A lot of people don’t know what to do with tofu. I’d have included myself in this group of people until just a few months ago, but now it’s rare for me not to have a packet of tofu in the fridge or freezer (tip: tofu is firmer if you freeze it first, then defrost it). I’ve even started to have it for lunch on an almost daily basis, usually marinated and grilled on my George Foreman grill, as it’s just so easy and tasty.
Tofu is bland by itself, so it’s best when as much water as possible has been squeezed out of it (just wrap it in kitchen towel and squeeze, or press between two plates with something heavy on top) and marinated for a few hours.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been marinating tofu in the gorgeous lime and chilli dressing from Scarlett & Mustard a friend sent to me but you can use whatever you’ve got handy – in the past I’ve used BBQ sauce, Peri Peri sauce, liquid smoke and sriracha, and even a combination of all of them.
Just cut a chunk of tofu off the block, squeeze the water out, generously coat in your marinade and leave the tofu to soak up the flavours for a few hours. Bake, grill or put in a George Foreman grill for about 10-15 minutes until the outside has crisped up a bit. I put my tofu on top of a toasted pitta bread stuffed with rocket, tomatoes, cucumber, olives and loads of homemade hummus.
Alternatively, prepare the tofu the same way, but chop it up and have it in a wrap instead.
I’ve been experimenting again with dips and spreads. I had half a tin of kidney beans and half a tin of chickpeas in the freezer so I blitzed them up with some Greek yoghurt and curry powder and the result was this gorgeous spread that’s perfect to have on oatcakes or in a wrap with some salad.
What a great way to use up any leftover beans!
Curried kidney bean and chickpea spread
Half a can of kidney beans
Half a can of chickpeas
2-3 tbsp Greek yoghurt
1 tbsp curry powder (or to taste)
Salt and pepper
Place the kidney beans and chickpeas in a food processor and blitz until they’re mashed up.
Add the Greek yoghurt and carry on blitzing until you get the consistency you require.
Add the curry powder to give as much or as little heat as you like.
Harry’s book is divided into seasons, with each recipe stating its calorie count, along with how many of your 5-a-day it contains. Although this isn’t a 100% vegetarian cookbook, most of the recipes containing meat or fish are followed by a note at the bottom giving a suggestion for a vegetarian version. At the back of the book are recipes for glazings, pestos, dressings and vinegars.
Lebanese Fattoush recipe
I made the Lebanese Fattoush but left out the pitta bread and instead of using a cos lettuce, I used a bag of Florette salad (Florette also have plenty of salad recipes on their website).
Lebanese Fattoush
The sumac (I found it on the ‘ingredients’ shelf in Tesco) gave this salad a wonderful lift, as did the simple suggested dressing of 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice and salt and pepper.
The end is nigh. Just one full day today and lunch tomorrow and I’ll be Bodycheffed out. As usual, I eschewed Bodychef’s breakfast and had a nectarine instead. But at 9:30am, hunger struck and so I braved the supplied ‘special cereal’ (205 cals) with some soya milk. If ‘special’ is a synonym of ‘birdseed’, then this cereal has been named to perfection.
‘Special’ cereal
The special cereal’s mix of sliced almonds, pine nuts, oats and seeds is undoubtedly healthy but needed a bit of fruit to liven it up as on it’s own, it’s a bit dull.
I’ve been loving the lunches provided by Bodychef and today’s was no exception.
I’m an oatcake convert
Oatcakes (165 cals), beetroot (83 cals), soft cheese (44 cals) and that flipping salad again (7 cals) were enjoyed and I’m definitely introducing oatcakes and spread into my lunches, along with salad (although salads more interesting than that side salad I’ve been eating all week).
At some point in the afternoon I had the strawberry yoghurt (90 cals) I hadn’t eaten on Sunday.
Low fat strawberry yoghurt
A ‘special vegetable curry’ (231 cals) was on the menu for dinner, along with white rice (144 cals) and broccoli (33 cals).
‘Special’ curry
I found broccoli an unusual accompaniment for curry – I’m more used to naan bread, samosas, pakoras and onion bhajis with my curry, but that’s possibily not very diet-friendly.
The curry was fine but as I’d started the diet with curry just a week ago, I’d have liked something different. Still, it was loaded with vegetables and filled me up, so I shouldn’t complain really.
I’d been sent a walnut and raisin oatcake (77 cals) for dessert, which looked like one of those seed cakes for hamsters and didn’t taste much better than I’d expect one to taste. It was tiny (5p shown for scale) and dry but I reckon it would be nice dipped in yoghurt.
More of an oatcrumb than cake
Just breakfast (which I’ll probably skip) and lunch tomorrow, then my diet will be over.
Day 7 conclusion
Don’t trust the word ‘special’. Oatcakes are yum. Broccoli is a perfectly acceptable substitution for a samosa (this might be a lie).
