Pork and Apricot Parcels – How I can blog this stuff and still lose weight…

How many of you foodies out there worry about your weight?

Are you one of the lucky ones who, with the more you eat, the less you weigh? Or are you one of the silent masses, where every tasty morsel stretches the old leather belt running through the hoops on your off-the-rack charcoal grey suit?

Well I’m one of the the great unwashed. I just look at an iced bun and that old belt starts to groan.

Normally, well, I just don’t give a toss. But not right now.

Right now I have to lose weight. A lot of weight. We have a holiday event coming up that involves ‘beachwear’. But as the kids may read this I cannot go into specific details. Suffice to say swimming trunks will be involved. And no one enjoys watching a man in his forties blubbering around in a pair of trunks with a muffin top that would put a z-rated reality TV show celebrity to shame.

So what to eat? Well yes I’m on a diet. That involves eating bugger all. Long time readers of this blog may know that I regularly ‘diet’ but generally that is bullshit. I eat one low calorie meal and then get the steaks out.

But this time it’s serious. Personal even. So what to eat? Well I’m eating bugger all at present but that won’t stop me blogging about recipes I’ve been storing up during the winter (fat-boy) months.

And here is one particularly delicious creation – Pork and Apricot Parcels…

If you took away the pork and the butter this would be diet food. Oh and lose the filo…

Ingredients

• olive oil
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 1/2 carrot, grated
• 1lb pork, minced
• 5 dried apricots
• 1 tsp chopped rosemary
• filo pastry sheets
• 50g melted butter

First off fry the onion on a low heat until soft. Grate the carrot:

Add the onion, rosemary and pork and mix:

Create eight balls of porky gloop:

Now heat the oven to 180 centigrade (basically normal setting if you use farenslight or whatever it is). Lay out a sheet of filo pastry. Brush one side with the melted butter and fold over:

Place one of the porky balls at one end of the pastry and fold it thus:

Brush with more butter and seal, repeat seven more times:

For some strange reason I managed to create 11 not 8:

Brush with more butter and bake for 20 mins:

Serve with horseradish:

This is the great thing about food blogging – you can salivate over your past creations whilst quietly munching on a stick of celery (and a nice big glass of wine – no fat in that badboy)!