Recipe- 5-a-day Turkey Bolognese

Now while this recipe alone wont give you your five a day in one meal, it contains 6 different veg so it'll get you on your way. It's healthy, tasty, something the whole family can eat, and it's cheap. I quite often think that Slimming World think we're made of money - if you were to follow one of their weekly eating plans from the mag or website you'd either need to remortgage or sell a kidney. And I'm quite fond of my kidneys. It makes a big old pan of hearty bolognese for around a fiver, can't say fairer than that. Ok, so it doesn't contain the 3 tins of caviar, 17 lobsters and half a lamb that you may be accustomed to if you like a SW recipe, but I guarantee it's a lot more tasty. And I couldn't get my kids to eat lobster anyway...

To make Recipe- 5-a-day Turkey Bolognese for 6-8 people (depending on how much you eat yourself while it's cooking...) you will need (count the veggies with me! Can you tell I'm a mum?!):

• 500g turkey mince (less than 5% fat)
• 1 large onion (1)
• 2 gloves garlic
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 courgette (2)
• a big pepper, or couple of handfulls of frozen peppers (3)
• 1 big carrot or a couple of small ones (4)
• around 8 mushrooms (5)
• 500g carton of passata (6)
• 1 beef stock cube
• dash of worcestershire sauce
• dash of balsamic vinegar
• dried Italian herbs - I used basil and oregano
• salt and pepper

Throw your mince into a large pan and break up with a wooden spoon. While the mince is browning chop your onion, garlic, peppers and mushrooms. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and soften, before adding the tomato puree and cooking a few minutes more. Grate your courgette and carrot straight into the pan and combine it all together. At this point chuck everything else in - and fill the passata carton half full with water, swill it around to get every last bit, and add that too. Season with plenty of pepper, but check the salt - you might not need it as the stock cube and worcestershire sauce are quite salty. Let it all simmer for around half an hour and serve with your choice of pasta or, if you must, courgetti *shudders*

This makes a huge pan - plenty to feed my brood plus enough for 2 adult lunches the next day. It's a good job too because I came downstairs after settling the baby for the twelfth time this evening to find the cat helping herself to my plate. I'm not fussy usually, but she licks her arse and I've seen what comes out of it. Anyway, you can use the bolognese for lasagne too - use fat free cottage cheese for the white sauce and your healthy a of what ever cheese you like on top. Yum!

Hx

Recipe- Go-with-anything Roasted Veg

Hello!

Roasted veg may be a bit of a no brainer but it's something I often over look in favour of yet another salad. I know Slimming World say you should have 1/3 of your plate with speed food, but sometimes you just want to chuck something in the oven and forget about it until the smoke alarm goes off (just me?) and not faff about with ricing a cauliflower or spiralising the contents of your veg rack. This is perfect for that. You can use pretty much any veg you like, cook a massive tray of it and save what you don't eat in the fridge, reheat or eat it cold and even use it in other dishes. Easy.

To make Go-with-anything Roasted Veg you will need:

• Vegetables - I would suggest onion and peppers as a minimum but then you can add anything you like. I used a red onion, a big courgette, couple of handfuls of frozen peppers, half a butternut squash, and a few baby leeks because that was what I had sat wilting miserably in the bottom of the fridge but you could add aubergine, cherry tomatoes, sweet potato, carrot, cauliflower, parsnip, asparagus, baby corn, celeriac, fennel, marrow, mushrooms - if it's a vegetable throw it in and see what happens. 
• Fry light or spray oil, or syn some olive oil.
• Balsamic vinegar.
• Dried oregano, basil, rosemary or thyme - or any other hard herb you like.
• Salt and pepper

You can also chuck a few cloves of garlic in, but I find it makes it bitter. Not sure why, but I just can't get garlic right so I leave it out. 

Just chop all your veg so they're roughly all the same size. It's going to be impossible to get a cauliflower floret the same size as an asparagus spear so don't go whittling them down, just get them roughly similar. Chuck it all into an oven dish and add a splash of balsamic, a sprinkle of your herb of choice and salt and pepper. Then spray it all with fry light until your finger hurts. Give it a mix around and bung it in the oven for about half an hour-45 minutes, giving it a wiggle around halfway through.

I chucked a frozen fish filet on top about 10 minutes before the end for a light lunch (perfect for SP if you've not used sweet potato or parsnip), but you can serve it with whatever you like - chicken, pork chops, sausages, or mix it into some cous cous, chuck it in a crustless quiche or add some passata for a quick speed-packed pasta sauce.

Hx

Recipe- Speedy and Saintly Chicken Stir Fry

This meal is a bit of an unappetising looking bugger, but it is packed with flavour and amazingly saintly. It's also ready in just minutes which is great if your 8 year old has developed a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush, your 6 year old has crapped himself 3 times, the baby had a meltdown because you wouldn't let her empty the bin and play with the contents or if it's generally just been a long day. AAAND it's 75% speed food, perfect for EE:SP if you're that way inclined (more on that another time), and so will definitely compensate for earlier when the spoon jumped into the nutella jar and straight into your mouth. Twice.

To make Speedy and Saintly Chicken Stir Fry you will need:

• One chicken breast
• One small onion
• One garlic clove
• One small courgette
• One small carrot
• Half a small cauliflower (or half a tub pre-prepared cauli rice)
• Soy sauce
• Pinch of chilli flakes (or more if you're brave and have toilet paper on standby in the fridge)

First of all, unless you've cheated and bought pre-prepared cauli rice, you're going to need to either blitz your cauliflower in a food processor until it resembles couscous, or grate it (messy, very messy!). Once that's done, spray a wok or large frying pan with frylight and get it hot while you slice your chicken and onion, and mince or finely chop the garlic. Once the wok is hot chuck in the chook until browned all over, then add the onion and garlic. Let that cook while you go at your courgette and carrot with a speed peeler to get nice long ribbons. You could use a spiraliser if you haven't lost it at the back of a cupboard somewhere like I definitely haven't done. Well, maybe I might have. Anyway, chuck the veg in the pan with a good glug of soy and a pinch of chilli, and stir fry until the chicken is done. Add your cauli rice and cook for 4 minutes more, serve and polish your halo.

The recipe serves one very generously, so just increase the quantities or add whatever veg you like to increase the volume. You could chuck in a stir fry pack, chop up some peppers, add beansprouts, mange tout, green beans, cabbage, brussels. Really fart it up.

Hx