Healthy Eating Made Tasty With Lo-dough and Their Cook Books

 I don't think that I've ever made a secret of the fact that I'm conscious of my weight, I strive to be healthy and this means watching what I eat.

In recent months I've taken to using My Fitness Pal, tracking both my calories and my macros. This means keeping a count of what fats, proteins and carbs I consume each day (sounds complicated, I promise it's not).

What's surprising is how many calories/macros are in the foods we eat, some foods that I though were healthy are most certainly not. So many things high in carbs - not the good kind either - making it difficult to stay on track sometimes.

Recently I was asked if I would like to review lo-dough, now this was a company I hadn't heard of but I was intrigued by both their food products and the handy recipe books that went alongside them.

Here's what their website has to say:

A convenient food innovation made entirely from just protein and fibre, it’s your answer to reducing calories and carbs in 100s of dishes.

By using Lo-Dough instead of traditional bread products, pizza, kebabs and burritos become dishes that fit into a balanced and nutritious diet.

Don’t believe it’s possible? We’ve tried and tested over 300 recipes on our website to show you how.

Lo-Dough is your secret weapon to feeling full and satisfied without loading up on excess calories or feeling bloated.

I was kindly sent a selection of their products including wraps, brownie mix, southern style coating and their all new cake bars. As well as both of their inspiring cook books.

Making Fajitas With a Little Help From Birds Eye

I don't know about you, but I seem to find myself extra busy in Spetember.

After a relaxing interesting 6 weeks off from the school run, we are back into the routine of school, homework and early bed times with a bang.

Dinner times can end up being boring as I just don't seem to have the time to come up with new ideas of things to eat, we end up getting stuck in a rut of eating the same things on a weekly basis.

Birds Eye to the rescue.

This lovely company have enlisted the help of some talented little chefs to bring us parents a range of ideas for tasty dinner time recipes, designed to be yummy and appealing to even the fussiest of taste buds.

The list includes :

Fish Finger Pizza

Waffle Submarine

Waffle Nachos

The girls and I opted to make the Chicken Dipper Fajitas seen as normal fajitas are always a family favourite.

Chocolate Chip Cookie In a Mug

It is no secret that I love cake. I shared my recipe for peanut butter mug cake a while ago and since then I've been trying to make all sorts of cakes in my trusty mug. Then I came across cookie in a mug. After a bit of trial and error.

Who needs Mcdonalds...

Well it has been a busy few days, what with Christmas and New Year and there seems to have been a lack of cooking going on!! So today we decided it was indeed time to do away with the Christmas leftovers and make something yummy from scratch. 

We all decided on beef burgers, something simple that the girls could help me make and a much better alternative to Mcdonalds.

Ingredients

* 500 - 750g of fresh beef mince, depending on how many burgers you are wanting to make, I find the lean mince is better.

* tomato ketchup

* seasoning

* Bread rolls

Preparation

* Break the mince up into a large bowl.

* Pour in around 2 tbsps of tomato ketchup and pinch of salt and pepper.

* Knead the ingredients together.

Cooking Up a Storm with Oven Pride

I was recently asked to take part in a challenge set by the people at Oven Pride in the hopes of becoming one of their 'Pride of Oven Pride' bloggers. The challenge seemed fairly simple, write a cooking blog post using a pack of goodies that Oven Pride would send us, challenge accepted.

I opted to have a different pack sent to me that would allow my lovely children to get involved with the cooking process, I was so surprised at what turned up in our package!!! Chefs hats for all of the girls, an oven mitt, lots of lovely utensils ready for baking fun, a recipe sheet and of course that essential pack  Oven Pride cleaner, ready for getting rid of the mess at the end. We were also sent a voucher that allowed us to go and pick up those much needed ingredients.

There were four recipes to choose from and we decided to make the ginger bread biscuits and the crusty bread as these seemed the most kid friendly recipes.

Whilst the eldest two were at school, Gracie, Layla and I popped to the shops to pick up all the ingredients needed and for once I didn't forget a single thing on my list. 

The first thing that needed to be done when we began to bake was pop on those special chefs hats because you know they really help with the baking process.

Then came all the measuring, melting, mixing, rolling and stirring. With puffs of flour and sprinkles of salt, a little help from mummy and lots of lovely biscuits and bread were ready for the oven. The smells coming from the oven were delicious and we had a little peek through the glass, watching the dough slowly rising. I was really surprised at how simple the bread was to make, no more than 5 minutes to prepare simply mixing all of the ingredients together and 20 minutes in the oven. The gingerbread biscuits took longer because the dough had to set in the fridge for a couple of hours.

