We all love a good dinner, but if you want to stay healthy and avoid weigh gain or if you want to lose some weight, a good dinner needs to be a healthy dinner.
Do you all too often find yourself reaching for the phone to get a pizza delivered or heading home via the drive through, or perhaps you are just looking for some new dinner ideas.
If so here are two healthy dinner recipe that you can adapt to your own taste.
Before I get started on making your mouth water I want to share a couple of tips on healthy eating.
The healthiest meals include some raw fruits and vegetables and an equal balance between starchy foods such as pasta, rice and potatoes, vitamin rich roods such as vegetables, fruits and seeds and proteins including seafood, meat, dairy foods, nuts, beans and pulses.
How you cook your food also affects how healthy it is.
The least healthy method of cooking is deep-frying.
If you deep fry and boil food it loses more of the vitamins and can even change structure to become unhealthy.
It is generally better to steam vegetables and grill rather than deep fry food.
Pan frying using olive oil or another good vegetabel oil such as rape seed oil is OK for meats but less good for other foods that can get saturated in oil.
Here are two main course healthy dinner recipes 1.
Pan grilled seafood and vegetable platter Ingredients: fresh or frozen small squid and scallops (sliced them if they are large), sliced red pepper, sliced broccoli, finely chopped red onion, chopped parsley, virgin olive oil, a crushed clove of garlic (more if you are a garlic lover) and scrubbed potatoes.

1. Prepare and put the potatoes on to steam (whole or large pieces - peeled or unpeeled as you wish).
   
2. Mix the crushed garlic, chopped onion, chopped parsley and salt with three or four table-spoons of cold pressed olive oil.
   
3. Put the rest of the ingredients in a deep grilling pan or baking tin (I usually line it with tin foil) and mix them all together.
   
4. Pour the olive oil mix over the mixed ingredients and throw it all around some more until the oil is spread throughout the rest of the ingredients.
   
5. Put under a pre heated grill and grill for about 15 minutes, stirring up the mixture occasionally to ensure it all cooks evenly and no bits get over charred.
   
6. Turn out into a serving dish, garnish with parsley and serve immediately accompanied by the steamed potatoes.
   

With a bit of practice this dish can be made in 45 minutes - the time it takes for the potatoes to cook.
Follow up with a raw salad such as grated carrots, young spinach leaves, sliced cucumber and spring onions sprinkled with chopped almonds and walnuts, lightly dressed with virgin olive oil, wine vinegar and salt.
2.
Pan cooked lambs liver with coloured vegetables Ingredients: quality lambs liver, onion, garlic, tomatoes, fresh or dried herbs to taste (I like rosemary), splash of red wine, extra virgin olive oil, scrubbed carrots, scrubbed sweet potatoes, washed cauliflower.

1. Prepare the vegetables and put them in a steamer to cook, slowest cooking vegetable goes into the steamer first.
   The cooking time will depend on the size of the pieces but generally carrots are slow, sweet potatoes are faster (especially if quartered) and cauliflower is the fastest of all).
   
2. Cut the lambs liver into chunky slices.
   
3. Skin and chop the tomatoes (5 or 6) - to skin put into boiling water until the skins split then the skin will just slide off.
   
4. Fry the onion lightly in olive oil in a large and deep frying-pan, then add the lambs liver at quite a high temperature, allowing it to brown slightly on the bottom of the pan.
   Toss it until it has changed colour on all side
5. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan (herbs, chopped tomato, salt to taste, splash of red wine, crushed garlic) and top up with some mineral water so the liver is almost covered with liquid.
   
6. Bring gently to the boil and simmer slowly until the vegetables have finished steaming.
   
7. Turn out into a serving dish and serve with the vegetables.
   

Follow up with a raw salad of watercress, lettuce, celery, cucumber and spring onions (or other raw vegetables as you please), sprinkles with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
This dish can be made in less than an hour.