Meal planning - week 11

Monday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Leftover pasta bake from Saturday with butternut squash in it (from a Slimming World recipe)
Dinner Cod in a white wine sauce based on this recipe but I will use fat-free Greek yogurt instead of the mascarpone and see if it works!

Did I stick to it?Breakfast: cereal. Morning snack: snackajacks (5 syns). Lunch: Leftover pasta bake, free. Also later had a pasta Mug Shot as an afternoon snack which is free but then realised I'd had pasta twice! Went to gym at lunchtime. Afternoon snack: Weightwatchers yogurt (free). Dinner as above, was very nice - had the cod with veg and no potatoes. Probably about 3 syns for the wine in the sauce. Finished the last glass of wine in the bottle too (7 syns)
Total syns for the day: 15 - really good!

Tuesday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Leftover pasta bake from Saturday with butternut squash in it (from a Slimming World recipe)
Dinner With my boyfriend. I've got an appointment after work and probably won't want to cook afterwards so I'm tempted to say we will get a takeaway, though it's not going to be good for my diet!

Did I stick to it? Breakfast: cereal. Morning snack:packet of Skips (5 syns). Lunch: leftover pasta bake (free). Dinner: saveloy and chips from the chip shop with my boyfriend - my guilty pleasure! Think I have to count 25 syns for the chips and 6 for the saveloy. And after that I had a chocolate doughnut as well! Estimating that at 10 syns - the chips were totally worth it, but I'm not sure the doughnut was.
Total syns for the day: 46, most of that on dinner! It's nice to fall off the wagon sometimes though :-)

Wednesday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch risotto with butternut squash and red onion
Dinner not sure yet - ran out of time so will post this now and come back to it

Did I stick to it? Breakfast: tiny bit of cereal as I'd run out then a cereal bar (Special K- option b choice). Morning: Skips (5 syns). Lunch: didn't have enough butternut squash left from making the pasta bake but I did have some of the pasta bake left, I probably should have thrown it out by now but I didn't have time to prepare anything else so had it for lunch. Afternoon snack: Laughing Cow Light cheese triangles (free). Dinner: fresh pasta - ravioli stuffed with ham and cheese - 5 syns, which is better than I was expecting, and I had it with passata which is free. I didn't really think it through though as I only realised afterwards I've had pasta twice in one day! Won't be having any more pasta for a while!
Total syns for the day: 10. Is that all? That's good!


Thursday
Breakfast ryvita with soft cheese
Lunch Chicken noodle soup - I've used this recipe before and it's great, though I may tweak it slightly as I've made it before without the eggs - it's not as thick but still tastes good. Or I might use the recipe from Slimming World magazine.
Dinner Beer-battered cod, home made, with chunky chips from Tesco. I know, another chip shop style meal.. but I want to make this as the Baking With Spirit challenge this month is beer, and I've always wondered about beer batter and making my own. Bit nervous about the pan of hot oil though!

Did I stick to it? Breakfast ryvita with soft cheese. Lunch: used a different recipe in the end, from a Weightwatchers book, and made chicken mulligatawny soup, which was really nice (and free!). I had a packet of snackajacks afterwards as I needed something crunchy (and I didn't have bread or anything with the soup, though I put little pasta shells in it). - 5 syns. Went to gym at lunchtime. Afternoon snack - fresh pineapple (free), packet of Skips (5 syns). Dinner: this was a really unhealthy one but it was amazing. Had no idea I could batter my own fish! Will do a separate blog post about it soon. No idea how many syns I should count given it was cooked in a lot of oil (albeit not for long) and I had it with chips, and homemade low fat tartare sauce. So I'm going to guess a random 40 syns for that meal and hope I have done enough to still lose weight this week!
Total syns for the day: 50, estimate - dinner was pretty unhealthy but something I really wanted to try.

Friday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Leftover chicken noodle soup
Dinner Hinted very heavily to my boyfriend that he might want to take me out tonight, as I've had a stressful few weeks and I always seem to be the one that makes plans for things to do! So hopefully he will come up with something nice... my guess is a nice country pub near where we live in Surrey as that's more his style than a bar in central London (where we both work).

