Posted On: 18/04/2017
By: Scouse Bird
As I’ve said before, there are some things you only know if you’ve ever joined Slimming World (like you’re the only fucker who’s ever heard of Quark and you’ll quite happily try to pass off a walk to the offy for prosecco as body magic).
While you’re first starting out it can be a bit of a minefield getting your head around free food and speed food and healthy extras all all that BUT it really does teach you how to have a better relationship with food. You’ll fall in love with cooking everything from scratch (because you don’t really have much of choice tbh) and seeing what inventions and junk food alternatives you can make out of nothing more than caulifower, a spice rack and hope.
There are certain thing you can buy to make life that little bit easier when it comes to cooking, because let’s face it, we’re all too busy to spend hours in the kitchen and can be tempted to make dead easy convenience food that quickly turns boring and then even more quickly turns into phoning a Dominos.
8 things that make Slimming World 10x Easier
A slow cooker
This is an actual life saver. Cut up some veg and meat and throw in stock and spices before bed, turn it on low before you leave for work and then you come home to a melt in the mouth, perfectly cooked Scouse – ditto goes for chilli con carne, pulled pork, you name it. The Vonshef 8 in 1 multi cooker is perfect because it’s massive so if you’ve got the whole family to feed it’s not a problem OR you can make loads of extra portions to freeze. There’s also a wire rack shelf for roasting meat – get you a slow cooker than can doth both.
A blender
Whether it’s whizzing up wholemeal breadcrumbs for your KFC style fakeaway (fit by the way), turning your cauliflower into caulifower rice (for cauliflower pizza base 😈) or blasting your mushy peas and beans into a base for a curry sauce, a blender is a life saver. The Salter Nutri Pro is brilliant and it comes with 3 interchangeable cups so if a recipe requires blending more than one thing then it’s easy enough to inter-change them without having to do the dishes in between. It’s technically a juicer but we all know juicing fruit is a mortal syn. Bless you my child, you are absolved, go in peace.
Kitchen Scales
It’s all well and good to have 30g of cereal as a healthy extra but have you actually seen how small a portion 30g is? I was shocked and appalled. Weighing your syns and healthy extras is so so important because if you’re a fat fuck such as myself, then you’ll have no idea what an actual real person portion is supposed to look like. It’s dead handy when you’re making cakes as well (no really, you can totally make cakes). I got this ‘carrot cake’ recipe off the absolute babe Jennifer Ginley who lost over 9st doing Slimming World and let me tell you, it’s been a lifesaver.
- 40g oats (HE B)
- 2 eggs (free)
- A grated carrot (speed)
- Half a tub of Grahams Vanilla Quark (just under 2 syns, but call it 2)
- Cinnamon to taste (free)
- A couple of levels tsps of sweetener (free as long as you don’t go overboard)
- Vanilla food flavouring (free) – this wasn’t part of her recipe but I like to add it.
Mix the ingredients together, spoon into frylighted tins/ramekins then pop in the oven at 180 degress for about half an hour or until golden. Then I like to use another spoonful of the vanilla quark as a ‘carrot cake style’ icing.
These sleek black gloss NutriTab electric scales from Terrallion ensure you have total accuracy, they look amazing in the kitchen and you can even link them up to the Wellness Coach app on your phone and record absolutely everything you’ve eaten that day and quantities. How smart is that?
A Soup Maker
This takes blending to another level. If you fancy making soups (which are amazing for getting loads of speed vegetables into your diet and fast tracking your weight loss) then a soup maker has got your back. You just pop all your ingredients in, select whether you want smooth or chunky soup and then press go. It cooks it all for you and then blends it to your desired consistency. The whole program takes about 15 minutes so you can be scranning down on the famous Heinz-alike tomato soup in no time. My personal favourite soup is a SW twist on brocolli and stilton:
- Brocolli softened ifirst in some boiling water. (Speed)
- Red Onion (Speed)
- Chicken stock (how much you use depends on how runny you want it – about 750ml is fine)
- Clove of garlic (Speed)
- Salt & Pepper
- 3 Laughing Cow Extra Light Triangles (1/2 HE A)
Cook and blend in your soup maker. Voila. The soup maker I use is by Judge and i love it.
A good baking mat
Nothing will save you the heartache of having to scrub burnt bits of oats off your oven and baking trays than getting a good baking mat (not to mention a fortune in tin foil and calories in oil). This silicone fibreglass mat from myrelationshipwithfood.com is actually amazing. Even if you don’t oil it, nothing sticks to it and it just wipes clean afterwards. Save your bakeware – get a mat! It’s perfect for making oaty cookies on:
- 40g oats (HE B)
- An egg (free)
- 1/2 a toffee mullerlight (free)
- A couple of drops of vanilla food flavouring
- A tsp of sweetener
- Chocolate chips (optional but 2.5 syns for 10g)
Mix the ingredients together, spoon into blobs on the My Relationship With Food baking mat, spread out into very thin circles and bake at 180 degrees for about 20-25 mins. COOKIES!
Spiralizer
Faux carbs are all the rage right now and they’re absolutely essential (in my opinion) if you’re going to do SP days consistently and speed up your weight loss. You can buy the pre-made packs in most supermarkets now but it’s much, much cheaper just to buy a bag of carrots or courgettes and make it yourself. This Salter electric spiralizer (available from Taskers) does all the hard work for you (no manual labour involved) so you can have courgetti and boodles (butternut noodles) in actual seconds.
An air fryer
Obviously, syn free chips is the first thing that springs to mind here but it also cooks sausages to perfection (which is great, because sausages are a pain to cook without burning on the outside and still having them pink in the middle – or is that just me??). I don’t know what it does to chicken, but if you pop a chicken breast in there to cook with no flavouring at all on it, I swear it’ll be the best chicken you’ve ever tasted in your life – I don’t know how or why, but it is!
An egg boiler
Eggs are the perfect SW breakfast – they’re free and filled with protein, which is great if you’re getting your head around the low-carb SP days. This egg boiler from Judge will make perfect eggs every time – you can even choose whether you want them hard, medium or soft boiled. You just pour the measured amount of water in the dish, put your eggs in and then they cook automatically – so even if you never have time for breakfast in the morning, they can cook while you’re getting ready for work, so honestly you have no excuse. Bring on the dippy eggs and wholemeal soldiers!
Egg poaching pan
If you want to get really fancy with your eggs (there’s nothing fancier than a poached egg) then you need this egg poaching pan from Salter. Poached eggs are notoriously difficult to get right – let’s face it, who can actually be arsed standing there trying to create a spinning vortex of vinegar water and tyrying to crack an egg in there fast enough for it to stay together or faff about with little food bags? This purpose made pan has little poached egg dishes that sit on top of a basin of boiling water meaning perfect poached eggs every time – they go great with bacon medallions, spinach for speed and some wholemeal toast! As an added bonus, if you remove the poached egg tray, the pan is the perfect size for making another low carb favourite; pizza omelette.
Go forth and slim fabheads!
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