Review: Celebrity Slim Chicken & Beef Couscous Ready Meal

Celebrity Slim and me have a good friendship.  I am drinking the shakes and loving the bar since May 2012, when a colleague recommended this type of low carb diet to me. It works! I lost loads of weight and I am also not bad at maintaining my weight.
Currently I am trying to loose a few more kilos. So I am back in the diet phase, which consists of two shakes/bars and a balanced meal.

Not too long ago Celebrity Slim launched two different ready meals. I bought one each and tried the Chicken & Beef Couscous Ready meal tonight.

This is what the packing looks like: Celebrity Slim Ready Meal

All I had to do is pierce the plastic lid and heat it for three minutes in the microwave.

So this is how it looks in the packaging...not really appealing, but that's how it goes with ready meals in general I guess:

I transferred the meal onto a plate...a little better ;-) (Sorry only realised afterwards that the picture is blurry.)

Looks: Ok, of course it doesn't look like the picture but I was positively surprised.

Smell: For some reason all ready meals have a certain type of smell. Maybe it's the preservatives?

Taste: Not bad at all. Not the biggest fan of the seasoning, but the couscous was nice and fluffy and the meat had a really nice texture. 

Portion size: It's really not a lot, but it works as a small meal in the evening. It's nice to have an alternative to the shake every now and then. 

(Celebrity Slim also offers soups, but I am really not a soup person.)

My Celebrity Slim favourites are:

Chocolate Shake (I LOVE chocolate and the shake really tastes like chocolate milk. Very very yummy!)

Cafe Latte Shake (It does what it says on the tin and it tastes really nice!)

10 days Variety Pack (A mixture of all shakes Celebrity Slim has to offer. I order it every now and then to spice things up) 

Rocky Road Snack Bar (Defo the best bar Celebrity Slim produces. It's really good. The other bars are ok and nice every now and then, but I order the Rocky road Snack Bar every time I place an order.)

The good thing is, that you are not stuck with Celebrity Slim bars. I regularly eat Atkins Bars too. I either eat a Daybreak or Endulge bar as a snack or eat one of the meal replacement bars instead of a Celebrity Slim shake. 

Tonight I bought another new Celebrity Slim product: Celebrity Slim Active Chocolate Shake

It's a new phase they added to the program. It's meant to boost the weight loss when you start the program, but it also can be done during any phase of the weight loss. 

I will drink three active shakes every four hours and have a low carb meal in the evening. Let's see if I can do this for a week as that is the duration recommended for the Active Phase. 

The normal shakes are just mixed with water where the Active Shake has to be mixed with Skimmed milk. 

I will write another review after the week and let you know if I lost more than usual. 

Atkins Revolution Rolls - Low Carb Buns

I love bread! I really do...there is nothing better on this planet than a slice of very fresh bread with just a bit of butter.
But then came low carb and bread was dead to me. :-(
Actually being without bread is not as bad as it sounds. But a nice sandwich....oh dear, I do miss that every now and then.

Always looking out for new low carb recipes I found Soulfood LowCarberia It's a Blog from Germany, so sorry most of the recipes are in German. Jasmin lives low carb since quite a while and she even has her own low carb cafe in Nuernberg, Germany. So wish I would know anybody living close to her shop. Everything looks so so good!

The first recipe I wanted to give a go are the Atkins Revolution Rolls. Yes, low carb buns!!!!!
For burgers, for sandwiches, for whatever you fancy and today, I fancied a sandwich.
(There is a video in the post which is in english.)

So I beat the egg whites and then added the egg yolks which I mixed with cream cheese.
The recipe says that they need to go into the oven for 50 minutes at 150 degrees, but mine were actually done after 30 minutes. I might even reduce the baking time a little further the next time I make the buns.

I was craving a nice hearty sandwich, so I put cream cheese, bacon, chorizo, mushrooms and BBQ sauce on my buns. I loved it! It tasted really nice.....defo gonna make them again!

Low Carb Celery root crisps = not-potato chips

I must admit that I am not the biggest fan of crisps/chips, but every now and then I like them. Of course they are everything but surely not low carb.
Browsing the internet for new low carb recipe ideas, I found Layla's low carb blog. Her last post is from March, but I really do hope that she is gonna continue the blog, because she has some fantastic recipes online!

She posted a recipe for Celery root potato chips and I thought I give it a try.

I popped over to the supermarket and bought a celery root. Not the prettiest vegetable that there is on earth?
Anyway, I peeled it and chopped it into small pieces and sliced it as thin as possible.

Next I heated a small pot with neutral oil (such as sunflower).
I fried the celery root slices in small batches and got rid of any excess oil by putting them onto kitchen paper.

Layla suggests to put some sea salt on top, but I thought they tasted salty enough.

