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.