Marks and Sparks food

I'm staying with my family in London over this weekend, which partly explains the absence of a post yesterday. I had a long drive down from Friday evening and decided to drop in on one of Marks and Spencer's 'Simply Food' outlets at a motorway service station. They really are the 'bees knees' for bandits trying to eat good quality, low fat, nutritious food (and no, I don't work for them and I'm not on commission!). I only intended spending a quick couple of minutes in there to buy something that I could eat on the journey, but ended up taking about 20 minutes browsing around shelves of wonderful food! In the end I bought four items: a small pot of soya beans with rocket, pine nuts and chilli dressing (210 calories); a pot of prawns with low fat mayonnaise and salad (165 calories); a larger pot of sun-dried tomatoes with orzo pasta and spinach (350 calories) and a pot of mixed fresh fruit containing slices of pineapple, blueberries, raspberries, mango and kiwi fruit (125 calories). I ate the prawn salad and fruit for my evening meal (total 290 calories) last night. Today, I ate the bean and chilli salad for lunch. This evening I mixed the tomato and pasta salad with some steamed salmon and chopped courgettes, heated it up, and ate half of it (total 320 calories) - I'm having the other half for lunch tomorrow (can't wait). I have to say, all of the food I purchased at M+S has been absolutely gorgeous.

Not only does the food taste great, but all of the pots that I bought were really well balanced - nutritionally-speaking. They each had some protein, carbohydrates and various vegetables. M+S also provide lots of information on the packaging setting out exactly what's in the food, calories, fats, carbs etc. The food is also set out really nicely so that it actually looks good too. I'm raving about this food because it really was soooo nice, but also because I have competely failed to find any ready-made, low calorie, nutritious food anywhere else?! Everywhere else I have looked I am invariably offered sandwiches or wraps laden with mayonnaise and huge chunks of cheese, or high fat options such as houmous or fried foods - and there's often no calorie information available. When you start to look, it is actually quite difficult to find ideal bandit food that is ready to eat on-the-go - while travelling, for example.

I suppose the obvious answer is for me to prepare my own food. However, before I embarked on my new 'think-thin' lifestyle, I believed that not having to always prepare my own food was somehow a reward for working hard. The logic is, you work hard to earn some money, and then part of the reward for your efforts is to be able, sometimes, to relax and enjoy food prepared by someone else. In the past, this 'food prepared by someone else' was invariably bad food - the kind of sandwiches and fatty foods I referred to above. So, in this new lifestyle, I am determined to carry this notion forward - at least some of the time. If this means planning my days around proximity to an M+S store, then so be it!!