Ever since we have decided to go full force into the weekend carnivore lifestyle of eating mostly vegetarian recipes, our vegetable drawer is bursting at the seams anyway but I do tend to get more adventurous when the summer recipe season hits. I will buy any vegetable that looks good and challenge myself to come up with a new healthy vegetarian recipe that I can work into my diet.  This week, I picked up an aubergine with no real plan as to which vegetarian recipe I would be making. 

An aubergine, by the way, is what my fellow Americans call an eggplant. So, if you are scratching your head wondering what I might be talking about with this recipe just rest assured that this is simply an eggplant recipe by another name. I knew I had been living in the UK for a long time (14 years this month) when I caught myself thinking aubergine rather than eggplant. When your mind thinks the word of the country you moved to instead of the one you grew up with you know you have finally gone native!

My husband has come a long way with his vegetable eating habits and will try just about anything.  However, I knew from the past that unless it is very well hidden he isn’t going to be a big fan of any aubergine recipe. So, that meant that my newly purchased aubergine was destine for a vegetarian lunch recipe.

For the past month, I have been participating in a cooking event over at Recipezaar (yes, I do spend a LOT of time there..such great people and recipes!) where we cook food from different regions of the world.  One of the regions we have just finished “visiting” is Greece. So, I had a whole bunch of Mediterranean bits and bobs hanging around in the fridge. Aubergine fits so well into Greek cooking that I knew it wouldn’t be hard to come up with a Greek vegetarian recipe.

Not having a clue how the eggplant recipe would end up, I started by slicing my eggplant lengthwise and griddling them.  If you do it well there isn’t much that is better tasting than grilled aubergine because it really works so well as a base for any other flavours you want to add to it. Which, is exactly what I did because amongst the remains of my Greek cooking ingredients was a little bit of feta.  I took a little bit of a gamble and cut up some fresh basil I had laying around and mashed it into the feta. You know what!? That was a stunning combination and I will be using it again in other recipes. The fresh basil really took that salty feta to a different level.

I spread that mixture over the griddled aubergine and then raided my fridge for any jarred Mediterranean vegetables and added them to the aubergine and feta stacks.   Then I plated up and tucked in to my newly developed low fat vegetarian recipe.  That was followed shortly by giving myself a nice firm pat on the back because they were SO good. The artichoke might have been chunky enough to make them slightly unwieldy when transferring to the plate but it was worth it for me since I can’t get enough of artichokes lately. Really though, this aubergine and feta recipe is so versatile and you could add any vegetables you desire to the top.

For me, two of these slices made for a perfect light vegetarian lunch recipe but I  could see this aubergine and fetish recipe being served as an appetizer recipe before a special meal. Equally, I could also see a side salad being added for a lovely summertime meal on the patio.  If you have a barbecue you could even do the grilling of the aubergine on that and make it an easy outdoor meal. Why not try them and let me know how that basil and feta combination worked out for you?

Mediterranean aubergine and basil feta stack recipe

Mediterranean aubergine and basil feta stack recipe

Ingredients:

2 lengthwise slices of aubergine (eggplant), about as thick as your small finger
60 grams reduced fat feta cheese
3 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
20 grams sundried tomatoes from a jar, drained well
30 grams marinated artichokes, drained well
30 grams green unstuffed olives

Directions:

1. Heat a griddle ban until very hot and then grill your aubergine slices until done. You can lightly oil the pan if you wish, I just used the tiniest amount of light cooking spray.
2. Mash the feta up in a bowl and stir in the chopped fresh basil until well combined.
3. Put the aubergine slices on a plate and spread an equal amount of the feta mixture over the top.
4. Chop up the sundried tomatoes, artichokes and olives and pile them on top of the feta mixture.

Serves: 1

My husband really enjoys those ice pops you can get in a any number of unnatural colours from the corner store. This year, I thought I would try my hand and learning to make my own healthier versions of those frozen ice pops. Also, with a little imagination I thought I might be able to come up with some interesting varieties to keep the idea fresh throughout the summer.

Not only will they be far better for both of us but they don’t actually require all that much effort or money to produce. The ice pop molds are available at any number of supermarkets at this time of year. I picked my set up at Ikea for just over a pound. Apart from the molds, the cost comes down to whatever you decide to put into your ice pops.

For my first attempt at making my own frozen ice pops I went for a kiwi and lemon ice pop recipe. My mother in law had recently been staying with us and left behind several kiwi fruits. I didn’t want them to go to waste and I was sure I could work them into the recipe. For the lemon, I went with a diet cloudy lemonade.

