Weight Watchers Wednesday | Family Favourites cookbook [review and giveaway]

One of the best ways to stay on track when you're on a weightloss program, is to keep your food interesting! Weight Watchers cookbooks are a great place to start for inspiration. This week, the Warren family have been road testing a few recipes from the new Weight Watchers "Family Favourites" cookbook! With 70 recipes to choose from, we were spoilt for choice...

Our kids love cookbooks, and both Seth and Eme have poured through the pages, pointing out the recipes they'd like to try. Eme has dog-eared most of the pages in the dessert section, though we're yet to try them out! lol. A very tempting image accompanies every single recipe, which I really appreciate. I always like to know what we're aiming for...you can see from the images below that we nailed it! Here's what we tried...

Bolognaise Pastitsio - page 103
This is pure comfort food, and perfect served as a winter meal. The portions are really generous, with a quarter of the pastitsio per person. The kids shared a quarter, with the remaining piece enjoyed for lunch the next day. The whole family enjoyed this meal, and we'll definitely be making it again in the future. This was a really cheap meal to make, as we had most of the ingredients listed already available in our pantry and refrigerator. We swapped out the veal mince for lean beef mince (we don't eat veal), and instead of mixed salad leaves, we served fresh steamed broccolini as a side. Two thumbs up!

Prawn Pad Thai - page 77
Pad Thai is one of our favourite meals, and Andrew has been craving it for weeks now! Thank goodness Weight Watchers have put together a ProPoint friendly recipe. I always thought this would be a complex dish to make, however we had no trouble whatsoever, and it was delicious! Unfortunately our kids didn't want to try it, so they had baked fish and veges instead. Never mind...that means leftovers for Andrew and I for lunch! It was so light and fresh, with a great balance of flavours. Like the pastitsio, we had most of the pantry items required already, so we really only needed to purchase some fresh prawns. We will definitely be trying this recipe again, and maybe try substituting different meats for the prawns (and adjusting the ProPoints accordingly, of course). Once again, two thumbs up!

We also tried the garlic chicken with mixed mushroom sauce (page 68), however I forgot to take a photo of it! Trust me...it was delicious!!! Maybe I should have taken a photo of the empty plate. lol. Keeping the meals interesting is definitely working for us, with both Andrew and I losing weight this week. Huzzah! Andrew is just a machine at the moment; he's now added a kickboxing class to his PT sessions, and thoroughly enjoying it. I'm still trying to get my head around eating as a diabetic, and I'm very happy to have to lost this week. Coming up soon, I'll be sharing some advice from Weight Watchers resident nutritionist, Emma Stirling. I can't wait to pick her brain! In the meantime, we'll continue eating healthy, tracking food, and making good choices. This week, I aim to make my cross trainer my friend!

As I promised...I have a great giveaway for you!

Weight Watchers "Family Favourites" is definitely my favourite cookbook at the moment, and I know we'll be referring to it often.

The good people at Weight Watchers want you to try out their new "Family Favourites" cookbook as well, so I have twelve..count them...12 copies to giveaway!

To enter*, simply leave a comment below telling us...

What is your favourite family meal?

Good luck!

*Terms and Conditions

• Entries must be made via Intense Debate commenting system to qualify.
• Entries close midnight, Tuesday, 18 June 2013.
• One entry per household.
• Open to Australian residents only.
• Total prize pool valued at $191.40 ($15.95 each).
• This is a game of skill. The judge's decision will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into.
• Twelve winners will be chosen. The winners will be contacted by email, then advertised on the Weight Watchers Wednesday post of Wednesday, 19 June 2013.
• Life as we know it...will take no responsibility for any delay, loss or damage to prizes sent to winners.