one'd notice!!)
• good hand full of chopped Italian parsley
• good hand full of chopped fresh coriander
• pepper to taste
• 3 large eggs

Mix together all the ingredients and roll into the size meatballs that you prefer.

Now, there are two ways in which you can cook these, probably depending on what your Mama taught you. I like to place them in an oven proof dish and bake uncovered for 30 minutes.

You could also make them small and brown them in a pan, cover with a tin of chopped tomatoes and cook them in that,

If you flatten them, you have great tasting hamburger patties, that can go on the grill!

I hope you enjoy them!

Have a great day and God bless

Janie B

The chicken revolution

Hi Guys

We're back in Courier and with text formatting.

So, yesterday I enticed you with what lies in my refrigerator...BRINED CHICKEN

I apologise to those of you who know what I'm talking about at this point already, but this was a total revelation for me.

On Friday night my hubby and I went to the gym and decided to stop at the supermarket on our way home to by a whole roast chicken, which we split down the middle, each got a half and ate it with the skin taken off - dinner of champions!

They had some honey cured hot smoked salmon in vacuum packed packages, but they cost and arm and a leg so that got me thinking.

A year or two ago I bought a hot smoker for my husband for his birthday, but we've never really cooked anything tasty in it and it's been gathering dust for a while now.  On the way home it hit me like a ton of bricks - I have to cure what ever I put in there first for it to taste authentic.

The thought then left my mind and we got home and divided up the chicken and munched away, that evening I took a bite of the most delicious roast chicken I've ever tasted in my life, the meat was ultra juicy and somehow seemed seasoned, which is really strange for skinless chicken, since all the yumminess is lying in the bin on the discarded skins, then another ton of bricks stuck me - IT'S BRINED.

I started googling brined chicken and found a mass of brine recipes, for anything from fillets to whole chickens to even turkeys and I couldn't believe that no one has ever taught me this, I couldn't believe that anyone cooks chicken in ANY other way!

So then I started formulating my experimental brine from a few recipes I found on the Internet, and last night we ate the best chicken I have ever eaten in my life, honestly, I am a new person because of brine.

Brine for chicken

• 1.9 litres of water
• 1/2 cup of coarse salt
• one whole head of garlic, unpeeled, chopped up
• 1 tablespoon of black pepper (unground)
• 1 tablespoon of rosemary
• 6 bay leaves, crushed

Boil half of the water with the rest of the ingredients for about 10 minutes, add the rest of the water and let it cool in a large glass bowl.  Once cooled to about skin temperature you can add the chicken, the chicken needs to be submerged, if you need to make more brine, everything will need to be increased proportionally.  I used 4 breasts, bone in, skin on and brined them in this for 6 hours in the fridge.

Next is the most important part - take the chicken out of the brine and wash under running tap water and dry thoroughly using paper towel.  Now put it on a wire rack on a tray in the fridge and leave it for one to 2 hours to dry out.  Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and roast the dry chicken for about 30 minutes. No seasoning, just like that.

If you follow these instructions you will have the most wonderful, seasoned, juicy chicken and I guarantee you will not want to ever make it in a different way.  I'm sure it will work just as well with breast fillets or whole chicken, obviously the fillets will need less time and the whole chicken more time in the brine.

I hope you enjoy this and change your life as much as it has mine, I really do feel like I've been living in the poultry dark ages!

Have a great evening

God bless

Janie B

iPhone app!

Hi Guys,
I just found the Blogger app at the app store, how cool is that?? I had no idea one could blog on the run!

Being a control freak though, it does plague me somewhat that I can't change the font, or format the text :(

This also means I can't really post recipes from my phone, BUT I will tell you this, I had a very startling realisation about cooking chicken last night, which I am terribly excited about. My experiment is currently in the fridge and if it is what I hope it is, it will forever change the way I cook poultry!

Food excites me, can you tell?

Have an awesome day, I shall report back tomorrow on my chicken experiment - formatted and in courier font.

God bless
Janie B

Before and Afters

Hi Guys

Ah, got ya there, sorry, no photo's.  I just called my blog that since the idea of before and afters have been plaguing me somewhat lately.

My friend posted hers on facebook a while ago, the same one I wrote about a while back that had the really cool interview about her weight loss (check Feb 22nd, Long time no see), and she had the courage to post hers after she'd lost a whole lot of weight.  Currently, I'm so embarrassed of my self-inflicted state, that I don't know if I'll ever have the courage to post my fat pictures!

I'm sure I will though, but I definitely won't do so before I've lost all my weight, that's for sure!!

Yesterday, I felt like having some creamed spinach and sweet pumpkin, just like one of my favourite steakhouses serve with their big fat steaks, chips and onion rings.  Of course in my version there are no chips and no onion rings.