For any American readers, in the UK lemonade means a carbonated drink such as Sprite. However, the cloudy version is much closer in taste to what Americans think of as lemonade. The only difference is that it is carbonated. However, I am sure this kiwi and lemon ice pop recipe would work with non-carbonated lemonade too.

It really couldn’t be much easier to make these kiwi and lemon ice pops and the great thing is that a total of three ingredients goes into the recipe. I can’t even begin to think how many chemicals go into the ones we had been buying!

I am looking forward to a summer of trying out new ice pop varieties. I am sure the possibilities are endless. I am even thinking of “adult” cocktail varieties that could be done.  There is some ginger wine in my fridge that is begging to be used.

Kiwi and Lemon Ice Pops

Kiwi and Lemon Ice Pop Recipe

Ingredients:

80 grams kiwi flesh
1 tablespoon runny honey
1 cup cloudy lemonade

Directions:

1. Purée the kiwi flesh. You can use a traditional blender or a stick blender to do this. I went with the stick blender.
2. Stir in the honey.
3. Pour in the cloudy lemonade and mix everything together until well combined.
4. Pour into the ice pop molds and freeze overnight.

Makes: 6 ice pops

Okay, well maybe that is a tad extreme but I have been on an adventure with this recipe all day. I woke up with an idea for a new dip recipe floating in my head. By the time lunch came around I just knew that I had to try it out and see if the new dip recipe I had dancing in my brain would work. Caution was thrown to the wind and I decided to have a crisps and dips lunch.

I was aiming for a creamy dip recipe but I didn’t want to go the normal onion or spinach dip path. Instead, I thought that mixing together some Italian themed ingredients was the way to go. I knew that I wanted sundried tomatoes to be a key feature to the new dip recipe and that I wanted to use low fat cream cheese as the base.

A good rummage in the fridge helped be bring my plan together. You can’t have something Italian without garlic. So, a few cloves had to go into the dip recipe. Then, I thought that throwing some green olives could add a nice hint of salty depth to the dip. Lastly, I threw in some lemon juice and zest in an attempt to lift the whole flavour of the low fat dip.

The results of the dip experiment? Yummy! All of the fresh flavours work very well together and make the taste buds pops. Plus, the light cream cheese means all the lovely creamy dip texture is there without nearly as much fat as you would think. Perhaps best of all, it takes a total of 30 seconds in the mini chopper to make!

Easy Sundried Tomato and Olive Dip

East sundried tomato and olive dip

Ingredients:

1 cloves garlic, minced
25 grams pitted green olives
50 grams sundried tomatoes in oil, drained but leave a bit of the oil clinging
200 grams light cream cheese
1 teaspoon lemon juice
zest of half a lemon

Directions:

1. Put all the ingredients into a mini chopper or food processor and use the pulse setting for about 30 seconds until everything is mixed up but there is still a bit of texture to the tomatoes.

2. Get the crisps and enjoy! It would probably be really yummy spread on a bagel too.

Serves: 4

No problem there other than figuring out how I was going to use all that yoguhurt before it expired. Where I feel a bit of a fraud is that the yoghurt I was suppose to try out and review was Total Greek Yoghurt. Far from being the first time that I have tried this brand of Greek yoghurt, I have in fact been eating and enjoying Total Greek Yoghurt as part of my diet for a few years now.

In fact, if you read back through Weekend Carnivore, you will find a number of posts where I evangelize about Greek yoghurt in general. There are a variety of reasons for my tubthumping. Firstly, even the full fat version of Greek yoghurt, and especially the Total brand, is still pretty low fat. So, once you get down to the fat free – what Total calls 0% – you are at very low calories and no fat.

More importantly for me though, is that I am lactose intolerant and for some reason, when I eat Greek yoghurt I don’t react. Without sounding like a commercial – and I promise you I would never do a false review of any product – this is only the case with the Total brand of Greek yoghurt. I have tried supermarket brands of ‘Greek style yoghurt’ and I more often than not react. I won’t claim to know why and please don’t assume that it won’t be the case for you if you are lactose intolerant but it is true for me.

Apart from the healthy nature of Greek yoghurt, I enjoy using it as an ingredient because it is so versatile. I often eat it at breakfast, as you would predict, topped with fruit or even with a bit of whatever sugar free jam I have on hand swirled into the mix. However, where it really comes into its own for me is as a replacement for sour cream, creme fraiche or, even in some cases, cream.