Special offer for Planet Veggie Readers
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I survived Saturday with no pizza and no wine, so Sunday was sure to be easy, right? Wrong! I craved Papa John’s pizza like a cat craves crème fraîche but at least I had a cheese sandwich to look forward to for lunch.
Before lunch though, I’d run 5 miles in my own DIY race; DIY right down to the post-race cup-a-soup and medal I presented myself with.
**CONFESSION TIME**
This bit isn’t really a confession, but I had some chocolate milk (as well as the cup-a-soup) after my run and runners need recovery fuel and it’s a well known fact – it may even be a scientific fact and not just a fact runners made up as an excuse to have chocolate – that chocolate milk is good recovery fuel. Well, that and beer but I’m staying off beer during this diet, which is why I did my own race and not the one I’d planned to do, as races don’t have the same appeal if there’s no trip to the pub for lunch after.
This bit really is a confession though – I’ve been having an after dinner mint EVERY SINGLE DAY during this diet. *ducks lightning strike*
**END OF CONFESSION TIME**
Here’s the deconstructed cheese sandwich Bodychef sent to me. It contains a side salad (7 cals), chopped mixed salad (19 cals), low fat spread (40 cals), cheese (yay!) (109 cals) and wholemeal bread (192 cals).
Deconstructed cheese sandwich
I resisted opening the fridge and getting out the mayonnaise and other condiments (I love condiments. I even love the word ‘condiment’) and reconstructed the deconstructed sandwich.
Reconstructed cheese sandwich
I’m not going to lie, I am totally bored stiff with the side salad. I appreciate why it’s included as you get a lot of food for your calories – a massive amount for just 7 calories so you can fill up on it as much as you want, but it’s as boring as hell after the fifth time of eating it in a week.
Still, the chopped mixed salad was a welcome addition and as for the cheese sandwich – that barely touched the sides (could have done with some mayonnaise though).
Now. Let’s talk about my dinner, shall we? My Sunday dinner. You know, the dinner where a lot of people have a full roast with all the trimmings? Obviously, a vegetarian’s ‘full roast’ isn’t as traditional as meat-eaters’ roasts, but vegetarians also love roast potatoes and stuffing and Yorkshire puddings and vegetables and gravy.
Okay, so I wasn’t expecting a full roast – vegetarian or otherwise – but I wasn’t quite expecting this.
My Sunday roast
I’d been looking forward to the chickpea and vegetable patties (175 cals) but, as you can see, unfortunately they got a bit squished in transit. They were accompanied by 70g of green beans (17 cals) and although – despite what it looks like, covered in gravy, it tasted great – it’s just that being a total of under 200 calories for my main meal of the day, it just wasn’t enough.
You’re jealous of my dinner, admit it
I posted the above photo on Facebook and friends’ comments included, ‘What is it?’, ‘Where’s the rest?’, ‘Oh, the pity of it’ and – my favourite – ‘I’d add some potatoes and a bottle of wine’.
You know I began the post by saying I spent Sunday craving Papa John’s? This dinner didn’t help, I can tell you.
The tropical fruit salad (109 cals) I had after dinner though was gorgeous.
Tropical fruit salad
A tub full of strawberries, mandarins (or one of those other little orangey type fruits), kiwi fruit, grapes, pineapple and melon, went down well and was quickly followed by the fruit salad (64 cals) I didn’t have for Saturday’s breakfast.
Day 6 conclusion
Cheese sandwiches need condiments. Chickpea patties don’t travel well. I need to eat more tropical fruit. Papa John’s cravings can come on really strong but can be resisted.
Special offer for Planet Veggie Readers
If you’d like to try out the Bodychef diet, readers of Planet Veggie can get 15% off any plan by using the code PLANET15.
Whoop, it’s the weekend and weekends mean stuffing my face with pizza or Indian or Chinese or whatever I fancy, along with lots of wine. Well, this weekend, that kind of weekend is for other people. But, hey, I’m tough – I can do this!
I had a nectarine (my own) for breakfast, but had I looked at the diet plan, I’d have seen that Saturday’s breakfast was a fruit salad and I could have coped with eating a fruit salad first thing.
Lunch was all the salad.
Lots of salad
This consisted of brown rice and sweetcorn salad (130 cals) which was fab; honey and mustard salad dressing (94 cals), which had the consistency of wallpaper paste but luckily didn’t taste like it and it gave a much needed boost to an otherwise boring side salad (7 cals); chopped mixed salad (19 cals) and what I’d really been looking forward to, the coleslaw (39 cals).
