It’s British Pie Week 2018 and so it’s almost compulsory to eat a pie 🙂 The British Pie Week 2018 dates are Monday 5 March to Friday 9 March inclusive – that’s five great pie eating days! Of course it’s just another “invented day”, but if you’re usually a pie dodger as they’re “bad for you”, then this week it’s OK 🙂
I’ve given up with buying individual pies as I feel the ratio of pastry to filling isn’t right. I love pastry, but with individual pies you don’t get enough filling most of the time, so I’ll tend towards buying family sized pies most of the time as they give a better ratio and more satisfying.
Calories in a Pie:
I’m aware that pies contain many calories …. and, as a rule of thumb I’ll always mentally note that any pie is going to be no fewer than 500 calories. But when it comes to the calories in a family pie I find that most these days indicate on the box that there are three portions in a pie. While I’d LOVE to eat 1/3rd of a pie, I only do that occasionally, most often reining myself in and thinking “A quarter of a pie is enough” – and cutting it into quarters.
I do try to then eat pie for four days in a row as I prefer to not freeze food as it just ends up as clutter – so when I buy a large pie I do so mindfully, knowing I can expect to be eating it for the next four days.
This week I have bought a Lidl Chef Select Beef Mince Pie. I actually prefer the beef mince pies to steak pies a lot of the time. These are tasty and very moreish! I probably eat 3-4 full pies a year at a guess, which is 16 meals. Certainly not one a month, although I could eat pies more often 🙂
Most recently I’ve been enjoying lots of the Chef Select sausage rolls as “a bit like pie and they’re nice”, with a pack of six sausage rolls giving me three meals, so I’ll buy a pack of six and eat them as my main meal over three days.
We’re increasingly told that, as a nation, we’re obese – with all sorts of Govt departments “telling us off” about eating too much. It’s always been calories that I keep my eye on, loosely, to balance out over time and use as my method of keeping my weight in check. Calories are easy for me to tot up and think about, rather than all the more complex other things people worry about like salt, sugar, trans fats and more …. all every confusing. I’ve always known where I stand with a simple calorie count and I let the rest sort itself out 🙂
Beef Mince Pie, Oven Chips and Baked Beans
Here’s a quarter of my Beef Mince Pie, served with a portion of oven chips and some hot baked beans (that’s one of those 5-a-day, right!).
Menu Cost 65p:
Using ¼ of the pie, 250 grams of oven chips and 1/3rd of a tin of beans, the cost of this main meal is just 65p. That’s not a bad deal is it!
Enjoy your British Pie Week, whatever sort of pie you eat!