This week I made a great big pot of soya chilli to take away with me for the weekend. Chilli is great because you can pack it full of vegetables, and you can have it in a pitta bread for lunch, with nachos, or with rice for dinner. Admittedly I did get bored after three consecutive meals of chilli so I chucked a couple of portions in the freezer for another day. The recipe for my chilli is below.
As I couldn't face another dinner of chilli I had a rummage in the cupboards and found some spaghetti and bolognaise sauce. I added onions, garlic, and spinach and ate that instead. It took all of 15 minutes to rustle up, so don't try that excuse of 'I don't have time'.
If you've been following my blog you'll know I've been doing this challenge to get healthy so I want to share with you a few things I've learnt. It's the stuff us serial dieters already know but choose to ignore, however, since actually following the rules I understand how important these things are to feel good about yourself.
1. Time yourself to eat every 3-4 hours! If you stay aware of when you last ate you'll realise you're not actually hungry and you don't need to eat that packet of crisps, or slice of toast. Just have a drink and find something to keep yourself busy for an hour.
2. Cereal for breakfast! I always used to skip breakfast and never believed the whole 'experts say skipping breakfast will make you gain weight' in my logic if I skip breakfast - which I'm not keen on eating anyway - then it's less calorie intake in the day anyway. But since eating a nice fibre-full breakfast most mornings I understand that it really does kick start your metabolism and set you up for the day. I think this is the main thing that's making me feel so much better about myself since the beginning of the challenge.
After the weekend when I tend to eat beans on toast for breakfast and more carbs than recommended I feel a bit bloated and begin to feel sluggish, but after a couple of days back on the healthier routine of cereal in the morning and eating once every 3 hours I feel much better again.
3. Vegetables vegetables vegetables! See my last blog post about the article I recently read. There's no harm in eating vegetables, and if you follow some nice recipes veg doesn't have to be boring. My family have commented on how great my skin is looking since the start of this challenge and I can feel much more energy in myself. Stopping yourself eating meat and cheese forces you to eat vegetables which means when I return to eating meat, I'll eat far less of it than before, and I have a whole load of new great recipes to replace the fatty stodgy comfort I used to eat and feel rubbish for afterwards.
Life is good!
Chilli Recipe:
Soya mince (I bought mine from Sainsbury's)
Onion
Garlic
Spinach (fresh or frozen)
Mushrooms
Chilli powder
Paprika
Green pepper
Tinned Tomatos
2 Vegetable stock cubes
Red Kidney Beans
Any other beans you might like
Marmite
1. I chopped the onion and fried with garlic until soft, in about a tablespoon of olive oil.
I think I used two cloves of garlic but I'm a bit of a garlic fiend.
2. Chop the green pepper and add to the onions for a minute or two.
3. Chuck in your soya mince.
4. After about 5 minutes add two tablespoons of chilli powder and a tablespoon of paprika.
5. Chop the mushrooms and add those.
6. After a couple of minutes add the vegetable stock cubes and a tin of tomatos. If you need a bit more liquid just pour a splash of water in.
7. Rinse your kidney beans and if you choose to add another kind of beans rinse those too. I used kidney beans and butter beans. As I've said on another recipe I'm not keen on rice so I added more beans as a substitute but you don't have to!
8. Add your spinach and season with ground black pepper, have a taste just in case you need more chilli powder or paprika.
9. Add a tablespoon or two of marmite. This might sound strange but I'd heard it had been done before and it really changes the taste of the chilli from a spicy tomato sauce to actually taste like chilli.
10. I preheated the oven to about 120 degrees and put the chilli in for about an hour. I was a bit wary that the mince would be quite bland so I wanted to keep it cooking for a while so it could soak up the spices.
And there you have it! Serve on it's own, with a jacket potato, with nachos, with rice, in a pitta, with chunky bread, or freeze it for another day! The possibilities are endless.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!
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