January is typically the time of year where you make heaps of resolutions. But now we are into February, how many have you kept?
Like most people I wanted to start to eat healthier and work out more. At both of these I failed miserably.
No salads eaten…
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In terms of food blogging this year has been a bit of a wipe out, I dropped Daring Bakers, Daring Cooks, making my own bread, ice cream and french macarons. I stuck to simple dishes when I blogged at all, that were either left for hours to slow cook, or were ready in a matter of minutes.
While this was necessity – you can’t plan a wedding while still working a 40 hour week and have time to keep up with the making, photography and posting cycle.
In 2012 I want to get back into pushing the boundaries a little. As much as Daring Bakers and Cooks was really great at pushing you to try new things, I did spend an inordinate amount of time pushing myself to make things that I would never have eaten if I had the choice. Like those marshmallow disaster cookies. I cried over those, tears of anger and disappointment.
While I am not sure I necessarily want to go through anything like that again – you don’t learn if you don’t push the boundaries. Learning new recipes is all very well and good, but really what you need to learn is new frameworks. Ideas that catapult you out of your everyday dishes, like learning to make bread – once you have the technique millions of new recipes are open to you.
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I have been rather absent in recent weeks, so I thought I would post a couple of shots from my wedding.
Organising a wedding in November I understood straight away that I could not count on the weather. In fact I planned assuming the worst, ice, snow, rain and wind. No outdoor wedding for me, in fact the venue I booked allowed us to do all the different sections of the day under one roof. No taxis, or cars needed. In fact in the end I actually walked to the venue, dress draped over my arms (it was only 2 minutes).
Having photos outside was an option that didn’t seem likely at all. So when I woke up to see the sun shining on a crisp November morning – I was a little shocked. I hadn’t planned for this eventuality at all.
Thankfully the venue has access to Queen St Gardens, so after we had our first glass of champagne/ whisky as husband and wife, we walked along to the gardens for some photos.
Photo by Bryony Beckitt
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I haven’t really been blogging and to be honest my dinner dishes recently have lost inspiration. I’ve made an awesome Green Thai Curry about 4 times in a month – because it’s tasty and more importantly quick. (I will post it eventually I promise).
When I have been baking I have been using my new Kenwood Chef Mixer, which I love and I am sure you will hear much about in the run up to Christmas! But to reduce stress I have been remaking old recipes, and while fantastic I don’t like reposting.
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You have no idea how much I wanted to call this recipe Kohlrabi and Korn… but thankfully I talked myself out of it 
I made this tonight to go along side a Venison burger and bun, but I am also planning to take it in to work tomorrow for Day 1 of Lunches for the Festival.
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Have you ever been to Edinburgh? During the festival? Or for that matter any major city in tourist season?
As the weather gets warmer the hordes descend on Edinburgh. They walk slowly looking at the scenery (or reading a map), they stop to take photos directly in front of you and there are thousands of them between you and where you need to go.
I work in the centre of town, so every morning, lunchtime and evening I have to storm past tourists, weaving constantly to and fro, occasionally sighing loudly.
Don’t get me wrong I love travelling and being one of those people, I love exploring new cities – camera in hand. I understand it’s hypocritical and I have no doubt in your city I would be one of _those_ people to you. However I don’t think my stress levels can cope with that number of tourists every day, so I have made a decision. I won’t go out at lunch time.
I’ll take my lunch to work with me, read a book, go up to the roof garden, talk to colleagues. I won’t brave the tourist strip until the festival is done and dusted. Which means the entirety of August making packed lunches.
It also means being super organised – which is not one of my strongest points. Leftovers will make it easier, but I don’t want to spend the entire month eating tiny portions of day old stirfries.
Thankfully August is a great month for variety in fruit and vegetables, so there will be lots of salads and I have been back trawling the food blogs for picnic recipes and food that will travel well. I am planning to write a whole series of posts on salad recipes and other packed lunch treats throughout the month of August.
You can follow coffeemuffins on twitter or subscribe to my feed to keep track of all the fun 
Have any good recipes for me to try? Please drop me a comment.
I don’t know what on earth possessed me to start a new project and giveaway for this blog the week I was moving house. I think I was in denial as to how much hassle decorating, moving and unpacking it all would really be.
Of course I’ll find ten minutes to announce the winner, even with no net connection – I can do that all on my phone. Where’s the problem?
And of course I am not going to pretend that I haven’t had a spare ten minutes over the course of the past month, I have had plenty. I just didn’t want to do anything with them but sit.
So today I have finally found the time to tick this off my list.
The winner is…
Congratulations a new copy of “Kitchen” by Nigella Lawson will be on it’s way to you in the next couple of days.
p.s. To all of you who didn’t win, I’m sorry, I love Nigella’s recipe so much I’d love to give each of you a copy – but I just can’t afford it! If you do want to get yourself a copy, however you can get it in the US here, and the UK here.
p.p.s The Questionnaire is now closed, I am working my way through the results and hope to get at least an initial round-up up this weekend.
A couple of weeks ago I was out at a bar in Edinburgh called the Villager on George IV bridge. I don’t really do reviews on this blog, but I did have a really great night, and table service for drinks in Edinburgh is almost unheard of (at least in the places I normally drink).
Being the sensible sort of girl that I am I didn’t go for any of the sharing scorpian bowls of overproof rum set on fire. They were all out of scorpian bowls when we ordered…
I went for the much classier sounding Bombay & Elderflower, a mixture of gin, soda and elderflower cordial. I have been thinking about it on and off ever since.
As the sun was setting tonight, on what has been a reasonably warm and extremely busy day, I felt the need to kick off my shoes and relax on the sofa with a cool G&T.
I used 1 shot of Gin (Bombay Saphire), 1 shot of Elderflower cordial and topped up with slimline tonic water.
The only thing that could of made it better? A slice of lime…
I think this is the longest between posts in the history of this blog. There are a couple of reasons for that, sunshine during the weekends have removed the part of the week when I am most likely to blog. During the week my excuses have been less clear. I have been very very tired since all the heat, sunshine and summeriness began. Falling asleep on the sofa when I would normally be reading other blogs looking for inspiration, going to bed early instead of writing my own. Forgetting to take pictures even when I have been making stuff worth blogging about.
So for the past few days I have been trying my hardest to get out of this slump, with highly healthy fruit smoothies. Hoping that a boost in vitamins will help sort me out. I can’t say that it has really worked yet – last night a single glass of wine had me comatosed on the sofa for the rest of the evening.
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I got my first ever blog award on Saturday from Nancy at Spicie Foodie. I love her collection of beautiful photograph and fantastic looking recipes (In fact I tried her thai fish curry tonight for dinner and it was amazing).
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