FODDER FOR THE CHOLESTEROLLY-CHALLENGED

I was having coffee with a mate recently and was harping on about needing to do an ever lower fat diet … and she disappeared and emerged with a cookery book called ‘Practical Low Fat’ which she’d found in a charity shop but didn’t use, and gave it to me.

Although I am no great shakes at cooking, I decided that if we didn’t want to live permanently on lettuce leaves then I needed some inspiration.

Tried Ginger Beef with Chilli last night – you marinade the lean beef steaks (or whichever lean bits of beef you can afford – ain’t it EXPENSIVE – rarely eat it but thought I’d give it a go!)

Ahem … where was I … oh yes – the marinade is made up of ginger wine, fresh ginger, garlic, ground chilli: so you sit the beef in that in the fridge, covered, then you’re supposed to barbeque the beef and throw away the marinade, which strikes me as a crying shame and when I was marinading again today I cooked it up as a sauce!

You eat it with shredded spring onions, noodles, and a relish made up of fresh pineapple, red pepper, red chilli pepper, soy sauce and more ginger.

Hmm It was OK-ish … if you like that sort of combination. They are all things I love but somehow it didn’t quite work for us so won’t be doing that one again!

However, it was only 179 calories and came in at 6 grams of fat, which is minute. As Hub is supposed to be losing weight (high blood pressure etc) then it killed two birds with one stone.

We much preferred the Pork Stroganoff, made with lean pork, onion, garlic, tomato puree, mushrooms, green pepper, nutmeg and low-fat natural yoghurt. It says to serve with rice, but we used cous-cous as this is very low in everything you can think of and you can spice it up a lot (cals 223, fat 10g).

We’ve agreed we will be very focused about this for 2 months, when I go back for another cholesterol test… and if it hasn’t come down by then … I am going STRAIGHT OUT and scoffing a CREAM TEA

In fact I think I’ll do that anyway …