Pots of Love

Beans, beans, they're good for your heart...

2017-01-26T18:03:00.003+00:00

Oh come on, it's STILL funny even if you're not 5! :)

At the turn of the year I announced to my lad that I am buying less meat. Mainly it's a budget thing, veg and pulses cost a lot less than meat, are tasty, filling, and go a long way. Anyway, he announced that that was fine, he was going vegetarian. He's 13, whether it sticks or not, I don't know, but he's stuck to it so far and good on him.

It's also been good for me to have to shake up our meals a little bit, it's so easy to get stuck in a rut with food and make the same stuff all the time.

We've had some really tasty meals. Pasta with home made arrabiata sauce and some salad (Ally had Quorn meatballs in his).

A lovely tarka daal (recipe by Jack Monroe - https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2016/12/29/tarka-daal-vegan/):

A nice veggie fried rice with grilled halloumi and veg:

Baked eggs with peppers, onions, and tomatoes:

This super quick and easy vegetable and quinoa laksa:

Minestrone and not-meatball stew:

But my favourite so far was a made up beany chilli that I chucked together last week:

2 x tins chilli beans
1 x tin baked beans
1 x tin pinto beans
1 x tin black eye beans (please do not confuse with black eyed peas, that makes chill.i.am instead of chilli)
1 x tin chopped tomatoes
a few squirts of tomato puree
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (or pop a cinnamon stick in, but don't eat it!)
seasoning
the crushed chillis/cayenne/chilli powder part of it is up to you, make it as hot as you like :)

Just simmer it all together for 20-30 mins gently, just to reduce the liquid a little and make it a bit thicker, check the seasoning and the spice level, then serve.
We had it with steamed rice and a salad of spinach, tomatoes, red onion, coriander, and a bit of salt and lime juice. Very tasty, will definitely make it again. I'm sure it would freeze nicely too, but we scoffed a huge pot of it over a couple of days so it never made it that far...

As our meals are all vegetarian now (although I do still have small meat binges now and again, my boy doesn't though!) so rather than me cart a pile of fruit and veg back from the supermarket every week I decided to get a local veg box delivery. I went with Pillars of Hercules (http://www.pillars.co.uk/) because I really like them, good fresh produce and their farm shop and cafe is great if you are ever out their way, do check it out.

This is our first box from Pillars, delivered today:

It's a great size for us, I was worried it would be too much but as we are eating more veg now it's great. We have:
A few HUGE potatoes
beautiful dirty carrots
a bag of curly kale (a fave of mine!)
a lovely dirty neep
some leeks
a few nice big onions
2 long pointy red peppers
a lemon
a few oranges
a few tomatoes
a cabbage

It costs £15 a week and is delivered on a Thursday to us which is perfect. I plan our meals for the week on a Thursday and do the shopping on a Friday or Saturday. I will have to get a few extra bits and bobs, but I would rather spend £15 a week on fresh, tasty, organic veg, most of which is grown locally, than £15 on supermarket meat. we'll see how we get on.

If you want any recipes of any of the pictures of our veggie feasts, do shout. I tend to make things up as I go along but can give you a fair idea of where to start.

Big veggie love!
Jill xx

Music, and ink, and pounds, and pots and pots of love...

2016-11-07T17:02:00.000+00:00

I've just had my favourite band name tattooed onto my side. Why? Well...

I think it was 1989 (I know I was 15, so it might have been 1990…), my pal’s big brother was going to Glasgow to a gig. For reasons I can’t even remember we were deemed worthy of going with him and his mate. My pre-parenthood life is all very hazy so I’m not sure who supported who, but the bands we saw were Texas and GUN. I dunno where we even were, Glasgow somewhere!

Texas were pretty cool, I still have a soft spot for them. But GUN were just right up my street. Their first album hadn't long been released and once I had it bought, it was played LOTS! I still count Taking on the World as one of the most perfect albums I own, it still makes me just as happy when I play it now, 27 years later. Actually, I think I probably appreciate it even more now.

I have no idea how many times in the 1990s I saw GUN (and Texas!) live, but lots! I do remember the first time I chatted to any of them – it was 1994 at the very first T in the park at Strathclyde Country Park. I went with my pal Caroline, we worked together in RBS. We had a very funny chat with Mark Rankin, their original singer, (there were a few pints of Tennents involved…) and Peter Cunnah from D:Ream about the use of punctuation in their band name. Again, hazy but it’s in there somewhere!

They released lots more cracking material, I went to some phenomenal gigs. I was a teenager – I had posters up in my bedroom J In 1997 (no longer a teen, but still obsessed!), Radio Forth had a weekend long competition running. Each show they would play a GUN track and you had to phone in when you heard it. The prize each time was the GUN back catalogue on CD, plus entry in to the draw for the big prize – a weekend in Lisbon, Portugal where the guys were playing a festival.

I sat in front of the radio all weekend. I remember my mum and dad going up to see the grandparents Dundee and to visit my old auntie in Kirriemuir, but I refused to leave the house as I was so desperate to win the big prize! I actually ended up winning 3 x back catalogues of CDs AND the trip to Portugal! Happy days!!!

It was a great weekend, I took my friend Lynne and we had a ball with all the people from other areas in the UK who had won. It’s a bit hazy yet again, there was a lot of booze! But we got to hang out with the guys backstage and there are lots of cool photos from the weekend.

But not long after that they announced they were splitting up – gutted! I had a lovely letter from the girl from A&M records who had been with us in Lisbon, inviting us to the last show but I wasn’t able to make it L

Round about the same time, I was 24 so either late 1997 or early 1998, my brothers and I had all discussed getting a tattoo as they were both moving away. We never did get this arranged, but I had the idea of a tattoo in my head so decided to get one anyway. I toyed with various ideas, one being a GUN one. But as they had split I decided to go with something else, a small spiral thingy on my ankle.

>>FF to 2008 – they’re back! Well, Jools and Dante from the original line-up are back - and with Toby Jepson on vocals! I quite liked Little Angels when Toby was with them so was keen to hear the new sound. They played a cracking gig at the Carling Academy in Dec 2008, that was a really cool night! By now, though, I had a 5 year old little munchkin on my hands and as much as I would have loved to have gone to see them more, it just wasn’t feasible. Cash and childcare were limited. And then Toby left the band in 2010, I wondered if that was the end again but no, Dante moved from bass and took over vocals. Happy days again!

Since then it has been like watching them start all over again, with all the highs and lows that that brings. I know I get sick of seeing comments like “it’s shit without Mark Rankin on vocals” on YouTube videos etc., so I’ll assume it’s a bit tiresome for them too!

The first time I saw them with Dante on vocals was at Electric Circus in Edinburgh in 2012 when they released a new album – Break the Silence. It was SO good seeing them again! Stuck around briefly after the gig to say hi but I had to run off for the last train back to sunny Fife.

Over the past few years I’ve been able to get to a lot more gigs again. My little 5 year old munchkin is now a strapping big 13 year old who could probably look after me better than I can look after him! They even played PJ Molloys in Dunfermline a few years back! Wah! My favourite band in my favourite pub, 5 minutes from my house – awesome!!

The guys have just finished a UK tour, I saw them in Dundee, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen and had a nice wee night out with them.

Every time I see them live these days they seem better and better each time. I’ve seen them 5 times this year and even from seeing them in May to seeing them in October, they have upped their game so much. I’m so proud! Especially of Jools and Dante for just keeping pushing on. They really have had to come back and start again but my god they’re writing the book on how to do that!

Since that gig in Edinburgh in 2012 I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a GUN tattoo again. Over the past couple of years, somehow, I don’t know how other than Slimming World just really suits me – I’ve lost so far 8.5 stone in weight and finally have the confidence to bounce around at the front of the crowd without being bothered about jiggling my wobbly bits! I was looking for a non-food based reward for myself for when I get to my target weight, and the tattoo idea did a wee ninja stealth crawl to the front of my mind – I like to think it’s been in hibernation for the past 20 years, just waiting for the right time.

That's me on the far left (obviously, given that the rest of them are men...) after their 2012 Dunfermline gig:

And this is me almost half the size, after their soundcheck in Aberdeen last month:

I’m now only a couple of pounds from target, and here it is!

20 years in the making, 27 years of being a Gunette, now fully branded! I love it, love the lads, love the tunes, love my fellow Gunette/Gunner family, love that the guys make us crazy fans feel like we’re all the 6^th member of the band. It has been suggested that I should claim that the tattoo is a permanent ticket to all future gigs, ha ha!! I just might work on that one!

Big love, always,

Jill xxx

Saturday night's alright for biting...

2016-08-20T21:13:00.002+01:00

Apologies for another cringe worthy title (sorry, not sorry... :) )

The past couple of days I have been suffering from 'slimmer's memory', it's a real thing! ;)
I forget that I've had biscuits, crisps, extra little bits creep in to my meals, and then there are the 'f**k it' moments. When I remember all the things I've already eaten, know i've gone over my Slimming World syns, but think 'f**k it' and eat more anyway. Might as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb, eh?

Then on Friday night, after a really busy week being back at work after 4 weeks holiday (yes, I know, I AM lucky!) I took myself off to bed early, I think I was asleep by about 10pm-ish and slept til 9am, lovely! And I had a pile of Facebook notifications, loads of them, very odd! However, lovely Clair my current Slimming World consultant had invited lots of people to like the page for this blog, and my numbers had doubled overnight! How nice, it even prompted me to make my breakfast of wheat biscuits and berries look pretty and take a picture of it to post rather than just throwing it down my neck. It also really helped to refocus my efforts and stop sabotaging myself this week. So hello! Welcome, and thank you so much for being here, I truly appreciate it!

