healthy

Chicken Katsu Curry

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This is a mild Japanese curry with a Slimming World take! To save on time and convenience you can use ready made breadcrumbs, just remember to look up the syns beforehand. I served it with boiled rice and pickle cucumbers.

Serves: 4

Syns: 1.5 syns per serving

Time Taken: 60 minutes

Difficulty: Moderate

Chicken Katsu Curry

Chicken Katsu Curry

Ingredients

For the chicken

  • 4 skinless chicken breasts
  • 2 slices of wholemeal (from a 400g loaf)
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the curry sauce

  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 2 carrots, peeled and grated
  • 4 celery sticks, thinly sliced
  • 5 cloves of garlic, crushed
  • 1 tbsp mild curry powder
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 600ml chicken stock
  • Low calorie cooking spray
Chicken Katsu Curry

Chicken Katsu Curry

Method

Pre heat your oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/Gas 6. Line a large baking tray with baking paper. Place the chicken breasts between cling film, beat until 1 cm thick and season.

Whizz the bread in a food processor to make fine crumbs. Tip onto a large plate and season well. Dip the chicken breasts into the eggs, then lightly coat each in a quarter of the breadcrumbs. Transfer to the baking tray sprayed with low calorie cooking spray and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Season the breadcrumbs with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place each chicken breast in some clingfilm and flatten with a rolling pin or meat tenderiser. Remove the clingfilm and dip the chicken in the egg, then coat with breadcrumbs and place on a baking tray sprayed with low-calorie cooking spray.

For the sauce, spray a large frying pan with low calorie cooking spray and place over a medium heat. Stir fry the onions for about 5 minutes, then add the garlic, carrots and celery. Stir fry for a further 5 minutes then add the curry powder, stock, soy sauce and season. Bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 15-20 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened. Blend the sauce for a smooth curry.

To serve, slice the chicken breast into pieces, spoon over the curry sauce and serve with steamed jasmine rice.

Snacks & Nibbles

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I absolutely love this feature on the SW website, which I’ve included below, that is all about snacks & nibbles! This is perfect whether you’re in need of a tasty lifesaver to keep you going, a mid-morning munch or simply a healthier alternative to a high-Syn snack, for when a ‘nibbly’ moment comes. Some need no cooking at all and some are simple to cook in advance and keep in the fridge ready for those times. Please do share using the comments box below what your favourite snacks & nibbles are.

Speed Free Food snacks
Snack on these for the BEST weight loss results. The more Speed you choose the more weight you’ll lose!

Savoury

  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Veg crudités – carrot, peppers, celery, sugar snap peas, and dips like homemade houmous
  • Sweet baby cucumbers
  • Roasted butternut squash chips (cooked in low calorie cooking spray)
  • Pickled beetroot, gherkins, cabbage and onions
  • Slimming World quiche muffins packed with your favourite Speed Free Foods

Sweet

  • Fruit bowl favourites – apples, satsumas, pears, peaches
  • Melon chunks – pop in the freezer for a cool nibble
  • Fat free Greek-style yogurt mixed with 1 tsp sweetener and top with strawberries and raspberries
  • Apple wedges dunked in your favourite syn free yogurt
Other Free nibbles include:

Savoury

  • Boil or bake a fresh corn on the cob, season well – I like to add chilli powder to it too
  • Hardboiled eggs

    Boiled Eggs, Clementines & Activia 0%

    Boiled Eggs, Clementines & Activia 0%

  • Seafood sticks dipped in soy sauce
  • Lean turkey, chicken,  chicken drumsticks (skin removed)
  • Sweet potato chips
  • Drain a can of tuna in spring water and blend with lemon juice and quark to make a pâté. Mix in chopped chives and spring onions, and serve with veg sticks
  • Asda Chosen by You Vegetable Chilli, from a 400g can, topped with a dollop of fat-free natural yogurt
  • Whizz roasted red peppers in brine from a jar with fat-free natural fromage frais and paprika, then use as a dip for cooked and peeled prawns.
  • Mugshots – my favourite one has to be the Cajun pasta flavour. Be aware that if you buy this flavour in a sachet it is 0.5 syn! The pot is FREE.

    Cajun Pasta Mugshot

    Cajun Pasta Mugshot

Sweet

  • Fat-free yogurt. Not all fat-free yogurts are Free eg. Onken Fat Free Yogurt Vanilla is 5 Syns per 450g pot  (double check your favourite flavour in Syns Online to protect your weight loss)
  • Freeze an Activia 0% strawberry yogurt in an ice-cube tray and enjoy like frozen sweets
  • Ice cream: Chop a handful of cherries and stir into two pots of Activia 0% (or similar) cherry yogurts and a large tub of fat free fromage frais. Pop it in the freezer for a couple of hours, stirring occasionally
  • Fresh pineapple chunks
Healthy Extra bites – If you’ve got your Healthy Extras left, tuck into one of these super snacks!
Hifi Light Bars