Creamed Spinach

• 1 packet of spinach
• 1 cup of skim milk
• 2 tablespoons of cornstarch ( 1tablespoon per person per day as tolerated food)
• salt and pepper
• pinch of nutmeg
• 1/4 of a packet of Woolworths fat free danish feta

Cook the spinach, drain well and chop roughly.  In a saucepan, bring the milk to the boil and add a paste made from a little milk and the corn starch to the boiling milk while stirring continuously.  You will end up with a very thick white sauce.  Add the nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.  Take it easy on the salt though, since the feta is very salty and seasons it too.

Mix the sauce and the spinach and stir in the feta - ENJOY!!

For the sweet pumpkin you don't need a recipe - just boil some cubed butternut squash ( I despise most forms of pumpkin, except these) in some lightly salted water until fork tender.  Sprinkle on some cinnamon (about 1/2 teaspoon) and sweeten with a few drops of artificial sweetener.  I know this sounds simple, but trust me, it's brilliant!!

I hope you enjoy this!

Have a fabulous day and God bless

Janie B

 

Tomato "chutney/jam"

Hi all

I've been on this diet for 64 days now, wow, it sounds very short if I put it like that!

Yesterday I broke the 100kg barrier, yes, I am down to double digits, I think this was probably my biggest goal to date and it feels so good to have broken it!

A week ago I went to a local fresh goods market.  They had a special - 3 X 500g packets of mini Rosa tomatoes for R10 ($1.30), I bought 3 packets thinking that I would quickly go through them, alas, a week later I still had two packets left, and they were starting to become less firm and pleasing to eat out the packet.

So naturally I decided to turn them into something delicious, so delicious, you won't even believe it's good for you!

Slow tomato sauce

• 500g baby Rosa tomatoes
• 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
• small hand full of thyme sprigs
• 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste
• a few drops of liquid artificial sweetner to taste

Heat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius and spray an oven proof dish with non-stick spray.  Put the tomatoes, garlic and thyme into the dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes start bursting at the seams.

Brown the onion in a heavy casserole, you can use a little oil, but if you don't want to, it's not the end of the world if the onions aren't brown, they'll cook soft.

Now you can add the tomatoes from the oven (the reason for keeping the thyme spigs whole is so you can fish them out easily once you're done) and add the can of tomatoes.  At this point you need to put a lid on and turn the heat right down, it needs to cook for about an hour, undisturbed at a low heat.  You can give it a gentle stir every 15 minutes or so to make sure it doesn't burn.

When the hour is over, take the lid off and turn the heat up a little and continue cooking while stirring regularly now.  At this point season with salt and pepper and stir in the cumin.  What you want is for this mixture to reduce into a nice thick, chunky jam/chutney-like consistency.  Once it's done cooking, you can add a few drops of liquid sweetner to taste.

We used it as a sauce for our steak that evening, absolutely delicious, but I can think of loads of other ways to use it!

Have fun with it!!

Good night and God bless

Janie B

Sunday chicken

Hi All

Yesterday while stalking the supermarket isles for goodies that might be permitted on this diet, I found 4 awesome new treasures - Fat Free Miracle whip (very low carb too), Light Wellington's Chutney, Allgold Light Ketchup and my personal favourite, Darling Dairy Fat Free Honey Yogurt, man, that stuff's good!

Those of you who grew up in South African homes will be all too familiar with that very famous Huisgenoot Wenresepte chicken with the sauce made from chutney, mayo and brown onion soup power - I myself have been incapacitated by this chicken dish on many a Sunday afternoon. 

Naturally when I saw the above mentioned goodies, my mind went to one place and one place only - Sunday Chicken Heaven, all Dukan friendly of course.

I know chutney is off limits on Dukan, but this Wellington Light Chutney only has 7 grams of carbs per 100g, which still falls into the nothing above 10g/100g rule.
Naturally the onion soup powder is off limits, that stuff's mostly made up of starch anyway, BUT I did find these awesome little onion stock cubes, they pack a lot of flavour and also come in a garlic variety.

Sunday Chicken Heaven

• 8 drumsticks and 8 thighs - skin and visible fat removed naturally!
• 1/4 cup of Sugar free chutney
• 1/4 cup of light ketchup
• 1/4cup of fat free Miracle Whip
• 1 cube of onion stock
• 4 onions

Place the chicken along with the onions, which have been quartered in an oven-proof dish.  Mix the sauce and cover all the chicken and onions in it, mixing well once it's poured on.

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 90 minutes.  Do not cover as it will draw a lot of moisture and you'll have a runny dish.  If you do end up having a runny dish, simply ladle the excess liquid into a small saucepan and reduce to a nice thick sauce on the stove top and pour over the chicken 10 minutes before removing from the oven.

