The perfect summer sparkler - B Secco White and Rosé - 3 syns per glass

Breaking the pattern

I have to admit, this end of week sabotage has been a bit of a cycle for me - and I think I’ve finally found a way to break it. I recently had the opportunity to try Black Tower’s new offering - B Secco White and B Secco Rosé. At just 65 calories - this is a tiny 3 SYNS per glass. I’m thinking to myself — this has the potential to be a game changer.

As summer gets into a groove many of us feel the seasonal shift toward refreshing, fruity, fancy fizzy drinks of a Saturday evening. Typically this has us reaching for cider, wine or prosecco. Make one wrong move with our choices however, and our syns for the week are thrown off -- undoing all of the good work for the week. To put this into perspective, here are a couple of summer faves and their syn values:

Pint bottle of Original Bulmers: 12.5 syns (up to 16 for a flavoured version.)
Kopparberg Original / Pear (12/15 syns respectively)
Small glass of white wine: 6 syns
Glass of Rosé wine: 4.5 syns

The Taste Test

I fancy myself as a bit of a Connoisseur de Booze, sure I’ve been at this game for almost 20 years! So, quality is important - a sparkling drink needs a bit of complexity. I’ve tried other “low-calorie” offerings and this is where they fall short - there is often something lacking.

Myself and my pal Maria found the perfect occassion to try a glass of the B Secco Rosé. I had just “proposed” to her to be my bridesmaid, and we were having a little celebration with a few tines in my sunny back garden. We both enjoyed it immensely - it has that celebratory sparkling zing, gorgeous fruit flavour and it even tasted… expensive. We polished off the bottle happily-- by then I had only used 9 of my daily syns!

Availability / Cost

The clincher here is that at the time of writing, they are on sale in Tesco Ireland for a mere €5 for a bottle - normally €6.99. A little birdie told me that there are also two more offerings to be released soon in Tesco Ireland - B Fruitiful Strawberry and B Fruitiful Passionfruit - which will be only 55 calories (only 2.5 syns per glass)

So find an occasion and round up your pals, and enjoy this summery delight guilt free!

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been careless with shopping in the past, often spending up to €120 (around £100) on a weeks food shop for two people and a cat. Like many others, I’ve been doing my best to clamp down on unnecessary spending when it comes to food, which can be tricky when trying to stay on plan. I recently asked in the slimming survival chat group what the average spend per person per week was - most said between £20-£40. Hours of graft later, I have come up with this weekly slimming world plan which will set you back just over £15 for 21 meals.

Supermarkets are competing against each other aggressively to offer the lowest prices, which is great news for us! I don’t feel strong loyalty to any particular supermarket as I feel they all have their strengths and weaknesses. However, Tesco has many healthy choices and by far has the best online shopping database, which allowed me to come up with this low budget weekly meal plan suitable for slimming world. For 21 meals, it will set you back just £15.50, working out at about 75p per meal.

Before we launch into the meal plan, I wanted to highlight a couple of points:

I’ve tried to strike a healthy balance between fresh ingredients and frozen/ready to heat foods.
The 7-day meal plan should result in virtually zero waste (for example, you purchase 15 eggs, the plan aims to use 15 are used by the end of the week!)
Introduce smart swaps if there is repeated use of something you really don’t like! (eg swapping light caesar sauce for light vinaigrette)
Maximum syns used in a day is 7, but most days leave almost full syns.
At the time of posting, all products are available at the price displayed.

£15 Slimming World Shopping List - Tesco

Dairy

Tesco 15 Eggs - £1.25
Tesco Lighter Mature Cheese 200g - £1.55

Fruit and Veg

Tesco Cherry Tomatoes - £0.89
Carrots - £0.24
Redmere Farms Spinach 200g - £0.66
Rosedene Farms Small Sweet Apple 520G - £0.98

Meat , Fish & Poultry

Tesco Everyday Value Tuna Chunks in Brine, canned - £0.65
Tesco Chicken Breast Fillets (Frozen) 640g - £2.81
Eastman's Honey Roast Ham 10 Slices 125G - £1.20

Bread, Cereals & Other Carbs

Tinned New Potatoes £0.35 -
Tesco Everyday Value Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce, canned - £0.25
Tesco Wholemeal Bread Loaf 800G - £1.10
Tesco Scottish Oats Porridge 500G - £0.70
Tesco Everyday Value Spaghetti Hoops in Tomato Sauce, canned - £0.20

Tinned & Packet Meals

Tesco Everyday Value Tomato And Onion Pasta'n'sauce - £0.20
Tesco Everyday Value Chicken Curry with Vegetables (392g can) - £0.53
Tesco Everyday Value Chilli Con Carne, canned (392g can) - £0.55
Tesco Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese - £0.38
Dressing

Tesco Healthy Living Caesar Dressing 250Ml - £0.89

Total Cost: £15.30 | Average Cost Per Meal - 73p

Download the £15 Shopping List

7-day slimming world meal plan

Download the 7 - day meal plan

Dying to hear how this works out for people, please let me know in the comments if it helped and if you’d like to see the same for other supermarkets. Thanks!