The whole procedure took me more than an hour, quite a lot isn't it? On top my kitchen and also me are smelling like frying oil.

I ended up with a medium large bowl of crisps, which actually taste totally like normal potato crisps. They are REALLY good!

Would I do it again? It's quite a bit of effort to make these little bad boys and because I am not the biggest crisps fan, I would say no. BUT if you are into crisps, I am sure you would make them regularly.

Note: I recommend eaten them straight away. I left mine sitting for a while and they went all soft.

Low Carb Strawberry Ice Cream

Ireland is currently showing it's very beautiful side. It's sunny and warm since a week and I couldn't be more pleased!
What goes good with a temperature of more than 20 degrees? ICE CREAM!
What doesn't go good at all with a low carb way of living? ICE CREAM!

It was time to change this!

Low Carb Layla uses almond milk quite often for shakes and other sweet treats. It is low carb and a good alternative to cow milk which you shouldn't consume too much when being on a low carb diet.

So I had the idea to use sugar free jello powder to make some ice cream which is based on almond milk and also some normal whipping cream.

I whipped the cream together with a few tablespoons of Splenda. Once the cream was stiff I put in the jello mix and blended. Last step was to put in almond milk. I didn't measure it, I just made sure to end up with a smooth ice cream mix, which is thick enough to make a nice ice cream.

The whole procedure took me less than 5 minutes!
I do have an ice cream maker, but we are not really good friends.

So I put the ice cream mixture into a bowl and popped it into the freezer. I set a time to give it a good stir every hour.

About two and a half hours later it was time to give this a try. YUMM YUMM!!!! Soooooo good, finally low carb ice cream! Love it....can't wait to have another small bowl later!

You will so have to give this a try ;-))

Low Carb Cauliflower Pizza

One of the blogs I follow is the blog of gorgeous Carrie. She posts about fashion, food and other essentials of life.

Not too long ago she posted a recipe for Low Carb Cauliflower pizza. Say what?!
Yes, she kicked out all the carbs of a regular pizza base and used instead the good ol' cauliflower.

That sounded like heaven to me! One of the things I really, like REALLY miss (being on a low carb diet) is a lovely pizza.

So of course I had to give this recipe a try!
It's sunny in Ireland (believe me that doesn't happen too often) so we paired the pizza with a BBQ.

After cutting the cauliflower into pieces I used a hand blender to blend the cauliflower into tiny tiny pieces. They not supposed to end up in a mash, so be careful.
It's also a good idea to cover the bowl with a tea towel, otherwise you end up with a really messy kitchen. Carrie had that problem, so I was extra careful.

Next you pop the cauliflower pieces into the mircowave for 8 minutes.

For every about 250gr you will need to mix one egg into the cauliflower. Also mix an egg per 250gr into the mixture. Pop in a handful (or two) of  grated cheese into your bowl. Spice it up with salt, mixed herbs and garlic to your taste.

A friend who is lactose intolerant visited, so we had an extra batch going on, where we only put in egg, but no cheese.

Spread the mixture flat onto a baking tray (don't forget the baking parchment) and put it into the oven for about 10-15 minutes (until it shows a little bit of colour). 170 degrees should do the deal.

Now comes the fun part! It's time for the toppings.
We opted for tomato puree, chorizo, salami, mushrooms, dried tomatos and lots of cheese. My friend used buffalo mozzarella and I used two types of cheddar and normal cow milk mozzarella.

Back it goes into the oven for another 10-15 minutes.

When the cheese is melted and a little brown you can get it out of the oven and give it a try.

What can I say? It was a delight and surely a treat!
I really loved it....so good and a real alternative. My BF said it was ok, but not his fav. Well, he is a man after all and loves his junk food ;-))

My friend and me are convinced that we will make it again.

Do you like cold pizza the next morning or day? I do and I must say that it tasted so so close to a normal pizza when I had a slice for lunch today.

Thank you Carrie for bringing this recipe into my life! VERY much appreciated!!!

The best low carb chocolate fudge brownies in the world!

Yep, I am not kidding. These are the very best brownies you can find! Not only are they low carb, they are also super moist and just yummy!

They don't contain any flour nor sugar so it's an absolute guilt free treat. I can't count how many times I have baked them so far, but ever since I am eating low carb these bad boys were a trusted friend when it came to chocolate cravings.

You can find the recipe here.

I pretty much follow the recipe. The only thing I adjust is the baking time and the amount of dark chocolate on the top. I usually use less baking time (25-30min) and less chocolate (50-70g)

What also tastes pretty awesome is to put a few nuts into the dough like hazelnuts or walnuts.

I am pretty sure you won't be able to taste the difference to a 'normal' sugar loaded brownie! Give it a go; they are really easy to pull off!