Like Frugal Queen, I've been busy today making Hot Cross-less buns. It is a bit of a long winded process as this particular recipe (from a farmhouse cookbook) requires a double rise before shaping the buns and leaving to rise again. It also uses lard rather than butter. The recipe says to cook them at 240 Celsius for 6-7 minutes. We did the back 4 like this but felt it was too high and too short a time. The batch cooked in the bottom picture were done for 14 minutes at 220 Celsius. They seem much better. Herewith the before and after cooking photographs.
We have been semi-eating via the Weight Watchers Pro-Points plan for 8 days now, concentrating mainly on the evening meals. We know how many points are in our porridge/cereal breakfasts which we have always had, Monday to Saturday. Sunday is our weighing/treat day. We have home-made bread and marmalade. What I am enjoying about eating this way is cooking the meals. There is a great web site with recipes written by a lady called Bev. You can find it here: http://www.happyowls.co.uk/recipes.html
On her site, she has lots of tried and tested recipes and is a lady who runs one of the groups. I can honestly say, out of all the recipes we have tried both from her site and a Pro-points cookery book, not one of them has been remotely tasteless or boring.
Tonight's recipes is lasagne. It serves 4 and each portion should be 11 points but I add 2 more sheets of lasagne to fill up each layer so it might be around the 12 points mark. This is made with minced beef but if you made a vegetarian version, it would be a lot less points. Here it is before and after cooking:
As neither of us are too worried about having meat, we thought next time we make it, it will be a vegetarian version. That way we can have a leek and cheese sauce with it. We still have one more portion each to use up. We finished off with a small bowl of a banana and some custard.
Although I don't need to lose much weight, 4 pounds or so wouldn't hurt me as I am currently around 24.5 BMI. OH is slightly higher than this but his weight gain we think is due to his blood pressure tablets. In order for those not to be increased, we reckon is he shifts a little weight, it will make the difference, especially if we can get him just below a BMI of 25. He lost 1lb last weight, I stayed the same which is fine by me.
We don't feel as though we are missing out. We don't eat many cakes, drink alcohol regularly, or gorge on sweets or puddings. Our treat for the whole of Easter will be the above said buns.
We have not bought eggs for each other. Last weekend saw us munch our way through one of his Christmas Toblerone's. The next one will be eaten 1st of July and the final one on the 1st of October. They are in the freezer out of the way.
Your buns look good! I made some last night and warmed them in the oven this morning. I used the recipe in my breadmaker book - I haven't used that one before as I usually use one in an old cookery book - but they turned out really well. J and I don't bother about Easter eggs either, and I'm avoiding dairy at the moment anyway because of my throat.Homemade pizza and garlic bread for J and KL this evening. I won't have any because of the cheese, and will probably have poached eggs on some lightly toasted wholemeal bread - much easier on the throat!
ReplyDeleteJust like you I have not wanted any chocolate for Easter. I find this chocolate need in people just too much of a hangup on commercialism, giving in to the adverts and the supermarket hipes. I rarely eat any sweets or chocolate. So, why should I gorge on it over Easter? We are having a lovely Pork and Potato Curry for Easter Sunday, and that`s a treat for us far more appreciated than any chocolates.
ReplyDeleteHave a great Easter brake!
Scarlet, thanks! The first quick cooked batch were just slight undercooked in the middle but the second batch are fine. Hopefully your throat is beginning to ease a little.
ReplyDeleteSarina, we were in a supermarket yesterday (very briefly as it was jam-packed) and one woman was letting her children pick out their own eggs. Her trolley had around 12 or so in it! Your pork and potato curry sounds yummy.
Don't homemade hot cross buns taste far better than shop bought! I don't think I'll buy any more mine were easy to make and taste wonderful.. Yours look yummy.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I love chocolate but we don't buy each other eggs, they are a total waste of money for the amount of chocolate you actually get. Although I did buy them for my son when he was younger. We try to limit our chocolate to just a Saturday evening, doesn't always work out like that though..lol Oh it's Saturday tomorrow, well you know what that means.. :D xx