Last week me and Kayley took Jasper to Dalby Forest for a day of family time and relaxation, we went for a little walk and we got ourselves sat down in a little picnic area next to a stream (Jasp loves water so it was an obvious choice for us). Picnics are notorious for being full of naughty foods which aren't exactly Slimming World/healthy eating friendly; sausage rolls, crisps and cakes are all obviously loaded with calories but there are ways that you can enjoy some really tasty picnic food without spoiling your healthy eating plan.
We had a proper bag full of food filled with all kinds of different food both sweet and savoury; that's what I love about picnics, you can graze for hours on lots of different things. Here are some ideas that you could use this summer if you're thinking of doing a healthy picnic:
- Box of fresh mixed salad (a must to get your speed foods in, I much prefer to cut my own rather than using bagged stuff but it's completely up to you)
- Hard Boiled Eggs
- DIY sandwiches (we used Kingsmill Wholemeal Thins which are a Healthy B); you could either fill them with salad and meat from the BBQ or you could bring your own sandwich fillings, I did both because I made some light egg mayo at home - it was so nice!
- Sugar free drinks (we got some big bottles of sugar free flavoured water)
- Slimming World Scotch Eggs (see below for recipe)
Slimming World Scotch Eggs
These are so easy and they work out at only 1.5 syns each
Ingredients:
- Tesco Healthy Choices Cumberland Sausages (1 syn each)
- Cooled Hard Boiled Eggs
- Smash (optional, it can be seen as a 'tweak' but for the amount you would use I wouldn't worry too much, you could also use wholemeal breadcrumbs but this would need to be synned or used as a healthy B choice)
Method:
- Squeeze out all the sausage from the casing into a bowl
- Take a lump of sausage and mould it around the egg (this is a case of practise makes perfect, some will have more sausage than others but the effect is the same)
- If you want, you can roll it in either wholemeal breadcrumbs or smash but this isn't necessary.
- Place on a baking tray, spray with Frylight and bake for around 30 minutes turning frequently
Some will turn out better than others and I know that some of mine maybe didn't have enough sausage around them but they still all tasted really nice. Depending on how much sausage you use for each the syn value may be different, all you'd need to do to work it out is see how many scotch eggs you get from a pack of 8 sausages at 1 syn per sausage then divide it equally to get the syn value.
There are lots of variations of this recipe on the internet, a quick search of Google will find lots of different ones with slight differences and additions to ingredients.
- The meat we had for the BBQ was pork loins, the Tesco Healthy Choices Cumberland Sausages (1 syn each) and fillet steak but you could have any variation of syn free meats and you can technically eat as much as you want until you're full!
- Low syn crisps (we got Hula Hoop Pufts which are 3.5 each (15g bag) but other options are Quavers (4.5 for 16g bag), French Fries (4 for a 19g bag) or Skips (4 for a 15.5g bag).
- Babybel Lights (you can have 3 for a healthy A choice, winner!)
- If you can fit in anything sweet the obvious choice is fresh seasonal fruit; we had strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.
- Hartley's 10 calorie jellies are only 0.5 syns each, as long as you can keep them cool before you eat them they're a great pudding choice.
We were so full when we'd finished our little picnic but we didn't have one ounce of guilt afterwards because it was all healthy and well within our syn allowance for the day. Just shows that you can do pretty much anything when it comes to eating out with family, it's just all in the planning!
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