Fast Diet recipes – Day 12

Breakfast: Gooseberry breakfast pots (196 calories)

Lunch: Butterbean tomato and caper salad (133 calories)

Dinner: Szechuan pork in lettuce wraps (182 calories)

= 511 calories

Since returning from France our eating-out diary has gone a bit crazy. More often than not we’re having to do 2 fast days in a row and looking at the diary for the week ahead, I can see we’re going to have to attempt a 3 consecutive fast day marathon on Sunday, Monday & Tuesday. That really will test the sustaining power of these recipes to the limit!

Thankfully, today is just a solo fast day, with some much-anticipated feasting on the horizon for tomorrow. We started the day with the gooseberry breakfast pots from yesterday. Once you’ve made and refrigerated the compote, you can make breakfast in seconds. It’s a great combination of sweet, sour, creamy and crunchy – just the thing to kick off a hot summer’s day.

Butterbean, tomato and caper salad

The combination of beans, tomatoes, a herb and a seasoning has become our go-to packed lunch when we’re in a hurry. The latest incarnation is probably my favourite of the lot, mainly due to the fact that I’m a caper-aholic.

Serves 1

133 calories per serving

100 g tinned butterbeans, drained (85 cal)

180 g fresh ripe tomatoes, diced (29 cal)

15 g capers in brine, drained (5 cal)

3 g (a few sprigs) fresh basil leaves, torn (< 1 cal)

½ tsp Dijon mustard (3 cal)

½ tsp runny honey (11 cal)

1 tsp sherry vinegar (< 1 cal)

• Mix the beans with the tomatoes, capers and basil.
• Stir the mustard, honey and vinegar together with a pinch of salt then dilute it with a little cold water (1 – 2 tsp should do it).
• Drizzle the dressing over the salad and grind over a little black pepper.

For dinner we couldn’t resist making the Szechuan pork with lettuce wraps again from last night. Unfortunately we were so eager to eat them that I forgot to re-take the photo, so the original low-light version is back!