Giant couscous salad: dairy free, soya free, syn free, vegan

This salad is lovely - slightly warm, with the fresh crunch of all the veggies, and the spice of the chilli really make it a light, and tasty lunch.

It's really yummy with a hefty dollop of my staple humous - why not try my aubergine humous which is so, so tasty - if I do say so myself. It'd be awesome with some chopped avocado as well, but despite it being pretty much the only bit of Slimming World I disagree with. It's healthy fat! We need healthy fats! I'm desperately trying to shift the last bit of weight.

A dairy and soya free recipe, it's quick and easy to knock up, and perfectly portable for packed lunches. I'm an Ikea Lagom ambassador and use their Fortrolig containers as I can see what's in them and so am less likely to forget what I've got and leave my lunches languishing in the fridge. 

Anyway, enough chatter - on to the recipe: 

Giant couscous salad 

Dairy free, soya free, vegan, syn free

150g giant couscous

Enough cold water to cover

1/2 cup frozen peas

1/2 cup frozen sweetcorn

1/2 cucumber, diced

1 red pepper, diced

3 small-medium carrots, grated

1 red chilli, finely diced

Cherry tomatoes to taste, halved (I add these as I dish up, as they go a bit bleurgh otherwise and use 7 per serving)

1 tin mixed beans in water, drained

Olive oil Fry light/ or a tablespoon of olive oil (but obviously the recipe won't be syn free if you add this) 

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

In a small medium pan, put the couscous and cover with the cold water. Bring to the boil and add the peas, sweetcorn and drained beans. Turn the heat down low and allow to simmer for 6 minutes

While this is cooking, prep your veggies and pop in a medium bowl. Although I just put them straight into a food container that can go in the fridge because I'm lazy efficient like that. 

Once the couscous is cooked - it'll be slightly translucent - drain the pan of any leftover water and leave to cool for 10 minutes or so. 

Spray with some olive oil fry light, or add a tablespoon of Olive oil at this point

Once cooled slightly add the contents of the pan to your bowl and mix thoroughly

Add the juice and zest of the lemon

Serve, with your humous, or just as it comes. It's really delicious and so lovely just slightly warm.  

As a side note - Harry wasn't keen (but he's teething and only wants to eat weetabix at the moment) but did enjoy picking up the giant couscous, peas and sweetcorn before daintily discarding them over the side of his high chair. So even if it's not a winner for eating, apparently it's nice for his pincer grip! 

If you're in the mood to egg the sunshine on with some more dairy free salads - why not have a look at these from some other lovely bloggers:

Tin and Thyme has what I suspect would be a beautifully fresh Fennel salad (I love fennel - I wonder what Harry would make of it)

Meal Planning Monday - an easy week

I've had a few weeks off meal planning on the blog, it feels like 10 months of sleep deprication caught up with me and I metaphorically hit a wall. I felt like I could have slept for a 100 years, and was walking through treacle just trying to keep going. Last week, something shifted and that fog started to lift. I'm sure the weather helped. Anyway - back to meal planning. Some things don't change - money is still tight, and we're shopping carefully, making use of special offers.

Breakfasts - I'm having overnight oats, and piles of fruit. Harry has porridge, toast and a banana. Seriously, that baby can eat for England at breakfastime.

Lunches - Last week we had Syn free tabbouleh with salmon - Harry had his mixed up with a little olive oil, houmous or warm tomato puree to help it stick together.  The weather isn't quite what it was, so I'm going to make minestrone this week...

Suppers -

Monday: Mum very kindly gave us a bowl of beef casserole for supper last night. I had it with brocolli, M with pasta.

Tuesday: Leftover bacon and butternut squash pasta, the recipe for this is going up on the blog this week as it's awesome.

Wednesday: Schnitzel, homemade Slimming World friendly chips and veggies

Thursday: Roast chicken, roast potatoes and veggies

Friday: Leftover chicken, baked potatoes and veggies

Saturday: Stir fried chicken, brocooli and mushrooms with rice for M and more veggies for me.

Sunday: A fresh batch of Butternut squash and bacon pasta

So that's it, another week, planned late but planned nonetheless. Be sure to pop on over to At home with Mrs M and see what the other planners are up to.

Slimming World lighter lunches - Syn free tabbouleh

My healthy 2015 is going well, I'm losing weight slowly but steadily and am as active as my hips and back will allow. One of the bonuses of baby led weaning is that Harry and I seem to eat very healthily - lots of vegetables and next to no processed food. Despite a wet, cold and rainy morning the baby and I are eating an apple (he is very keen on eating what you eat) and I have a herbal tea.

Lunches however are my downfall - only of the things that happens if we're busy is that I skip lunch and end up trying to eat the entire kitchen before supper. I seem to be someone who needs to know that what I've got to eat is tasty and satisfying, the mugshots etc which can be so popular at Slimming World just don't tend to hit the mark for me, so I typically make a batch of something up for lunch that I can either eat from the fridge or as a pack up. This gets around the difficulty of finding things I can grab and go that are dairy and soya free as well.

This is more of a tabbouleh-esque recipe as it doesn't use bulghur wheat and is more of a guideline. I tend to have it with a piece of fish, or leftover chicken, or ham. The protein is important as I'm discovering that it's that that keeps the munchies away and stabilises my blood sugar (previous attempts at weightloss that have involved *ahem* skipping meals tend to fail when my blood sugar spirals into my ballet flats at about 3pm - see comment above about eating the entire kitchen).