I had already taken the time to plan my meals for the coming week, so I was almost back on track, but my snacks were the problem. So today I have been much better. I made a big pot of chicken, leek and rice soup and have been snacking on it throughout the day. I'm also making a bigger effort to drink more water as I often forget to at the weekends. But it's Saturday and I know I will need nibbles for the evening ahead. I'm a grazer in the evenings.

So I've made some hummus and dippy veggies (or crudites for the less heathen like amongst you!), sweet potato skins scooped out and mixed with bacon and spring onion, topped with melted cheese (my Healthy Extra A allowance), and then a mix of fat free greek yogurt and some chopped chives (this was just the result of messing about with what was in the fridge - try it!), and a wee packet of chocolate buttons for 4 syns. There was also a bowl of pickled onions and beetroot but I scoffed them. I'm going to have a cheeky wee Jack Daniels and diet coke too (4.5 syns for 35ml), it IS the weekend :)

That wee lot should keep me going all evening!!

Oh and just to prove that I really do eat a huge amount of food, this was tea from 2 hours ago:

Lamb leg steaks with visible fat removed, marinated all day in fat free yogurt and harissa paste (a tiny 0.5 syns per level tspn!), couscous loaded with red onion, green chillis, tomatoes, lime juice, and fresh mint, coriander and flat leaf parsley. A favourite tea that I had forgotten about til I saw a jar of harissa in Asda last week.

Hope these give you some ideas if you are following Slimming World, but to be honest it's just tasty grub for anyone.

Big love,
Jill xxx

Dear Slimming World group...

2016-02-17T18:09:00.001+00:00

...I love you. I actually really love you. All of you. All of the people who have been in groups I've gone to in the past, all of the people in my current group. Consultants, members, just everyone, I love you all!

No, I'm not drunk, honest!

Last week was shit. You cant polish a turd, as they say! I won't go into why much, but as a single mum to a hormonal teenager, sometimes it all gets a little much to cope with alone. It was just one of those weeks. Every time one of us spoke World War III broke out. Then the dog joined in by creating this display of dog food and plain flour on the kitchen floor...

That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Once the tears started there was no stopping them, sometimes you just need a good blub!

It had been bubbling up all week and every day I went over my max amount of slimming world syns. Not by much, but regularly. But amidst my floods of tears on Friday night, I thought about stuffing my face with junk food, then told myself that would only make me feel worse. 'Haud the bus!', I thought, WHAT???

I've been an emotional eater for most of my adult life, if I'm happy I celebrate with food. If I'm sad I console myself with food. If I'm feeling really low I really go to town: pizza, cake, biscuits - whole packets at a time, cheese cheese and more cheese, nachos, chocolate, crisps...anything. I've often thought it's a kind if self harm, like I want to hurt myself, but i do it with junk food.

So to have the clarity of thought at that point to not bother even starting was massive for me. Yes, I had been overdoing snacks a little all week but at my lowest point I didn't decide to do my impression of a Tasmanian Devil in the bakery aisle of Asda. And that realisation made me cry some more, but happy tears!

And my boy came home later in a great mood. We had a good chat about us both trying harder, and it's been so much better this week. And if the past week cost me a 1.5lb gain on the scales then I think that's a bargain.

But seriously, thank you to everyone who has ever propped me up in group, people I've never met on the group Facebook page, anyone who has given me ideas for recipes, shared their good times and bad times, to my past consultants Nikki and Debbie, and my current consultant Dawn, for keeping me motivated enough to stick to a plan for long enough that my old habits have changed without me even noticing.

I might be a bit misty eyed again just now, wonder if I could cry 1.5lbs of tears out tonight... (I'm kidding!!)

Big love,

Jill xxx

Preparation, preparation, preparation!

2015-11-02T17:33:00.000+00:00

At the risk of sounding like Uncle Tony in his speech here (we're not really related, just have the same surname, honest!), this post is as much a kick up the arse for me as for anyone else struggling to stay on track with their weight loss journey (AGH! I used the J word, again!!!).

Here's what we've been up to recently: a couple of weeks ago, my boy and I had a week's all inclusive holiday in Tenerife. It was so lovely, we just completely chilled out for the week. Before we went, I had grand plans of not going mad with alcohol, sticking to grilled meats and fish with salad, not having dessert all the time, daily walks... Yeah, well that didn't quite happen! To be fair on myself, I didn't have a lot of alcohol during the day bar a couple of days where I treated myself to a couple of Pina Coladas and beers by the pool. But I hardly moved my legs for the week, apart from going from the pool to the restaurant. I did stick to grilled meats and fish with the fresh salad for most meals, but also developed a dependency on dessert with every meal! Even breakfast would end with a coffee and a pastry, oops! But I was on holiday, it was lovely. I went to my Slimming World group when I got back and over the 2 weeks from when I was last weighed I had gained 5lbs. Not that bad really, but imagine if I had really gone to town with fried foods, burgers, chips, beer, cocktails, etc etc. It's so easy to undo all the good work.

The week after we arrived home I had a really horrible cold that I'm still trying to shake off. As much as I tried to eat healthily, I just wanted toast and butter, and tea and biscuits. So another week of not being great with what I was eating and it was beginning to be the norm again. Yesterday I started to feel a bit better. It was a lovely sunny day so I got my backside in gear, planned our meals for the week, made a shopping list, and went to buy what I needed.

This has to be the best bit of advice I could give to anyone trying to lose weight, whether it's on Slimming World or any other plan. Prepare!!! A good plan gives you the chance to make sure you have a variety of food throughout the week, it can make sure you use up your leftovers so you don't waste food. Budget is a big factor when i am shopping, money is tight so i need to make things go as far as possible. Yesterday I made a batch of bolognese sauce (will make a good 6 portions), a batch of chilli bulked out with black eyed beans, peppers and mushrooms (should do a good 6 portions too), a pot of veg and lentil soup, and a Chilli Papas chicken balti bulked out with a tin of chickpea dahl and peppers (about 4-5 portions). My freezer is packed :)

Here's my bag of food for bringing to work today: (my awesome bag was given to me by my lovey cousin, Nicola, it's by MooMoo Bags!)

Breakfast is a portion of baked oats that I made last night, I'll heat it up in the microwave at work and I have a tub of fat free cherry yogurt and some blueberries to have with it. (recipe here) I only used about 50g of blueberries, rather than raspberries in the baked oats. I also substituted the 3 tbsp of sweetener as that seems an awful lot and I tend to react badly to a lot if artificial sweetener. Instead I used a teeny squirt of a vanilla sweetener that I put in my coffee, worked just fine.

For a snack I segmented a grapefruit, just because I really like grapefruit in the morning.

Lunch was a portion of leftover pasta bolognese from last night's dinner, plus a tub of salad leaves and cherry tomatoes. I almost just heated them up and ate from the tubs but instead I put them on a plate and had my 1/3 plate of 'speed' foods as recommended by Slimming World. Doing this, I didn't eat the whole portion of pasta as I couldn't fit it all on the plate, but I was satisfied with what I had - I ended up nibbling on the rest later in the day but that was better than nicking a Krispy Kreme donut from the office next door! I also had a couple of teaspoons of grated parmesan to put on my pasta, dead tasty and filling lunch!

For a snack in the afternoon, I had a banana and also took an Alpen Light cereal bar for having with my afternoon coffee. Jaffa cake flavour, nice! Although not as nice as the Slimming World chocolate orange Hi-fi bars :)

Dinner tonight will be home made chilli with some boiled rice and salad. Here's how my day looks in a Slimming World sense:

Breakfast:
baked oats recipe - Healthy B choice (oats)
baked blueberries - 1 Syn
yogurt/blueberries - free

Grapefruit - free

Lunch:
pasta bolognese - free
salad/balsamic vinegar - free
1 level tbsp parmesan - 1 syn

Snacks:
Banana - free
Alpen light bar - 3 syns

Dinner:
Chilli - free
rice - free
salad/balsamic - free
2 tbsp salsa - 0.5 syns
2 tbsp half fat creme fraiche - 2 syns
30g mature cheddar - Healthy A choice

Supper is going to be a ham omelette. I find if I have eggs at suppertime it fills me up so I don't pick at rubbish the rest of the night. That's the theory anyway, evenings are my downfall. I have some studying to do tonight though so hopefully that will keep me busy enough that I don't start picking. If I do, I've got grapes and apples in the house, I'll try VERY hard to stick to them!

But I think I'll be ok, I feel very re-motivated this week. I even started my Christmas shopping and I really couldn't be bothered even thinking about it last week.

Hope you all have a great week!
(Oh, here, have a picture of a dolphin that swam by our boat in Tenerife on a day trip. Just because it's beautiful!)

Big love,
Jill xx

No chocolates, please - I'm winning

2015-09-04T10:15:00.001+01:00

Again, not really a blog post about home cooking, sorry Pots of Love! I'll bore you all over the next few weeks with some of the things I've been rustling up recently though.

This time I wanted to do a quick post about a new phenomenon to me - Weight Loss Sabotage! I don't think any of the recent events have been intended as malicious, but that doesn't make them any less confusing, or hurtful.

