Millet vegetarian lasagne

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Cheese Polenta with zucchini and tomato

Savoury Millet

Hulled millet, prepared according to the packet, with cheese, ketchup and chilli flakes added. It tastes like cous cous.

Pizza toast

I was craving pizza and just happened to get all the pizza toppings together except for actual pizza base. This is bread slices spread with tomato paste, topped with bacon etc and sprinkled with cheese.

Grill'd Bunless Burgers

At Grill'd, there's a bunless option. It sounds like bad value 'cause you're paying the same price and not getting the bun. However, it turns out the bunless option is just as filling as with the bread (especially if you also want chips), since the bun is not a filling component of the meal anyway.

This is the bacon and cheese burger. The great thing about having the sauce on the side instead of inside a sandwich is that you can have as much or as little as you want (and it's a LOT of sauce, but having worked in a fast food restaurant myself I know they actually put that amount in the burgers!! This is especially a concern with a high fat sauce like aioli).

The zucchini chips sound like a good alternative to potato, but with the batter they put on the zucchini, they are actually almost as high in kilojoules as their potato counterparts and don't even taste as good (waaaay to salty, and kind of slimy tasting if the batter falls off).

In conclusion, even though restaurant bun-free burgers are better than I expected, the ones I made at home were just as good. I have mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup etc at home that need to be used up too!

Tomato and mozzarella omelette

Tomato and mozzarella is one of those classic flavours It's what Margherita Pizza and Tomato boccincini salad are based on. And for that reason, this was one of the most amazing omelettes I've ever had. It looks kind of messy. This is because mozzarella cheese is stretchy and therefore results in omelettes spreading apart rather than sticking together. I made the omelette in a microwave, though, so this wasn't an issue for me.

Mash and cheese

I stumbled across this hearty and delicious meal when attempting to use up the vast quantity of mashed potato I had made for a meal meant for other people (one of the most irritating things as a calorie obsessed person is that not everyone else wants to eat everything). I did this simply by sprinkling grated cheese and cracking an egg (for the protein of course) onto a bowl of mash, which I heated in the oven. The result? Slightly crusty top, hot, bubbling cheese and a soft, squishy underbelly of mashy goodness.

Pizza omelette

Pizza is without a doubt one of my favourite foods ever. I can turn my nose up at most savoury snacks – chips of every description, nuts, dips. However, the smell of hot mozzarella on freshly baked bread is one of those things that can make the most strict of dieters go weak at the knees with hunger. This is why we do low carb versions of our favourite foods. Here, I am using my microwave omelette maker. All you need to do is beat 3 eggs, pour the mixture into each half, and microwave for 2 minutes. Then you add the toppings (in my case it was cheese, onion, pasta sauce and bottled capsicum), then microwave for another 2 minutes. You can make the omelette fluffier by beating the egg whites until they become frothy and then folding in the beaten egg yolks. You can also choose to use one of those cartons of egg whites they sell at the supermarket instead. Some of these are flavoured with things like spinach and ricotta.

Easy low carb slim Bolognese

530 calories

Ingredients per person (I made 3 servings)

33 g aged cheddar cheese, the icing on the proverbial cake. It's a bit brittle, but packs a ton of umami into the meal.

1/3 jar organic pasta sauce randomly picked up on special at a chemist (due to being close to its best before date, probably. This seems to be the only way shops like this end up selling stock)

A pack of slim pasta, also from the chemist. It seems one of the staff had been considering buying it because she asked me I it was "any good." If you like slightly jelly-like vermicelli, then yes, its fantastic. And it happens to go rather well with tomato based sauces.

1/3 of an extremely huge almost half kilo  onion from one of those 10 kg bags. Diced with the pivot method and a nice, sharp knife. Fried until caramelised with spray oil.

1/3 diced carrot

300 g premium beef mince formed into a pattie with a little flour to bind and spices

Method: cook everything in a microwave for 10 minutes and serve with noodles

Next time I'm substituting the noodles for long, thin slices of carrot (thin enough to bend)

Nachos and baked beans, aka healthy alternative to Doritoes Pizza

After making pizzas a few days, I had leftover tomatoes, pizza sauce and cheese. I also had a bag of Cool Ranch Doritoes I had been wanting to try and hadn't finished. The natural conclusion? Nachos! This is partly inspired by a recipe of my sister, who likes to cover doritoes with cheese and pasta sauce, then microwave them for a bit. Some chips have submerged with the sauce and cheese and are soft, while others remain crunchy. The baked beans are there to "bulk" everything up and turn an unhealthy snack into a healthy meal. Who said they need to go to Dominoes to get the "Doritoes pizza" experience?

Eggs on cheese toasts

This morning I decided that I was going to have an egg on toast and that while I was at it, it might as well be cheesy toast. I made this meal by microwaving two eggs on a small plate for a minute or two. It might be a good idea to stop the microwave after the first minute though, because eggs have an annoying habit of exploding if you cook them too long. Before I was doing that, I had sprinkled two pieces of bread with a little cheese and put them in the oven. This should only take 10 minutes at most, but I left them in too long and ended up with something comparable to cheesy rusks (rusks are those rounds of toasted bread similar to Melba toasts. They are usually made by European brands).

Hamburger Donburi

Yet again, I felt like burger with rice as a substitute for bread. The only thing that's missing here is the mayonnaise, but I figured that enough flavour came from everything else.

Pizza or tortilla?

Weight Watchers frozen personal pizza. At under 400 calories, it sounds like the perfect diet meal. But after actually trying this extremely thin crusted, scantily clad pizza, I think I could have done better with  a hearty pita bread topped with pizza sauce, mozzarella and anti-pasto vegetables.