Hello Dear Reader,
Who else is tired of the grey skies and lack of daylight. I'm beginning to crave a crisp winter's day where I can wrap up and walk on the beach before heading off for a coffee from the flask! In this weather, we need to inject as much healthy food and colour into ourselves as possible. We owe it to ourselves to take care of our own health and eating well is essential. I'm not in the position to not be able to choose what I eat so I continue to eat thriftily and frugally for our own budget.
To make this for supper, you will need. (serves 2) - All ingredients are from Aldi.
1 butternut squash, cut length ways and seeds removed - 75p 135 calories each
100g (half a pack) of feta cheese - DB will have the rest for lunch tomorrow and Friday - 65p - 132 calories each. (I had 30g of feta so my calories were 79 - I don't like it, but men are allowed more calories than women!)
2 red onions - 20p - 29 calories
1 chilli - seeds and pith removed and finely chopped - 10p
4 cloves of garlic - finely chopped - 4p
6 sprays of olive oil - 3 calories each
1 little gem lettuce - 20p -8 calories each
1/2 punnet of cherry tomatoes - 45p - 25 calories each
Total price £2.47 and £1.24 each - 332 calories each - way better than yesterday!!!!! (279 calories for me)
Here is how I made it:
1. Set the oven to 200
2. Chop and prepare ingredients.
3. Halve and prepare the butternut squash
4. Spray squash with 'frylight' and bake for 20 minutes.
5. When squash is soft enough, spoon out flesh and leave to one side
6. 'fry' the onions, garlic and chilli - take care not to burn
7. Spoon ingredients back into the butternut squash skin and arrange cubes of feta onto the veggies.
8. Place in the oven.
9. Place the cherry tomatoes on the same baking tray and spray with oil and sprinkle with salt.
10. Bake everything for 10 - 15 minutes.
Serve with lettuce or green beans or any veg. If you wanted to stretch this to hungry people then add spicy rice or chunks of homemade bread. We're watching the calories so we've made this as 'light' as possible.
I hope I'm not letting down the frugal faithful. This came to £1.24 per person but everything is fresh. You could save this recipe until you've grown some squash, salad and onions or if you see feta on offer. You can buy 'Greek style' cheese but I like the genuine Greek cheese which is about 30p a pack more.
I try to eat significantly fewer calories on two days a week, I don't consider this to be fasting as I'm still eating. I had a 200g fat free Greek yogurt for breakfast - 110 calories, this for supper and an apple and banana for lunch. It feels like enough food for the day. I'm glad that's only 2 days a week though. I'm eating healthily on every day but halving my calories on two days a week.
Over to you Dear Reader, who else is cutting their food back for two days a week? Who is watching the calories and trying to eat healthily? Who else is finding it hard to balance eating thriftily and healthily? I find it a juggling act and I wonder who else is finding it difficult?
Until tomorrow,
Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxx
That looks blooming lovely..we have an 'on toast day' a couple of times a week, it helps a bit with the pennies
ReplyDeleteAFM xx
I decided to cut out carbs (except brown rice a couple of times a week) and sugar for the month of January, to drop a few pounds after the excesses of the holiday season. As I buy meat and veg nearly exclusively from the yellow sticker section to fill my freezer, and rely on frozen veg when the fresh has run out, I'm not finding it too expensive. But it would be much cheaper if we didn't regularly eat healthily as there are nearly always great bargains on cake/scones/puddings etc.
ReplyDeleteLovely! I'll have to try that recipe. Miss 10 loves feta cheese and tomatoes. We had butternut stuffed with lentils and a bit of cheese the other day. I don't know about struggling to eat thriftily and healthily. I just know how much more it would cost to feed the family on pre-prepared rubbish. I spent £46 at Aldi this week, marginally less than normal, but that feeds five of us for a week. Our cheapest meal was carrot and coriander soup, which has the added advantages of being about the only meal everyone will eat, and low enough in calories for a fast day.
ReplyDeleteGoing to write this in my recipe book . x
ReplyDeleteI wish I could get the rest of the house to eat vegetarian, we would save so much. Chicken breasts were fourteen dollars for five hundred grams e other day.
ReplyDeleteI wish we could send some of our heat and sunshine your way! We're having yet another hot summer here!
ReplyDeleteHow do you cope with exercising on the days when you eat less? I have thought of doing something similar but I get so hungry when I exercise.
