How to be a Weight Watching Foodie

Now I promise I am not becoming all Julie and Julia now I have the Julia Child books, I swear I am not!

However, as many of you know I struggle to balance my love of food and cooking with trying to maintain a healthy weight.

I try following Weight Watchers (WW), which kinda works if I put all my energy into it, but it kind of kills my creative cooking style and often goes against my attempts to only eat whole foods.  What I mean is, WW foods often do not satisfy what I am looking for with taste, freshness and quality.  Their own brand of food products contain lengthy, chemically sounding ingredients, which usually end up giving me abdominal pain (seriously).

So, I am wondering, after reading for the second time the fabulously titled "French Women Don't Get Fat" if there is someway I can combine the theory of WW with the taste and philosophy of French cooking and eating?

This may end up being the title of a new blog for me, we will see where it takes us.

For today, it is taking me to little red onion and goats cheese tartlets.

Using a few wonton papers in a muffin tin to form the tart, I fried up (in a small amount of olive oil) some sliced red onions, organic field mushrooms and some fresh oregano.  I popped this fragrant mix into the little tart shells and topped with some crumbled goats cheese (full fat, yes, but so full of flavor you really only need a little bit).  Top them off with a few roquette leaves and there you have it.

Total WW points of 2 per tartlet. I am pretty happy with the taste.  The wontons obviously do not impart the same lovely buttery, flakiness that a traditional tart base would.  The upside of this, however, is that the flavour of the filling is much more prominent.

While the oven is on, thought I would bake up some sweet potato, roasted in a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic, a good pinch of sea salt, a twig of rosemary and a few smashed cloves of garlic.  WW points value of 1 for a bowl full.  Would go smashingly with roast meat.