When cooking something like a creamy sauce or curry, I will happily stir in a bit of the Greek yoghurt and get the same result. For this I would favour the full fat version since it doesn’t separate at all during heat.

As a general rule, I find that the less fat you have in the Greek yoghurt the more sour the taste and the less creamy. This is the same with Total and it simply means that where I would want to replace cream I use the full fat variety (I have used it to make homemade ice cream, for example) and when I want to replace sour cram or creme fraiche I go down to the 2% or o% varieties.

One way that I use the lower fat varieties is to cut into mayo to make lower fat coleslaw, potato salad or dip recipes. You don’t notice a taste difference but you sure do notice the calorie and fat grams difference.

To mark my mission to finish 14 tubs of Total Greek Yoghurt before their New Year expiry dates, I thought I would create a new recipe that combined two of my favourite uses for the ingredient. Spinach dip is an American party classic and every good American home cook has a potato salad recipe in their recipe arsenal too. So, I thought why not combine the two?

This was the result and I have to say I rather enjoyed it and I hope you do too!

Low fat spinach dip potato salad

Low fat spinach dip potato salad

Ingredients:

450 grams baby new potatoes, skins left on
110 grams frozen spinach
70 grams fat free mayonnaise
85 grams 2% Total Greek Yoghurt
2 tablespoons dried onion flakes
1/2 teaspoon vegetable bullion powder
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried chives
salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Directions:

1. Cook the baby new potatoes and let them cool slightly. I do this by steaming them for 30 minutes in my electric steamer but you could boil them too.
2. While the potatoes cook and cool, defrost the frozen spinach and squeeze out all the excess liquid.
3. In a large bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients and stir really well to fully combine. Use a good amount of seasoning since there is a lot of moisture going into this recipe. However, judge how much salt you need based on how salty your bullion powder is because it can be rather salty.
4.Stir the spinach into the bowl just to combine with the mayo and yoghurt mixture.
5. Cut the baby potatoes in half width wise and fold into the spinach mixture.
6. Cover and cool in the fridge for at least an hour to allow the flavours to develop.
7. Take out of the fridge, give a good stir and serve.

Makes: 4 hearty servings

I have a huge stack of cooking magazines and recipes I have printed out from the internet sitting on my desk as I try to widdle them down to decide what exactly I will be cooking and baking for the Christmas period. You would think after all that foodie focused research I would be settled on a menu by now. The problem is that the more I see the more I want to make but I want to be careful of not biting off more than I can (literally) chew.

One thing I do know is that Christmas cooking period is going to be one of those times where I won’t be sticking strictly to a vegetarian diet. However, I do really want to try as much as possible to be cooking and serving mostly vegetarian Christmas recipes.

The good thing though is that it really isn’t very hard to do that. When you think about it, most of the Christmas cookies and cakes we will munch over the holiday period are vegetarian by their very nature. Then, the normal Christmas dinner trimmings are also largely vegetarian. At least that is the case if you skip doing your roast potatoes in goose fat. Frankly, even when I wasn’t so focused on vegetarian cooking that never appealed to me anyway.

As I make my way through a largely vegetarian Christmas, I will check in and share my vegetarian cooking adventures. Hopefully, it will give some of you also trying to eat mostly vegetarian over the Christmas cooking period of bit of inspiration.

For now though, it is on to finally forming a solid Christmas cooking schedule. So, time to settle down with that stack of Christmas cooking magazines and make my mind up. At least until I change it again.

Of course, I can’t do that research without having a good hot beverage by my side. This month for the vegetarian swap I participate in over at Recipezaar, I picked out this Mayan Hot Chocolate recipe posted by Recipezaar member the80srule.

spiced hot chocolate recipe

It turns out this hot chocolate recipe is the perfect partner to planning my vegetarian Christmas cooking. Firstly, the big sell for me, is that it is actually made with soy chocolate milk. I am lactose intolerant so whenever I make a creamy drink like hot chocolate I have to weigh up the consequences. I could make a normal hot chocolate recipe with water, I suppose, but any lover of hot chocolate knows that is simply never the same. Amazingly though, I had never thought of using soy chocolate milk as the base of a hot chocolate recipe but it really did work.

What really makes this hot chocolate recipe special though are the spices that go into the mixture. First in the pot, is a bit of cinnamon which gives a real Christmas feel to the hot chocolate recipe. Then comes the real surprise, a pinch of cayenne pepper. You would think that would make it hot and spicy but really it just adds a back ground warmth to the hot chocolate.

