Curry Chia Damper bread

Mix self-raising flour and water, gradually adding the other ingredients (I used only just enough oil to ease mixing and a a of tablespoon of curry powder for cup of flour) until the texture is thick but only just runs off the spoon by itself. Then bake in a preheated 180 ° C conventional oven until browning.

Millet vegetarian lasagne

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Cheese Polenta with zucchini and tomato

Kale Bolognese

Cook kale. Drain liquid from kale to use in cooking pasta. Mix kale and tomato pasta sauce. Use leftover liquid and pasta for minestrone.

Savoury Millet

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

Kale and pb sandwich

While I was staying with my dad recently, my uncle, who is living in the US came to stay. He is vegetarian, and eats a LOT of bread. That's why this sandwich is interesting: Kale contains protein and so does peanut butter.

I used crunchy peanut butter because salads often have nuts added for "crunch" factor. There was a lot of kale in between those slices of bread, but also lots of peanut butter (spread on both slices). So despite the amount of (raw!) kale, I didn't end up tearing the bread away from the kale while eating the sandwich. In fact, the peanut butter seemed to soften the kale. To be fair though, I tore the bits of kale that didn't have any stems...

Noodles & bok choy

Instant noodles with bok choy. This is a meal I often have at university. All I need (other than the obvious ingredients) is a microwave. I also cooked the bok choy before putting it with the the noodles and cooking them together.

Mushroom and pak choy spinach gnocchi

Mushrooms and gnocchi? Although this wasn't planned, they go surprisingly well together. I had bought this gnocchi because it was spinach flavoured, and in retrospect, I could have put it to better use, like spinach and ricotta gnocchi. Despite this, I don't regret this meal. The slightly sour flavour of the spinach gnocchi compliments the opposite flavour of the mushrooms, and the juxtaposition of textures between the gnocchi (starchy and firm) and the mushroom (firm in a more gelatinous way) offer interest.

My attempt at "Zoodles"

In the 4 Ingredients Allergy book there are also various "zoodle" themed recipes. Or that is, Vegetables prepared to replace pasta and noodles in meals.

Sweet potato noodles are ready to fry.

The idea is that you peel the vegetables instead of cutting them, so that you end up with something like linguine or wide rice noodles. The recipe involving sweet potatoes called for cinnamon as well for some reason. The idea was to fry them in oil (!!). However, I failed to use enough oil and ended up with overly thin bits of undercooked sweet potato that had to be broken up so they wouldn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Grr.

The zucchini fared better, but it was a hassle to peel one zucchini let alone the amount you would need for a pasta dish. And it just tasted like normal zucchini.

It's hard to stop noodles breaking apart in stir fries at the best of time. Sweet potato noodles (which didn't even fully cook) were a bad, bad idea for this meal (the chicken and balsamic noodles from 4 Ingredients, in which I used mung bean noodles).

In future, I will make sure noodle stir fries are composed of ingredients that have been cooked fully XD.

Root vegetable Frittatta salad

Saladify everything. That's how you lose weight. Surprisingly, this was not at the forefront of my mind when I was thinking of ways to use up the fritatta, salad mix, dressing and tomatoes in my fridge. I'm just buying a lot of fresh produce lately.

Avocado mash

This is a recipe in the 4 Ingredients Allergy book. The original recipe calls for an avocado, 2 potatoes and olive oil. I substituted the potato with half a sweet potato (the orange kind) and half a kumera potato. I carefully diced the potatoes (all cubes the same size, very important), boiled them until slightly mushy, then added the ripe avocado and dash of oil as I mashed. I was surprised how good it was. Avocado is creamy, so it's almost like adding milk or cream to the mash but with a different flavour.

Caramel Banana

Walden Farms produces a variety of very low calorie sauces (the other notable ones being strawberry and BBQ). While, due to the nature of artificial sweeteners (they begin to taste bitter and awful in concentrated amounts), they aren't the kind of thing you'll be wanting to constantly sneak from the bottle, they make a nice low calorie alternative to dipping sauces. All this banana needs now is some peanut butter and "marshmallow creme."

Psyllium cake fail

While I was at my dad's house recently I made him a gluten free, raising agent free, wheat free slice.

I had made something like this before with potato flour, coconut cream and brown sugar in somewhat equal ratios )!!). I'm making something my dad will enjoy, not something healthy!

But this time I added psyllium! It's basically pure fibre, so what's the harm when there's so much sugar to mask the flavour anyway?

 

The end result looked and tasted okay (there is nut butter and melted (apricot jam on top. Which when dad told me he was now allergic to NUTS too). But I used WAY too much fibre!! I learned that too much fibre = gas induced stomach aches.

Too bad. There's always next time.

Easy Minestrone

This is the easiest minestrone dish I have ever seen or made. It involves boiling celery, onion, canned tomatoes and diced carrots in stock, then adding easy mac, waiting for that to cook, and finally adding baked beans. This is served with a side of slim noodles fried with leftover onion. This meal great value for calories and delicious.

Slim noodles and kale

After being on My Fitness Pal for 2+ years, I can safely say that slim noodles and kale is one of those dieting clichés. It wasn't my fault that I happened to find lots of kale and slim noodles on special at the same time, in the same inner city supermarket of Canberra (coincidence? I think not). I did make one important adjustment that made this extremely filling and yet non-satiating meal palatable: oodles of soy sauce. The whole meal was about 100 calories.

Weevils

Weevils. After all those jokes about Weevils being a source of protein in old ship's biscuits, I never thought they would have marketed as a snack.  But believe it or not, there's a Californian company that does exactly that. They are available in "original" (I'm assuming salty) and "BBQ" flavours. At AUD$5 per 15 g box, they were a strictly one off occurrence for me. To be honest, they weren't very special. The only reason they were so low in calories was because it was like, 15 g. Of course it would be low calories. They were crispy and had scant BBQ flavouring, but there was also a slightly unpleasant under-taste reminiscent of when you eat a deep fried prawn head (palatable to many people in the world, but not to me) or perhaps a fishy version of marmite/vegemite.

Lentil gnocchi bolognese

This occurred somewhat accidentally. I needed to make bolognese for my boyfriend and I didn't have meat or normal pasta. The next best things? Gnocchi and lentils.

This dish is amazingly filling and healthy. It was also incredibly easy, as all I did was plop everything onto a baking tray and put it in the oven for about 40 minutes.

Let them eat chocolate cake

This was made by mixing 100 g of the cheapest brand of chocolate cake mix with about half a cup of coke zero, then microwaving it in a heart shaped container. The mixture expanded to twice the size in the microwave after just a couple of minutes. I poured sugar free chocolate syrup on top.

Apple cinnamon pudding

This is basically a mug pudding. Only, unlike a mug cake, I am doing several things differently. Firstly, I'm using a bowl. This is much easier than using mug because there is more surface area and less chance of having uncooked batter and overly hard crust. Secondly, the batter is simply wholemeal self-raising flour mixed with hot water (although soda also works well), I have swirled stewed and drained apple, sultana and cinnamon into the batter.

When upturned, the pudding retains its structure enough to be eaten off a plate. Success!

BBQ coleslaw

Okay, so I was nearly out of calories for the day, but I was famished and needed something. And even though I had cabbage, I couldn't deal with having it on its own. The only solution was to cook the cabbage and drench it in low fat mayonnaise (my drench is your sprinkling. But in all honesty, you don't really need much sauce for the moistness of the cooked cabbage to carry the flavour through the whole thing). This was about 100 calories.