Italian Pork with Garlic Spaghetti

This dish was very tasty and something you could certainly serve up to guests!

The sauce is simple, and the garlic spaghetti adds a nice twist to an otherwise blank accompaniment. I did wonder if all together it would be too much, but it worked really well.

I began by pan frying (with squirty cooking oil) the pork escalopes for 2 minutes on each side. I then added a chopped red onion and a crushed clove of garlic. Then I added some dried rosemary (1/2 tbsp), some lemon rind (1 tsp) and cooked it for 1 minute, stirring continuously.

I then added 150ml of chicken stock and 1 can of chopped tomatoes. This was left to simmer for about 15 minutes, by which time the sauce has thickened slightly.

Meanwhile I'd cooked some spaghetti according to the normal instructions. In another pan I had fried, in a tad of olive oil, a crushed clove of garlic and a pinch of salt, until the garlic was golden but not fully brown. Once I was ready to serve, I poured this mixture over the spaghetti and tossed it all together well.

Lamb Pitta Pockets

Lamb is expensive at the moment, but this dish makes lovely use of the meat and makes a little go a long way!

Simply cut your lamb into cubes, and fry (as always, I use low fat oil, just a squirt!) with a little mint (fresh if you've got it or I used dried) and some sweet chili dipping sauce.

Meanwhile, toast your pittas - and be careful as those things get blimen hot! So carefully wait for them to be puffed open enough and then remove them from the toaster and cut one in half. Insert some of the lamb and prepare a dressed salad for the site! Easy!

Amazing Cheese On Toast

Having been to a cheese festival at Cardiff Castle, I was the proud owner of some very nice cheese! So, to show cheese on toast isn't the bland dish you used to eat on Saturdays when you were at Primary School, here's a very tasty version.

This dish simply relies on the ingredients. With a fresh harvester loaf from the bakery across the road from my house, and my Sundried Tomato and Spring Onion cheese, I got this incredibly tasty lunch! Simply toast some chunky slices of bread, cut some thin pieces of cheese and place on top of the toast under a hot grill. A few minutes later - ta da! So easy but soooo tasty!

Film Night Popcorn

If you can't watch a film without munching your way through bags of unhealthy popcorn, then try making your own instead!

Simply get a bag of popping corn from your local health food/organic shop, or even your supermarket. Then simply add a little oil (I use the low fat stuff) to a pan and add some corn. Cover the pan (vital!) and turn up the heat! You'll hear the corn start to go crazy inside the pan as it pops away! If you've been delicate on the oil I'd recommend shuffling the pan occassionally so nothing can stick.

Once the popping's calmed down, carefully remove the lid (the odd piece of flyaway popping corn can be dangerous!) and serve! If you want, add a touch of salt or sugar/sweetener to flavour.

Herbed Pork Escalopes and Special Mash

Now this picture doesn't look like much, but it was actually a very tasty meal.

I simply pan friend some pork escalopes (just in a little bit of low fat squirty cooking oil) and sprinkled over some dried mixed herbs whilst they were cooking.

Meanwhile I boiled some left over sweet potato and swede I had from earlier in the week (great use of left overs here!) and blended it together to make a really tasty mash.

The sweet corn then added another interesting aspect to the meal.

Easy Special Fried Rice

To make the most of a selection of left overs, I just rustled up a very quick and easy special fried rice for lunch.

Using rice from last night's curry, and a tiny bit of scrambled egg and bacon from breakfast (I cooked too much on purpose as I had this lunch in mind), a couple of spring onions which were getting past their best, and a handful of frozen prawns and frozen peas, this took only a few minutes to nicely fry up (of course, in light spray oil).

To add more flavour I sprinkled on some Chinese Five Spice and added plenty of light soy sauce whilst I was cooking it.

Chopsticks are optional. ;)

Anniversary Breakfast

Now, I won't be blogging about breakfast often - it is the most important meal of the day and all that, but it's also an occasion where you can be really pushed for time.

But today is mine and my boyfriend's 2 year anniversary - so I thought I'd make the effort!

The original plan had been croissants, but on finding how much lower in fat muffins are, I went with plan 'B' (approx 16g of fat in a butter croissant, 6g in a 'healthy' croissant - 2.5g in a muffin).