The girls had lots of fun making both the bread and the biscuits, as you can see from the pictures above,  they all work together nicely, including little Layla, even though she was more interested in trying to eat the dough before it was cooked!!!

Below are a couple of pictures of the finished products fresh out of the oven, that was their lunch sorted for the next day and of course I needed to have a little taste test to make sure they were alright to eat ;)

Once all the baking was done, well the fun part was over so my wonderful children left me to do all of cleaning. That's where the complete oven cleaner from Oven Pride came in handy, made light work of a daunting task!!! And of course I rewarded myself with a ginger biscuit after I had finished!! 

I'm now looking forward to trying out the other couple of recipes that Oven Pride provided for us.

xxxx

Disclaimer : I was sent a voucher and utensils for the purposes of this challenge however all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Brussels Sprouts Love Them or Hate Them?

Whilst wandering around the supermarket trying to decide what vegetables to put with our roast dinner last weekend, I spotted brussels sprouts. Now this vegetable is a bit like marmite, you either love it or you hate it, there doesn't seem to be an inbetween. These are my favourite vegetable!! Daddy Hazelden however, is not their number one fan but I dislike having to cook lots of different veggies.

A couple of years ago my mum and I came across a lovely recipe from Jamie Oliver that made brussels sprouts that little bit more appealing, he called them brussels with hustle. Even Daddy Hazelden will tell you that these are delicious. To make it my own, I added a bit of onion to it.

Ingredients

Brussels Sprouts

Streaky Bacon

1/2 an Onion

Sage of Rosemary

Worcester Sauce

Butter for cooking

Olive oil

Cooking

* Chop the brussels up finely

* Put olive oil and a knob of butter into a pan and heat

* Place in the bacon, onion and herbs and fry for a few minutes

* Add the brussels and a splash of water, put the lid on and fry for a further 4 minutes

* Then add another knob of butter and worcester sauce (as much as you like) mix and serve

You can make as much or as little as you like depending on how many brussels and rashers of bacon you use. You can even save some and reheat it the next day, even better flavour!!

xxxx

What's For Dinner Tonight??

Being a family of six, the shopping bill normally ends up far more expensive than I want it to be, we tend to stick to the same type of meals to keep the cost down, this means dinner times can become quite boring.

So when I got the chance to review Schwartz new 2 in 1 range, I was more than happy to accept. There are 5 different varities of this new range and I didn't know which ones I would be getting. I received two different recipe mix sachets, Mediterranean Chicken Pasta and Cheesy Crumb topping and Garlic and Thyme Roast Chicken and Crispy Roast Potatoes. 

I chose to make the Mediterranean Chicken Pasta first, mainly because we always have pasta in the cupboard and is a firm favourite in our house.

The idea of the 2 in 1 range is that you have one sachet that flavours the main dish and one sachet that either contains seasoning for a complementary side dish or a topping for the main dish.

I love how it is two sachets in one, you open one up at the top of the packet and open the other up at the bottom of the packet.

On the back of the packet it clearly states what ingredients will be needed to make the dish and there is a simple recipe to follow too, so even if you think you can't cook, I think you would struggle to go wrong with this!!

So let's start with the list of ingredients needed :

* the sachet of Schwartz 2 in 1 mediterranean pasta

* 1 tbs of oil

* 450g boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced 

* 1 pepper

* 150ml of water

* 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

* 200g pasta

* 75g grated cheddar cheese

I like that there aren't too many ingredients to buy, I must admit I cheated and bought frozen chicken strips as this was cheaper than buying the chicken breasts.

Before I could begin cooking, I needed to prepare the food, this meant chopping up the pepper, cooking the pasta, mixing the chicken pasta mix with water and browning the chicken pieces.

Once everything was prepared, the cooking of the dish was quick and straight forward, this would be an ideal meal if you don't have a lot of time on your hands. Simply add the diced pepper to the already cooked chicken, cook for 2 minutes then stir in the sauce and the chopped tomatoes, bring to the boil then simmer, add the pasta and heat through for another couple of minutes. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and sprinkle with the cheesy crumb topping and then cover in the grated cheese. Place under the grill for 4-5 minutes until golden, what did I say, oh that's right, easy!!

Once cooked, it was time to dish up, the children by this point were already sitting at the table, some would think I don't feed them enough!! 

I was really impressed with just how much food this recipe made!! It not only fed the whole family, we had left overs too. Everyone gave it a big thumbs up, plenty of flavours and textures and very filling.

I will be making the Thyme Roast Chicken meal on Sunday, roast dinners are Daddy Hazelden's favourite, you never know I might even manage to get him to cook it instead of me, a girl can dream :)

xxxx

*This post is an entry for Britmums "What's For Dinner Tonight?" sponsored by Schwartz*