Chicken Kebab And Chips

It looks like I'm going to have to be particularly strict with my diet over the next few days, after a somewhat food heavy weekend.

I got in Friday night feeling tired, emotionally drained, a little depressed and absolutely ravenous. As payday was, and at the time of writing this still is, several days away, ordering a takeaway simply wasn't an option and that meant getting my head together, raiding the fridge, freezer and larder for whatever odds and ends I could find. Fortunately I always tend to have things like onions, garlic and pasta in stock as they're cheap, keep really well and are easy to cook, making them an absolute store cupboard essential. I coupled this with a good sized chunk of leftover chorizo, some mushrooms and a large chicken breast, I found in the back of my freezer drawer, to make a quick, easy and actually really tasty chicken and chorizo pasta. I added some additional flavour with a glug of dark soy sauce and a couple of teaspoons or dried oregano from the larder.

I did my weekly food shop, after my driving lesson, on Saturday morning and decided, with having not being able to afford a takeaway the night before, to treat myself to a dinner of homemade chicken kebab and chips. I bought a couple of packs of chicken thighs, I skinned and boned them out myself as they're considerably cheaper to buy with skins and bones still intact, a pot of yoghurt, a bag of 'wonky' potatoes, a bag of 'wonky' onions ('wonky' veg is just as nice and a fair amount cheaper than standard, uniform, veg), a cabbage, a couple of corn on the cobs and a pack of wraps. The whole lot came in at less than £10, about what it would have cost to order in a take away for myself, and I ended up making easily enough food for 2 people, with plenty of leftovers besides.

I started my prep as soon, as I got in from my shopping trip, by seasoning the yoghurt with paprika, cayenne pepper, cumin, onion powder and garlic powder before adding in the chicken thighs, coating them thoroughly and putting the whole mixture in the fridge to marinade for most of the day. In the evening I impaled the chicken on skewers, set them on a high sided tray and placed them in an oven set to 150°C. While the chicken was in the oven I cut up some potatoes, added them to a pan of water and bought it to the boil. Once boiling I removed the pan from the heat, poured the potatoes into a colander to drain and spread them out on a lined tray to steam dry. once the potatoes stopped giving off steam, I lightly sprayed them with oil and seasoned with smoked salt and dried rosemary. Before adding the potatoes to the oven I removed the chicken and turned it over to ensure it was evenly cooked throughout. While the potatoes and the chicken finished off, I chopped some onions and cabbage leaves to make a salad for the wraps, made a mint yoghurt sauce with the leftovers from the marinade and some mint picked from the garden, boiled the corn on the cob and lightly charred some peppers I'd found in the fridge. Once the chicken and chips were cooked I removed them from the oven and carved the meat directly from the skewer. I filling the wrap with salad, sauce and meat then served alongside the chips, corn and charred peppers. All in all it made for a very large, very tasty and extremely satisfying plate of food, with the added benefit of leaving me lots of leftover food and ingredients for other meals during the week. food, food blog, food porn, foodie, cook, cooking, cooked, home cook, home cooking, home cooked, home made, homemade, fat boy, fatty, meat, fat boi,

Work Toilet Selfie, Just Because I'm Vane As Fuck

Work toilet selfie, just because I'm vane as fuck.

Also on a side note, I had an absolutely terrible weekend diet wise. I went totally off the rails on Saturday, packing away in the region of 6000 calories worth of booze and BBQ. Sunday wasn't much better, I ate left over BBQ for breakfast and devoured an entire 200g bar of chocolate in the evening (there's well over 1000 calories on its own). Consequently this week I've been trying to stick to around 1500 calories a day, it's only Tuesday and I've already let myself down. Why are ham sandwiches and crisps so hard to ignore?

Some Days Are Just Bad Days

When you're as obsessed with food as I am and you're trying to manage your weight, particularly if you're counting calories, I think it's important not to feel like you're missing out. From my perspective the moment that I start feeling like I'm missing out is when I know that it's just a matter of time before I break and relapse into my old eating habits. I have a few things that I rely on to help with this, one of them being that I buy little, pre portioned, treats that can easily be factored into my daily caloric intake. Unfortunately I also have to operate within a fairly tight budget and sometimes, to help keep costs down, I will buy my treats in bulk, this means that I will occasionally have several weeks worth sat on my shelf. Normally this isn't an issue, not allowing myself to feel like I'm missing out grants me a certain amount of self control and I can usually stick to whatever I've factored into my daily diet. Some days, however, are harder than others and Tuesday was a particularly shitty day for me. After getting home from work, instead of following my normal routine, I decided to try and cheer myself up by eating my treats for the day a little early. This lead to me having a minor break, instead of taking just one cake bar from the pack, I took the whole pack and once I'd finished that pack I started on a second. It took less than 10 minutes to completely destroy over a week's worth of treats and to burn through well over a day's worth of calories before I'd even eaten my dinner. Rather than cheering me up, as intended, this has left me feeling angry and more than a little disappointed with myself.

Everyday I Struggle With Food

It's been 18 months since I radically changed what I eat and started to actively lose weight. Although I don't actually know how much weight I've lost, in that time I've dropped 10 inches from around my waist and gone down 3 X's in shirt size. Even after all this time staying on the wagon and making healthier food choices is incredibly difficult, there's not a single day goes by that some part of me doesn't cry out for crisps, fried foods and chocolate. Most days I can keep it under control, but that's not always the case, some times my will breaks and I make a total pig of myself. The days I fail are the hardest of all because they remind me that I love eating and that fatty, unhealthy foods are my favourite and represent some of the best foods known to man. On these days getting myself back under control and getting back on the wagon is almost impossible, but I know that I have to, I never want to be the size I used to be and that means being in control of myself.

Monday Morning Update

This weekend was a very food heavy couple of days and, whilst I definitely enjoyed eating it, I know that I’m going to spend the rest of the week paying the price for it. I shall be somewhat punishing myself mentally, if not physically, as I obsessively count every single calorie that goes into my body. That’s not to say that I’m currently on a massively restricted calorie count, I’m not really looking to lose any more weight, however, I am actively trying to avoid gaining weight. After the weekend I’ve just had (including heading out for a few drinks on Thursday night), I’ll be aiming for somewhere in the region of 1800 calories a day and over the next 4 days this should, more or less, balance things out nicely.

Forever A Fatty

So diet wise this weekend has been a complete disaster, however, food wise it's been pretty awesome. Cinnamon hot cocoa with homemade cookies for supper followed, a few hours later, by a rye bread grilled cheese with red onion chutney and pickles for breakfast.