We are in the throes of our weekly meat free days, having had sweet and sour peppers yesterday and a vegetable stew today which will provide us with our ‘stewp’ tomorrow.
My sweet and sour dish was so easy as all I used was a tin of pineapple pieces in juice, what was left of my green, red and yellow pepper, 2 cloves of garlic and a carrot. When all these were nice and soft, I added three large sliced closed cup mushrooms to just finish it off.
My sauce was a mix of the pineapple juice, vinegar, soy sauce, stock cube, dried ginger spice and brown sugar.
Served with rice, the total cost was probably just over a pound for the two of us, with a total syn value of 9½ for the sugar and tinned pineapple.
Today’s stew consisted of a 1.5 kg stewpack for £1.39 which contained carrots, 2 small parsnips, 2 onions, and a swede. We added three potatoes from a 1kg bag purchased for 19p a little while ago, a stock cube, and some gravy granules for thickening which gave it a syn value of One.
I had dessert again today, which was a green fruit salad of kiwi and grapes, with 3 sliced apricots (1 syn each) and some quark. I sprinkled the top with cinnamon spice.
This is the one I had yesterday which had a banana at the bottom instead of the apricots.
Hubby had the second individual Christmas pudding with a dollop of quark today.
Tomorrow he has a blood test with the nurse who told me about being eligible for the free 12 week membership with Slimming World.
After that, we are into the supermarket for tea…….. literally…………… as they have a special offer on Yorkshire Tea and rumour has it that tea prices here are about to soar.
As we have some vouchers for that particular chain, I intend to stock up!
pensitivity101 
How do the stock cubes rate re syn value?
According to the SW book, stock cubes have no syn value, but gravy granules do. Tomato puree, spices, vinegar and soy sauce are also syn free. The thing to watch with stock cubes though is the salt content as some are quite high so I tend to only use one.
I remember my Mum using OXO cubes… and they tasted really salty!
I always preferred bovril cubes to oxo, then they put bovril up and oxo improved their recipe so I used oxo for years. Now I buy 12 chicken cubes for 36p of the supermarket own brand and they are really good for the things I cook without too much salt.
🙂
A good tip for gravy thats syn free is using passata, a stock pot (or use a stock cube with added water) and mixing it with some garlic and finely chopped onions that have been fried in fry light.
It’s a syn free alternative thats mostly speed food and tastes delicious with some Slimming Wold style roast potatoes!
The only downside is Bisto is brown and this is dark red – so it takes a bit of visual imagination 😀
Thanks so much for the tip! I use a stock cube and water from the veg as a rule rather than making a thick gravy. I don’t fry anything, steaming my meat in water which works for us. Thanks for commenting. I appreciate it.