Vegetables

Sweet potatoes are not speed

Richard11 Comments

I’m trying out an SP day today, where I’m only allowed to eat Speed and Protein foods.

The idea is that, although it’s not a required part of the Slimming World food optimisation plan, it is meant to speed up your weight loss. And I’ve been in a bit of slump recently, and need something to re-ignite my progress.

The problem is that it’s not as easy as it would first seem to do an SP day. There are a lot of free foods out there (potatoes, pasta, and so on) that are not speed. It’s worth checking the membership book, because I was surprised at some of them.

Non speed vegetables

Every now and again people in my class talk about swapping out potatoes for sweet potatoes when making chips – so it might be easy to assume that sweet potatoes are speed – but they aren’t.

Also in the list of non-speed vegetables are:

  • Parsnips
  • Sweetcorn
  • Peas

Non speed fruits

When it comes to fruit, there are even more examples that are free but not speed, including:

  • Cherries
  • Kiwi fruit
  • Mango
  • Pomegranate
  • Bananas
  • Pineapple

I need to be really careful when picking out fruit to eat, especially those pre-cut fruit pots from supermarkets that often have grapes and pineapple in them.

The SP food planning is the tricky bit. Dinners will probably be okay because I can have a steak and salad, or some chilli and roasted vegetables. However lunches pose more of a challenge to my imagination. There are only so many times I can eat salad and cold meat before my taste buds shut down. And I’m not much of a fan of soup.

If anyone has any ideas for SP meals let me know.

Vegetable Curry

Richard1 Comment

Syns: None
Serves: 8
Prep/Cooking Time: 60 mins

Syn-Free Vegetable Curry

I decided with about 2 hours notice to cook something for the taster night at my Slimming World group. And for some reason I picked a vegetable curry – not something I had ever done before. And I’m not using any recipe, so it’s a bit of a voyage into the unknown. I just hope it turns out OK!

Ingredients

  • A few squirts of Frylight or spray oil
  • 2 large white onions, chopped finely
  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
  • 1 aubergine, diced
  • 2 courgettes, diced
  • 3 bell peppers, diced
  • 200g mushrooms, chopped
  • 2 cans of chickpeas
  • 2 cans of chopped tomatoes
  • 1 packet of passata
  • 2 vegetable stock cubes, made up in 300ml of hot water
  • 3 heaped teaspoons of ground cumin
  • 3 heaped teaspoons of ground coriander
  • 3 heaped teaspoons of ground turmeric
  • 3 heaped teaspoons of curry powder
  • 150g pot of fat-free natural yoghurt

Method

  1. Add a few squirts of Frylight / spray oil into a pan, and then added the onions and garlic, and fry gently for a few minutes until softened.
  2. Add the aubergine, courgettes, peppers and stir in.
  3. Add all the spices. Reduce the quantities if you don’t like your curry too spicy, or ramp them up if you want to blow your mind!
  4. Add the cans of tomatoes, passata and vegetable stock.
  5. Add the chickpeas and mushrooms.
  6. Stir, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Taste, and if not spicy enough, add more spices.
  7. Stir in some fat-free natural yoghurt just before serving. Be sure not to boil the curry once you’ve added the yoghurt or it’ll curdle!

Serve with rice, or just on it’s own. For the taster night, I’m taking along some Pataks Pappadums that are only 1½ syns each.