Now we're cooking - Thai curry from scratch

Breakfast was a repeat of yesterday, berries, bananas and yogurt for me, fruit purée for little man and Soooper hoooops for madam. 

We attempted to get to a baby group this morning and for the second Tuesday running failed miserably. So we went shopping. By the time we got there it was lunchtime, and having learnt from my last visit we went straight for Spudulike and got a jacket potato with beans and cheese (healthy extra) to share, and a portion of garlic bread for little miss. She did really well eating all of the spud I gave her and both bits of bread. 
Little man was thoroughly enjoying people watching, to the point that he refused to look in my direction making feeding him a little tricky. Nonetheless he managed to eat the whole 'zingy lamb couscous' Ella pouch, eventually. 

We had a toilet stop in the middle of lunch. What a logistical nightmare that is, when you have a small person announcing the need for a wee when you're halfway through eating in a food hall. Hoorah for nice people at the next table watching our stuff while the 3 of us made a dash for the baby change toilets. 

I was in the mood for a bit of 'proper cooking' tonight, so decided to make a Thai green curry from scratch. I've been working out for a few days how to make it syn free without it being a weird and wonderful muller yogurt hack or other random ingredients. I eventually came up with this (and had a little helper to make it): 

To make the curry paste take the following ingredients and blitz into a paste:

3 medium chillies
1/2 onion
1 1/2 tbsp ground ginger
3 cloves garlic
Small bunch coriander including stalks
Small bunch basil including stalks
Grated zest of a lime (or lemon if no limes)
Juice of 1/2 lime (or lemon)
8 kaffir lime leaves
1 tbsp coriander seeds crushed
1 tsp cumin ground
1 tsp black peppercorns crushed
2 tsp fish sauce (nam pla)
2 tsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp water
1 lemongrass stalk 
Chop 1 1/2 onions and 1 green pepper and soften in the pan in fry light. Add the curry paste and then add chopped chicken breast. Ensure the chicken is thoroughly coated with the paste and fry it all off. Mix up 2 tbsp Maggi coconut milk powder with 175ml warm water, and add to the pan. Add chicken stock and top up with water. Bring to the boil. Add a tin of potatoes, chopped baby sweetcorn and 1 whole (crushed) lemongrass stalk. Simmer for 1/2 hour (the longer it simmers the better the flavour, I put mine in the oven on 100.) When ready to serve add the mange tout, and stir in 350ml fat free fromage frais. Garnish with chopped coriander. 
Serve with boiled rice. 
The whole pot is 3 Syns. And it's scrummy with a bit of a punch but not too hot. If you like it spicy add more chillies to taste when it's cooking or to garnish. 

Little miss had fish fingers and peas, followed by a yogurt. For little man I defrosted one of the pots of last week's bacon, tomato and bean soup. Followed by yogurt. - I didn't manage to feed us all the same meal but I think the fallout of chilli infused Thai curry may be a step too far for both of them! 

Total Syns = 6 Syns (small bag of quavers 5.5 Syns) 

Back to normality...then again!

The visitors have all gone home. And so it was back to normality this morning. Except I forgot to get a shop in, and the cupboards are largely bare! Well, bare of healthy-slimming-world-friendly foods anyway. If I wanted to live on rusks, biscuits, petit filous, and sweet chilli crisps I'd be sorted. 

Breakfast for the little man was a farley's reduced sugar rusk, most of which was briefly sucked and then unceremoniously thrown on the floor. Little miss had Soooper Hoooops, for a change. And I managed to scavenge 1 end slice of a 400g wholemeal loaf for toast (with a second slice later once I'd been shopping, it counts as my healthy extra.) 

Off to preschool for little miss and to the new shopping centre for me and the little man. 
After a few hours exploring the shops and facilities I decided to stop by the food hall. Hmmm, it was a sea of KFC, Burger King, Costa, Taco Bell, Indian and Chinese food. This caused a long dilemma and much online syn searching. Having ruled out the big chains, and veto'd boots and sainsbury's sandwiches (something like 18 Syns for low fat egg mayo if I remember rightly.)

I decided I'd go for the Chinese option. In my head I reasoned that if I was going to use precious Syns, it'd be on something tasty and that I'd not had for ages. Having studied the menu for a disproportionately long time, I dismissed anything deep fried (aka scrummy,) and opted for chicken noodles. I hadn't factored that these would be coated in a sheen that I'm hoping was oyster sauce but suspect was likely to be grease. 

It wasn't until I sat down with my £6 tray of noodles that I spotted a Spudulike! I was gutted. I could have had a syn free lunch. Which would have been cheaper and something I could have shared with the little man. You live and learn eh?! 

When we got home I opened a pot of baby fruit purée which the little dude practically inhaled. He demolished the entire pot and followed it up with a Heinz biscotti. 

For dinner I roasted a chicken. Went shopping for some veg, fruit and bread and promptly ran out of time to do roast spuds! So I served up chicken with mashed potato (using a splash of milk from my healthy extra allowance,) green beans, tender stem broccoli, cabbage and a splash of gravy for me. 1 syn for the teaspoon of gravy granules. 

Hopefully this won't have too big an impact on the scales. My balance between good and naughty last week resulted in me maintaining (neither gaining nor losing anything) so hopefully the worst this will do is to have no impact!