Diets...Bah humbug!

Yup. That's right......I am officially on a diet. Have been for ten days and it sucks :-( Ten days and I have lost 1.5 Kg. Now that may sound OK but we all know that in the first week if you are good, heaps drop off...cos its all water right? Well its not dropping and I know why I hate dieting. Diet food doesn't taste good. I sit here reading my favourite blogs...most of which talk about food!!!!!and I look at my menu plan...meat and salad.....fish and salad...for a bit of excitement you can eat vegetables. Oh and lets not forget. They give you a "treat" if you are good. A low fat dairy dessert. Thanks but no thanks. I don't often eat dessert but when I do, I want it to taste good not plastic.

I am on this diet for health reasons. I am past dieting for vanity! This time I gotta stick to it! I have to find a way to eat 1500 calories (in the old measure)a day and have it taste good AND enjoy it. I will not be beaten . Its going to be a challenge.

I have been given a "diet plan" to follow and its taken me 10 days to realise that I can be smart about this. Tonight's dinner was Chilli con carne. I perused the recipe provided.

450g lean beef mince
1 tbsp canola oil
1 onion finely chopped
1 teaspoon crushed garlic
1/4 cup tomato paste
400g can tomatoes in juice
1 teaspoon sugar
290g can red kidney beans
Mexican chilli powder to taste
chopped parsley.

Served with 1/2 cup rice
40g reduced fat cheese and a side salad.

Blah..... how bland does that sound! That serves four people so if I cook that up for GB and myself tonight. I have to eat it again another night!!!!! to use the rest up. I don't even know what "Mexican chilli powder"is.

I have this method of cooking. It may not suit everyone but it suits me. We grow most of our own vegetables up here at the farm. Because of that, we eat seasonally. Its no good me planning to cook asparagus if we don't have any at the moment but do have a glut of mushrooms, right? So I head out to the garden in the morning with a vague idea in my head of what meat we might eat that night. ( I buy in bulk and freeze, as I don't go shopping very often.) I look at what is available and plan my menu around whats there. Simple as that. I would add that I do keep a very good store cupboard of staples and am not afraid to experiment. I also cook from scratch. So if we are going to eat chilli I use fresh chillies.

I realised that I can tweak this diet to suit me. Tonight I started tweaking. Into the mix went ground coriander, ground cumin, some smoked paprika and a beef stock cube, ground black pepper, extra garlic and three beautiful shiny red fresh chillies. Sit back and taste. Hmmm its getting better. Sprinkle over finely chopped parsley and coriander. Mmmm. I will go with that for today. On to the plate with the rice and just a little under 30g shaved fresh parmesan ( equivalent calories as 40g reduced fat plastic cheese) all served with a nice little side salad of fresh mixed lettuce,rocket and cress from the garden, cherry tomatoes and spring onions. Oh and lets not forget, a crisp glass of savigion blanc ( I traded 1 plastic dessert and 4 dried dates for that!!!) You know I think I may be able to cope with this. Note to self....if you halve the oil allowed for cooking, you can have a little lemon and oil on your salad ;-)

Its only the start but its given me hope :-)

Now I need to go read some of those lovely blogs and figure out how I am going to cook the yummies I read in less than 1500 calories. Wish me luck!

I won't be too long out of bed cos look whose waiting for me

and the Gorgeous boy is there as well ;-)

Night all.