Hifi Light Bars

  • Cereal bars – 2 Hi-fi Light or Alpen Light bars (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice)
  • 4 Ryvita Original/Dark Rye (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice) topped with 4 Laughing Cow Light Triangles (Healthy Extra ‘a’ choice) and mixed pickles like gherkins and onions
  • 60g of any wholemeal bread, toasted (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice), topped with 40g reduced fat Cheddar (Healthy Extra ‘a’ choice) and halved cherry tomatoes
  • 30g bag Ryvita Minis, all varieties (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice)
  • 500g cooked rhubarb (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice) topped with fat free Greek-style yogurt mixed with 1 tsp sweetener
  • 35 pistachio nuts (Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice)

Ways to eat more Speed Foods

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Free Foods are naturally low in calories, bulky and filling. Speed Free Foods are even lower in calories so they’re the very best foods to eat when you want to lose weight. So if you swap one third or more of the slimming Free Food on your plate for super-slimming Speed Free Food, you’re naturally reducing the calories – without weighing, measuring, counting or going hungry.

You can find the fruit and vegetable lists that are just bursting with Speed Free Foods in your Food Optimising book – just look for the ‘S’ symbol. If you haven’t got your book handy, in the Weight Loss Planner section of the Slimming World website you’ll find drop down lists of all the basic Free Foods. Speed Free Foods are all marked with an ‘S’.

If you are a Slimming World group member you must have heard at least once in your group ‘The more speed you have, the more weight you’ll lose’!!! And that is correct, but it does not mean filling up on Speed Foods after a meal full of syns hoping it will counteract the calories consumed! What Slimming World mean by ‘The more speed you have, the more weight you’ll lose’ is replacing Free Foods and Syns on your plate with Speed Food, not adding extra calories if you do not need them.

Below are just some of the ways that helps me and my members get our Speed Free Food in our day. Please do share how you get more Speed Foods in your day!

  1. Fill at least 1/3 of a plate, add more if you like! I always find filling my plate up with Speed Free Food first helps me get this right
  2. Reach for them first as a snack between meals – whether it be a Satsuma, an apple, carrot batons or cucumber sticks, whatever you enjoy the most, reach for that Speed Food first
  3. Enjoy them for desserts – you can make a delicious Speed Food fruit salad with all your favourite fruit
  4. Whizz them into a soup, great for lunch or as a warming snack – soups are a great way of getting more Speed vegetables into your day
  5. Cram them into your Free main meals – this is ideal especially if you don’t enjoy bulky veggies or have fussy eating children and partner like mine!
  6. Sizzle them in a stir-fry – drizzle some soy sauce and oyster sauce for flavour
  7. Load them into a quiche, frittata or omelette – I love adding veg like onions, mushrooms and peppers into these
  8. Enjoy them as an alternative to pasta, rice and noodles – if you haven’t tried cauliflower rice yet, you must! There are so many other veg that can replace pasta too like courgetti or butternut squash lasagne sheets!
  9. Get creative with your cooked breakfast – how about using asparagus or spinach into your cooked breakfast for a change!
Lasagne with butternut squash sheets

Lasagne with butternut squash sheets

Easy Tomato Soup

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Easy peasy soup you can make with a few ingredients from your store cupboard without using up any syns! A tin of Heinz tomato soup can set you back by 11.5 syns!!!

Serves: 4

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 1o minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • 2 tins chopped tomato
  • 1 tin baked beans
  • 1 tin carrots, drained
  • 1 pickled onion
  • Vegetatble/Chicken stock

Method

Open up all your tins and place the ingredients together in a pan. Add your pickled onion and cook everything together for about 5 minutes.

Add enough stock depending how thick/thin you want your soup.

Blend everything for a smooth soup.

 

Overnight Oats

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This is a very popular breakfast option with members in group. I love it too as it is very easy to prepare and it is ready and waiting for you when you wake up! You can add any fruit to it, frozen fruit works really well as it is perfectly defrosted by morning.

Serves: 1

Syns: FREE if using porridge oats as Healthy Extra B choice

Time Taken: 2 minutes plus overnight chilling

Difficulty: Easy

Overnight Oats with Fruit

Overnight Oats with Fruit

 

Ingredients

  • 40g porridge oats
  • 200g fat free natural yogurt or a flavoured variety (check if syns)
  • Mixed blueberries, strawberries and raspberries

Method

Layer the porridge, yogurt and fruit in a jar or bowl. Cover and put in the refrigerator overnight so the porridge absorbs all the yogurt.

In the morning stir so all the layers are mixed together and top with more fruit.

Butternut Squash Soup

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This soup is perfect for those of you that like smooth soups. To make this even easier you can buy pre chopped chunks of butternut squash from most large supermarkets.

Serves: 4

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 30 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients

  • Low calorie cooking spray
  • 1 onion, peeled and diced
  • 1 medium butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into wedges.
  • 1 small potato, peeled and quartered
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 900ml vegetable stock
  • A few thyme sprigs to serve

Method

Spray a large pan with low calorie cooking spray and place over a low heat, add the onion and cook for 1-2 minutes.

Add the butternut squash and potato and cook for 2 minutes over a medium heat. Add the garlic and season to taste. Pour in the stock and simmer for 25 minutes.

Using a hand-blender or food processor, blend until smooth and serve sprinkled with thyme sprigs.