Of course, once we reach consolidation phase, this will be eaten with some yummy Basmati rice... Damn, I miss Basmati rice...

I hope you have a glorious Sunday and a great week ahead!

God Bless

Janie B

PS -  I noticed that the blog posts with food in their names get read a lot more, maybe you guys are under the impression that the ones without food in the title are not about food - this is not so, every blog post one here WILL have a recipe, this is my solemn vow to you, my faithful readers (except of course for the obligatory Kony 2012 post:))

KONY 2012

Please take a moment and watch this video, together we ARE going to make the world a better place!

Fat-pants

Hi everyone

I hope that you have been well, at this end we've been faithfully pushing on with our diet, and I am very pleased to report that I've lost just over 16kg!  That certainly sounds like a lot, but sure makes a disappointingly small difference when you're my size, however, 31kg left to loose does sound a heck of a lot better than 47kg left to loose!

Plus, I'm now starting to fit in some of my previous fat-pants. 

Interesting concept this - FAT-PANTS.

They have always been my red light, my sentinel bearing warning of having gone too far, however, in recent years I have not been paying them much heed... hence my current situation.  Yep, having gone through fat-pants from a size 35 to a size 42 (probably bigger than that, the day I started this diet, I could barely squeeze into my size 42 jeans *blush*), the writing was always on the wall.

Why I chose to ignore the recurrent upgrade to fat-pants, I may never know, and usually when that day came, I felt so awesome in my new, looser fitting pants, completely

 oblivious of the fact that they were 5cm wider than the previous ones - dude, how crazy was I???

So I'm seeing this reverse journey back through all the fat-pants as a significant part of this diet, something to keep me going, hopefully fitting into the next smaller pair will inspire me to feel just as great as my prior misplaced self-confidence that came from new jeans...

This diet, as you know by now, is very much a loooong term commitment, and there is no way in hell we're going to make it without being a little inventive in the food-department. Finding alternatives to what we're used to can be tricky, but can also be a real diet-saver!  For the past week now, I've been craving cottage pie, but naturally, potatoes are off limits, so I had to make a plan..

And what a yummy plan it turned out to be, for this one, I really must pat myself on the back!

Cottage Pie - Skinny Pants edition

for the mash part:

• 2 kohlrabi
• 4 large carrots
• 1/2 cauliflower
• 1 litre of chicken stock

Peel and chop the vegetables and boil in the chicken stock till tender and place in a food processor, blend until smooth while adding milk to achieve the desired consistency.  I have to add at this point - kohlrabi is not a frequently seen ingredient in South Africa, I saw it yesterday at a market and bought 2 with this purpose in mind.  Mine were extremely tough and had very hard stringy bits in the centre, even after it was boiled soft, and the resulting puree was terribly gritty with an unpleasing texture, which was easily amended by scraping it through a fine sieve - the outcome was spectacular - a fine, buttery tasting puree with a wonderful texture.  Next time I make this, I would however skip the kohlrabi and just use carrots and cauliflower.

for the mince part:

• 1kg of lean mince - venison or ostrich is probably as lean as you'll get, I'm fortunate to have a minced Oryx vacuum packed in 500g packets in my chest freezer :)
• 2 large onions, sliced
• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
• 2 cups of diced carrots
• 3-5 cubes of beef stock (you can really use what ever blows your hair back, I use it instead of seasoning with salt and pepper)
• 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
• 1 small tin of tomato paste

Brown the onions in the oil, add the mince and brown meticulously, it really has to be nice and separated and brown.  Add the stock cubes and tomato paste and carrots, top up with some boiling water, enough to cover the carrots.

Cover with a lid and simmer till the carrots are nice and soft, taste your mince, and add more stock cubes if not seasoned enough.

There you have it - put the mince in the prettiest oven proof dish you own and top with your puree and bake at 200 degrees Celsius till browned somewhat.

I hope you love this as much as I do!

Here's to skinny pants!

Cheers and God bless
Janie B

Long time, no see!

Hi there!

I've had to take a moment to dust the spiderwebs off this blog just now...

My life has been so busy over the last month, however the diet has been going so well!

I was just reading an amazing interview that a magazine did with my friend who's lost more than two thirds of her original body weight - wow, what an inspiration! She is so determined and hear mind seems to be in such a good place! Please take a moment and read this, it is awe inspiring!

http://www.stlexercise.com/FlashAmy/flashamy/flashamyindex.html

I can't tell you how happy I am that I've lost just over 13kg, it is making such a huge difference, but it does pale in comparison to the amount of weight I still have to loose...

The trick seems to be not to get overwhelmed by the big picture, but to do the best you can every day, as my aforementioned friend taught me.