So, make yourself your own mug of this spiced hot chocolate and pull up your own pile of Christmas recipes and join the foodie December ritual of planning your holiday baking and Christmas cooking. Let the games begin!

If you want to save money on your food budget, one the best ways to do so is to make the most of your ingredients. A great deal of what most people normally throw in the trash could actually go towards making meals.

For example, instead of throwing away your carrot and onion peels, keep them in the freezer until you have filled up a freezer bag. Then use all those trimming to make a vegetable stock. Not only have you made the most of something you have already bought but you save yourself having to pay for store bought stock or stock cubes.

When, I was in the States, I discovered broccoli slaw. I guess this is something that became popular after I left the States to move to the UK because I hadn’t even heard of it until recently. Basically, it is just like coleslaw but instead of cabbage the main ingredient is shredded broccoli. It turned out to be really very tasty. Also, depending on the dressing you use for the broccoli slaw recipe it can be very healthy. Broccoli is, after all, a super food.

Upon my return to the UK, I decided to try to figure out how to make my own broccoli slaw recipe since it isn’t available in British supermarkets. When I investigated what went into making a broccoli slaw I found out that the broccoli used is actually the broccoli stem. How great is that? Something which the vast majority of us just chop off and throw away can be used to make something so tasty and healthy. You simply use a vegetable peeler to take off the top layer of the broccoli stem and then you are ready to make your broccoli slaw recipe.

So, in one full swoop you can take on both the budget and obesity crisis by making this tasty low fat and healthy broccoli slaw recipe. I cut the vegetables chunky because that way I can have it has a side dish when I want but I can also have it as a lunch salad all on its own if I desire. Plus, I am usually too lazy to pull out the food processor to shred them.

Chunky broccoli slaw with apricots

chunky broccoli slaw recipe

Ingredients:

45 grams broccoli stem
85 grams carrots
70 grams green cabbage
55 grams law fat mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon dried onion flakes
1 tablespoon skim milk
25 grams dried apricots

Directions:

1. Peel the carrots and broccoli stalk and then cut them into matchstick sized pieces.
2. Use a knife to shred the cabbage and put into a large bowl with the carrots and broccoli.
3. In another bowl, mix together the mayo, mustard, onion flakes and milk until well combined.
4. Fold the vegetable mixture into the mayo mixture until all of the vegetables are covered in the dressing.
5. Slice the dried apricots into thin slices and fold into the slaw mixture.
6. Chill in the fridge for an hour or so and then serve.

Makes 2 to 4 servings

My spice and herb cabinet is overflowing. I am always buying stuff to try and use it a few times before it moves to the back never to been seen again. I would love it if you could just buy a spice by the pinch or the tablespoon for those times when you just need that little bit for one recipe. Recently, I have decided to challenge myself into finding ways to use some of those herbs and spices which have been lurking unloved for far too long.

The other day, I had a sudden craving for flatbreads but didn’t really want to do anything that involved yeast and letting things rise. I just never plan my cravings far enough ahead to factor in the time for yeast to do it’s thing. In the back of my head, I recalled a quick flatbread recipe that didn’t involve yeast. I used that as a base and decided to experiment.

The first combination I tried for the flatbread recipe was garlic and cumin. In both cases, I used the powdered variety of the garlic and the cumin to that it would mix smoothly into the dough. I ended up really liking this version of the flatbread recipe. They were especially nice with some hummus and they reheated really well the next day. I stored them in the fridge in some foil and simply stuck them in the microwave for 30 seconds and they were back to true form.

Garlic and cumin flatbread recipe

garlic and cumin flatbread recipe

Ingredients:

250g strong white bread flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt (use the sea salt if at all possible..it makes for a really nice texture within the flatbread)
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
125ml warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

1. Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and create a hole in the middle.
2. Mix the water and the oil in a jug.
3. Slowly pour the water and oil mixture into the hole in the middle of the dry ingredients. While doing that, you want to be slowly pushing the dry mixture down into the wet to incorporate it.
4. Once finished pouring in the water and oil mixture, gently mix with your hands until it comes together as a dough.
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes. You don’t need to add extra flour unless it is really, really sticking. Otherwise just go with it until it feels like a proper texture.
6. Divide the dough into eight equal sized balls.
7. Roll each ball out until they are about the size of a pita bread.
8. Heat a pan until it is really hot and then turn down the heat to a ‘high low’. You could use a griddle pan if you want put I don’t have one.
9. If you wish, you can lightly oil the pan at this stage but mine turned out fine without adding any extra fat.
10. Put a few flatbreads at a time into the hot pan.
11. Cook for about 3 minutes on each side and then transfer to a serving dish and enjoy. Seriously..that easy!

