'Living' together....

I have to admit, usually it’s quite easy to update the Blog as / when Jeff and I get together and do fun stuff... however at the moment it’s a total nightmare as I’m really, really busy at work! That being said, I find I have a little spare time, so thought I would detail our fun cooking adventures!

This week I’ve basically been ‘living’ with Jeff and it’s been really nice – I’d like to think we would be able to live together at some point, even if it’s not directly in the future (I have a cat and he’s quite evil – He’d destroy Jeff’s house!) When we were together last time, Jeff wasn’t overly houseproud and I had sold my house and was living in a shared house – this meant neither of us could really have each other round, which meant that Jeff and I couldn’t really just ‘chill’.

As soon as Easter was over, I suggested we go back to healthy eating – Jeff is very laid back and therefore very happy to go along with whatever I suggest and whilst I would have LOVED to have suggested we go back to our ‘old ways’, which was basically eating in restaurants every day and cooking very unhealthy things – I really don’t want to be fat again and I know Jeff is keen to continue his weight loss as we are both 30 next year.

So, we did a Tesco’s delivery order before we went to Northumberland and planned out the meals we were going to cook. Tuesday night was ‘Smoked haddock fishcakes, mustard spinach and a poached egg’, which was a recipe I got from my BBC Good food magazine. We were absolutely starving by the time the Tesco’s delivery person turned up at 8:30pm, so set to work straight away and boiled the fish, the potatoes and flaked the fish into a big bowl. The tricky part was dipping the fishcakes in egg, before putting on the breadcrumbs as we didn’t chill them like we were supposed to (too hungry and to be honest, I forgot!) however, they turned out really well indeed and rather than frying them in oil – we baked them, so they were more healthy!

Wednesday we made lamb kleftiko with lemon sweet potatoes – we made this recipe more healthy by not roasting the potatoes and using sweet potatoes, rather than normal potatoes as they are lower in GI. We also didn’t sprinkle on much feta cheese, even though the recipe (another one from the BBC Good Food Magazine) suggested sprinkling 50 grams of feta cheese on each plate! This was absolutely excellent and certainly something that Jeff and I would do again – the flavours were gorgeous and I have to admit to being quite chuffed that we used my Le Cruset casserole pot – it’s coming in very handy these days!

As pay day was just around the corner yesterday, I actually bought Jeff and myself some American measuring cups – that way we could use the same measurements that Ina Garten uses in her recipes and I thought that would be easier than working out what ‘half a cup’ was every time we tried to cook something that she made. I also bought an egg poaching pan, as whilst the eggs we did (we just stuck them straight in a pan of boiling water) turned out quite well, I think I’d prefer a little bit more control on the poaching process, and £17 for a poaching pan wasn’t that bad value!

Tonight Jeff and I are going to do another very healthy recipe – fish and broccoli pie, it’s supposed to be under 350 calories per serving and very low in fat. It looks nice and we have all the ingredients so we’re good to go!

- Molly