Weight Watchers Chicken Noodle Soup – with added zing

Sorry for my absence lately, I’m not even sure what I’ve been doing to be honest.  Just a busy bee – and doing fair bit of cooking of course!

I thought I’d share a healthy yet very tasty fail-safe meal.  My daughter hasn’t been keen on noodles up until now, but she seems to like them all of a sudden which is great news for this recipe

Here is the recipe:

http://www.weightwatchers.co.uk/food/rcp/index.aspx?recipeid=71741

I add 1 red chilli, a thumb sized piece of ginger and 2 chopped garlic cloves for extra ‘zing’ and it really makes it taste very fresh.  My husband loves this dish and I’m always in the good books when I’ve made this for him 🙂

Here it is cooking away:

I hope you try it out and enjoy it!!

Hey Pesto

As spring has sprung and the weather is so sunny at the moment, it’s time to start making one of my favourite dishes again: bruschetta.

It may be just a personal thing, but I feel the fresh, crisp flav0ur of bruschetta is more suited to warm weather than cold, rainy days.

I’ve only gone as far as buying a basil plant and making the key ingredient so far – green pesto.

I used to buy pesto from the supermarket, but a) it’s fairly expensive and you don’t usually need a whole jar at a time so you end up wasting some; b) my husband and I are intolerant to cheese so the parmesan is an issue for us; and c) making it yourself makes the flavour so fresh and delicious.

The ingredients are very simple:

3 garlic cloves (or more or less according to taste)

handful of pine nuts

1 tbsp olive oil

15 large-ish basil leaves

salt and pepper to season

then you just throw them all into a food processor and – as I punned nicely in the title of the post – hey pesto!  Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I’m planning on making bruschetta at the weekend so the pesto’s all ready for action.  I’ll chop up lots of cherry tomatoes and red onion, place them on top of toasted ciabatta, spoon the pesto on top then drizzle some balsamic vinegar.

I made the pesto yesterday because I used a couple of spoonfuls on home made pizza – it added a really nice flavour when sprinkled on top of the chicken and vegetables.  Not really as satisfying as melted cheese on a pizza, but it was delicious nevertheless.

I also use it as a stir through sauce with pasta for a quick meal.

Once I know the frosts are definitely over, I’m going to plant some basil seeds in pots in the garden.  I love the smell of basil!  A couple of years’ ago my husband and I grew some but it had a lemon flavour which I found a bit too sweet-smelling and tasting so we’ll go for ‘normal’ basil this time.

My daughter has just started to like cherry tomatoes so I’m hoping she’ll learn to love bruschetta as much as my husband and I do … it’ll be her first time trying it this weekend, wish me luck!