Think you know Cottage Cheese? Think again! This NoBooksBlog has NOTHING to do with books...

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Straight home from group, just before 9am, and time for something to eat, before I headed to my desk.  This is the most basic, absolute staple way that I eat cottage cheese.  Simply 3 hard boiled eggs, chopped up and stirred through a tub of cc, with a wee bit of black pepper. I'll do the maths here, cos I cba doing it all the way through. One tub of cc gives me 26.7g of protein, and three eggs is around 18g, so this one snack gives me 44.7g, almost my daily target. 

This, and variations of this, is almost a daily eat for me. 

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As an aside, I don't know the last time I actually 'boiled' an egg, and I eat eggs every day.  Actually, as a further aside, here's how many eggs I've eaten since Christmas - I only know, because I keep the egg boxes for a pal who has hens, plus Mr No Books hates eggs, so these are genuinely all in ma belly :P 

Anyway, yeah, if I'm having 'boiled' eggs, I almost always airfry them. I have a very basic air fryer, no buttons, just a timer type dial. I place the eggs straight in to the air fryer, and turn the dial to 135° and roughly 13 minutes, which gives me a hard boiled egg.  About 11 minutes usually gives me a slightly jammy hard boiled egg.  No faffing with watching a saucepan and tripping over dogs with boiling water in my hand. I've done this pretty much daily for about 18 months, and I've only ever had one egg split in that time.  Well, it exploded, tbf, but literally only 1 egg out of thousands. Total game changer for me.  And they often seem easier to peel, than when boiled in water, but that might just be fluke. 

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For my evening meal that night, I had tatties to use up, so I parboiled and sliced them, and used a tub of cottage cheese, blended smooth, with a couple of eggs.  Added lots of garlic, bit of salt, bit of mustard powder, shoved it in the oven and made something vaguely potato dauphinoise. Another staple. 

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Next day, a pasta salad was what I was fancying. I often use blended cottage cheese as a salad dressing (literally just blitz a tub of cc with your stick blender, adding whatever flavours you want), but today I still had tatties needing used, so I made a tattie salad to go with my pasta salad - yup, no such thing as cutting carbs in my life! So I blitzed cc with a good splash of lemon juice, more garlic, dried basil, touch of Worcestershire and mustard. Gorgeous tattie salad. 

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I fancied something sweet, just before bed, so out came the cc, and I blended it with some sweetener and some strawberry protein powder. Not a million miles away from Angel Delight. And I remembered I had pomegranate in the freezer, so chucked some of that on top. I ate this just as is, but you can also freeze for a couple of hours, for quite a decedent version of ice cream. 

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Another staple. This isn't low carb, low syn or low calorie - I really meant it when I said this isn't a diet blog, so don't come at me, I'm genuinely just sharing how I've used cc this week!  This is one of my faves.  It's kind of a pizza, but I don't really like pizza, and this, to me, is WAY tastier than any pizza. But if you're in to pizza, you'll probably like this too.  I make a super simple dough, which I use as this pizza type base, but also can be used like a flat bread, or a naan, I've even filled it and steamed it like little boa buns.  I did this one all in a dry frying pan, but you can oven it, and stuff the crusts with cheese, if you wish. Tub of cc, blended until smooth, and roughly the same weight of flour worked in until it comes together in a ball. You can add garlic, almond, coconut, whatever will go with your meal. Knead until smooth and roll out to your desired thickness.  Then bake or fry, turnover and add your toppings.  This one was spread with cream cheese and the topping was a whole bag of frozen red onion, which I'd slowly caramalised down earlier in the day, with a good glug of balsamic vinegar and tablespoon of sugar. Absolutely divine! 

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Back to the ol' faithful, just eggs and cc, and today I added less than a tablespooon of sweet chilli sauce.  Straight from bowl to belly, nom. A few months ago, I was out for lunch and 'healthy' options were limited.  I thought, ahh, I'll have an egg mayo sarnie, that'll be a lovely treat, haven't had real egg mayo for a couple of years. Yeah, nah, it was a real let down, I far prefer this 'not egg mayo' concoction, to real egg mayo! I thought I'd picked this up from when I first did SW, many years ago, but recent conversations haven't rung any bells with fellow members or my consultant, so maybe it was never anything to do with a 'diet' and just something I stumbled upon and adopted as my go-to! 

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Fancied a wee sweet something late last night. Ice cream in bed? yes please! 
So I blitzed a tub of cottage cheese with 22gm of instant hot chocolate powder and a wee bit of sweetener.  Shoved it in the freezer for a wee while, maybe about 90mins, and took it up to bed to eat whilst watching Family Guy :) 

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After the gym this morning, I was fancying something quick to make and eat, but with a good bit of sustenance.  Cottage Cheese Things it was!  I don't know when or where I first came upon this recipe, and, I must admit it's quite random, even for me, but these are another thing I make variations of. Sometimes sweet, sometimes savoury, sometimes more like muffins, sometimes more like scones.  It's another 'base' mix that you can adapt in loads of ways. I know this list of ingredients seems weird, but it works, OK! haha
125g porridge oats, blitzed until almost a flour consistency
125g cottage cheese, blitzed until smooth
1 teaspoon baking powder
a splash of diet Irn Bru, just to let it down to a doughy consistency.
You can use lemonade, water, whatever you've got. I was drinking bru at the time, so that did fine. 
Shove in the oven on 180 until they seem done. Leave to cool (I prefer them almost cold). A satisfying bite on the outside and a lovely, fluffy inside. today, I spread them with cream cheese, as I ate the lot over the sink haha

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Whilst the oven was on, I chucked together a crustless quiche for tonight's dinner.  I fried off a whole bag of frozen mushroom and about half an onion, and then blitzed...can you guess...a tub of cottage cheese, with three eggs and a generous spoon of lazy garlic, to make a savoury custard, poured it over and chucked it in for about 20 mins at 180. I might reheat it later, or I might have it cold, depends what time I eventually surface from the office!

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