Serves: 8

With that flatbread recipe having worked so well, I got a tad more adventurous the second time around. For what feels like forever, I have had a container of the Middle Eastern dukkah spice blend hanging out in the cupboard. I first had it at a food fair where olive oil covered bread was then dipped in the dukkah before eaten as a snack. It really was tasty!

However, once I brought it home I just didn’t really know what to do with it. Since I associate flatbread with Middle Eastern food, I wondered if I could make use of it in this recipe. I think it worked out pretty well. It certainly has a different texture to the first batch but in a good way. Plus, I rolled these out thinner to make them bigger and feel like a different sort of bread.

I suspect, that how much dukkah you would need in the recipe will depend on a number of factors. Firstly, as it is a blend rather than an out and out spice, different blends are going to taste different. Secondly, my dukkah has been sitting around for a while and no doubt has lost a good deal of the potency it had when originally purchased. So, when making your own version of this flatbread recipe, just keep that in mind and go with what your instinct tells you.

Dukkah spiced flatbread recipe

dukkah flatbread recipe

Ingredients:

250g strong white bread flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt (use the sea salt if at all possible..it makes for a really nice texture within the flatbread)
3 tablespoons dukkah
1/2 cup fresh coriander, finely chopped
Zest of 1 lemon
125ml warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

1. Put all the dry ingredients and the coriander and lemon zest into a large bowl and create a hole in the middle.
2. Mix the water and the oil in a jug.
3. Slowly pour the water and oil mixture into the hole in the middle of the dry ingredients. While doing that, you want to be slowly pushing the dry mixture down into the wet to incorporate it.
4. Once finished pouring in the water and oil mixture, gently mix with your hands until it comes together as a dough.
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes. You don’t need to add extra flour unless it is really, really sticking. Otherwise just go with it until it feels like a proper texture.
6. Divide the dough into 6 equal sized balls.
7. Roll each ball out until they are about the size of a small tortilla.
8. Heat a pan until it is really hot and then turn down the heat to a ‘high low’. You could use a griddle pan if you want put I don’t have one.
9. If you wish, you can lightly oil the pan at this stage but mine turned out fine without adding any extra fat.
10. Put a few flatbreads at a time into the hot pan.
11. Cook for about 3 minutes on each side and then transfer to a serving dish and enjoy. Seriously..that easy!

Serves: 6

If you wanted to make this flat breads three ways (ooh, I am so trendy..lol) you can just take out all of the seasoning apart from the salt and make the base flatbread recipe. They plain ones are good too and taste much like a pita.

The base flatbread recipe is great because not only is it very low fat but it also qualifies as a vegan recipe. On top of which, it takes just over 10 minutes from start to finish. Perfect for when you have that craving for some bread but can’t be bothered waiting for yeast to do that yeasty thing it does.

One of those that has been obvious to me as an American that has lived in the UK for so long is that the USA is much more of a a ‘chips and dip’ culture. By that, of course, I mean crisps type chips (confused yet?). In the States it just isn’t a party without a good selection of chips and dips. However, if I throw a party in the UK, the dips are often one of the last things selected by the guests. I can’t pretend to understand it because the love of dips is one of those American things I have just never been able to shake. If I am honest, I have no desire too either because what isn’t to love about a good dip? Perhaps it is that people think that dips are a bit down market but that doesn’t have to be the case at all. Really, hummus is just a dip by another name, isn’t it?

low fat carrot dip recipe

There is a problem with me having dips in my life these days though and it all comes down to fat and calories. If I am ever going to get my weight loss moving again and get to that magical 100 pounds lost (I am on an insanely frustrating and very long plateau) then I just can’t have anything high in fat. Even if it is as good as a dip!

Which means that I am always on the look out for low fat dip recipes that can help me satisfy my dip cravings whilst still tasting good. When I saw the carrot dip recipe over at the lovely Cupcakes and Cornwall blog I knew I had to give it a go. Pretty much the only ingredients in the healthy dip recipes are carrots, fat free Greek yoghurt and some spices. Who could argue with the healthy nature of that?

