You need this in your life (and your cereal and your yoghurt)!

Lately I've eaten really badly and it's started to take its toll, so this week I nipped into Waitrose on my lunch break for a bit of inspiration.

The food in Waitrose always looks so amazing, and it's easy to find yummy healthy things in there (as well as naughty desserts) so it's a great place to go when you need to reinvigorate your enthusiasm for eating 'proper' food. I don't shop there often, in fact I rarely buy things from there, because it's expensive and a lot of the time it really is the packaging and store environment you're paying for.

When I went this week I got this amazing concoction:

It is Waitrose "Love life" Seed, Nut and Sultana Sprinkle. It's designed to go on cereal or yoghurt, and it contains all sorts of yummy things including:

• Sultana bits
• Sesame seeds
• Pumpkin seeds (there's no food better)
• Pine Nuts
• Walnut chunks
• Flaked almonds

And probably loads more because every mouthful is different.

This week I've had it on top of Golden Syrup Oats So Simple, and on top of raspberries (out of the freezer, defrosted of course) and Greek yoghurt.

Now I should warn you, it was pretty pricey - £3.99 for 400g. But it really is worth the money, and you only need to use it sparingly to add great flavour. I'm even tempted to add it to salad.

In an effort to get healthy I've also started running - the plan is to run a couple of times a week before work - starting small and working my way up to longer / further. I figured getting up earlier will hopefully be balanced by the new energy I will discover from being active. I was so enthusiastic yesterday after making my plan that I got straight on the treadmill after work and watched some motivational videos on YouTube while I ran. The first I watched was from StartRunningDotCom - this guy, Tellman Knudson from runtellmanrun.com, really says it like it is and I found the video funny - it was the Start Running For Beginners video. I also watched Start Running - Breathing Techniques. 

That's all for now, but I'll let you know how I get on! :)

Get in my belly!

Ok, I'm no professional when it comes to cooking, but my family pretty much revolves around food - food to celebrate occasions, food to cheer people up, food to make illness go away... you get the idea. I'm currently mid-way through slow-cooking the most gorgeous beef stew and I thought I'd share the recipe (it's so easy, it's almost fraud to call it "cooking")...

4 medium carrots, peeled, cut into rounds about 1.5cm thick
1 parsnip, peeled, cut into rounds about 1.5cm thick
1 swede, peeled, cubed (about 2cm)
2 medium onions, sliced about 5mm wide
Beef (can be a pretty cheap cut), as much as you fancy, cubed (about 1.5 cm)
2 pints of beef stock (2 x Oxo cubes will do, with 2 pints of hot water)
1 tablespoon of Marmite (oh yeah)
1 teaspoon mixed dried herbs
1 good slug of nice red wine
2 bay leaves
3/4 cup of flour
Salt, pepper and a little oil

It looks like a lot of ingredients but I bought beef for £3.40 and all the veg in a bag in the Co-op for £1. Everything else is store cupboard stuff and the wine was already open ;-)

1. Pre-heat the slow cooker.
2. Put the flour in a bowl and add salt and pepper. Add the cubes of beef and toss them around until they're coated in flour.
3. Fry the beef in a pan with a little oil until it's started to go brown. Don't push it around the pan, just turn it gently so the flour stays on the beef. You should still have some flour left in the bowl after you've tossed the beef around.
4. Take the beef out of the pan and put it in the slow cooker.
5. Put the onion in the pan that you've fried the beef in. Sweat it down until the onion has gone clear. Add the remaining flour and continue to fry until it starts to look a sticky mess.
6. Add a slosh of stock and continue cooking it until it starts to thicken to a bit of a paste.
7. Add the wine to the pan, cook it for a couple of seconds while you carry on stirring and then add the whole pink mush to the slow cooker.
8. Now lob in your veg and give it all a good stir to mix.
9. Add the Marmite to the remaining stock, stir it round so it dissolves and then add all of it to the slow cooker.
10. Keep heating it on high until it comes to the boil. Once it's boiling add the herbs and the bay leaves.
11. Then just keep stirring it every half hour or hour.

It'll be ready after about 6 hours, by which time the smell will have driven your household into a crazed hunger. Serve it with mash, or a baked potato, or some yummy fresh crusty bread. This will serve two people as a main meal with left overs for greedy-pig second helpings and lunch tomorrow. It freezes reall well so if you're left with too much it makes a great microwave meal.

Autumn in a bowl!

And it's impossible to make it taste bad!

If I remember I'll add another photo of it served up in a couple of hours.

... And here it is!