Five easy starters

So you’ve got guests coming for dinner, or you want to make something a bit special for your other half or family, but you’re tight for time.  An easy way to make a meal special is to do a starter.  A three course meal automatically sounds impressive, but it can be very easy to whip up a quick tasty starter.  Often you can do them in advance which saves time later.  Here are my top five suggestions for quick and easy starters:

Note: all these starters are for two people, so multiply the quantities if you want to do more!

Purchase Xanax Online Legally https://eloquentgushing.com/13di5uduw8 Avocado and prawn salad

For the salad you will need: one ripe avocado, some crisp lettuce, some cucumber, and some cooked prawns – as many as you want to eat!

https://merangue.com/wh2o6p9 Its nice to make Marie-rose sauce to go on top, but if you don’t want to bother with that, any dressing from a bottle is good – a vinaigrette, or a fruity dressing will go nicely.

Marie-rose sauce (mix all these ingredients together – go easy on the last three items, add a drop and taste, then add a bit more to get to your required taste):
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon tomato ketchup
Lemon juice
Black pepper or Tabasco sauce
Worcestershire sauce

https://www.completerehabsolutions.com/blog/gtzzfoslvy Chop up the lettuce and cucumber and lay it on the bottom of the plate.  Slice the avocado and lay it on top of the salad.  Scatter the prawns over the top.  Drizzle your Marie-rose sauce or dressing over the top.

Smoked salmon and cream cheese rolls

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You will need: some crisp lettuce and some cucumber, a 100g packet of smoked salmon, some cream cheese (full or half fat, not low fat), lemon juice, black pepper.

https://inteligencialimite.org/2024/08/07/7xo8mk0i Arrange the chopped up lettuce and cucumber on the plate.  Separate the smoked salmon into layers and spread them out on a board or plate.  Carefully spread a thin layer of cream cheese over the smoked salmon.  Roll up the smoked salmon into a sausage shape.  Cut the “sausage” into slices, and arrange the “wheels” on top of the salad.  Drizzle a little lemon juice on top and grind a little black pepper over the top too.

Cheap Xanax Overnight You will need a light touch when spreading the cheese, and a sharp knife used very gently when chopping the “sausage” up.

https://oevenezolano.org/2024/08/n7v34lw09k Baked blue cheese mushroom

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https://foster2forever.com/2024/08/nr60o9aljw.html You will need: two Portobello mushrooms, crushed garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, blue cheese, mozzarella, and parsley.

https://www.clawscustomboxes.com/leve86nowma Preheat the oven to 200 C.  Drizzle the mushrooms with the oil and garlic and seasoning, and put them in the oven on a baking tray for 15 minutes. 

Buy Real Xanax Bars Then take them out and sprinkle the blue cheese and mozzarella on top and then the parsley and some black pepper on top of that.  Put them back in the oven until the cheese has melted – 5 to 10 minutes.

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You will need: smooth pate, Melba toast (bought), some crisp lettuce and some cucumber, vinaigrette dressing.

Cheap Xanax Online Simply place a nice chunk of pate on the plate, with some Melba toast, and the salad.  To make it look nice, fan out the Melba toast, and try using a biscuit cutter to make the pate a fancy shape.  I used a star shape once – it was a bit fiddly but it looked good.  You could use a heart if it’s for your loved one!

https://solomedicalsupply.com/2024/08/07/6j916jrje https://nedediciones.com/uncategorized/c3tx15x96 Melon with summer fruit sauce

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https://udaan.org/o4s2ky3z.php You will need: a ripe melon, some frozen summer fruits, crystallized ginger, a bit of sugar, some cornflour

Xanax Mexico Online Leave a handful of summer fruits out to defrost.  Later put them in a small saucepan, with a bit of sugar, the chopped up ginger, a bit of cornflour, and a drop of water.  Heat them up until the cornflour thickens the mixture.  Drizzle the summer fruit mixture over slices of melon.

Buy Xanax Nz Enjoy! 