Any way, enough with the serious stuff, there have been a couple of awesome recipes since I last posted on here.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a major stew craving and the thought of giant hearty pot of ratatouille dawned on me...

Ratatouille is such an obvious diet food, so easy to prepare and above all, SO versatile, so I really recommend making a huge big pot full and saving the left-overs in little zip lock bags in the freezer.

Ratatouille

• 2 large aubergine
• a packet of baby marrows
• a couple of bell peppers, different colours
• 3 tins of chopped tomatoes
• some diced carrots
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 3 cloves of minced garlic
• a few sprigs of thyme and oregano
• Salt and pepper to taste

This is so simple, really just chop everything up and chuck it in a big pot, a slow cooker is even better and let it simmer until everything is soft and all the flavours have infused.

Honestly, this stuff only gets better after a day or two spent in the fridge, AND you can basically put anything you have in the fridge into it!

It is especially yummy with breakfast, I like to heat up a few spoon fulls and serve it with hot scrambled eggs, along with a spoon full of chunky fat free cottage cheese. Or, the other day, I heated some in a small oven-proof dish, along with some diced low fat Vienna's and made two dents in it with a spoon and cracked an egg into each hole and baked in the oven till the eggs are cooked to your preference.

I hope you will have fun with this recipe and I hope I will continue to make your diet easier with yummy recipes!

Good night to you, God bless

Janie B

Beginning of week 4

Hi All

Triumphantly I started week 4 yesterday, having lost nearly 8 kg, I am extremely happy!

Neither of us have cheated and we are constantly patting each other on the back for that :)

So, today at work, a colleague (a skinny, gorgeous colleague) said something to a patient that rang very true in my own life.  She was talking about how South Africa is one of the fattest nations on earth, and she made the following claim:  South Africans are always having a party. 

Always having a party of course translates into always having party food - breakfast, lunch and supper.

This is so true for my former life, if I think about it now, weekends (the ones I don't work) were invariably spent in the kitchen, cooking and baking the most wondrous food creations, adored by family and friends, all too happy to accept frequent invitations to lavish dinners at our home.  And in return, I loved cooking for them, nothing in this world gives me greater pleasure than making food for a loved one and seeing them enjoy it and asking for more!

Shopping for these dinners usually turned out to be very expensive, as I seldom planned them, I'd just start paging through my enormous library of gorgeous cookbooks for inspiration, go to the grocery store and start piling in ingredients, and usually by the time I've gathered what I deemed necessary and standing in line for a till, a second wave of inspiration struck, and more food needed to be bought.  And of course the obligatory coke and chocolate for the drive home and a little treat for me to munch on when everyone's left...

You can see how I often ended up with way too much stuff in my fridge and an overstocked pantry with many goods way beyond their sell-by dates.

Even just supper with my husband was never just supper, no, I really made a party out of every meal, there always had to be pudding, even if it was just a chocolate after dinner.  If I think back to my childhood, and what my mother fed our family - the difference is so vast.  For supper we'd always have meat, except once a week when she'd make macaroni and cheese, other evenings we'd get a small portion of meat - 2 lamb chops or meatballs - accompanied by a warm vegetable portion, a salad portion and a starch portion, which was always rice or some kind of potato incarnation.  In other words, an extremely balanced and healthy lifestyle.

Dinner in my house as an adult would frequently be nachos smothered in cheese and sour cream, spaghetti bolognese smothered in mozzarella - that cheese and starch pattern is fairly consistent as the list goes on...

I always wonder where I derailed from these principles, and I so suspect those diet pills are the ones to blame, instilling a lifetime of bad eating habits.

Anyway, so, in order to achieve a healthier lifestyle, party food will have to be reserved for parties from now on, this I solemnly vow. 

This does of course mean that party food is still out of the question for the time being, since I still have loads of weight to shed.

However, one has to make due with the cards that one is dealt - so in my case - I try to come up with delicious recipes, ones that should fool even the most perverted of taste buds!   Like my AWESOME roast red pepper and garlic dip - used to dunk crudite or stuff chicken with, the possibilities are endless!

Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Dip

• 2 large red bell or pimento peppers
• 1 large head of garlic
• 1 tub of fat-free cottage cheese

Roast the peppers in a hot oven 220 degrees Celsius, until the skin in nice and black, you have to turn them once.  Take them out of the oven and into a glass bowl and cover with clingfilm and allow to cool.  Meanwhile, roast the garlic at about 180 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes.

Take the skin off the peppers and deseed them, cut the top off the roasted garlic and squeeze out the roast garlic, it will be a luscious sweet paste with a gentle garlic fragrance, unlike the rather pungent uncooked version.

Blend in a blender, together with the cottage cheese and season to taste.  Enjoy!

Have a great evening and God bless

Janie B