Getting Saucy

One of the first things I learned to cook with my Mum was lasagne. Admittedly, she would make the bolognese and the bechamel sauce...my role in the dish was the assembly job.  The preparation time involved made you appreciate the meaty creamy layers when you finally took it out of the oven. Obviously the flour based sauce, full fat cheese and mince certainly helped me build some layers of my own!

Luckily,on Extra Easy we have quark. It's syn free, so beaten with some eggs and a Healthy A portion of grated reduced fat cheddar you can feel a little more relaxed about the creamy topping on your lasagne. There's no need to worry about the sauce going lumpy in the saucepan....you don't even need to cook quark white sauce just pour it over the top before cooking in the oven as usual. With extra lean meat, plenty of mushrooms, peppers and onions, pasta or potato layers..you can tuck in to a large plateful.

The same principle is used in the featured recipe on the Slimming World site - Moussaka. I am trying that tonight after several friends have recommended it. Essentially its very similar to a lasagne. The key differences are the use of aubergines instead of pasta, quorn or lamb instead of beef mince to which cinnamon is added rather than basil or oregano.  Both of these dishes keep well in the fridge or freezer for ready meals so make a large batch.

Note: I follow Extra Easy and for simplicity don't reference Green and Red days a great deal here!

It's not pay day yet..and the fridge is empty!

The sight of half a bottle of milk, a few scraps of salad stuff and little stains on the fridge shelves where your groceries had been last week is a slimmer's nightmare. Couple it with the slowest week of every month (the one before pay day) and you have yourself a serious emergency! This is time when you'll see the ignored box of biscuits for cheese and the box of chocs you have hidden since christmas. They call you, they genuinely do at times like these. Worse still, if you live very close to a chip shop as I do, the smell of that batter and fat drifting along the street gets your tummy rumbling.

Eating healthily needn't be expensive and with the following tips you'll also find that these little emergencies could become a thing of the past. If you have a freezer, a fridge, paper and a pen you can take action right now to make next month a breeze.

Empty fridge emergency kit - yes, I mean a box in your cupboard that you can grab at those times of temptation and find rations to fuel you up until you go for your weekly big shop!

• Ryvita minis
• Hi-fi bars
• Dark chocolate bar (place in the freezer and eat chunk by chunk - it lasts longer in your mouth and tastes great)
• Low syn ready meals or tubs full of leftovers (again one for the freezer) to grab in a hurry.
• 220g tins of spaghetti or beans (quick to heat up and snack on!)
• Jar of Bovril (for a quick hot drink)
• Options hot chocolate sachets (2 syns but excellent for chocolate cravings)
• Batchelors savoury rice
• Batchelors Pasta and Sauce
• Tinned mixed veg.
• Smash

It does sound a little as though you're preparing for battle on the Western Front or some kind of natural disaster but this genuinely works even if it makes you chuckle a bit to yourself!

Making your well earned cash go further.
I love a bargain, and finding it's doing me good health-wise is a real bonus. So here are some ways for you to try or investigate for yourself.

• Bargain bin bonanza times - See this list from Moneysaving Expert that tells you when the best reductions are. This is an especially good way to get organic meats and fish.
• Beat waste, buy the perfectly good food that usually ends up in the bin. Bacon offcuts from your butcher (trim off the fat and they are a chunkier, more satisfying syn free treat). Salmon trimmings - available from most supermarkets - great on scrambled egg.
• Gammons instead of Ham - cook it yourself, slice it to your preferred thickness, save money.
• Grow your own veg in pots outside your house.
• Make everything go further by adding extra vegetables to lasagne's, chillies, curries, packet pasta/rice, soups.
• Make a list of the meals you'd like to have over the week (you don't have to pick which day at this stage) and then list out what you need. It's good old common sense isn't it!

Pass on your money saving or fridge emergency tips in the comments below. Good luck with next month's shopping!




Note: I follow Extra Easy and for simplicity don't reference Green and Red days a great deal here!