Chicken Pasta Bake

I tried a new recipe I found in the Co-operative's magazine today for a chicken pasta bake. It sells itself as an easy weeknight meal.

I made a few adjustments. As I'm only feeding me, I cut the recipe in half and substituted mushrooms for carrots (carrots with pasta? Just wrong.) or peppers (didn't have any) as suggested in the recipe. I also substituted onion powder for the onion to low-residue it and added more garlic (because, well, garlic).

To start, I put on a lot of water to boil pasta and pre-heated the oven to 220C/425F.

I cut up a chicken breast into chunks and fried it in olive oil. I also cut up two rashers of smoked bacon from my friendly butcher (removing excess fat and the rind) and put that in the frying pan. Then I added some cut up button mushrooms, two crushed cloves of garlic and half a tablespoon of onion powder. I let that cook for about 10 minutes until the chicken was cooked.

Meanwhile, I cooked some macaroni and drained it once cooked.

Then, I added a can of cream of tomato soup to the pan.

And then added the cooked macaroni.

Then I tipped the lot into a casserole dish.

I then sprinkled it with parsley and torn mozzarella cheese.

I then put it into the oven and let it cook for about 25 minutes until the cheese bubbled and went brown.

Voilà! Chicken pasta bake!

The verdict? It's okay. A bit salty between canned soup and the onion powder. The flavour isn't overly interesting and could have used some black pepper and something else to make it more interesting. It took about 45 minutes to make, so while I would agree that it is easy, I wouldn't say that it is quick for a midweek meal. But it did the job, and I would eat it again. Which is good, as despite cutting the recipe in half, it made loads!

Tracking Progress

My body has undergone a lot of changes since falling ill with Crohn's just over 2 years ago. I lost a lot of weight when I was sick, almost 3 stone (about 40lbs to you non-Brits) between September and December of 2013. Needless to say, this had a MASSIVE effect on my body image. I am not a very big person to begin with, so 3 stone was about 1/4 of my body mass.

It's taken me 22 months to gain back 2/3 of the weight I lost in such a short time. This is despite not exercising as much as I used to and eating a rather junky low fibre and modified low residue diet and rather a lot of cake. I can live with where things are at now, and I'm not struggling with my body image like I did, but I still have a lot of clothes I have not grown back into. 

But I swear that I have regained most of that weight on my boobs! I was never small chested to begin with, and even at my lowest weight still fit into a DD, but when I started gaining weight again, it was all in on my chest. I've gone through a lot of bras over the last two years! 

I had a bit of a clean out this evening, and decided for fun to lay out the various sizes I have worn since I was at my lowest weight.

In 22 months, I have gone up 6 cup sizes!

This picture gives a better contrast.

The light coloured one is one size down from what I am wearing now, the black one is what I was wearing at my lowest weight.

My shape has changed, so a lot of my pre-illness bras still don't fit (sob!), but I'm going to call this progress.

A Beef

I had a knock on my door this week from my new-ish next door neighbour. Lovely bloke, very friendly. He looked a bit uncomfortable.

Him: "Um, do you eat meat?"

Me: "Yes."

Him: " Do you eat beef?"

Me: "Um, yes."

Him: "We got one of those HelloFresh boxes today."

For those who don't know HelloFresh, this is their website - https://www.hellofresh.co.uk

It's a great idea to encourage people to try new things and be more adventurous with their cooking. You order a box, and it comes with three recipes and all of the ingredients all packed up for you, all with fresh, organic ingredients. Great idea for busy people who like to cook, but who are in a rut when it comes to variety or lack the time to think of something new. But this conversation highlighted a problem with their system.

Him (looking slightly embarrassed): " Um, look, they gave us this beef, and I'm Hindu, and I'm not a veggie or anything, but I don't eat beef, and, um, it's not a lot, but do you want it? I know it's not a neighbourly cup of sugar or anything . . ."

Me: "Sure". He couldn't hand it to me fast enough, and handled with a disgusted look on his face like it was contaminated waste.

I'm not going to complain. One man's rubbish is another woman's treasure and all that - 

So out of sheer curiosity, I jumped on HelloFresh's website to see how much latitude customers get in picking things and to see how they accommodate dietary needs. As someone with food allergies and intolerances, nevermind the low fibre/low residue thing, this is an area of personal interest.