I've lost weight in the past, a couple of stone, then get a bit cocky when people start noticing, and eat a pizza, 4 jars of Nutella, a bottle of wine, bag of Maltesers etc etc....every weekend...until...BOOM! 2 stone back on, plus a bit more. So to have lost significantly more than that over the past few years (see my blog post here) is a pretty big achievement, as my friends and family all know.

I still have a way to go, I'm a good 2 - 2.5 stone over what would be considered a healthy weight for my height and age so that's my ultimate aim now. It's quite exciting, I don't remember the last time I was only overweight and not obese!! But overweight i am. I know BMI charts aren't the most reliable indicator of this, but since I'm not a muscle stacked weight lifter or anything, it'll do as a fair guide.

But I couldn't tell you how many times in the past few weeks people have said "you're not going to lose any more weight though, are you?", and variations of that, I've also had "you need to stop, you've got a lollypop head".

Well intentioned they may be, but I think they made me feel worse than any veiled dig at me being fat in the past to the point where I struggled for days to keep myself on track and not just have a huge self pitying blow out of salami pizzas, cake, chocolate and wine.

I might dress to cover up my wobbly flabby bits, but they are definitely there. They don't bother me, I know they will shrink soon enough. Every pound closer to that target I get is a pound less my heart is having to work harder to carry around. I'll never have a toned taught body, I have too much loose skin for that, but this isn't about how I look, it's about making my insides healthier.

I can't help where I lose weight from first. I seem to have shrunk quite quickly across my shoulders. I put weight on my boobs first and lose it from there last though. Honestly, 7 stone lighter and I've only gone down a couple of bra sizes, it's mad - but that's how my body works. So as much as i know that to say anyone with 34JJ boobs might have a head that appears large in comparison to their body is a bit ridiculous, it still hurt. If looking at my freakishly gigantic head (because that's what I've made it in my mind now) offends you - well, tough shit really. If you have a friend/colleague/family member who is on a weight loss (sorry for using the 'j' word) journey, they really don't need to hear shit like that, no matter how much you think it's helpful. If you can't say anything positive, just button it, really!

I'm a 41 year old grown woman. I know my height, I know my weight, I know what I look like naked. Only 1 other adult recently knows what I look like naked and it's none of the people who have made comments to me.

I also had a birthday recently. I could have opened a sweet shop with the amount of boxes of chocolates I was given. Thank you if you gave me any, it's always nice to receive a gift - thank you also from the local food bank as that's where they went. Apart from 1 box. That was eaten (the WHOLE box) over 2 nights. Because I have no OFF switch with chocolates. I devoured 1 box (2 layers!) and then realised I couldn't keep the rest in my house so I donated them all to a food bank. So please, please, again if you know someone who has worked really hard to lose weight, don't stick temptation under their nose. Get them a lovely fruit basket, flowers, a gift voucher, smellies... Put a bit of thought into it, it will be so hugely appreciated, I bet.

Like I say, I don't believe any of the recent events were meant with any malice, but just because I, or anyone else, laughs things off in front of you, it doesn't mean they haven't hurt.

Big love, be kind to one another.
JB xx

Blow your trumpet!!

2015-08-22T14:19:00.000+01:00

First things first...2 years since my last blog post?! Life has been busy!

However, something happened today and I felt the need to bore as many people as possible with it :)

A bit of background: In May 2011 I decided to change the future for me and my son, Alister. I abseiled off the Forth Rail Bridge in aid of Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland, saw photos of myself, and was so horrified at how big I looked that I weighed myself for the first time in a long time. The number on the scales terrified me: 19stone 8lbs. I was less than half a stone away from 20 stone, how did that even happen without me noticing?

Seriously, if you need some motivation to lose weight, get your arse in a safety harness, it's a real eye opener!!

My immediate thought was that I was essentially killing myself. Having lost my dad far too young, I couldn't willingly make that a possibility for my son. None of us can stop bad things happening, but we CAN stop making them more likely if we want to.

Over the next few years I lost about 3 stone through using the MyFitnessPal app to log all my food and exercise. I would go through spells of losing weight easily, then during holiday periods I would fall off the wagon and put a bit back on again. But at September 2014 I was at 17 stone 2lbs and had taken up running, using the C25K app (I'd definitely recommend this if you fancy giving running a go). I was also following the Fat Girl's Guide to Running (with Julie Creffield) on Facebook. I signed up to Julie's first monthly fitness challenge which included daily and weekly fitness and nutrition challenges. At the end of September I was thrilled to have lost 10lbs!!

In the meantime, an old friend of mine, Nikki Williamson, had trained as a Slimming World consultant and was going to be starting her classes in October. I'd gone to groups in the past (Rosemary Conley, Scottish Slimmers...) but was in the "I'm not paying someone to weigh me" camp. But as it was Nikki, I decided I would go to support her in her new venture. I even believed that I wasn't going for me for a bit :)

So I hopped on the scales on the first night and the 16stone 6lbs that showed on the screen wasn't a surprise. I set myself an interim target of 13stone and it felt like a mammoth, unreachable number right then.

Apologies, this has become a bit of self therapy, but hang in there, I will get to the thing that happened today!!

To cut a long story a bit shorter, on 16th June this year I reached that first target and set a new one of 11stone. 3stone 6lbs lost in 9 months, happy days! Slimming World just seems to fit in to my life easily, and I finally admitted that a group support network is exactly what I need. We have a walking group set up now on a Wednesday too, which is lovely! I've now lost 3stone 11lbs, and managed to not put weight on over my summer holiday period, a massive result for me. Shopping is weird, I can't remember when I last shopped for size 12 or 14 clothes, but it's nice trying stuff on. I absolutely can't remember when I last weight 12 stone anything, but I do now! I even won the Woman of the Year award in our Slimming World group. Me! Ha ha!! This is the same girl as in the first photo up there ^^

Anyway, today I went to Aldi. I have lots on this weekend and was planning to get a Tesco delivery but rejigged some stuff and went to Aldi today. It's about a 5km round trip walk for me and I needed lots. Now school and work are back to normal I'm determined to get back in the habit of planning the meals for the week and shopping for that. So I took Alister's big rucksack and another couple of bags and off I went with my list.

I put all the heavy stuff in the rucksack and carried the lighter stuff in bags. So in the rucksack I had bags of veg, frozen peas, frozen prawns, tins, masses of fruit, 6 litres of milk, bacon, mince, eggs...it absolutely weighed a tonne. I had to stop a couple of times on the walk home to take a rest but then plodded on. As I was walking I tried to guess how much the rucksack of stuff weighed. My estimate was about 4 stone. As I've lost 4.5 stone since last September I thought it would be interesting to weigh the bag when I got home to see how close it was.

2stone 2lbs. That was it. Nowhere even near 4 stone. This huge, rammed full bag weighed less than half the amount that I've lost in the past 11 months. A third of what I've lost since I was at my heaviest. I don't feel much different to how I did back then. I'm not smarter, or happier, or prettier, or funnier, or more caring, or less loving. I'm just smaller and weigh less. And healthier. The weight loss has been gradual so I don't really notice anything different. But I've said to a few people recently that if I was given a 7 stone bag to carry around with me I'd sure know about it! And I'm completely blown away by this thing today. Even half the weight of that rucksack is heavy! I know so many people in our group who have lost a stone or 2 stone and aren't blowing their own trumpets about it - GET BLOWING!!!!

Fill a bag with stuff, weigh it, get it to the weight you have lost, and I bet you completely underestimate the enormity of what you have done! Go on! Do it today!! Then give yourself an almighty pat on the back, and a big hug!!

Chillis!

2013-08-26T16:03:00.003+01:00

I LOVE CHILLIS!! They really are amazing; such a huge range of different flavours and heats. I know very little about them other than there are loads of varieties and diferent chillis work better for different recipes.

And living in Scotland it's not like there's a chilli farm round every corner! However, the good news is that here in the Kingdom of Fife we've had the lovely ladies at Chillilicious around for quite a while now, they make lots of lovely chilli based goodies (I get twitchy if I don't have a pot of their chilli piccalilli in the fridge) as well as chilli inspired fused glass in their workshop in Ceres. Read about their yummy goodies in my old post here.

But now for the GREAT news!!! My little corner of the Kingdom is now home to a new up and coming chilli farm! YES! Right here in Dunfermline, Alan Stenhouse is working hard to bring us Spice of Fife! It looks like it's going to be a great thing for the area if you like using chillis, he's got greenhouses packed with beautiful, flourishing chilli plants and lots of different varieties. Have a look at the Facebook page for some great photos of the plants developing. The recent warm weather has created a little tropical paradise (well, if you're a chilli plant!). And he knows his stuff, if you're not sure which variety of chilli will work best for whatever you are making, ask him!

You can find him on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/SpiceOfFife
on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/SpiceOfFife
and at the website here:http://spiceoffife.co.uk/

If you are planning to go to The Great Scottish Brave Harvest Chilli Festival 2013 at Scone Palace on 21st and 22nd September (yes, a chilli festival in Scotland!!), Alan will be there with lots of chilli goodies. I've been lucky enough to try his strawberry based hot sauce, Chilli Berry Punch, as well as his Chilli Sookers - hard boiled sweets in a variety of heats to suit every chilli lovers taste buds!