Practically a whole salad bar on a plate
Oh, hang on. Did I say coleslaw? What I meant was ‘grated carrot and shredded cabbage’. I’m sorry Bodychef, but this is not coleslaw. Okay, so coleslaw doesn’t have to contain mayonnaise, but mayonnaise is what most people expect in coleslaw, I’m sure. (Wikipedia has just informed me that ‘Coleslaw is a salad consisting primarily of finely-shredded raw cabbage and dressed most commonly with a vinaigrette salad dressing.’ but what does Wikipedia know, huh? Stupid Wikipedia.)
Coleslaw disappointments aside, I enjoyed the salad, especially the rice and sweetcorn bit. I’ve got to admit though, I’m getting fed up with the side salad and it’s never-changing combination of leaves, cucumber and tomato. It’s like being in a Wimpy burger bar in the 80s but without the burger.
**CONFESSION TIME**
My first ‘cheat’! I usually have at least three cups of low calorie hot chocolate a day but decided to not have any during the course of this diet trial. Today though, I fancied some and thought ‘sod it’ and had some. Keeping in the spirit of the diet though, I exerted a bit of self-control and didn’t take ‘2 heaped tsps’ to my usual extreme (you can fit a lot in a heaped tsp if you really try) but the end result was a disappointing, watery hot chocolate and I wished I hadn’t bothered.
**END OF CONFESSION TIME**
Ah, dinner time. Despite what I said at the beginning of this post, I don’t always turn into an alcohol-fuelled gluttonous pig at the weekend but I do tend to have food that is slightly unhealthier than I would in the week. Bodychef obviously know people like their pizza and pasta at the weekend as they gave me lentil spaghetti bolognese (188 cals) and spaghetti (171 cals) for dinner.
Where’s the rest of the spaghetti?
They forgot the garlic bread and Parmesan-style cheese though. Dammit, Bodychef, don’t you know you can’t have pasta without garlic bread? Would you have Sooty without Sweep? Pinky without Perky? Mel without Sue?
The lentil bolognese was fine, livened up with a few chilli flakes and black pepper. Once again, I learned you don’t need a ton of pasta to fill you up. The 50g was ample, so I’ll be cutting down on my usual 75-100g.
Big space for garlic bread
While I made this, The Meat Eater made himself burger and chips, along with the obligatory trimmings of burger sauce, relish, plastic cheese, gherkins and jalapenos. Git.
Dessert was compote and I’ve never had compote (109 cals) before and it seemed to be apple and apricot crumble filling left to go cold but don’t take that in a bad way – I enjoyed it.
Compote. A posh way to say ‘cold apple crumble filling’
Day 5 conclusion
Rice salad is yum. There are a lot of calories in a titchy bit of salad dressing. Low calorie hot chocolate is only nice if you squeeze 3 tbsp into 1 tsp. Pasta can be eaten without garlic bread and parmesan-style cheese and wine (this might be a lie). ‘Compote’ is a posh word for ‘cold apple crumble filling’.
Special offer for Planet Veggie Readers
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Friday meant new hamper day – hooray! I’d been looking forward to the new delivery because, let’s face it, everyone loves a food delivery, don’t they? I met the same cheery delivery chap as before in my front garden on my way back in from the gym. Because I’d been out, he’d left the hamper in the arranged ‘safe place’ (not to be confused with ‘safe word’ – this ain’t no 50 Shades-esque blog, okay?)
This hamper for the second part of the week’s diet was huge. Look at all the food.
I don’t think I’m going to starve
There was so much food, I couldn’t fit it in neat piles for each day.
Disorganised piles
I may have squealed when I saw the tub of coleslaw. I imagined thick, creamy, tangy coleslaw, but I’d have to wait until Saturday to have it, dammit.
Still, although I had to wait until Saturday to have coleslaw – today’s breakfast was low fat spread (a single serving of Flora at 40 cals) jam (18 cals) and crumpets (108 cals).
My kind of ‘diet’ food
As usual though, I didn’t have breakfast and didn’t feel hungry enough in the morning to warrant wasting them by eating them just because they were there.
I’d also been looking forward to today’s lunch of egg mayonnaise. Egg mayonnaise as diet food? Get in! As with the feta and pepper spread, and the roasted aubergine and chickpea pâté, Bodychef had supplied a generous portion of egg mayonnaise (114 cals), pitta bread (161 cals) and salad (7 cals).
Oh yes, I’m enjoying this diet
Obviously, Bodychef hadn’t gone overboard with the mayo; this is a diet after all – if it’d had the amount of mayo I’d have spooned into it, left to my own devices, that would have been my calorie allowance for the next two days gone in one soggy sandwich. Still, it just goes to show what a bit of moderation and restraint can do – this was a perfectly acceptable egg mayonnaise and not dry at all.
This kept me full all afternoon but I kept thinking about those crumpets so I gave in and had them about 4pm-ish and yes, they were as good as they looked.