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Help! I can’t be bothered to cook tonight – 7 top tips to stay healthy

https://eloquentgushing.com/sggi9dxjua The dilemma – you want a healthy dinner … but you don’t feel like cooking.

https://polyploid.net/blog/?p=eet4l6e919 So you’ve just got in after work, you’ve had a long day, and you don’t feel like cooking. Or maybe you feel off color but you’re still hungry. Or maybe you’ve run out of energy after running round after a toddler all day.

Buy Xanax Europe You recognize the situation I’m sure, or something very similar.   We all have days like that.  It’s the day when healthy eating resolutions can go out of the window because you just want to eat without cooking, or you want something sugary to cheer yourself up. Deep down though you know that a healthy meal will be better for you in the long run.  If you snack on junk food or get a takeaway you won’t feel better and you might even have feelings of guilt or failure that you’ve ruined a healthy diet.  Of course one takeaway doesn’t ruin a healthy diet, but if it happens too often, things can start to slip.

Order Green Xanax Bars Online So here are my top tips to help out with healthy dinners on those evenings where you want the meal to be low or no effort:

  1. Keep packets of frozen vegetables in – the ones you steam for a couple of minutes in the microwave. They have just as many vitamins as fresh vegetables and ironically may be fresher.
  2. Baked potatoes – a potato will do in the microwave in 15 minutes. Use as an accompaniment or top with cottage cheese and chives for a main meal.
  3. A tin of baked beans is invaluable. Heat up in a pan for 5 minutes, or 2 minutes in the microwave. Serve on wholemeal toast, or with baked potato and grated cheese.
  4. Always have some eggs in the fridge. It’s easy to whip up scrambled eggs on toast, or a quick omelette with something like cheese, ham, mushroom, or tomato.
  5. Keep some breaded chicken or fish fillets in the freezer, which cook in about 20 minutes in the oven. Serve with low fat oven chips which can go on the same tray in the oven, together with baked beans or frozen vegetables. Choose breaded rather than battered products as they are healthier, and try and avoid the budget ranges as the quality of meat will not be very high.
  6. Keep a carton of fresh soup in the fridge, or tins of soup in the cupboard. Simply heat up and serve with fresh bread. Watch the salt content of the soup as it can be high.
  7. Investigate the supermarket ready meals section. Most of them do healthier ranges these days. Buy a couple and keep them in the freezer for emergencies. Make sure they can be cooked from frozen in the oven.

Just remember, if you give in and order a takeaway its not the end of the world.  Just make sure it doesn’t happen every day!

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Chicken in Dill Mustard sauce

This week I’ve had another go at a recipe using chicken breasts.  I seem to cook with them once or twice a week so its good to try out some new recipes.  Once again this is an Epicurious recipe, and I halved the ingredients below as I was only cooking for two people.

https://blog.extraface.com/2024/08/07/6mutzt0glfu Ingredients (for 4 people):
1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
4 whole chicken legs (2 lb total)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup chopped shallots (2 large)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2 teaspoons whole-grain or coarse-grain mustard
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

The method can be found here.


As always I made some adjustments to the ingredients, although I followed the method fairly closely.  I used chicken breasts not leg pieces, I had red wine open so I used that instead of white, I used some chopped onion instead of shallots, and I used dried dill not fresh.  

As always I used an oil spray and not actual oil.  This did not turn out very well as my rather cheap frying pan seems to have lost a lot of its non-stickness.  I think I need to get a new one.  I spent a lot of time scraping the stuff off the bottom of the pan.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with this recipe.  I suppose it might have been better with white wine, but I could barely taste the dill, and the bit I could taste, I wasn’t really sure that the flavour went with the chicken.  I much prefer dill with salmon.  I probably wont bother to do this recipe again.  It was pleasant but nothing special.

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Top ten weight maintenance tips

A lot is written on the internet about weight loss and relatively little about weight maintenance.  If you view any internet forums, you may see twenty boards about various diets, and then one board for weight maintenance.  However weight maintenance is the most important part of the journey!  If you don’t focus on it then slowly and surely you will end up where you started.  Many people who diet end up regaining the weight that they lost, and that says to me that the emphasis of a weight loss journey should be to show someone how to build healthy habits to keep their weight off for life.