We all loved the hot sauce, the strawberry base is really unusual but works so well with the chilli heat. We've had it with slow cooked Mexican beef, on cheese sandwiches, I even mixed some up with some cider vinegar to make a salad dressing! And the sweets were fab, really different and sweet and hot all at the same time, lovely!!

As well as these products, there's also strawberry, black pepper and chilli jam (delicious!), chutney, chilli oils (using Scottish rapeseed, and since I'm always banging on about how great this oil is that makes me VERY happy!), and chilli toffee. They can even make little pots of jam and chutney as wedding favours for your big day; almost makes me want to find a husband. Almost... Nah!

There's lots of other yummy stuff in the pipeline too, including chilli cheese, chilli chocolate and chilli ice cream which I'm particularly intrigued by!

But even more exciting than all of the chilli products is the fact that Spice of Fife are developing a chilli club in the area. Membership will be restricted to 100 members in 2014 and for a one-off payment of £27.50 you will receive the following:-

A Personalised Gift Card for 2014 Membership
Selection of Chilli Seeds to grow your own
3 Chilli Plants (April/May)
Bottle of Chilli Liquid Feed to help plants grow
Bottle of Spice of Fife Chilli Oil
Jar of Spice of Fife Chilli Jam
Bottle of Spice of Fife Chilli Hot Sauce
10% discount on any product purchases made in 2014
Free Delivery to KY11 / KY12 postcodes

Now, I have tried to grow chillis before and I did actually manage, but then went on holiday and the plants got fried at the window. Oops. I really am not green fingered! But for those of you who manage to keep things alive (I have succeeded at keeping a boy and a dog alive, that's my limit!) and love chillis this is a great thing. You can also buy individual plants from Spice of Fife at the moment, get in touch with them to see what is available. You might just pick up a variety that you wouldn't be able to buy in a local garden centre.

All very exciting!

All of this has reminded me that I have a little pot of strawberry, black pepper and chilli jam in the fridge. I'm thinking a wee cup of tea and some toast and jam could be the order of the day... :)

Salads!

2013-07-27T14:39:00.000+01:00

I would love to say I haven't written for a while because I'm such an incredibly busy and important person (oh go on, it's a little bit true, in MY world!), but mainly it's because I'm lazy!

I go through phases of feeling the need to write and then once it's out of my system it can be a while before it sweeps over me again.

Today, I just felt like having a wee chat about salad dressings. As one does!

Supermarkets are choc-a-bloc with every kind of salad dressing you can think of: creamy ones, low fat ones, spicy, citrus, herby, fruity... there's just hundreds of the damn things - and the price of some of them, ooft!!! But my favourite is a good glug of rapeseed oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, some cider vinegar (about 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar as a guide), a blob of dijon mustard, some salt and pepper then give it a whisk together or put it in a container with a lid and just give it a good shake. Tastes better than the bottled stuff and if you have the stuff in the house anyway it costs pennies to make.

Have a play around with it to see what you like: try different oils, even flavoured oils. I like rapeseed as, aside from just preferring the flavour, it's homegrown and it has around half the saturated fat of olive oil. There's loads of vinegars, red or white wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar make great dressings too. Maybe switch to wholegrain mustard, add a teaspoon of honey, pop in some garlic or ginger... the possibilities are endless!

I just finished a bottle of my lovely lemony mustardy one so I don't have any decent photos but here's our lunch from my birthday last week, I wanted a plate full of my favourite things! We had quesadillas filled with buffalo mozarella, chorizo and taleggio cheese, plus a salad of baby leaves, watercress, spinach, rocket, figs, olives, feta cheese, baby plum tomatoes, grated carrot, and lemony mustardy dressing - a bit of a mish mash on a plate but perfect!! Salad has come a long way from the lettuce, tomato and cucumber with a blob of salad cream (although I do LOVE salad cream!!), put whatever you love into it. You get really good jars of veg in oil in pretty much any supermarket now: roasted peppers, artichokes, mixed mushrooms - all sorts. Give them a go, bung a few in with a bag of mixed leaves, put a bit of home made dressing on, just enough to coast the leaves but not drown them, and see what you like.

Other things you might like in your salads are grains - quinoa, couscous, bulgar wheat etc are so readily available these days, and although fairly plain in taste they do take on the flavour of other things well. I love cous cous with red onion, coriander, fresh chilli, lime juice and a bit of salt and pepper in it - pretty much fresh salsa mixed with cous cous. But that's lovely mixed in with salad leaves too.

Salad doesn't have to be dull, even with something in it a bit more calorific like a bit of feta and a bit of oil based dressing you can still pack it full of vitamins, antioxidants and all sorts of good stuff. And just because cheeses and oils are higher in calories and fat, remember that there are good fats out there!

Hope you are all having a wonderful summer, we certainly are!

Summer Lovin'

2012-09-02T19:15:00.001+01:00

Well, I think we can safely write off Summer 2012. A few warm days in between torrential rain and thunder storms does not really count as summer!

But last night for dinner we brought a little bit of summer into our living room (whilst also having to turn the heating on for an hour to take the nip out of the air!) in the form of beautiful, spicy, fresh, tasty chicken tikka wraps, yum!

I used a sachet of Chilli Papas 2 in 1 Tikka spice mix. You can either use it to make a tikka masala that has a nice little nip to it, or add it to natural yoghurt along with some garlic, ginger, onion, lemon juice and your choice of meat, veg, fish etc to make a marinade. The spice packet for this mix is so pretty, the beetroot powder gives the dish a lovely flavour and a stunning colour without the need for any nasty chemical additives...

I used a couple of free range chicken breasts. The lemon and yoghurt makes the meat lovely and tender and juicy and you can taste every spice in the mix, rather than it just being a flat spice flavour, absolutely delicious. I marinaded the meat for about 4 hours, but if you need it in a hurry, 30 mins would do. Then, as it was hardly barbecue weather, I just popped the chunks of chicken under a medium hot grill for about 15 mins or so.

The picture above is one I made a couple of months back using Warburtons square wraps, but last night I used some nice multigrain wraps. I smother some more natural yoghurt over the wrap, put some nice fresh salad leaves on (I like a mix of baby spinach, rocket and watercress), put the grilled chicken on and top with another dollop of yoghurt and a wee squeeze of lemon juice. It's a firm favourite in our house! If you are particularly hungry you could serve with rice and salad, that would be lovely :)

Chilli Papas now also make their mild Mandalay mix as a 2 in 1 so you can use that as a marinade aswell. Not tried that yet but it's on the list! (www.chillipapas.com)

Happy munching! xx

Back to school!

2012-08-16T21:51:00.005+01:00

Yes, here in sunny Scotland the kids are all back to school, just in time for the weather to brighten up a little as per normal!

Little Pots of Love will be back soon with Round 2 of Chip Wars, but in the meantime I thought I would do a quick post about school dinners/packed lunches. School dinners north of the border used to be well regarded, even by a certain Mr Oliver in his TV series to overhaul the sorry looking offerings dished up to kids. I never used to mind if Alister wanted to have school dinners as they usually had a really good choice of hot meals, baked potatoes, salad bar etc etc. Even if he didn't fancy something hot he would choose salad and a ham baguette, he's good at making healthy food choices. But over the past year or so there seems to be more food being bought in and less being made from scratch by proper school cooks, which is a shame. A few times when he had school dinners I found I was paying £1.75 for him to have a tiny hot dog and a yoghurt. I'm sure he could have chosen more but who would want hot dog and carrots, for example??

He's always preferred packed lunches anyway, but last term we both got a bit lazy. He always asked for a wrap with cheese spread and ham, and it was easy to do so that's what he got. Pretty much EVERY day! So this year it's changing. Packed lunches can be healthy, tasty, varied and cheap so I have bought a few different sized tubs and I am trying out some things on him. Thank goodness I have brought him up to enjoy pretty much everything!

Today was his first day back. Last night I cooked some pasta and stirred some green pesto through it, I toasted a few pine kernels and added them plus a handful of halved baby plum tomatoes. He had that plus a yoghurt, some fruit squash, some grapes and a little biscuit for afterwards in the playground. He loved it, except there was far too much pasta!

For tomorrow I have just made this:

Pasta again, although if I had any I would have used noodles instead. I stir fried some sliced carrots, yellow pepper, green pepper and cooked pork in a little rapeseed oil, added some teriyaki sauce to warm ti through then added the pasta back in. It smells lovely, or so the boy shouted from his bed anyway!

My next change I need to make is to stop giving him a bag of crisps for tuck at breaktime. We've agreed he can have crisps on Fridays for a little end of the week treat but otherwise it will be something healthier. He's a good fruit eater, but for a bit of variety I think I'll try some breadsticks, or cheese twists, or maybe make some mini muffins with fruit in them. Apple and cinnamon muffins sound good!

All of your suggestions for healthy lunches and snacks are welcomed, I have a lot of packed lunches still to make!!

Crisp... crunch... CHIPS! (round 1)

2012-08-02T20:44:00.000+01:00

Hi, I'm Alister, I'm 9 years old and I'm Jill's son. I would like to do a post about... CHIPS!

I've been going around Dunfermline trying chips from lots of places. Not only on this post am I going to talk about chips, I'll also tell you about my lunch today at The Inn at Carnock, near Dunfermline.

But first... CHIPS!! About 2 weeks ago I went to Grill48 but we forgot to take pictures but we will go back! The chips were lovely and golden with a lovely flavour. They were so crisp on the outside that you could hear them crack as you bit them, and the middle was lovely and fluffy. The steak ciabatta that I had with them was gorgeous.