Since The Meat Eater started mountain biking on a Friday evening, Friday nights have traditionally become ‘chippy night’. Not tonight for me though, eh? Nope, my dinner was – instead of my usual veggie burger and chips or battered veggie sausage and chips – leek and mushroom kedgeree (306 cals) and Persian cucumber salad (27 cals). I’ve never seen such a small pot of salad.
More an aside salad, than a side salad
Bodychef supply only basic cooking instructions for the diet as a whole, not individual dishes, so I wasn’t sure if the hard-boiled egg should be reheated, as it’s not something I’ve done before. I’ve had hard-boiled eggs in curries in the past, and if you’ve never tried a curry that contains hard-boiled egg – please do, they’re fantastic, but the only time I froze the curry with egg, when it had defrosted, the egg was as rubbery as an old balloon stuffed inside another old balloon. This was a fresh egg though, so I heated it up in the oven along with the rice and it was fine.
No. 22. Egg fried rice
The kedgeree reminded me of egg fried rice, which is no bad thing. The salad, despite being small, was dressed, fresh and crisp.
While I was eating this, The Meat Eater came in with his chippy take-out and offered me a chip. I wondered if this would be the start of a slippery slope into obesity but I decided one wouldn’t hurt.
Don’t laugh at this next photo because despite what it looks like, this trifle (151 cals) containing jelly, sponge and some kind of watery blancmange-type substance was great – in a flashback-to-your-childhood-parties kind of way.
Don’t judge a trifle by its watery blancmange-like cover
My cat started begging for some, so it got the cat approval, which is always a good sign. Cats don’t eat any old rubbish, you know.
Day 4 conclusion
Buy a bigger fridge. Crumpets are diet food. You don’t need a whole jar of mayo in an egg mayonnaise sandwich. Kedgeree is like egg fried rice. Put ‘trifle’ on the shopping list.
Special offer for Planet Veggie readers
If you’d like to try out the Bodychef diet, readers of Planet Veggie can get 15% off any plan by using the code PLANET15.
As I said in the introduction to my Bodychef trial, the plan starts at Tuesday dinnertime, and tonight’s dinner (and my first introduction to the food from Bodychef) was vegetarian korma (207 cals), quinoa (0 cals – I’m assuming that’s a mistake?) and salad (7 cals), with fresh mango and pineapple (83 cals) for dessert.
I’ve got to admit, when I saw the titchy tiny bag of quinoa, I thought I was going to starve.
Tuesday’s dinner, including dessert
Still, I needn’t have worried about Bodychef trying to starve me as I can never remember how to cook quinoa, so I Googled, boiled it up and managed to burn it.
Crispy quinoa is surprisingly nice
Although I burnt the quinoa, it’s surprisingly nice crispy – and I’m not just saying that to make me look slightly less hopeless. I wouldn’t usually microwave anything except soup but decided that, as this has all been sent to me for convenience, I’d make it mega-convenient and put the curry in the microwave as instructed, for 2-3 minutes (you can also put it in the oven for 20-25 minutes). The korma – which, as far as I could make out, consisted of green beans, lentils, red pepper and sweet potato – was a bit gungy but that could be because it had been in the microwave. The taste was pleasant enough though.
The fresh and crispy salad – which was your average leaves/carrot/cucumber/tomato combo – despite it not being something I’d usually serve with curry, went well and filled me up.
As I’m not much of a dessert person, I saved the fresh mango and pineapple to have as a smoothie for the next day’s breakfast.
Day 1 conclusion
Food was fresh and a generous size. Crispy quinoa nice. Salad goes with curry. Didn’t go to bed hungry.
Special offer for Planet Veggie readers
If you’d like to try out the Bodychef diet, readers of Planet Veggie can get 15% off any plan by using the code PLANET15.
Because I’d made my own vegan mayonnaise a few days ago, obviously it contained no preservatives, which meant I needed to actually use the stuff and not leave it in the fridge ignoring the ‘use within six weeks’ you see on shop bought mayos.
I’d had it with some pizza and also this week I’ve had it for lunch in pitta bread with some mashed-up chickpeas.
It’s seriously simple. Just mash up some chickpeas with a fork or potato masher, add salt and pepper and anything else you fancy (in my case, chilli flakes), mix it up with mayo, and stuff it in some pitta bread with salad. You can’t really see the salad in my photo but it’s there, honest.
I had some today in a sandwich, along with cucumber, tomato, sprouts and mayonnaise. The deep oak flavour of the cheese went beautifully with the fresh, crispness of the salad.
Truckle Cheese Co have a wide range of cheese, not all are suitable for vegetarians but the ones that are are clearly marked on the website, including Vesuvius Vintage Cheddar with Chilli, and Creamy Blue Stilton (which I’ll be trying next).
A 200g truckle of Oak Smoked Cheddar costs £3.95 and is available from the Truckle Cheese Co website.
