Largely based on the same recipe as my Low Fat Beef Stir-fry this has the surprising addition of broccoli. A version of this recipe was one of the first things my fiancee ever made me for dinner. While I have never been a broccoli-hater, I had relegated it to something to be boiled and put as a side vegetable. This dish made me see that Broccoli can be a main star. If you don’t believe me you’ll just have to try it and see.

Cooking the Broccoli

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The problem is that recipes for Coffee Flavoured Muffins, not recipes for muffins to have alongside a cup of coffee, are few and far between. While on initial glance it might seem that there are quite a few recipes, 90% of the ones that do exist are actually exactly the same recipe.

The recipe below does contain coffee, and unlike the first of couple of recipes I tried is really really good.

This Coffee Muffin didn’t last long!
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Following on from my weekend of baking, I decided to try this recipe from For the love of cooking which was one of the first food blogs I added as an RSS feed back at the start of the year. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out you should!

Banana and Blueberry bread

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Last week I wrote a post about how to cook for family one of my main tips was not to try to do too much. Cooking a starter, main and desert can be a lot of work for people who like me are new to the kitchen. Thankfully recipes like this one are made for entertaining large groups of people.

Bruschetta Al Pomodoro

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A couple of weeks ago I was given a copy of Good Housekeeping: Great Baking (the fiancee was worried I wasn’t creating enough cakes, cookies and such) and since then I have been leafing through it’s 600 recipes whenever I get the chance. Again it’s another American cookbook so the conversions are annoying but at least there is a table at the back.

Cinnamon Bun

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You want to impress, right? You want the whole process to be stress-free and for you and your guests to enjoy themselves.

I have had a number of disasters with cooking for the in-laws and I thought it might be interesting to talk about what I have learnt, the basic steps to make things easier and less stressful for you, and tastier for everyone else. Here is my guide to cooking for a number of people…
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I think this is possibly the first recipe I am going to link to that has absolutely no pretensions of being good for you. It’s just really tasty and makes me think that summer is finally on its way.

Individual Rhubarb Sponge

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It’s been a long running tradition that when I have to make dinner just for me, I make Macaroni Cheese. It’s a treat because my fiancee hates cheesy things so when he’s not around I go overboard. However Macaroni Cheese is just a bit on the plain side, it was perfect when I was a kid, but now I am looking for something that vaguely contains a vegetable in my dinner – that’s where the salsa comes in.

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I just made some smoothies, the enzymes come from the fruit, which can be an “effective way to assist in treating Sinusitis (sinus inflammation) and inflammation pain”.

Find the more information and recipe here on Healthy. Happy. Life.

The number of times I have made really bad beef stir fry has meant that now I have actually made a really good one I feel the need to post the recipe! However this time I did it a bit differently, and it was worth it.

1. The first thing I did differently was to buy a great cut of meat, a fillet steak. While you might think it a waste to stir-fry a fillet steak, this was by far the best change I made. Admittedly if I had been deep frying the beef in the stir-fry it would have been a crime, but by keeping it healthy (or at least healthier, it didn’t compromise the taste).
2. I marinaded the Beef for 8 hours. This meant that it was succulent and melt in the mouth.
3. I tend to overcook everything, and I made sure this time that the beef was cut really thinly so that it would cook quickly in the heat, this way it didn’t dry out and become tough.

From now on I think I’ll try to stick to these rules as much as possible, although maybe I’ll try downgrading the cut of beef, the fillet was perfect but really can only afford it for special occasions.

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