Wednesday Recipe - Corn Chowder soup!

Instead of the old WIAW where I eat pretty much the same thing I did last week, I thought I'd show you all a recipe for what I'm having for lunch; Corn Chowder soup!

I found the recipe somewhere online, but changed it quite a bit so I suppose it's pretty much my own now. I'm always annoyed that recipes are for loads of people, so I've tailored this recipe to one serving to make it easier, although obviously you can just double it up for 2 people.

Ingredients

- Anchor light spreadable 7g

- Red pepper - 30g diced

- White onion - 10g diced

- Turkey bacon (or pancetta whichever you fancy) - 2 rashers cut into strips

- OXO chicken stock cube made up to about 250ml

- Sweetcorn - 75g

- Potato - 70g cut into cubes

- Onken Fat free natural yoghurt - 30g

- Parsley

- Cumin

1. Melt the butter off in a saucepan and then add the onion, pepper and turkey bacon. Fry off gently until softened.
2. Add the stock and bring to the boil, this is where I added a dash of cumin as I wanted my soup to have a bit of spice to it, this is completely optional. 
3. Leave to simmer for a few minutes and then taste to see if any salt or pepper is needed. Then add the potato and bring back to the boil.
4. Add the sweetcorn and leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes, until the potato is cooked.
5. After the potato is cooked, transfer to a blender and blend until pretty much smooth. It will still be a tad thick and a tiny bit lumpy, but that's normal and I mean come on, nobody like a watery soup.
6. Put back into the pan and add the yoghurt, cooking gently on a low heat. Then add the parsley and a few cubes of crispy pancetta on top if you want and you're done! 

If you want to made this soup a few days ahead, just make up to stage 5 and put in a sealed container in the fridge. Just heat back up then add the yoghurt and simmer for a few minutes on the day you want to eat it! I had mine with a few crackers but you can serve it with bread or anything you like really. It's a really filling lunch and only 259 calories with only 7 calories from fat. Perfect for these chilly winter days.

Hope you have a great Wednesday and as always, feel free to post your WIAW's and comments below!

xo.

Food for thought Friday

I am a total fashion and beauty junkie, there's no denying it, but I also love cooking. There's something about creating a meal from scratch, it tastes so much better to me than pre-cooked packaged food. Plus it's always good to know what's going into your meals. A couple weeks ago, or days, not entirely sure, I posted about my healthy eating day and someone suggested I post some recipes so thought I'd let you in on my dinner for last night :). I would do 'what I ate today' food posts quite often, but I don't know if that's really what people want to read when they find my blog and also I don't tend to eat lunch that much as it's not my thing so would pretty much just be dinner! Either way, I hope you like my recipe, which was found online and tweaked a bit.


The recipe: Homemade bolognese!

(okay I made this for just me, but with a little more pasta it would definitely do two as I didn't finish it)

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
250g extra lean beef mince
1 carrot
2 large cloves of garlic
1 1/2 teaspoons basil
2 teaspoons mixed herbs
1 18.7cl bottle red wine
1 onion, cut up into chunks
100g passata
200g tinned chopped tomatoes
200g tagliatelle

(optional - garlic bread and parmesan)

Method:
1. Fry the olive oil in a large frying pan, then add the crushed garlic and onion and fry off until softened. Add the mince and cook through until brown. (this is how it looks at this point)

2. Add the red wine and leave to boil, stirring occasionally until it's reduced in volume by about two thirds. Then add the carrots, chopped tomatoes, basil and mixed herbs and stir all in together. Cover and leave to simmer on a low heat for about 10 minutes (it said an hour and a half online, mine would have been burnt to a crisp by then!)

This is before covering :)

3. Turn off the heat to the mince and cook the pasta according to packet instructions. Then add the pasta to the mince mixture and stir to coat. This is where I added the passata, just because there wasn't really any sauce at all. I'd recommend tasting the sauce before you serve as mine could have done with a little more herbs. 

And voila! I'm sure it'd taste just as nice with spaghetti, I just fancied a change :). 

Let me know if any of you do try this and what you think, and if there's anything else you would like to see me cook (for a change from the beauty and fashion) then leave me a comment and I'll be sure to try it out!