Here's what I discovered - While you have a choice of a 'Classic Box', 'Family Box' or 'Veggie Box', you only have a few meals (5 on offer, minimum order of 3) to choose from each week, and you pretty much get what they send you if you are a veggie. While their meals list common allergens, their labelling seems a bit hit and miss. For example, their 'Creamy Leek and Mustard Chicken' rightfully puts mustard on the common allergens list, they didn't put milk when the meal uses double cream. While the title may give away that there is milk in it, as someone who has successfully made 'creamy' foods without dairy (for example - http://foodlovingcrohnie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/pudding-pops.html), that shouldn't be assumed. People with allergies often read the common allergens list first (there's a reason the EU requires these ingredients to be in bold on food labels), and the rest of the ingredients second, so it is important that food labellers get this right.

So I checked out their FAQ about special dietary requirements, and here is what they said - 'Whilst we don't offer specific dietary plans, because our ingredients are delivered to you in separate packets, if you have any specific dislikes you can simply omit or replace them with your own ingredients.'

Okay, I will give them points for packaging everything separately, but what they are pretty much saying is that you get what you get. Which would be fine if a 3 meals for 2 people Classic Box didn't cost close to £40. And as you don't have much choice in what you get, you are pretty much are paying for things you can't use and then are either passing things off to your neighbours, or throwing them out and wasting them. 

And I take issue with the words 'specific dislikes'. I actually really like grapes and their related products. Unfortunately, they really don't like me, as evidenced in the hives I break out in when I eat them. Every. Single. Time. 

That, my dears, is an allergy, not a 'dislike'. Just as my neighbour's situation is a religious matter, not a 'dislike'.

I'm not posting this to slam HelloFresh. I'm sure that have lots of happy and satisfied customers who are cooking loads of new, yummy things in their homes, and I'm all for companies helping people to do that. But it highlights that 'one size fits all' isn't the case when it comes to dietary needs.

This issue was highlighted in hospitals recently on one of my favourite IBD blogs. The writer, who has a stoma and is lactose intolerant, was recently hospitalised and blogged about what she was fed. Effectively, she subsisted on potatoes and dry fish because they couldn't accomdate her lactose intolerance - https://adventuresofthebaglady.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/chips-and-boiled-potato-why-can-hospitals-not-feed-people-with-intolerances-and-special-diets/

Lactose intolerance is seriously common and not difficult to accommodate. What got me in her blog was the hospital giving people who had had stoma surgery lentil soup and curries.

WTF?!!

And then they wondered why she wasn't getting better. I had similar problems when I was in hospital after my hysterectomy. Between their inability to accommodate my dietary needs and being sick from morphine, I pretty much ate nothing but rice krispies for 2 days.

Her blog post about this became mainstream news this week - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hospitals-serving-curries-patients-who-6820527

And she's started a campaign about hospital food - adventuresofthebaglady.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/a-fussy-or-unfeedable-mouth-hospital-food-standards-needed-in-wales-stoma-lactoseintolerant

I'll be sending her my experience!

As for that beef, I made bolognese, which gave me two meals with one more for the freezer. 

Cheers for that, HelloFresh!

Oh Deer-y Me!

It's that time of year again. Not Halloween. Not Bonfire Night. Bambi Deer season :)

I love venison. I mean really love venison. Have I mentioned a few times in this blog how much I love venison?!

My friendly butcher got a new deer in this week. I usually stock up on loads and put it in the freezer. Steaks, noisettes, diced for casseroles; I'm generally happy to take whatever they've got.

Normally, the deer they get in are pretty small, but they got a big one in this time, so I was able to try out cooking a new cut - tenderloin. Normally, my butcher rolls the tenderloin into noisettes, but they were big enough to cut separately this time. So of course, I kind of had to.

Venison is extremely lean meat, which works well if you are on a low-residue diet and need to keep fat down. It's also very high in protein (and naturally free range to boot!). Its leanness means that it needs to be cooked carefully to prevent it from turning into shoe leather. It is not meant to be cooked to well done. Ever. My butcher suggested pan cooking it very rare.

So, I decided to give it a little extra, and used some parchment to roll it in some fresh ground pepper and dried rosemary.

I got the pan quite hot, then added a tablespoon of olive oil. Lots of people say that butter is the way to go with venison, but I'm quite happy to use extra virgin olive oil instead.

I seared it on all sides, then turned the heat down a bit, and left it for about 5 minutes turning frequently.

I took it out of the pan and let it rest for about five minutes while I dealt with the sides (leftover couscous and a bit of spinach I needed to use up).

Then I cut it very thin, as the butcher suggested.

Oh my, was this ever nice! So lean and flavourful! Should I admit that I easily ate half of it in one go?

And I have leftovers for tonight, om nom nom!!