Thursday 7 April 2016

A Week in Salads - Prawn Cocktail with a zing!

 Oh the famous prawn cocktail, it has gone through so many permutations, so why not put it through one more. I love prawns and I just had to do this because I love the combination of sweet prawns and creamy avocado. Prawns are also a great source of protein as is most seafood, they are also quite high on cholesterol however and 100gm of prawn contains 63% of your daily allowance. I know not all cholesterol is bad, and I tried to see if there was a further nutritional breakdown of this but I couldn’t find one. Here is what you need for this lovely salad. I found that this was just a little on the large side when I made this

Ingredients

150gm of cooked King Prawns
1 gemme lettuce or ½ Cos lettuce
½ bell pepper
⅓ cucumber
½ avocado
2 hard boiled eggs
Salt to taste
Sriracha Sauce for that Zing!

For the dressing
3 tablespoons greek yogurt
1 ½ tablespoons Tomato ketchup

Method:

In a large bowl put all the veggies and the prawns together. Mix the yogurt and the tomato ketchup well and add to the salad. Cut the eggs into quarters. Transfer the salad to your serving plate, put the eggs on top and drizzle with the Sriracha sauce. If you don’t want that little bit of heat then skip this step. Eat!

Tips and Ideas: One of my biggest failures over the years when dieting was that I had built it around a reward system. I ate too little, I ate the wrong things, I was permanently hungry, fatigued and irritable. I love food, cooking and the experience of a delicious meal. My diets were not allowing me to enjoy any of that. It felt like the only way of motivating myself was giving myself little treats for goals reached. The problem is that you spoil some if not all of the hard work that you had done so far. It is a one step forward two step back method of slimming down, and it is in no way healthy or sustainable.  
Dinner becomes your reward for doing well through the day, you had an apple for breakfast, two almonds as a snack and a stick of carrot and celery for lunch so it is ok to have a pot of pasta with 4 cheese sauce bacon and a whole garlic bread to yourself, and yes I have actually had that exact day! If you like me were dieting wrong and denying yourself too much food, then you like me would latch on to the first opportunity to find an excuse and eat something sweet, rich and/or extremely decadent.

If you feel the need to be constantly rewarding yourself with naughty treats then you have to re-evaluate how you are eating. The best way for me was to build in a cheat day. One day a week when I eat whatever I want. No guilt! And no don’t be nuts and say “Wednesday is my cheat day” move it around to suit your life, birthdays, weddings, work outings, that awesome cheese festival in town. Being too regimented can set you up to fail. What surprised me is how often I was not actually interested in changing my diet on the cheat day, and my cheat days are predominantly used for events. I can say though that is easily due to the fact that I am not dieting, I am not on a regime aimed at losing weight. I am on a lifestyle change aimed at a healthier me. Therefore I changed my diet, I think about what I eat, I plan meals, I cook at home, which gives me greater control over fat, sugar, carbs and salt. I do falter, Easter was a MASSIVE 3 day binge of sugar and fat, but I don’t feel bad because that is not the norm. I believe the concept of dieting is dangerous, useless and unsustainable and I hope these posts inspire you to think about your eating habits on a long term basis.

Bon Appetit!

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