It turns out that the low fat dip recipe is also rather forgiving. For some reason, I forgot to cook the carrots in water for a few minutes before sticking them into roast. I remembered this about ten minutes into the cooking and decided to let them roast for another ten minutes to get them more tender. That worked just fine and when they came out they looked lovely and roasted with just a little bit of the tell tale black spots that come with a good roasting. By using cooking spray instead of the suggested olive oil, I managed to cut the already very low fat dip recipe down even more and they roasted just fine.

Once the carrots were roasted, the healthy dip recipe just couldn’t be easier to put together. I tossed the carrots into my mini chopper, threw in the spices and blitzed it for about 20 seconds. At that stage, I tasted it and it was really nice but I decided to add a little bit of garlic powder simply because I am a sucker for garlic in just about any dip. It would have been just fine without it too. I put the fat free Greek yoghurt into the mini chopper and blitzed it again for maybe 30 seconds and then the dip was done!

I cut up some lovely crisp celery and tore up some toasted pitas and had the low fat carrot dip for my lunch. With a healthy dip that tasty and easy around there is no reason for this chips and dips gal to shun them any longer.

Sun dried tomato and olive tortilla pizza recipe

Lately, I have been indulging my pizza craving moments by throwing together quick and very easy tortilla pizza recipes. It really is as simple as using a tortilla in place of the normal pizza dough and piling it high with the cheese and toppings of your choice. They are so easy and simple to make that I have taken to having them instead of a sandwich for lunch. I suppose, really they are an open faced sandwich or a an inside out quesadilla anyway.

You really can put just about anything on them and make a whole new tortilla pizza recipe each and every time. They are great for anybody following a vegetarian diet because the pizza topping options really are as varied as the types of vegetables you can find.

My recent favourite topping combination for my tortilla pizza recipe is sun dried tomatoes and a mixture of green and black olives. If I use reduced fat mozzarella I can pile those olives high and not worry too much about the fat. It is all good fat anyway, right?

Sun dried tomato and olive tortilla pizza

Tortilla pizza recipe

Ingredients:
1 flour tortilla
1 tablespoon pasta sauce
1/3 cup reduced fat shredded mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup sun dried tomatoes in oil, drained and roughly chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons green olives, sliced
1 1/2 tablespoons black olives, sliced

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F/Gas Mark 6
2. Put the tortilla on a baking sheet and spread with the pasta sauce.
3. Scatter the cheese evenly over the tortilla.
4. Put the sun dried tomatoes and olives all over the top of the cheese.
5. Bake in the oven for about 5 minutes until the cheese melts. Watch it very closely during this cooking time as it can very quickly go from golden and melted to very burnt.
6. Put onto a plate and eat sliced into pizza style slices.

Serves: 1

I have always loved how a good twice baked potato recipe is an easy recipe but looks really impressive. The problem is though that so many twice baked potato recipes are usually rather high in fat and calories from all the butter and cheese that usually goes into making them. Anything that high in fat is a no no for me these days.

I am always looking for something else to put refried beans into. I know they don’t look pretty but I just love them and with vegetarian and low fat versions of refried beans now readily available in British supermarkets I pretty much always have a can in the cupboard. I usually have a bit of salsa in the house and we are never without some potatoes. So, this really is the sort of recipe that comes more out of a cupboard than a cookbook.

You can control the spice levels by picking the intensity of salsa that your family enjoys. I am a total spicy heat wimp. So, I used a mild salsa and then the two of us topped our Mexican twice baked potatoes with chillies. I went for the really mild banana peppers. These are fantastic and now sold as part of the Discovery brand’s range of Mexican foods. They aren’t in every supermarket but I usually can find them in Morrisons. My husband has much more of head for spices. So, he topped his with Jalapeños.

Mexican Bean Stuffed Baked Potatoes

Mexican bean stuffed baked potatoes

Ingredients:

4 baked potatoes, freshly baked
1 (435 gram/15 ounce) can fat free refried beans
1 cup salsa

Optional Toppings:

fat free sour cream
banana peppers
jalapeños
chives

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees or gas mark 6.
2. Cut off most of the top of the baked potatoes and scoop out the majority of the insides leaving just enough not to break the skins.
3. Put the potato shells into an oven proof dish and the insides into a large bowl.
4. Gently mash the potato insides but don’t mash so much that they are fully smooth.
5. Empty the can of beans and the cup of salsa into the bowl and gently mix so that everything is combined but not over mixed or it will get really loose.
6. Spoon the mixture back into the potato shells and bake for 20 minutes.
7. Top with any or all of the optional toppings and serve with a green salad for a low fat and healthy vegetarian meal.

Serves 4