Food, glorious food!

It's official - I luuuuurve food shopping at the moment. The sight of all the colours in my trolley, and all the lovely stuff that I've got to eat during the week, puts a smile on my face. Mind you, it also puts a dent in my wallet! Never, ever, go food-shopping when you're hungry - huuuuuuuge mistake! £70-odd my shop cost me last night. And that's just for me. Ouch. But there's lots of tasty, gorgeous food in there!

I try to steer my shopping away from becoming too dependent on diet-specific food, as that's not how I want to be living my life when I get to goal. I want to make sustainable choices, get the best for my money, and also put as much good, wholesome stuff down my neck as possible, opposed to artificial nonsense.

Having said that, I do use some diet products to help me cut corners. Like Weight Watchers pitta breads. I love pitta; love, love, love it! But it's an easy one to cut points on without losing too much taste. While I'm focusing on shedding the pounds, I'm content to eat their slightly anorexic white pittas. When I start maintaining though it's going to be wholewheat with seeds and nuts all the way - extra yum! Unfortunately, also an extra 0.5-1 point per pitta. Damn. I like Weight Watchers yoghurts for lunch, but there's so many lovely organic flavours out there that I look forward to trying later. I do get Options hot chocolate for a lighter drink alternative, and low fat ice-cream and a few other bits, but for the most part I concentrate on cooking from scratch - lean meat, loads of fresh veg and fruit, basic starches like potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, couscous and pasta and lots of herbs and spices. Oxo stock cubes are probably my saviour for allowing me to add points-free tastiness to savoury dishes. And mini meringues for luxury, but light, puddings.

Here's a sneak peek of what I bought yesterday:

• Leeks, new potatoes, jacket potatoes, onions, sweet potato, a living lettuce, satsumas, strawberries, baby carrots and tenderstem broccoli, stir-fry veg (baby corn, mange tout and baby carrots). Basically lots and lots of crunchy colour. The living lettuce is ace - it's three different varieties, fully matured, in a little pot for a whole £1.39! For a person shopping for one, salad is a nightmare because you never get through it all before it goes over - but the beauty of this is that it's still growing and getting food and water. I don't know if it will keep regenerating and put out new shoots, but even if if doesn't, it'll live long enough for me to eat it all!
• A massive punnet of mushrooms - going to make risotto this week, and maybe try my hand at a mushroom soup or stroganoff. I love mushrooms so much, so it's brilliant that they're free. Creamy mushrooms on toast is also lush.
• Venison burgers - these things are legendary - two full size burgers is a measly 3.5 points for the pair. Just plain grilled (I do them on the George Foreman) and they're lovely. I had them with some of the broccoli and carrots and a jacketed sweet potato last night .... mmmmm mmmmm. I might play around with them for the summer as actual burgers with salad and a bun - maybe open, so only using 1 bun between them both.
• Salmon fillets - a recent rediscovery of mine - it was ages since I last had salmon, and I realised what I've been missing. Generally I oven bake them wrapped in foil with some lemon and black pepper, and eat with couscous or a jacket potato, but I might monkey around with some pasta, extra light Philadelphia (another staple of mine!), dill and paprika this week.
• Couscous - I'm so slow that I only latched on to this a couple of weeks ago - bought my usual Mediterranean tomato this week, and also some mushroom and garlic couscous to try. I use Sammy's Organic to avoid nasty flavourings and preservatives.
• Yoghurts - lots of yoghurts. Both Weight Watchers to take to work, and pro-biotic natural yoghurt to eat with compote and dried fruit at home.
• Small packs of cooked chicken - pre-portioned and pointed - it's quick and easy for me to use in lunches. Also small packets of wafer thin chicken for lunchtime wraps.
• Pittas and petit pain - can't beat fresh from the oven bread! Which I will be eating today for lunch with ...
• Sea Food and Eat It fresh brown crab. I can. Not. Wait. Bit of salad, maybe some mayo. Heaven.
• Organic skimmed milk.
• Special K - addicted to this stuff for breakfast, but also as a great filler when I'm starving and need something substantial quick, or when I'm not hugely hungry at teatime. I always measure my bowl (30g portion), and have with skimmed milk. I love the creamy red berries version.
• Eggs!! Ages ago, I read that you shouldn't eat more than 2 eggs a week as it was bad for your cholesterol. So imagine my delight when I was reading Zest last week (British women's health, fitness and well-being magazine - it's good!) and they said that new research showed that this wasn't true, and eggs were just plain good for you! I broke my cereal habit this morning to have scrambled eggs on a toasted wholewheat English muffin. Lover-ly! The muffins were in the trolley last night too.
• Squash (sugar-free) as I get through litres of the stuff - how I get my liquids for the day! And orange juice to have with breakfast.
• Chocolate. Because every girl (and boy) should have chocolate! I take mine in the form of Cadbury Buttons in treat-size packs. I refuse to eat crappy diet chocolate (and I know many will argue that Cadbury is crappy anyway, but it has its place next to the good stuff a.k.a. 70%+ cocoa solids chocolate/gold), but by having treatsize packs, my portions are pre-controlled, I know what I'm getting points-wise, and I damn well savour every bit of it.

As I'm sure you've probably all snoozed off by now, you can wake up again!

I was feeling a bit glum this morning after my ritual face-up the scales (I swear they sneered at me ... or maybe it was an evil grin - who knows?), as my weight had bounced back up from yesterday's little drop. I know that this is probably the effect of the long weekend's eating catching up, and that it will go back down again if I stick to what I'm doing, but it's just a bit aggravating on top of my inability to exercise on my still sore / swollen ankle. I'm just a tad paranoid that's it all going to go horribly wrong, if you hadn't spotted that already!!!!

Still - I will not let it get me down. I have a lovely relaxing weekend to look forward to (read into that: I have nothing planned and refuse to let myself be negative about it!) and 3 people have complimented me on the dress I'm wearing today, as well as one comment from a 4th person that I'm doing so well on my weight loss crusade. This is a good chance to give myself some much needed rest time, and maybe even some *gasp* tidying and organisation time!

On the other hand, I might just see who's about and do some social plotting .......

*sidles off with a cunning grin on her face*