Simple cooking with Alana | Eating my Degustabox

I think Simple Cooking could be a series I run on here although it would be pretty much every recipe I put up! As I said a few days ago in my first impressions for the April/May Degustabox, I've still got a couple posts from last month's box and here is one of them!

Muj and I have a ridiculous stash of pastas and sauces in our cupboard but when I received these we couldn't wait to try them out! Of course we had to wait until we were both around at the same time to have it but we got there in the end!

The two Organico products were what I received and we just added mini chicken fillets and some mangetout. Yes you are reading that reduced sticker properly, the mangetout cost 1p! There are still 3 or 4 packets in the freezer along with runner beans that were also 1p. Cheapest veg I've ever bought and it's great having in them in the freezer to chuck in with some meals.

There's not really much to say about this recipe to be honest, brown the chicken, cook the pasta, fling the mangetout in the microwave and add the sauce to the pasta! I told you it was simple cooking ;)

Apart from leaving the mangetout in the fridge too long and it being a bit watery this was a great meal! Definitely filling and it tasted great. Apart from me hating tomatos, the sauce was really nice, I just pushed the big chunks out the way and ate the rest!

And that's it for another simple meal from me. I will no doubt be back soon with another!

Alana x

Chicken & Quinoa | Eating my Degustabox

Last night my flatmate Mary-Jane (or Muj) and I decided that we were going to make  a decent dinner and we turned to the Degustabox I received (first impressions post here). We decided to use the Maggi SoTender Italian Herbs papyrus paper and Alice & Oscar's Quinola Mothergrain Express Quinoa with some reduced to clear chicken breast. I will forever fly the flag of reduced to clear shopping!

It was all very easy to use which put my mind at rest as I am no Gordon Ramsay, apart from maybe the swearing! One of my resolutions this year was to cook more which hasn't happened all that much but these are great for easing yourself in!

For the chicken all you do is take your portion, lay it on one half of the papyrus paper, fold the other half over and flatten it as much as you can. I had a massive portion so couldn't get it that flat but I gave it a go! Stick them in a frying pan - sidenote Muj and I don't have a frying pan yet so we used a soup pot - 10 minutes on each side and hey presto, done! I think next time we will maybe give it a couple extra minutes on each side as both Muj and I though they were a tiny bit undercooked in the middle and her portion was much smaller than mine! Apart from that though, this was so freaking delicious. It smelled and tasted amazing and will definitely be going in my shopping basket during one of my trips to Asda!

I've not had much experience with quinoa so didn't know what to expect with this. We stuck it in the microwave for 2 minutes and that was it done. My favourite kind of cooking, no cooking! I thought the quinoa was really nice, it didn't have too much taste but I liked the texture and it was definitely filling! Half way through the meal, both Muj and I noticed how full we were getting and very oddly for me, I actually left food on my plate!

To finish off the meal we chucked in some cauliflower and broccoli. Our healthy and filling meal was cooked in 20 minutes and it was bloody delicious! We still have two of the papyrus papers left (I was quite shocked to see you get 4 in a packet!) so we will be having that again very soon

 You can buy Maggi products at Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys, and you can find Alice & Oscar stockists on their website (link here).

Venturing into vegan meals

 

How tasty does this look?!

On Friday, I organised for my friends Blair and Manda to come over for homemade burgers. The plan was to make them using lentils but we couldn't find out if we had to soak the lentils in water or not so instead we popped to Asda and bought their Meat Free Chargrill style burger mix and some bits to go with it (Blair brough quite a bit of prep items as well)

 

I'd never tried sweet potato so I was rather excited when I saw them (there were 3 but for some reason I only photographed the one with the mix) I'm doing rather well with trying new foods I think and finding that I like a lot of them as well!

 

The burger mix was quite easy to make, you simply pour it into a bowl, add some water and let it sit for ten minutes. Shape into patties then shallow fry or grill, we went with shallow fry. Not the healthiest option I know but I have a 1 cal spray for cooking, I no longer use actual oil.