Moving on to chip sample number 2! At The Inn at Carnock, they looked amazing but the flavour wasn't as nice as the chips at Grill48. They were crunchy, but not crunchy enough.

So Grill48 wins Round 1.

My lunch today at The Inn at Carnock was a minute steak baguette with red onion marmalade. Even though I'm a kid I ordered from the adult menu but was still surprised when 2 baguettes appeared!

I didn't really mind because the bread tasted so good! The bread was nice and fresh, it was very soft, it was very crisp on the outside (maybe a bit too crispy for me) and had a lovely doughy flavour.

The red onion marmalade was too sweet for my liking (and my mum's!) but I did enjoy my lunch.

I'm going to try lots more chips to see if anyone can beat Grill48.

To be continued...

A little ray of lemony sunshine

2012-07-26T21:31:00.002+01:00

School holidays can be...ummm...challenging! I am lucky enough to work term time so although I get lots of time off in the summer, it means my boy and I are with each other 24/7. And so it's only natural that now and again we need to spend a little time in separate rooms!

So one day last week we had a nice morning but by lunchtime he was getting a little cheeky and I was getting a little short tempered. So he spent the afternoon chilling out watching TV and I spent it in the kitchen trying a couple of recipes I had on my to-cook list.

My last blog post dealt with the bran scones from that day, but I wanted something a bit special and light and zingy to counteract the dark, grey, wet, miserable summer days we were being dealt. My younger brother (BAFTA award winning, no less!) is filming a new TV show with chef Peter Sidwell at the moment and so I had a nose around the interweb for some of Peter's recipes. Peter is the chef at Rheged in Penrith. If you've never been to Rheged, do make time to pay it a visit if you're in the area, it's a great place... http://www.rheged.com/

There's a nice little bio of Peter on the website, along with one of his recipes which hit the nail on the head as far as I was concerned - Lemon Meringue Posset. A quintessentially British dessert with a twist, lemon curd on the bottom and crunched up meringue on top, lovely! It got me thinking that I would like to do a regular feature where I take a recipe from a respected chef and make it at home. A lot of people are scared to try, I'm a bit more haphazard and up for having a go! So, hopefully, this might encourage someone to have a pop at something that seems tricky at first.

This is the recipe ----> http://www.rheged.com/files/Lemon%20Meringue%20Posset.pdf

And this is the end result:

If you do have a go, the measurements for the cream and the creme fraiche are a bit confusing as one says 300ml = 1/2 pint and one says 300ml = 1/4 pint. Use 300ml of both and ignore the pint measurements. For the curd, you need 6 egg yolks. I used the egg whites to make my own meringues to go on top, they really are easy to make. When you are separating egg whites/yolks break each egg into a little bowl just in case one of the yolks splits and you end up contaminating all of your lovely clean egg whites. Then add them one by one to a larger bowl.

I have always used Delia's measurements/timings for meringues and they have always been great. For each egg white you will need 2oz of caster sugar. I like using golden caster sugar as I think it has a more natural taste, and it gives the meringues a lovely golden colour. In a clean, grease free bowl whisk the egg whites on a medium speed until they start to firm up, then increase the speed and beat them until you get firm peaks. At this point, add the sugar a bit at a time and whisk on a fast speed until you get firm peaks again that will be lovely and glossy. Either split the mix into small blobs on a lined baking tray, or make one large meringue. I made half the recipe for the posset dessert so only made 3 egg white meringue and there was LOADS. Pop it in a preheated oven at gas mark 2 or equivalent, then turn it down to gas mark 1 as soon as they are in the oven. When the meringues are baked, turn off the oven and leave them in until the oven is completely cooled, this will dry the meringues out and give them a nice crisp shell.

Before:

After, with a lovely golden colour:

Easy peasy, honest!!

The recipe also calls for home made lemon curd which seems daunting but really is fairly simple to make. Just follow the recipe and, most importantly, once you add the eggs to the bowl keep the mixture moving with a hand whisk so the eggs don't scramble. I ended up making a double batch of the lemon curd the following day as it's so delicious, I'll never buy shop bought again! It was absolutely gorgeous on the warm home made bran scones that I made the same day.

The dessert really was one of the nicest I've ever tasted. The very fussy 'wife' even gave it a 10/10! Time consuming to make, but well worth the effort to make everything from scratch. It just wouldn't have been as nice with shop bought lemon curd and meringues. Go on, give it a go, bring a little bit of lemony summer sunshine into your day!

When life gives you lemons...

2012-07-14T10:16:00.001+01:00

...make lemon curd! Obviously! Although life did't give me lemons, I bought them in Asda. Lovely big juicy unwaxed affairs they were too. Mmmmmm......

This morning, along with a nice cup of Earl Grey, I had this for breakfast:

And at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I am in heaven!! It's a home made bran scone, half topped just with butter, half topped with a little butter and a good dollop of home made lemon curd. I had a lovely day playing in the kitchen yesterday!

I had a conversation with my friend, Lynne, about bran scones (oh, yes. We're that interesting!) and how the bakers always seem to be sold out of them. I've never seen them in the supermarket, so I thought I would hunt down a recipe and have a bash at them. From Googling it, a lot of recipes suggested that this is a Scottish dish, which hadn't occurred to me. So if you have no connections with Scotland but have had a bran scone I would love to know!

I used the recipe here ---> http://www.food.com/recipe/scottish-bran-scones-117596 and used natural wheat bran, which I prefer to oat bran and gives the scones the nice dark flecking through them. The dough was very wet and soft (I was a bit heavy handed with the milk!), but I played around with it and added a bit more flour and bran until it was a little more pliable. It was probably still a bit too wet as I ended up baking it for almost double the time in the recipe, but it was well worth it!

The scones are lovely and soft. I warmed one for my breakfast earlier and it was just lovely. I'll definitely make them again.

As for the home made lemon curd, I made that as part of what turned out to be one of the most delicious desserts I have ever tasted, and that deserves its very own blog post! Watch this space...

Tea and sympathy...

2012-06-21T16:40:00.000+01:00

Actually, tea and shortbread, but I'm feeling a little bit sorry for myself. I never really get ill, and if I get a cold I just get on with life and ignore it. But this week I have been floored by Supercold! I've had no voice, streaming eyes and nose, headache, aching limbs, can't keep my eyes open...generally feeling absolutely dreadful. It's now Thursday afternoon and I've been in my bed or on the sofa pretty much since Monday afternoon. Rubbish.

And the weather is awful, which makes me feel even worse. Mainly because I have no biscuits in the house and there's no way I'm going out to buy some!! And let's face it, when you feel rotten and it's pouring rain outside, you NEED tea and biscuits!

So I had a rummage around the kitchen and came up with 1 slightly soft chocolate Digestive (whoo hoo!!), plus some flour, sugar and butter which screamed "MAKE US INTO SHORTBREAD!!!" at me. Who am I to refuse the demands of 3 simple ingredients when they seem so desperate. (yes, I may have overdone the ibuprofen and lemsips today...)

I dug out my old Great Auntie Jean's book of Plain Cookery Recipes from The Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy. I don't think Auntie Jean actually attended the school, she probably bought or was given the book:

I love reading old books like this! There were also a few recipes cut out of 1950s newspapers tucked in the back for various sweets, jams and marmalades - lovely! However, their shortbread recipe called for rice flour which I didn't have today so I ended up using an old recipe I have scribbled down that uses 175g butter (at room temperature), 250g plain flour and 75g caster sugar. I only had 170g butter in the fridge but I'm not much of a stickler for exact measures anyway so just bashed on.

Auntie Jean was the sister of my Gran Blair - Agnes Irvine Blair. My son has the same middle name as her. She always appreciated that I had an interest in our family history and in passing things down through generations so she gave me her old cook books amongst other things dear to her, I still miss the chats we had in front of her old fireplace in Dundee :(

One of my fondest memories of my gran is making shortbread highlanders with her on rainy afternoons whilst the boys were at the football. So in her memory, that's what I made today. If you come round for a cuppa and I offer you one, don't worry, I DID wash my germ ridden hands first!

It's such an easy recipe. Heat the oven to about gas mark 3 or equivalent, so a fairly cool bake. I cream the butter and sugar together then sift in the flour. Then just get your hands in and combine it all. Use a little drop of milk or water if it's a little bit dry. I also added a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Roll the mix into a long sausage about 2" in diameter. Then put some demerara sugar into a baking tray and coat the whole roll in the sugar, making sure it's pressed in and that the ends are covered too. Pop it into the fridge for about 30-40 mins til it firms up. Cut it into 1/2" thick rounds, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, or 5 mins longer if you like them darker. Cool on a wire rack then get the kettle on and make a cuppa!

Even with a runny nose and achey body, who wouldn't feel just a little bit better after a cup of tea and a crisp, buttery shorty highlander?! Thanks to my Gran Blair for the memories xxxxx

A cheeky little tart

2012-06-05T20:27:00.003+01:00

Who doesn't love a tart!? Or a pie? There's something lovely and comforting about crisp, warm, buttery pastry and you can fill it with all of your favourite things. Scrumptious!

A while back I decided that I had avoided making pastry for far too long. I have a nice easy to use silicon tart case and I was determined to overcome my fear of pastry making and put it to use. Pastry is one of those things that lots of people assume is going to be very tricky and time consuming, so they don't bother doing it. I was one of those people! However, after trawling the interweb for a while one weekend, I realised that it probably isn't as challenging as I first thought.

