Seafood Risotto & Pan Fried Scallops

After the #i8this challenge, I felt the need for a little treat. One of my favourite dishes is risotto and every time I make it I like to make little changes. Whatever I did this time, made this dish the best I ever had! It was so good I just had to share! Happy cooking!

Ingredients

1l Fish stock

50g Butter

1-2 Shallots, chopped
2 cloves Garlic, crushed

1 Leek diced

250g Risotto rice, I use arborio

75ml Dry white wine
100g Prawns
3-4 Squid

85g Marscapone cheese

50g Parmesan

Parsley to dress

Method
Make up the stock as per instructions. If using your own stock, warm on the stove, but do not boil. Wash the prawns and squid, then chop the squid into rings and set aside.


Sweat the shallots, 1 clove garlic and leek in 30g butter over a medium heat - do not colour. 

Lower the heat then add the rice and coat in the butter. Add the wine, stir through and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the stock, a ladel at a time, waiting until all the liquid is absorbed before adding the next ladel. Keep going until the rice is cooked, but not too soft. 

To cook the scallops, add the remaining butter to a separate pan with 1 clove garlic. Once the butter is hot add the scallops cooking once each side until slightly brown.


This is the bit where things get tricky. Have the mascarpone and Parmesan ready as you'll need to add them quickly! Add the prawns and then the squid, followed by the mascarpone & parmesan. Season with freshly ground black pepper stir through and leave on the heat until the prawns and squid are cooked. Be careful as you want your seafood just cooked and you do not want your squid to turn into rubber bands! It should just take a few minutes to cook, then serve straight away.

Dress with the parsley, add the scallops to the side, serve and enjoy!

#i8this Challenge - Day Four

Today I was very, very good and I was only a little bad... I love the good things about this challenge, I'm drinking more water (3l today woohoo!), I'm eating more veg and leafy greens (at least one leafy portion a day) and I'm still getting all my yummy fruit in. I've been trying to use the fruit to replace all my indulgent snacks i.e. chocolates and biscuits. Especially raisins as they are just like sweets! lol. But this is the area where I struggle, today someone lovely soul in the office brought in sweets, not those little packets of sweets, but the big tubs you find in the sweetie store. But I was as good as I could be, there were mushroom and pencils and I only had two of each, I could have quite easily have had a handful of both! My only other discretion was to eat three custard creams after hitting the gym tonight, but after 3 hours of working out I think I deserved it!

Yummiest part of today was this amazing discovery; I recently stocked up on a few Linda McCartney meals. Being a vege it's sometimes hard to pick ready meals and I end up doing lots of cooking at home, but when you get in late from training like I did tonight you want something quick, easy and healthy to eat, with very little fuss. This did it and it tastes great! Chicken style pieces tasted like chicken, hot and spicy and full of veg pieces - 2 of your 5 a day apparently! And it was full of lentils, and I hate lentils, but I ate every last one! Yummy, might even add lentils to my shopping list now...

#i8this Challenge - Day Two & Three

Okay, I'm going to be honest the last two days have been a failure. I've gone the good stuff, drunk lots of water and added in my leafy greens everyday. But cutting out the sweet stuff has been very hard, add in an argument with the bf and I may have had a minor binge fest on chocolate... And yes the fest lasted much longer than the argument or my anger did oops! Point is I've now finished all the sugary snacks in the house, so I'm ready to go out tomorrow and get back in the saddle! Wish me luck!

#i8this Challenge - Day One

So I've made it through the first day, that's the hardest part right? Well today was a little crazy, I work up at 06:30, but decided that was way too early to get up on a Saturday morning. I woke again at 08:00 and text the bf to tell him I was up (he's working nights), I got up and went back to sleep quite a few times, always doing something in between, making a call, responding to emails etc. But I didn't actually really leave my bed until 15:30, when I got a text from the bf asking me to meet him in town for a coffee. I guess he was up early and as we hadn't seen each other for a while he decided he'd like to spend the afternoon with me. Which was actually really sweet, especially as it was a lovely day outside and way I was going I would have missed it entirely!

So I showered, shaved (my legs - summer dress weather!), dressed, grabbed a bottle of water and headed into town to meet him. We ended up having lunch at Pret, which was good as it meant I got my leafy greens in in the form of a crayfish & avocado salad (my fav!)

Dinner was cooked for me, which is a good thing as he cooks a lot healthier than I do! We had grilled sea bass, roast potatoes, a medley of mixed veg; broccoli, cauliflower, carrots & cherry tomatoes. Snacks today were mainly light mini babybel & Clementines. I brought lots of fruit while we were out shopping, but not all of it is ripe yet :-(. 

Christine put up a post today about Love On Some Fruit. Now this really caught my attention and it looked like a really interesting exercise to do. Take time out to show your appreciation for your fruit, prepare it with love and enjoy every mouthful. My midnight snack was my yummy raisins and this is how I showed them I loved them!

I think I've managed 1l of water today, so on that part I've failed miserably, but I have had lots of fruit & veg and I've stayed away from the chocolate and other sweet snacks, so I am retiring to my bed today feeling very good about myself! Oh yeah, I even managed a Yakult too (they were giving them away in the mall), so my tummy is happy too!

#i8this - Spring Clean Living

This is an idea that came to me from a friend Donna (@donna_de) after a discussion about my poor eating habits and a suggestion from a male runner friend of mine who advised me that I needed to loose two stones... He meant it in the best possible way; he has great aspirations for my running that I don't share. I'd be happy to finish a 5k race with a 25:xx time, he wants me to look at 23:00mins... Loosing two stone would get me there (so he says). Honestly though I do wish I was a little lighter a stone maybe, but realistically I am NOT overweight. I think I need to be clear that I do recognise that, what I should be working on is my body fat %, I know its high, I can clearly see it high, so I guess my goals here should feed into that. 

To give credit where credit is due this idea (the #i8this hastag on Twitter) was started by Christine Lynch (@holisticguru). I don't claim to know Christine, but I have enjoyed reading through her blog and she is someone I would like to get to know through this challenge. 

Generally, my diet is not horrendously bad; I'm a vegetarian, although I do eat fish, I get my five a day, I don't drink coffee or smoke and I am teetotal. My only vice is my high sugar intake and that is all in the form of sugary treats -I don't even add sugar to my tea! I expect reducing this will have a significant impact on my body fat. I really want two things from this; my objectives are to a) make it achievable & b) make it beneficial, on that note here are my goals... 

My Goals - 7 days

• Drink at least 2l of water per day - I often forget to drink and I am used to being dehydrated. As an athlete (I used that term loosely) this is not a good thing, I've been on short runs recently as part of my recovery and the first thing I noticed is that 5 steps out of my door I was dying of thirst! Had I been drinking enough through the day, this wouldn't have been a problem and I need to find a way to make it a habit...
• Cut out crisps and chocolates - This is gonna hurt - I've been living on crisps and chocs the last few weeks. Missing my endorphin rush from running, chocolate has been my substitute.
• Add in the right stuff - I do get my five a day most days, I eat 50g of raisins as a snack which is two, then there's my usual pink apples, clementines and a banana for breakfast. And I haven't started on the veg as I miss a 'full' portion some days. What I will do is plan to have at least one meal a day including leafy greens in addition to my fruit fetish!

In addition I will keep a food diary; I have a great app on my iPhone already for this (DailyBurn), which I have been using. And I may even dip my toe in the pool of mediation... Wish me luck and if you're not already following me on Twitter please do: @LilMsSweets I'll be tweeting with everyone else throughout this challenge!