ReplyDeleteI love roasted squash and have it many ways, but this looks divine! I am trying to lose weight! It aint easy is it. I have got out of the habit of healthy eating for a while mainly due to the stress I was suffering in my job. That job is now history and I have been so busy (good busy) with my new job over the last couple of months that I haven't given it much thought....... until now! Until the reality is I need new clothes.... or lose weight to fit into properly the perfectly alright nothing wrong with them clothes I already have. So am just doing some research to ready myself and Monday is the day (its Thursday). I have a special visit to have tomorrow with my daughter then I work Saturday have Sunday off and then my new week is Monday. I find it easier if I pick a day to start then do a bit of a countdown with a bit of research first (cheap recipes that are low in calories .... etc) So I will be cutting down the calories on all days and on two days a week halving the calories from the previous day. It will take a week to get my head around it but it will work. Just need to up the exercise!! I am going to have a look through your recipe list to pick out a few favourites to kick me off!
ReplyDeleteJo in Auckland, NZ
You can do it Jo! Bring on Monday :)
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ReplyDeleteLooks gorgeous. I will try this I think. X
ReplyDeleteI'll definitely try this. Have just started the last Crown Prince Squash, so with a jar of Aldi Feta in oil that I have under the stairs I'm almost there! (yes, I know that in oil has more calories, but gosh it's tasty and I'm not watching my weight)
ReplyDeleteGill
At the moment here in south eastern Australia, it is too hot for Adventures in the Kitchen, so we are living on salads, cold cuts and the like. Icy Poles have become a food group all of their own and water is being consumed by the gallon.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite easy to live like this when it is still hovering at 100 or more F at dinner time. Just hoping that the cool change does turn up tomorrow as promised and the summer is a bit more normal.
Regrettably, it is bushfire season as well. Tomorrow will not be a good day.
I'm doing the 5:2 Diet so yes I'm eating around 500 calories twice a day
ReplyDeleteI never cooked with Feta but I think I'm going to try this. Looks lovely & filling.
ReplyDeleteSounds & looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing:-)
X
Oh my, it's only 8 am her in North Carolina and my mouth is watering over this recipe! What I try to do is eat Paleo 3 - 4 days a week and Mediterranean the rest of the time and this works well for me. Paleo can be quite Spartan so the Mediterranean adds balance. Doing this, along with exercise I have dropped my cholesterol by 50 points and this way of eating keeps me lean.
ReplyDeleteHow about a cookbook Froogs? Love your recipes. I made your meatloaf last night but instead of using gluten-free bread I used Bob's Redmill gluten-free oats and made homemade Paleo catsup to go wit it. It was wonderful!
L
It looks lovely, the only thing I would do differently is NOT to use the spray fat, it's not real food, A little butter in the pan is so much better and a smidge of fat with your meal means that your body absorbs all the vitamins much easier, that's why our grannies instinctively added a scrape of butter to boiled veggies.
ReplyDeleteBut you are totally right about needing our food to be colourful at this time of year, the grey skies are beginning to get everyone down ... even our chickens!!
Froogs, what could you use instead of feta. My OH hates it, it would need some other type of protein.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah - the colourful stuff is packed with goodness too - I shop in my local market where I can have a little bit of everything I want. You can buy as much or little as you need - even things like eat/fish/cheese and so on. I buy meat quarterly, batch cook and portion. If you can store your veg well then it will last - I'm just coming to the end of my big Christmas veg shop. The last bits are shredded to make bags of stir-fry that can sit in the fridge for a couple of days and the rest of it will be made into soup and stew. I was lucky enough to buy a small, super energy efficient freezer from a neighbour who was moving (for £25!) as an 'annexe' for my ordinary fridge freezer. It has been an absolute god-send.
ReplyDeleteAll my veg gets wrapped in newspaper (out of the paper recycling bin!), and hung in cotton/hessian bags in my cellar stairwell so they keep cool and dark without attracting critters :) It is the only time I buy so much at once.
Apart from the market I'm a Lidl girl - its my closest supermarket. They do a great range of tinned veg (not always as cheap as 'value' stuff but fab quality) - I roast rinsed tin spuds and carrots and serve with a small tin of sweetcorn stirred through - served in a soup bowl with feta crumbled on top or a few almonds and chickpeas. Follow with some seasonal citrus fruit (cheap at the mo - or chilled tin pear quarters) mmmmmmmmmm :))
This looks lovely and I got 2 large butternut squash for 49p each at Aldi today on the veg special offers.
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