So this breakfast is very simply scrambled egg and healthy bacon (no rind) on a buttered muffin (I've discovered Flora Extra Light - look out for it, it's in a purple tub). To add some colour and different textures I then sauted (fried in very little oil - and just the spray kind at that) a large mushroom each, and added some cherry tomatoes.

To cook the tomatoes, I started off with them in the oven, again with a few quick sprays of oil) and then finished off sauteying them in a pan for quickness, taking them off the heat once the skins started to crack. Whilst my boyfriend was more concerned with the eggs and bacon, I was really pleasantly surprised by how sweet they ended up and would definately cook them like this again to add a different flavour to a dish.

Elaborate Banana Split.

What could be simplier - or tastier - than a good ol' banana split?!

And the joy of this dish is, you can just add in what you've got around - you don't have to buy special ingredients (well - except for bananas and ice cream; kinda essential those two!).

I simply slices a banana length wise, put 2 scoopes of vanilla ice cream between the 2 halves, filled in around the ice cream with a selection of berries. I had some frozen ones already 'in stock'. I then covered the bananas with (low fat) whippy cream, and drizzled maple flavoured golden syrup (from the cupboard) and chocolate sauce over the top. The chocolate sauce was some left over chocolate cream filling I had made at the weekend for a birthday cake - butter, dark chocolate and caster sugar blended together - I heated it up again tonight to make it runny. Ok - so the chocolate sauce means this isn't the healthiest of recipes - but hey, I didn't coat the dish with chocolate!

I then topped it off with some fresh strawberries I picked up at the green grocers earlier, and grated some brazil nuts - well 1 brazil nut - my boyfriend bought last week over the top (they added a really nice flavour - good use of a stock item there I think!).

This might be a simple dish - but if you pile on enough cream and sauce, you'll get an astounding response from anyone you serve it up to!

Easy chunky vegetable curry.

This is a very tasty simple dish - made sweet by the yogurt added at the very end. I was cautious of adding too much ginger and Garam Masala, but my taster told me I needn't have been - whilst it tasted lovely (much more flavour than sauces from a jar) a touch more spice wouldn't have hurt.

To get this one going (and to cook enough for 2 - 3 people), simply dice 1 onion, a large sweet potato, a medium sized carrot, half a small swede, and half a small cauliflower.

Tip: Cut the swede chunks smaller than the rest, as they take the longest to cook.

Saute all of the vegetables together for 5 minutes in 1tbsp of olive or vegetable oil. Then add 1 tsp of Garam Masala and 1/2 tsp of ground ginger. Cook this together for 1 minute, before adding 3/4 pint of vegetable stock.

Bring this to the boil, before reducing it to a simmer and leaving it for approximately 30 minutes (longer if your veggie chunks were big and so take longer to cook).

Finally, stir in 1/4 pint of natural yogurt (I used low fat yogurt and it was fine) and 2 tbsp of fresh coriander (dried if you can't get your hands on fresh... this is supposed to be practical cooking after all!).

Stir it all together until the yogurt is fully mixed in, and serve! I topped mine with a dried bay leaf (again, fresh would have been nicer) and served it with brown rice.

Open ciabatta sandwich with eggs and smoked salmon.

Now I think this looks pretty 'gourmet-esque' - I'm sure you're pay a lot of money for it in Harvey Nicks - especially as it's garnished with rocket - always a way to add to a price tag!

But it's basically an egg and tomato sandwich!

The original receipe used Mozzarella cheese, but as always I wanted the dish to be as low fat as possible - and as cheap as possible. So I used hard boiled eggs (hey - when they're cut into slices they look the same, sideways on!)

Simply cut a ciabatta roll in half, or slice a ciabatta loaf (97p from my local bakery, £1.55 in the trendy deli down the road) longways, and spread one side with light mayonnaise. (I use the extra light stuff.) Butter the other side, or leave it dry if you wish. Then simply add a layer of sliced hard boiled egg, followed by slices of large beef tomato. And top with thin slithers of Smoked Salmon (or smoked wafer thin ham if you're on a particularly tight budget, but I got enough salmon to do this for 4 people for £2). Add rocket and poppy seeds to garnish and serve with dressed little gem leaves.

Prep time: About 3 minutes once the eggs are boiled and shelled.
Cost: Cheaper than eggs benedict in a bistro.