Held it together and ate out successfully!

7^th December 2013 

There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.

I rushed round yesterday morning t get everything done so that I could have lunch with my mates before our training session, the upside of that was I forgot all about having breakfast, so I grabbed a banana on my way out.  

I did exactly what I said I was going to do at the Harvester despite being given their Christmas festive menu as a tempter, nope I stayed strong and asked for “8oz rump steak cooked rare, with peas (no butter) and baby potatoes, then I only had zero salad options from the salad bar to pop my plate up and drank diet pepsi (maybe too many of those as I’m not used to the caffeine!).  In the Eat Out guide it says 12pp for that meal, so an 8oz rump steak is 7pp, 2tbsp peas is 2pp (without the butter which is 1pp per tsp!) so it doesn’t matter where you eat you can order an 8oz steak for 7pp, then work out the rest.  I had boiled potatoes with mine to save ProPoints too yet I actually enjoyed them (eat out guide says 3pp).  I only put down 12pp total on my tracker because I didn’t have butter on the peas which had to save me 2pp and I cut the fat off my steak saving me another ProPoint I’m sure.  The meal of course was completely F&H too, so that’s worth remembering if you want to eat out on F&H and enjoy your meal.

Now my behaviour in the restaurant impressed me, I do love food and the option of someone else cooking for me does usually lead to me going a little crazy with my choices, however I have to admit my lunch was delicious, I don’t eat a lot of salad this time of year – it’s expensive and doesn’t fill me up and it’s cold!  However the combination of it all was delicious, and I especially loved diced beetroot, might have to do that myself.

The traffic home at tea time wasn’t fab and as you can imagine after a working week of roughly 60 hours this week because of training and our conference on Sunday as well as my usual 12 meetings, I was a bit pooped.  I knew I had a defrosted loin of pork that had to be cooked but the idea of doing the recipe I’d chosen from the hairy dieters book wasn’t filling me with joy.  In the car I was thinking what can you cook with pork, it’s not a meat I buy often, then BINGO, I remembered sweet and sour, my smile grew bigger as I thought jar of sauce, let it cook itself.  I popped in the Co-op and compared jars, Uncle Bens was 11pp, however his light version was only 7pp, I did wonder if it would taste as good, so I compared ingredients and they looked pretty similar, and tea only took ten minutes maximum, diced the pork, removed the fat, fried for 3 minutes added jar and cooked for 5 mins whilst microwaving tilda rice – a perfect 10pp Friday night fakeaway!  I really enjoyed it and will definitely make it again, it’s going on my ‘to eat regularly’ list. 

Sweet & Sour Pork Fakeaway
serves 4 10pp per portion

Uncle Bens light sweet & sour Jar sauce 7pp
350g pork loin diced 14pp 

Cook as per jar instructions, use Tilda rice 10pp (serves 2), to accompany it. 
Tea in under 10 minutes, you’d spend longer than that on the phone ordering!

Of course all this was washed down with two lovely glasses of red before I had an early night to catch up on some much need Zzz’s.  

And this photo shows what happened to the fat from the pork loin, I cooked it on the George Foreman, over 2 tablespoons of oil (8pp) came out (if you cooked it on the meat some of that that would go into the meat), then as you can see the crackling/fat that was left still weighed 16pp!  Not for me thanks, I'll stick to trimming the meat.

Because I haven’t done enough work this week (joke!) I’m actually going to spend this morning in my office sorting it out and working, because Christmas is almost upon us and I actually want to have a good break and forget about my office!

Today’s plan of action involves work, food, chilling.  I have a leg/shank of minted lamb that a lovely lady gave to me, now I’ve worked out using esource that it’s about 80pp thereabouts!  So I’m going to make a nice cooked dinner and weigh my slices, 200g = 10pp, it’ll be worth it, I’ll have loads of veggies with it and Alfie is gonna love the bone out of it!  Might buy a low fat curry sauce to throw some of it in after it’s cooked so that it goes further and I’m not tempted to keep eating it!  I’ll have a browse now for ideas before I cook it. 

Right let’s all Shine this Saturday, as a lady said on Wednesday in my meeting when the leader asked her what’s motivating her to carry on this time of year, her reply was, “I just really want to lose this weight”, that’s the only reason you need isn’t it!

And I have to agree with her, this week I really want to lose this weight!  You with me? 

We can do it being Eating Gorgeous xx