I quite fancied making a mainly vegetable based tart and came across this blog post: http://food52.com/recipes/10062_potato_tart_with_gruyere_bacon_and_rosemary#

The recipe uses a butter pastry and I would definitely use it again, it was beautiful. The key is to keep everything very cold. I used my shiny new food processor that my brother and his wife bought me for Christmas and this made it super easy. I weighed out the butter I needed about half an hour before I planned to make the pastry. I chopped it up into little cubes, put it in a dish, and put it back into the fridge to re-chill it. I also put a glass of iced water in the fridge so the water I was using would be really cold too. When I came to make the pastry, I added the flour, sugar and salt into the food processor and gave it a quick whizz. Then i added the chilled cubes of butter and pulsed the processor blades until the mixture formed crumbs. I then added the chilled water and blitzed til the pastry mix started to come together in a ball. Once it's in a ball, wrap it in cling film and chill for about an hour before rolling it out. Don't work the pastry too much, just roll it then use it and you will get a lovely buttery, short pastry.

Now, the filling. Honestly, what is not to love about potato, cheese and bacon encased in butter pastry??? Heaven!? But I thought potato and pastry might be a bit carb heavy together for my personal taste, so although I used the pastry recipe, I tweaked the filling a little. I opted for sliced sweet potato (counts towards your 5 a day, unlike starchy white potatoes), sliced leeks fried in a little butter with some chopped chives, fried off pancetta lardons, and a mixture of mature Scottish cheddar and Gruyere cheeses.

I lined the tart case with the rolled out pastry and layered all the filling ingredients inside, with a bit of black pepper. It was a bit hit and miss knowing how long to cook it for. The recipe called for 45 mins at gas mark 5. I ended up with it in for just over an hour. I got a bit impatient waiting for the sweet potatoes to become tender so I ended up drizzling a little olive oil over the top towards the end, hoping it might increase the temperature in the filling a little. However, this resulted in the tart having a bit of a soggy bottom. I plan to make it again but will try either roasting the sweet potato slices for a while before layering them in the tart, or possibly par-cooking the sweet potatoes as well as blind baking the tart case first.

Soggy bottom or not, the end result was lovely and the sides of the tart were beautifully crisp and buttery:

Yes, as usual our bellies needed to be filled so badly that I forgot to take a photo of the entire tart before we devoured it!! But at least this way you can see the layers, and my soggy bottom ;)

So, go on, give pastry a go - and let me know how you get on!!

In a bit of a pickle...

2012-05-17T20:28:00.001+01:00

...and over the moon about it! Oh dear, I've found a new addiction, and it's yellow!

Anyone who has had the pleasure of dining in my company will know that I have an obscene passion for condiments. Lamb must have mint sauce, fish must have tartare sauce, fried eggs must have brown sauce (preferably Daddies but I'm pretty free and easy and will take what I can get!), lentil soup must also have brown sauce and tomato soup must have curry powder and worcestershire sauce (blame those last two on my wonderful Grandad, Aly Keir!). Everything has a condiment to go with it and if something contains vinegar it's pretty much a winner with me. A couple of months ago I discovered a local Fife company called Chillilicious who make chutneys as well as a gorgeous range of glassware. You can find their lovely stuff at http://www.chillilicious.co.uk/shop and their Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/Chillilicious.Products.UK

When I first started Pots of Love they very kindly sent me a sample of their red pepper chilli chutney. I can take or leave peppers, and as much as I love anything pickley and chutney-ish I wasn't going to be an easy one to bowl over since it had peppers in it. But my word, what a delicious surprise! The peppers were really plump and sweet and still nice and chunky, I hate it when chutneys are too fine so this was onto a winner. The vinegar wasn't too overpowering, the sugar wasn't too sweet, the chilli gave a lovely warmth to the chutney without it taking over completely. A beautifully balanced chutney that was heavenly on some oatcakes with a big slab of tangy Anster cheese. Gorgeous!

Not long after that, Chillilicious had a stall at a craft fair in Dunfermline. Alister and I toddled down and finally decided on a jar of cheeky chilli piccalilli and some chilli and coriander oatcakes. I LOVE piccalilli, always have done. I reckon I would pretty much eat anything if it was pickled first!

Here's my jar of yellow heaven:

Divine. I could eat this with everything, I am completely hooked. Actually I would be quite content eating it from the jar with a spoon! The veg was crisp and chunky, the sauce had a tangy mustardy vinegar hit that I adore, the chilli heat in the background gave it a little special something - it's just flaming LOVELY! I had it on the chilli and coriander oatcakes with some mature Lockerbie cheddar and it was phenomenal. The oatcakes leave a lovely warm glow in your mouth and are nice and rough, just the way I like them.

Unfortunately this jar of yellow heaven is now very much empty, but it's such a pretty jar that it now holds some paper clips on the desk in my little office!

I was planning to go and visit them during the recent Open Studios North Fife weekends to see where they grow their chillis (yes, all Fife grown!) and also their glass studio. Unfortunately far less interesting things got in the way of this and I never did make it to Ceres to see them. Next year, for sure!

So another fantastic Fife company making high quality products, how fantastic! And there are still lots more for me to discover, my mouth is watering already!

Another quickie...

2012-04-02T18:48:00.000+01:00

Loved our dinner tonight! It's another pretty speedy one and, even better, you can prepare about 90% of it in advance and just reheat and finish it off when you need it. Win!!

Tonight it was mushroom stroganoff and rice for tea. Mushroom stroganoff contains a heap of my favourite ingredients, and because I'm keeping an eye on my calorie intake just now it's pretty healthy too. Yes, it would appear that if you sit on your bum being lazy but stuff your face with lots of good food, you put on weight! Imagine! I lost a couple of stone last year but it's starting to creep on again so I'm nipping it in the bud now before it's all back on again. I use a website called Weight Loss Resources to keep track (http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk), it's basically a huge food database so you log everything you eat and it works out how many calories you have had each day. It takes your personal height/weight info and rate of weight loss you want and sets you a daily allowance. You also log your exercise and it's got me into the habit of doing exercise if I want to 'earn' more calorific foods. Or I just don't have them. The lovely people at WLR have kindly given me permission to use the nutritional info from their database to include the details to my recipe blogs.

Anyway, here's the recipe I used for tonight's meal...

Because I'm logging everything just now I had to measure how much of each ingredient I was using. I'm usually a chuck it in and hope for the best kind of girl but this has really made me pay attention to how much I'm eating!

Ingredients: (serves 2, or 1 hungry person!)

250g chestnut mushrooms, sliced

1 medium onions, sliced thinly

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp tomato puree

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1.5 tbsp vermouth

1 clove garlic, crushed

juice of half a lemon

1 tsp paprika

100g half fat creme fraiche (or sour cream)

chopped fresh parsley

Method:

Heat the oil in a large pan on a med-high heat and saute the onions and mushrooms for about 5 minutes until they soften. Add the garlic and paprika and fry for about 30 seconds, stirring it through the mixture. Add the tomato puree and allow it to cook out for 30 seconds or so. Add the mustard, vermouth and lemon juice and cook out for another 30 seconds or so. At this point you can either save the mixture for later, or finish it off to serve immediately. Lower the heat and stir through the creme fraiche and some chopped parsley. Serve with pasta or rice, adding a blob of creme fraiche on top, if you like, and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

I served ours tonight with a packet of microwaveable long grain rice between the 2 of us and the nutritional info for the meal is:

Nutrition Per Serving:

Calories (kcal) 307.4

Protein (g) 6.8

Carbohydrate (g) 26.7

Sugars (g) 5.9

Fat (g) 17.4

Saturates (g) 6.5

Fibre (g) 2.9

Sodium (g) 0.1989

Not bad for a tasty dinner. And if you're starving you could eat the whole lot yourself and still have a very healthy meal for 600 calories (if you care!).

I'd love to know if you have any great, quick, healthy dinners you can recommend. Leave me a message, or pop over to my Facebook page and say hi there :o) https://www.facebook.com/PotsofLove

Say yellow, wave goodbye...

2012-03-19T18:40:00.001+00:00

Apologies for the title! I've had Say Hello, Wave Goodbye by Soft Cell in my head for days so when I was thinking of a title for a post about a yellow curry... Yep, that's how my mind works! Although, the wave goodbye bit is apt since the yellow curry in question was devoured to leave very clean plates by not only the boy child but my very fussy 'wife' (i.e. the other person in my life that I cook for. Not an actual wife!).

Now, if you know me it is quite likely that at some point I've asked you, "Have you heard of Chilli Papas?", to which you've then answered, "Yes, Jill. You harp on about it all the time". Some things are worth harping on about!!

This is their website---> http://www.chillipapas.com/ Here's a link to their Facebook page ---> https://www.facebook.com/redhotchillipapas . It's updated all the time with their latest news, products, where they will be direct selling, asking for customer feedback and opinions, recipe ideas - loads going on. I like companies that interact with their customers like this. And they do listen and take on board what people tell them. And to put an extra smile on my face, they are based right here beside me in Dunfermline. Yes, my Fife foodie mission continues...

