Come Dine With Me

Over the next few weeks my calendar is full. I have birthdays, a holiday and a wedding reception, all of which could involve eating and drinking all the wrong things. However, I still have a slight control over what I'm eating at these occasions - and should be able to select appropriate foods from the menu that have lower syn values.

The biggest difficulty coming up in the next month or so is some Come Dine With Me style parties. This is the 3rd time my friends and I have done this - we keep it like the TV show, and all go around to each others' homes for a meal, although ours are considerably more spread out! The menu is revealed shortly before each dinner, and we all score each other in secret! We don't take it too seriously though - instead of £1000 prize, the winner gets treated to a meal in the restaurant of their choice. Its good fun creating a menu, and having a few nights of great food with great company (another bonus being that we all actually like each other!).

When discussions were had about having another set of dinners, I definitely wanted to do it, however my problem is syns! Obviously there's no choice of what to eat at these, and wine normally flows relatively freely as well, so there's massive potential to break the diet. Last night saw the first of the dinners, and I think I coped relatively well.

Starter was chicken liver pate, toast and salad. I'd saved my healthy extras yesterday, so I counted the toast as my B choice, and just had a very small amount of pate, plus lots of salad. This was followed by a main course of chicken stuffed with cheese and pesto, gruyere potatoes, roast carrots and broccoli. I'd also saved my A choice for the day, which was more than used up by the cheese in the main, and I'm hoping that the extra syns I saved this week will have helped make up for the rest of the cheese and pesto. Deserts were my big worry, so I've said to everyone that I will only have a very small bite of their desert. However, last night's lovely host also gave me some syn free fresh berries and natural yogurt - so bonus points for a perfect dieter's desert, and it meant I didn't feel too envious as I watched everyone else tuck into banana and chocolate cake.

Fortunately the dinners are all spread out - I have another on Wednesday, but following that, the third night isn't until May, so hopefully a similar tactic each week and the spread of the nights will mean the diet doesn't go off track.