So with that in mind, here are my top ten tips for keeping the weight off:

  1. https://aiohealthpro.com/i298fagvteb Weigh yourself weekly, and set yourself a goal weight range covering 7 pounds.  When you get near the top end of the range, start keeping a food diary to work out where you might be letting unhealthy habits creep in again.
  2. Exercise – it doesn’t have to be anything fancy but it must be regular.  Even if all you do is take a walk for 20 minutes 5 days a week, something is always better than nothing, and the https://solomedicalsupply.com/2024/08/07/a7hrnlw911 consistency of doing of exercise will keep your weight down.
  3. Try out healthy new recipes or new foods for lunch or dinner to https://mandikaye.com/blog/l9mte861l keep an interest in healthy food.  I like to try and do one new recipe every week if possible.
  4. Take a https://transculturalexchange.org/2fdgdn9jl packed lunch to work so that you can control what’s in it.  Do not buy extra food in your lunch hour to supplement the meal!
  5. If you know you are going to eat a lot one day, for example if you have a social occasion coming up, plan out the https://www.clawscustomboxes.com/3hpwp2uf08x following days menu in advance and keep it light, and include lots of fruit and vegetables.
  6. Avoid unexpected unhealthy snacks that people offer you by politely saying, “No thanks, I’ve just eaten”, or “No thanks, I’m full”.  Don’t say that you are trying to be healthy or they may try and sabotage your intentions by insisting you eat the snack.
  7. https://www.completerehabsolutions.com/blog/hxemlbuiz4q Try not to drink your calorie allowance.  Generally I stick to water and tea for drinks, with a glass of wine in the evening.  I rarely drink soft drinks, and if I have fruit juice or milk I try to include them as part of a meal, normally breakfast.
  8. Try and stick to https://mandikaye.com/blog/ffyd5bly9r home cooking.  There may be extra calories in supermarket ready meals and restaurant food that you don’t need.
  9. Always watch your portion size.  Remember if you are still hungry after you have finished you can always have more food, but if you serve too large a portion up in the first place you are more likely to eat it anyway if its there on your plate.
  10. Try to plan in advance what you will eat the next day for meals and snacks because then you are more likely to stick to it, and less likely to eat unhealthy food you didn’t plan for.  Its useful to try and plan a week at a time, although at the very least just planning the next day is helpful.

What are your top tips for weight maintenance?

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Pan-Roasted Stilton Chicken with Apples

I’m always on the lookout for new recipes that use chicken breasts, so here is one I tried from Epicurious.  I chose this one because I also had a lot of apples in that needed eating up.  Now I only used half the quantities below because I was making it for two people.

https://blog.extraface.com/2024/08/07/xd95705 Ingredients (for 4 people):
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (about 1 1/2 pounds)

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 unpeeled Honeycrisp or Fuji apples, cored and sliced 1/4 inch thick (about 2 1/4 cups)
2 ounces Stilton cheese, crumbled (about 1/3 cup)

The method can be found here.

As always, I doctored the recipe slightly based on what I had in.  I wasn’t sure if chicken breast halves were what I would call a chicken breast, or half of one of those.  So in the end I used one chicken breast per person – but I did butterfly it (sliced in half but left the halves attached down the middle) because I know this is the best way to ensure it cooks properly in the middle.

I didn’t measure my salt and pepper out, and I forgot to go and get fresh rosemary from the garden before it got dark so I just used dried.  I used my oil spray (Frylight), instead of both the oil and the butter.  I have no idea what type of apple I have, it was just one of the eating apples that come in my veg box.

Finally, I didn’t have Stilton in but I did have Dolcelatte so I used that instead.  I didn’t measure it either, I just used what looked like a sensible amount.

The end result was extremely yummy, despite my alterations!  I think this one might make it on to my list of favorite quick and easy recipes.  I served it with a little mashed potato, and some steamed vegetables.

 

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