Syn free tabbouleh

1 cup couscous
2 tsp vegetable bouillon powder
1 cup boiling water
1 cucumber
4 big vine tomatoes
Big bunch flat leaf parsley
Big bunch mint
1 lemon
1/2 clove garlic
salt & pepper

Put the couscous in a bowl with the 2 tsp of vegetable boillon and the grated garlic (you could use a stock cube, but I found 1 cube made it too salty) and the boiling water. Leave to absorb for about 15 minutes
Dice the cucumber and tomatoes
Finely chop the parsley, and the mint leaves - I don't worry about the parsley stalks, but pick the mint leaves first. 
Zest the lemon, then juice
Add all the extra ingredients to the couscous, taste then season.
Serve with salmon, ham, chicken - anything really.

 If you aren't being healthy, then add some extra virgin olive oil when you season this - 2 tablespoons should do nicely.

Of course you can use this as a base and add any and all veggies you like, chilli would be a nice addition too. 

Home is where the heart is meant to be: Couscous salad

The thing about working away from home and eating restaurant food is that I find I crave vegetables (yes I know I'm weird), food I can eat from a bowl on my lap, in my pyjamas. I just don't think they'd be down with that in a Harvester. Although I should say - Harvester for the win at being able to eat what you want as it suits you - sadly though, still not in your pjs.

So, it probably makes me something of a sad loser to admit that I spent a large part of Friday daydreaming about a couscous salad. Yes, I know. Something spiked with brightly coloured, fresh veggies, with lots of protein and flavour that tasted - wholesome. I know that's not a flavour, but that's what I wanted.

So Friday afternoon came and I popped up to Waitrose, as my fridge was almost completely bare - I would have added a picture here, but that would have entailed showing you the fact that it also needs a clean out with some bicarb in hot water and I'm not keen on my slatternly tendencies being on show for the whole world to see. I picked up some couscous and feta (both from their essentials range), working on the basis that I was sure I had odds and sods to use up in a fridge-bottom style...

However, the fridge wasn't completely bare - here's what I found in it:

A handful of dried up fresh mint
Two handfuls of equally dried up parsley
A tomato
Half a red romano pepper
Some spring onions that were only slightly wilted
Garlic
Lazy chilli
Half a cucumber that was looking very sorry for itself
A centimetre or so of homemade salad dressing in an old jam jar
And a bottle of rose with one glass left in it!

Also in the pantry I found the end of a packet of pine nuts, and some Marigold bouillon

I boiled the kettle and measured out 1 cup of couscous into a salad bowl
I added 2 teaspoons of bouillon and 2 cups of boiling water, stirred it all in, covered with a clean, dry tea towel and left for 10 minutes
Meanwhile, I chopped up the tomato, cucumber, pepper, spring onions and feta up into a small dice
I finely chopped the mint, parsley and garlic
I toasted the pine nuts in a dry pan until lightly browned

When the couscous was cool I added all the ingredients above, a teaspoon of lazy chilli and the leftover (shaken up) vinagrette. Everything was stirred in and served in a large bowl with the rose. It was exactly what I wanted - and made loads - which meant both Mark and I had it for dinner on Friday, and lunch on Saturday and Sunday.

On Monday I did a discount run around Waitrose, picking up a packet of prawns and a packet of feta, and a bag of peashoots - I added half of each of these to the remaining cous cous and had it for dinner on Monday. As an added bonus, packed lunches on Tuesday and today were the remains of all of those and some cherry tomatoes and alfalfa/ radish sprouts as an undressed salad. Yum.

I know it's not exciting to talk about those meals we make at the end of the month to make the budget stretch further, to use up the odds and ends from a veg box or a shop, and it's not a recipe per se as you could use anything languishing in your fridge but this is real life - we can't all be knocking up Jamie's 30 minute meals or Delia's suggestions every day - sometimes we just need something that nourishes us, that is tasty and that doesn't cost the earth. I know I do.

Coming up... Mark's mum sent me back a whole load of plums from their tree, mint from the garde and crabapples she was given, so for the cost of some sugar I'll be presrving madly this week. Also a long awaited foray into a nasi goreng inspired by something I saw on the Food Channel when I was off sick before I changed jobs.

Meal Planning Monday: A week at home!

I feel like I should preface this post with saying just how much I'm loving my new job. It's taking me to different parts of the country, meeting new people and trying new things. In this economic climate I recognise just how lucky I am as for so long I've been so miserable and stayed in a job that continued that. What it hasn't done thus far is let me have time to cook. This weekend however, I've blitzed the house, and whilst I have an empty fridge, the clean, ironed washing, and clean, tidy rooms will allow me the time over the next few nights to make some jam and jelly, turn museli into cookies for the office, and try some new recipes. Exciting stuff!

Breakfasts: fruit, yoghurt and a sprinkling of Grape nuts.

For lunches this week I'm going to make a rice salad with tofu, soy sauce and veggies.

Monday: Leftover cous cous salad (blogpost should be up on Wednesday) mixed in with prawns, pea shoots and feta

Tuesday: Beetroot, goats cheese and feta salad with roast chicken (peices if I get to the butcher)

Wednesday: Leftover roast chicken/ Sausages, sweetcorn and baked potatoes and salad

Thursday: I'm out Thursday night, but depending on when I get home and if I've eaten will either have an omlette or toast and marmite

Friday: We're off to Mark's parents for the weekend

I'm waiting on delivery of some Gourmet Raw brownies that I ordered last week. I know it's probably not the best introduction, but I've really got into Nakd bars of late and have been reading up on raw food. I eat a lot of fruit as you can probably tell and for snacking they're tasty, convenient and don't have that horribly processed aftertaste I find in a lot of cereal bars. I'm hoping the Gourmet raw brownies are similar, only slightly more decadent. Review to follow when they arrive. Not that I'm impatient or anything *taps foot*