 

After the mix had sat for the ten minutes, Manda (shown above) added in chopped onions and sweet green peppers. I just went for the peppers in mine as I don't like onions (unless its in coleslaw?)

 

The packet said we would get 6 burgers out of it but we made 5 and there was still loads left so I suppose it just depends on how big you want your burgers.

 

We halved the large sweet potato from above and made wedges that you can see below and also sweet potato fritters, I didn't get a photo of them on the tray but you can see them above in the finished meal picture.

 

So I really enjoyed this meal, it was delicious. There was just one, kind of major downfall, I think I'm allergic to peppers. After the meal I felt really strange, itchy all over, severely nauseous and just plain horrible. Blair and Manda felt fine so I knew it couldn't have been food poisoning or anything like that. After they left I was then sick for the next 30 odd minutes till I wasn't actually throwing up anything and just felt so weak!

I felt so bad as I was supposed to be getting the girls on Saturday for the night but when I woke up I just felt so horrible that I relaxed most of the day. Managed to get to town for a quick job interview, a wee comfort lunch then back home.

 

Popchips are amazing by the way! First time I'd ever tried them and I loved them. The Shapers water/juice was really tasty and make me feel a bit more alert and the sushi, well I love sushi so it was fab! There was one wee bit of red pepper in one of the sushi rolls which I whipped out and threw away in disgust.

Not counting the horrible reaction, it was a great meal and I will take away the positives as my first vegan meal. I'm going to make the burgers again but just have them plain, nothing mixed in with them unless it's flavouring and I'll let you know how I get on with that!

Have you tried Asda's Meat Free range? What are your favourite vegetarian meals?

I'm off to see Mick Foley tonight (for the 4th time!) so there will be a post up about that soon, hopefully I get some good pictures!

My Meals 20th Feb

Breakfast - cottage cheese and baked stars sandwich

Lunch - Lentil soup with unbuttered roll and egg mayo roll

Dinner - Admiral's crumble and salad of carrots, cucumber, iceberg lettuce and balsamic vinegar

Yeah, crisps for breakfast, not the best start. A slight improvement on yesterday's nothing but still! I need to get into the habit of eating breakfast again. Lunch was bleedin' tasty! Love some homemade lentil soup. Dinner was a ready meal but I don't really think of these in the same vein as findus meals or tesco value microwave meals. At least there's no horse in this! ;)

Snacks were a packet of crisps and some mints. I'm usually a lot worse with snacks and tonight was a cinema night too so I did quite well I think.

I'm slowly getting back into the habit of eating better food after my 'break'.

My meals 12th Feb

Breakfast - Seedy bread with soft cheese and honey roast ham, a handful of grapes and a handful of sunflower seeds.
Lunch - Oven cooked salmon fillet, couscous with garlis sauce and button sprouts.
Dinner - Ham and cheese salad with balsamic dressing.
Shrove Tuesday! I had 3 pancakes but we cooked one ate it, cooked another ate it etc. Some naughty fillings in them, honey roast peanut butter and chocolate and caramel spread, sugar and lemon in another.

So today started off really well. I must have subconsciously known that I would be having some calorific pancakes! I've not put them into mfp yet, I'm quite scared to! I'll be jumping on the elliptical when I get home I think.

My meals 11th Feb

Breakfast was Tesco Special Flakes with semi skimmed uht milk and sliced almonds.
Lunch was meatballs with carrots and iceberg lettuce and a sauce of cottage cheese, tomato puree, paprika and mixed herbs ( a tad too much paprika this time! )
Dinner was salmon portion, button sprouts, sweetcorn and mashed new potatoes.

I made all these choices thinking I wouldn't be able to log it on MFP or put on here/tumblr. Quite proud of the fact that I still made good choices. That means it's all sinking in!

I'm thinking about maybe doing these kinds of posts, my meals either every day (although I'm afraid that it might get very boring very quickly) or perhaps doing it once a week and just doing it all in one, I'm leaning towards that a bit more just now but who knows I might change my mind!