I've been using their products for a while now and my favourite mix changes all the time, but at the moment I am really into the yellow curry. I love a curry, but if you've ever made your own from scratch you probably know the problems with it:

you buy a dozen jars of spices which take up a lot of room in the cupboard and go out of date before you're even halfway through them
it takes time to measure out all the quantities of all the different spices
if you're trying to watch calories and fat content then curry is a no-no

I do love making a curry from scratch but I have to have the time to spare, and as a very busy working mum that doesn't happen very often. Chilli Papas provide 2 of their mixes in each pack and each sachet contains all the spices you need for each curry. The 2 in 1 Tikka has beetroot powder in it too which gives it a fabulous colour without any artificial additives that you might find in shop bought curries. I'll do a blog post on the tikka mix separately as I adore it! The Chilli Papas tagline is "Authentic curry the oil free way", and it is! I suppose if you really wanted to you could fry the onion and spices in oil first, but having tried all of their mixes using the age old 'bung it all in a pot and let it cook' method, I can vouch for the fact that oil really isn't needed.

So on Mothers Day this year, as nobody was likely to cook dinner for me (boo hoo...), I wanted something I love, something easy that I could leave to cook without having to keep an eye on it and something both the child and the wife would like too. I decided on yellow curry with roasted butternut squash, baby corn and green beans. Phwoar! Along with the spice mix and my veg I needed an onion, a stock cube, a tin of coconut milk and some easy garlic and ginger (or you can use fresh but I was going for superfast, superlazy cooking, I even used microwave basmati rice!). And here it all is:

The butternut squash was chopped into chunks and roasted in the oven with a bit of salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil until it was tender.

This is what is in one of the Chilli Papas sachets of yellow curry mix, spices plus kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass:

As I say, you get 2 of these in a packet so enough for 2 curries and all for the bargain price of £2. You can buy them as single units on their Facebook page, or they also offer bundles of 3 or 6 packets for £5 and £10 respectively. And even more good news, free postage! The inlay card gives you cooking instructions and a list of ingredients you will need, along with directions on how to cook rice.

So, my butternut squash was roasted and into the pot it went with a bundle of green beans, a packet of baby corn, a chopped onion, a teaspoon of easy garlic, a teaspoon of easy ginger, the spice mix, a tin of coconut milk and half a stock cube. The pack says a whole stock cube but as I had put salt on the squash to roast it and don't like things too salty, I cut back. You could leave it out altogether if you're keeping an eye on your salt intake, or use a low salt one. Give it all a stir, leave it to cook for 20 mins or until the raw veg or meat is cooked, and serve with whatever you like! I chucked an Asda garlic and coriander naan in the oven and a packet of microwaveable basmati rice in and we had a splendid dinner:

It's so easy to make a nice authentic curry using the mixes that I even had a cheeky nana nap on the sofa whilst it was cooking! (Well, it was Mothers Day!) As for the flavour, well the young one and the picky one both scoffed the lot in record time. There was talk of licking the plate... Again, if you are watching calories etc you can swap the full cream coconut milk for a reduced fat version and it still tastes great. To be honest, the curries are very versatile so go ahead and add what you like! A squeeze of lime juice would be lovely in the yellow curry, add a sprinkling of dried chilli flakes if you like it with a bit more bite or chuck a handful of chopped coriander leaves and stalks in at the end to give it some more freshness - it's completely up to you.

The Chilli Papas range at the moment includes a 2 in 1 Tikka (you can mix it with yogurt etc and use it as a marinade, or you can make it into a tikka masala sauce), yellow curry, Mandalay and a mild, medium and hot version of vindaloo. They also put together brilliant hampers for any occasion and can include chilli chutneys, chilli chocolate, chilli seeds, pamper products, cakes, chillipapa or chillimama aprons ( I have one, I heart it!), anything you fancy really to suit your budget. Keep your eyes open later in the year too as they are looking to launch new mixes in the summer, including a fajita mix which I am probably more excited about than would be considered normal. I can't help it, I LOVE fajitas!!! But for now, if you want a fast, authentic tasting range of curries to have as a store cupboard essential, head over to Chilli Papas and get stocked up!

Just a quickie...

2012-03-07T20:01:00.003+00:00

I just stuffed myself with one of our favourite quickie dinners in a hurry, so whilst I'm trying to figure out how to roll myself off the sofa I thought I would do a quick blog post to find out what your staple quick dinners are.

Unfortunately, we were far too hungry to stop and take any photos before stuffing our faces but never mind! So this is my quickie cheats 'carbonara' for 2:

150g linguine (or spaghetti)

1 x 100g pack of diced pancetta

1 250ml tub of single cream

A good handful of grated parmesan

Ground black pepper

Easy peasy dinner - whilst the pasta cooks in a large pan of salted boiling water, empty the tub of pancetta into a hot frying pan. You won't need any oil as the fat from the pancetta will render down and do the job for you. When the bacon is crispy, reduce the heat and add the tub of cream. Stir to lift all the crispy bits of pancetta off the bottom of the pan and heat the cream through. Increase the heat a little til the cream is simmering and begins to thicken a little. Add in a good few grinds of milled black pepper and the parmesan and combine well. When the pasta is cooked to your liking, add this into the cream mixture, allowing some of the water the pasta has been cooked in to go in too as the parmesan makes the cream pretty thick so this will loosen it a little. Mix the pasta into the sauce until it's coated in the sauce and serve in 2 bowls. The sauce should just coat the pasta rather than drowning it. Fast and a bit tasty!

So what's your best super speedy dinner?

Oh, one last thing before I go and let the button of my jeans out... The lovely Darren @ Chilli Papas is arranging the Fife Food Fayre to be held in the Kingsgate shopping centre in Dunfermline on 12th May 2012. If you are a Fife based food business and would like to take part, or know of one that would, get in touch with darren@chillipapas.com and let him know. Now. Do it now. NOW!! Ta :D

Warm and sultry? Don't mind if I do...

2012-03-03T21:51:00.002+00:00

It's taken me ages to get round to writing this review of Foodles Mixes but, like the product itself, it's worth the wait! Once you Foodles-ise your life you'll not go back! A little background to the product - they are based in Markinch (yes, another fine Fife foodie product!), and currently produce 3 different mixes. Warm & Sultry produces a lovely Moroccan spiced dish with a deep sweetness, Sticky & Sweet has an oriental twist with lots of star anise and soy, and their new mix, Fragrant & Fiery, a coconut and cardomom based curry mix. You can order the 2 original mixes at http://www.foodlesmixes.co.uk/ or via their Facebook page, (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Foodles-Mixes/236091043076561?sk=wall)

I received one each of the mixes in December 2011 but with the whole Christmas chaos going on we didn't really do much eating of proper food. My diet consisted mainly of party food and gin. Lovely, but it takes its toll! So in early January, on a very grey, damp and cold Scottish day, it seemed the perfect time to make a Warm & Sultry beef casserole. This is what is in the pack...

I love their packaging! The first packet contains the spice mix, the 2nd contains lots of lovely sticky dates. The cooking instructions are all on the back of the packet but it's pretty much a case of bung it in a pot, stick it in the oven and leave for a couple of hours. All the ingredients are of a very high quality. Yes, they could probably make the product cheaper but I think it's worth the price of £4.49 (website price, only £3.32 on Facebook, hooray!) for the excellent quality of the ingredients.

This is the end result...

Sorry I didn't make it look prettier by presenting it on a plate, but really, what's more welcoming and warming than a big casserole full of beef stew?? Loooovely! The dates melt into the sauce to give it a sticky sweetness and wonderful depth, the spices are subtle and warming and fragrant. We had it with mash one night and a huge baked potato with butter another night. If you like comfort food, this is for you! My son is almost 9 and he ranks this as one of his favourite dinners ever. WIN!!

A few nights later I thought I should try another mix to make sure the success of the Warm & Sultry wasn't a one off. Ahem... So I popped to the butcher, bought some pork ribs which, judging by the size of them, I'm not entirely sure didn't come from some mutant dinosaur pig, and tore into the Sticky & Sweet mix...

Again, fabulous packaging!! The first packet in this mix contains a mix of sugar and spices including star anise and cinnamon, the second packet is soy sauce. Once again I was struck by the really good quality of the ingredients. The star anise were all large and chunky, the cinnamon was thick and coarse and held together rather than disintegrating into dust like cheaper variations are inclined to do, and the soy sauce was thick and rich and obviously excellent quality. Again, it's a case of bung it all together and stick it in the oven to cook low and slow. Here's our mutant ribs all tossed in the mix and ready to go into the oven...

Phwoar!!! The smell even from the raw spices was amazing! After a couple of hours in a low oven they became...

Not the prettiest presentation again! I just threw some veg into a wok and did a quick stir fry to serve with the ribs, this picture was taken as my lad was on his way to munch on it. Another success!

The quality of the ingredients really made this dish shine. You can't go far wrong with good quality ingredients cooked simply.

I have yet to try the Fragrant & Fiery mix but I'm pretty confident it will become another favourite in our house. So go on, treat yourself and stock up on a few Foodles mixes. And if you try them, please leave a comment below to let me know what you thought.

Also, if you like the idea of easy peasy mixes to throw in a pot and end up with a delicious dish, then watch out for my upcoming blog on one of my favourite Fife companies, Chillipapas. (www.chillipapas.com)

Happy eating!

Fabulous Fife Food in Foaties!

