A Week in Salads - The Tuna Medley

  

My last salad and it is a stunner! This came about as a “oh dear what have I got in the fridge that needs eating”.  Turns out I had quite a lot actually. Initially I had something very different planned but as I was looking through my veggie crisper on Thursday night I was inspired. I am sticking to my need for protein as I have started running and I don’t want to give myself the excuse or option to stop. I won’t lie I was a little uncertain about what I was putting together at first but it turned out to be super delicious and very refreshing. What you need for the tuna medley is:

Ingredients

1 can of dolphin safe tuna in brine - not oil

½ gemme lettuce

½ avocado

Two tomatoes or a handful of cherry ones

⅓ of a cucumber

150gm asparagus blanched  

150 cooked broccoli

1 teaspoon mayo

Salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 hard boiled egg, optional

Method

You may have  gathered from the previous posts that making the salads is essentially a toss all in a bowl and mix. I miss the mayo and tuna together and add it on top along with the egg once i had mixed and seasoned all the veggies. It makes it look very pretty. Really it is up to you how you will arrange your salad.

Try not to deny your cravings. Cravings is the undoing of all healthy food plans, they make your efforts unpleasant and eventually you crack. We have already talked about cheat days, and this is essentially what the cheat day is for.  If you want to have a piece of chocolate or a cake then then do. If you can make it be a healthier version of your original craving and feel satisfied then you are a genious and a better person than me. BE CAREFUL though! Do not eat a whole cheesecake (in one day…) or a box of 12 Krispy Kremes like I did. If you are having a low sugar diet having your cheat day be filled with sugary treats will just set you back to the beginning. Try and think things through and find healthy alternatives to the foods you crave such as: 

• Avocado chocolate mousse
• Dark chocolate instead of milk or chocolate covered nuts
• Raisins and dried fruit instead of sweets
• Roast your own nuts with spices instead of crisps   

I know that all of this seems “easy to say hard to do” but I am only sharing what I have already experienced myself. It is not easy that is true but it is not easy to begin with when you are figuring out the balance of it all, what works and what doesn’t what you like and what you don’t. Let us all be honest and  admit that it is a part of life, you do it with every other aspect of existence, we spend days trying to figure out the best mobile phone to get and research smartwatches for weeks before we buy one. Why not be as careful with our food, we are what we eat at the end and I for one want to be a lovely seasonal salad!

Bon Appetit!

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!