Pancakes!

YUM.

My SW consultant posted a recipe for pancakes on our Facebook group and I decided to make it. I've had a bit of a shocking week foodwise as I've been really emotional and angry at the world, but today we decided that instead of indulging in syn-heavy ways we would try out this recipe.

I am so glad we did. They were scrumptious!

Sweets and Pride

I've had another rough day so wanted to share the rather tasty sweeties we made in a bid to cheer me up.

Penguins! (Okay, okay, so the most exciting ice cube tray we own is penguin shaped. All the fun stuff will come like penguins.) Made a Hartley's sugar free jelly sachet up to half a pint with boiling water, and added two gelatine sheets. I let it cool for a minute or so then stirred in a yoghurt (in this instance a peach one, but a friend on Twitter suggested that a combination of raspberry jelly and Turkish Delight Muller light would be her choice and that sounds amazing). I put berries into the sections of the ice cube tray but I probably won't do that next time, the blancmange type jelly-ness was excellent on its own and I can always have fruit on the side. 

Sweeties!

And in other news, the pulled pork I slow cooked earlier in the week has been so cost-effective! We had it as a meal in itself, with BBQ sauce and mashed potatoes. We diced it into macaroni cheese (which I did not post here as it was not very nice at all!). We used it as pizza topping (and were quite generous with it!). I have had it twice through the week as a snack, cutting a few slices and nibbling them when I've been peckish. And today it finally disappeared into a pasta salad I made for the boy's lunch tomorrow. The joint only cost £3.50 in the first place! And it was beautiful. I am proud of myself on that one!

Walking, Weigh In and Treats

This week we've tried to incorporate a bit more exercise into our days, and we went on a lovely walk in some local hills and actually worked quite hard at it!

But when the view ends up like this...

...it's hard to complain! It was a really lovely hour spent walking along the stream, admiring the baby ducklings and then climbing a horrible hill and walking back. I wish we lived closer to scenery like this (this park is a 40 minute drive away) so we could do that more regularly, and walking in the streets of the town doesn't have quite the same appeal!

At group this week I lost 3.5lb and am pleased with that. Next week I want to do the same again and get my 1/2 a stone certificate. And I know it could have been more, as I've now looked up the Lidl brand muller lights we've been having (muller lights have got so expensive!) and they're not at all syn free. Which would have been fine if I was aware of that and accounting for it, but to have an extra 4.5 syns every day that I didn't know about, not so good.

As a post weigh in treat, we had jelly and ice cream! Mixed a yoghurt in the freezer to create our own 'fro-yo' and served with jelly penguins! We're big kids at heart.

Danone 'Danio'

The adverts for the Danone Danio yoghurts are adorable. Seriously adorable. And every time I see them I think "I would love to try that." So today I did. 

They are COMPLETELY worth the hype.

The television told me they were "extra thick" - I was not expecting them to be so thick that the spoon stands up on its own! The fruit at the bottom was lush - I had passionfruit, and the gold syrup and crunchy seeds was delicious.

For the syns they are worth, they are the perfect indulgence - they feel more like a cheesecake than a yoghurt. So so thick. Something that I wouldn't choose every day but when I had a cheesecake craving, this is what I'll buy.

The 0% passionfruit is 1.5 syns. 0% strawberry is just 1 syn.

The blueberry and the peach are 3 syns each but I imagine totally totally worth it. That's not even many. You get so much flavour and 'treat' out of it. I'm am a convert. They are even on special offer at the Co-op at the moment!