2011-12-16T20:08:00.002+00:00

Well, what a busy week! Saturday we went to the farmers market in Dunfermline (http://www.fifefarmersmarket.co.uk/) and the Fife Diet Christmas Fayre in Burntisland (http://www.fifediet.co.uk/). Sunday saw the event that was the 4th annual Festive Lasagne at Casa Blair. Alister and I plus 3 of my very best and long suffering friends gathered for our usual pre-Christmas stuffing of our bellies.

This is the table all set and ready for the girlies:

We had the obligatory Blair family recipe home made lasagne, which I used to help my dad make when I was just a lass. I'd probably struggle to write exactly what I put in the bolognese sauce but roughly speaking it's pancetta, onion, carrot, steak mince, peppers, mushrooms, tinned chopped tomatoes, bay leaves, Italian seasoning, bouquet garni and seasoning. But you can't use a fresh bouquet garni. Oh no. You have to use the shop bought ones that look like a teabag because for years that's what my dad had me believe it was. It always makes me smile when I pop it in and I remember that and remember happy times with him.

Dessert was a rather yummy milk, dark and white chocolate cheesecake from M&S. I would have made something myself but at this time of year life is so hectic with festive goings on that there just isn't time. After the dessert was coffee and mince pies and a beautiful but small cheese board. I'd much rather have a small amount of good cheese than a whole host of cheap supermarket cheeses (not that you don't get good cheese in supermarkets these days!). It was the Dunfermline Farmers' Market on Saturday, however, and I had bought a big chunk of Anster cheese and of Red Anster cheese from St Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company (http://www.standrewscheese.co.uk/). Anster cheese is a Fife cheese made with unpasteurised milk, it has a real nice tanginess to it. The Red Anster has garlic and chives added and is slightly addicitve! Those gorgeous cheeses were served very simply with 'Fife Cut', wonderfully rough oatcakes by another Fife company; Your Piece Baking Company (http://www.yourpiecebakingcompany.com/OurOatcake.htm). They are the roughest oatcakes I've had and the creaminess of the oats in your mouth is so lovely with the tangy Anster cheese.

I also bought venison burgers, pork sausages and chorizo at the farmers market. More on them at a later date:

Also on Saturday we had gone to the Fife Diet Christmas Fayre in Burntisland, which is where I bought the amazing oatcakes. Wow!! What a great afternoon! If you are free next year make sure you go along! We made a lovely wreath for our front door to which I added a big red bow later and it looks beautiful (well, I think it does, what do you think?)...

Not bad, eh?! After that, Alister made gingerbread biscuits at the cooking workshop. There were a few local maker stalls there and we bought some beautiful bread from The Steamie Bakehouse (http://www.steamiebakehouse.com/) as well as the oatcakes from Your Piece. The bread is a white bloomer and a fruit loaf. I ate about half of the white loaf just with butter and a few glasses of red wine on the Saturday night when Ally went to bed, heaven!! The fruit loaf was full of plump juicy raisins and lovely sticky bits of candied peel with a wonderful warm spice in the background, all topped off with the most wickedly sticky and delicious glaze on the crust. It's lovely just sliced and munched, or try toasting it with some butter melting into it. Yum!!!!

Then Ally had a lesson in knitting, turns out he's a bit of a natural! After knitting a few and purling a few we moved on to the wee cafe area for a big slice of home made Victoria sandwich and a cuppa before heading over to the Christmas tree decoration workshop where Alister made this very cute addition to our tree:

After about half an hour in the storytelling room, the boy re-emerged to ice his gingerbread biscuits (no photos, they were pretty much inhaled as soon as the icing went on!) and then we headed home. All of the workshops were free and we had a brilliant afternoon. It will definitely become part of our annual Christmas plans!

Lots more been going on but I'll spare you all for now!

Hope you're all enjoying your Christmas preparations. I'm full of festive joy, I can't wait!

Love, Jill xx

Practise what you preach

2011-12-08T19:41:00.001+00:00

Further to my Keep It Local post, this weekend I'm planning a bit of a Fife foodfest! Practise what you preach indeed.

The Fife Farmers Market is on in Dunfermline on Saturday. My shopping list includes duck eggs from Kilduncan's, sausages and chorizo from Puddledub, veg from Bellfield and maybe a cheeky ice cream from Nelson's if they're there!

Then, after that, we are off to Blacketyside farm shop in Leven to pick up some Foodles mixes so I can try them out before writing a review of them. Yum! What a tough job... I've also been told that their café is nice so we'll probably have lunch there. Then it's off to Burntisland for the Fife Diet Christmas fayre which includes making gingerbread and festive wreaths etc. Really looking forward to that, and it's free!

Then back home, to make a bolognese sauce and possibly to collapse on the sofa and order a chinese for tea!! Sunday is usually a busy day for us but this week, as well as church/Sunday school, there's nativity play rehearsals too. Then swimming lesson at 12.30pm and home to get the house ready for the annual Festive Lasagne!

Every December, although snow buggered it up last year, my lovely friends, Fi, Karen and Kirsty, come over for a lasagne dinner. We used to exchange presents but these days Alister's the only person who receives presents, it's just too expensive for us all to give to everyone else. We have the Blair Family Recipe Lasagne, hence making bolognese sauce on Saturday night, garlic bread, salad, wine, fizz and dessert. It's one of the very few times in the year that we all get together, no questions asked - Festive Lasagne is compulsory in our calendars!

So, a busy weekend ahead! After that, next week I really MUST get my Christmas shopping started/finished. Not done a thing so far. Oops.

Hope you are all staying safe. We've been hit by a terrible storm today which has been a bit scary but seems to be passing now and moving on. Tiles flew off houses in our street, windows blew in at one of the high schools and at someone's house locally, awful! Stay inside, keep safe and warm and eat something lovely!

Jill xx

Keep it local!

2011-12-05T13:25:00.003+00:00

I'm supposed to be cleaning the house just now. The living room is spotless (well, by my very low standards!) and ready for us putting the Christmas tree up when Ally gets home from school today though. I'm this [ ] close to feeling festive, the tree might just do it! And I have a pack of ready made puff pastry in the freezer and a jar of mincemeat in the cupboard so there may even be super speedy mince pies on the go later too.

However, as I was dusting the window sill and hoovering the rug, my mind drifted off to thinking about local foodie companies. Some I already use, others are on my 'to cook' list. One of my favourites is Chillipapas (http://www.chillipapas.com/), a company based right here in Dunfermline who make a range of curry spice mixes. As a busy mum I always have a stash of their mixes in the cupboard as they are so quick and easy. You can just bung everything in a pot with the spices and leave it to cook.

I also know there is a company called Foodles Mixes (http://www.foodlesmixes.co.uk/) just up the road in Markinch. I haven't tried their mixes but they are right at the top of the 'to cook' list!

I'm planning to dedicate a blog post to each of them in the very near future but in the meantime if there are any Fife based companies you think I should know about then shout about it right here! I'm a big supporter of The Fife Diet (http://www.fifediet.co.uk/) which aims to get people eating local produce but I think supporting local companies like these should also be a part of this. Maybe if any of them read this they can get together!

Ok, I HAVE to go and clean Alister's room. I may not make it out alive...eek...

Jill xx

Winter veg

2011-12-04T12:52:00.001+00:00

This is really more of a test post so I can play around with a few things, but I do have something damned tasty to share too!

I used to get a fortnightly veg box delivered by Bellfield Organics in Fife (http://www.bellfield-organics.com/). I try to use organic produce when I can. I know it isn't any better for you but if I can avoid putting potentially carcinogenic chemicals into mine and Alister's bodies then that's got to be a good choice. I've also started direct selling Neal's Yard Remedies products - here's my website https://uk.nyrorganic.com/shop/JillBlair/ . The skin is the largest organ in our body and yet whilst some people think twice about what they put into their body through their mouth, the products we put on our skin are just as important. I'm a total Neal's Yard convert and Alister can use all the products too as they are so natural and safe.

Anyway, back to food! I stopped getting the veg box as the quality was a bit hit or miss. You just don't want to be able to bend your carrots without them even considering snapping! However, fast forward a couple of years and there was a Groupon offer for an £18 veg box for £8, or something like that. So a month or so ago I had a big family sized veg box delivered. I'm happy to say the quality was much better. This is what arrived:

A lovely selection of good Fife grown organic winter veg. There was a mountain of tatties, onions and (non-bendy) carrots, a couple of cauliflowers, turnips, parsnips, a green pepper, some cherry tomatoes, a couple of huge leeks, green kale, purple kale and about 8 of my very favourite root veg, beetroots! It was like veg porn, I could hardly contain myself.

From that lot I made a pot of tattie and leek soup, cauliflower and kale soup, a veg curry and the pepper, some of the carrots and some of the onions went in to a stir fry. But, my very favourite meal was our meat free Sunday dinner. I chopped up a load of veg, added about 6 garlic cloves whole, a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme, a good glug of olive oil and coated all the veg well in the oil. This is how it looked going into the oven:

What a beautiful sight! I would have taken a photo of it cooked but it didn't stay in the roasting tin for long enough. We had it with some yorkshire puddings, mashed potato and some veg gravy. The veg gravy was really lovely. Our Sundays are pretty busy so I like shop bought shortcuts. I got a tub of Asda own make vegetable gravy granules and it was really nice, would definitely use it again.

So hopefully the layout of this has worked ok and my photos have appeared. Fingers crossed as I hit the Publish Post button!!

Happy munching,
Jill xx