Over the last week or so, I’ve been trying out the ilumi Boost Your Energy diet which is designed to offer you an easy to follow gluten-free one week meal plan. The plan is flexible, so if there’s a dish you don’t fancy, you can simply switch it to another from the range in their shop.
The Boost Your Energy plan includes most things you need including beer (always a winner with me), but you will need to supplement it with fresh things like fruit, vegetables and milk. I was a little surprised that they don’t include gluten-free pasta, although that is easy to source in supermarkets and health food shops. You get 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches and 7 dinners with the plan, plus snacks and a couple of bottles of beer. This costs £40 and the dishes are easy to heat up and serve.
Each morning breakfast is a serving of porridge oats. Obviously, you need to add milk to this, but I’d suggest some dried fruit too to make it a bit more interesting. Snacks come by way of a supply of Nairn’s oatcakes and Nairn’s Oat and Syrup Biscuits. Oats are good for filling you up and releasing energy gradually.
Lunches came mostly by way of soups. I love Butternut Squash Soup and the ilumi one is a goodie. I wasn’t so sure about the Pea, Pancetta and Mint Soup though, but I like to give new combinations a try. Other lunch dishes included Moroccan Style Vegetable Tagine and Spanish Rice and Vegetables.
As you’d expect dinner was more substantial and in most cases, there were two packets for each dinner: a rice packet and the sauce packet. Dishes on the menu included: Thai Red Chicken Curry with Basmati Rice and Pork, Mushroom Madeira with fluffy Long Grain Rice. A couple of the dishes needed the addition of vegetables to make a meal like the Slow Cooked Beef Casserole and the Beef Meatballs needed some pasta to set it off nicely. As I’ve come to expect from ilumi the quality of the dishes is high and it is really easy to use their meals. I also like the fact that you can keep them in the cupboard and that there is no need to take up space in the freezer or fridge.
Many people benefit from being on a gluten-free diet. They discover that their bodies are a bit intolerant of gluten and it makes a difference to their health and well-being to avoid it. This is a great way of seeing if that is you, without the need to do a lot of research about meal planning options or lots of confusing label reading. I personally have tried a gluten-free diet for a while before and I think my body must tolerate gluten well because it doesn’t seem to affect me. That said I enjoyed having a change from my normal range of foods and as a bit of rice monster, I liked having so many rice based dishes.
some nice sounding flavours!