Did I stick to it? Breakfast: cereal. We had a bake sale at work and I wasn't going to have anything, honest! But I'd made a cake (which I will blog about next week) that I'd never eaten before, so thought I ought to try it, and had the smallest slice I could cut! My boss also makes chocolate cookies that he has brought in for bake sales before, and I've never had one and decided it was about time I should.. so I had one of those as well. (For the record, they were amazing and I might have to ask for the recipe!). So that was probably 20 syns easily, oh dear! For lunch I had my chicken mulligatawny soup which was free.
The evening was a bit of a disaster, but in a nice way. The only place my boyfriend could get a booking for a Friday night was Prezzo - which is nice enough but I'd hoped for somewhere different to a chain pizza restaurant. To be fair he did try several other places first but with no luck! Then we both ended up getting stuck late at work - I was in the office til 7 - so it was lucky the only time he'd been able to get a table for was 8.45! But then we spent 20 minutes circling the town centre looking for somewhere to park in the pouring rain, and couldn't find a single space and in the end decided we had to give up! By this point it was already gone 9pm, I didn't fancy cooking, and we knew if we ordered takeaway it would take the best part of an hour to arrive, so we went to the chip shop! My boyfriend seemed to think he'd failed miserably to take me out on a nice date but I was quite happy snuggling on the sofa back at his house with a plate of chips and the new series of Red Dwarf on TV! But really not good in diet terms as it's the second time I've been to the chip shop in the space of four days, and the third time I've had chips! No idea how many syns for dinner, going to say 25.
Total syns for the day: 45 I think, but on very unhealthy food!

Saturday
Breakfast Planning to have stayed at my boyfriend's so I will either skip breakfast or have a Mullerlight, then maybe grab a ryvita and soft cheese when I get home
Lunch At a birthday party for a relative of my boyfriend's family
Dinner Having my boyfriend over. I want to make a curry and have found a recipe for curried lamb from a cookery book I want to review, though my boyfriend says he doesn't like lamb. Am wondering if I can pass it off as chicken.. if it's spicy enough he won't be able to taste anything else! I'll actually do him a chicken variation on the same curry.

Did I stick to it? Had a cereal bar for breakfast on my way to Slimming World. I had some leftover pasta at around midday as we weren't going to the party til about 1.30, and in the end we didn't really eat anything until 4. It was a very nice buffet, I had some pasta bake (with cheese so a few syns there), some crusty bread, mackarel pate, potato salad, sliced ham and potato tortilla. I reckon there were about 20 syns in all that, plus I had a glass of coke, a glass of wine and a glass of champagne, which is another 20 syns or so. Then I had a bowl of the most amazing tiramisu -there were so many desserts and birthday cake that I couldn't resist, even though I know that was probably another 20 syns. On the plus side, as we ate fairly late in the afternoon, I didn't really want dinner, and my boyfriend and I just had two pieces of toast with Flora spread. The bread was from a small loaf (so the slices were quite small) and it was brown so if I count 5 syns for the cereal bar this morning the bread can be my option b choice, plus another 3 syns for the Flora. I was a bit naughty though - I've just discovered Cadburys has brought out a new chocolate Dairy Milk bar with Oreo pieces - my two favourite things together! (Maybe they can do a peanut butter one next!). So my boyfriend and I shared a bar in the evening - I did let him eat most of it but I probably had 10 syns worth.
Total syns for the day: Don't really want to add it up! OK, here goes.... about 80 I reckon!
Slimming World weigh-in: I was very pleased to find this morning that I'd lost another half a pound, it's not much but after the week I've had I was expecting to have put on! Of course that was before the blow-out I had on Saturday, and I'm in Germany for 4 days next week so I think next week I will end up putting on some weight.

Sunday
Breakfast When my boyfriend stays at my house I never know whether we will be up early and want breakfast, or be up late and skip breakfast and just want lunch, so planning a brunch-style meal is probably the best bet! See below...
Lunch Fry-up, inspired by Henry's Full English from the Fabulous Baker Bros cookbook. Essentially it involves sausages, bacon, fried bread, baked beans and eggs - for my boyfriend. I'll have a slightly healthier variation on that though!
Dinner roast chicken leg, roast potatoes, bread sauce - one of my favourite meals!

Did I stick to it? Did a fry-up for my boyfriend at midday; I had two pieces of crispy bacon with the fat cut off and two Quorn sausages on two pieces of brown bread, spread with Flora. Everything is free apart from the sausages which are 1 syn each and the Flora would be another 1. I also had a glass of juice which is 2.5 syns so in total I had a very filling breakfast for 5.5 syns, and my boyfriend had a big fry-up which would have had at least 4 times that amount but he was happy - and baked beans are one of his five-a-day (I can't stand them!)
Total syns for the day: