Saturday 14 July 2012

Bumper Shrooms

It should come as no surprise to you all that I live food. Actually that "live" was a typo and should have read "love", but it works beautifully. I do live it. Not just the eating part but also cooking food, reading about it, shopping for it, looking at it, watching tv shows about it, thinking about it and talking about it. Cooking is a particular delight for me - filling empty, appreciative tummies has to be my number one thing to do. A little tragic, I know, but it does make me smile, and I genuinely never tire of playing about with new ideas to make something delicious, new and - now - diet friendly.

It was this fiddling which led me to stuffing large flat mushrooms on Friday morning, as an alternative side to the steaks I had in for our dinner. To be fair, these mega mushrooms would also make a splendid main course dish with a side salad. They are free on Extra Easy using your healthy A and B choices for the day too.

Serves 2

2 large flat mushrooms, stalks removed and finely chopped
1/2 a small onion, finely chopped
2 asparagus spears, finely chopped
2 rashers of bacon (fat removed), diced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Juice of half a lemon
50g fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs
35g chilli flavoured light cream cheese (or use plain with a pinch of chilli flakes)
30g grated Parmesan
Small bunch of basil, chopped

Heat a frying pan and spray with frylight. Lay your mushrooms in your pan, face down, and fry gently for about a minute. Remove from the pan and place in a baking dish, face up.

Add the chopped mushrooms, onion, garlic, bacon and asparagus and sauté gently for 4-5 minutes until softened.

Transfer to a bowl and mix in the breadcrumbs, lemon juice, soft cheese and basil and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Fill your mushrooms with the stuffing and sprinkle the Parmesan on top.

Bake for 20 minutes at 200 degrees (fan oven) until the topping is crisp and golden.

(I must confess that very technically the soft cheese is not an A choice - unless you buy the plain light cheese and flavour yourself - but I have been using the flavoured ones as my A choice maybe once a fortnight without any detrimental effects. If you aren't happy making the tweak, take the plain cheese option and flavour as above.)

The other picture below is one of my lunches from this week. I mention this purely because it is the potato cakes I talked about in a previous post, Horses - you'll find it here: http://dietville.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/horses.html?m=1

In other news, Richy hit his 3 stone loss this week. I am so proud of him, and I know that feeling was reciprocated this week when I got my 4 stone award. Clearly I am very pleased indeed after the excesses of last weekend. I lost a pound which was twice what I needed to get my award. It still doesn't feel real though. Despite being smaller than I have ever been, I still have that again to lose and more. I'm looking at another 5 stone from here, maybe more, maybe less, and I think it's going to be another 2 stone before I really get it. If I ever do.

It's got to come eventually though. I'm sure of it.

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