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