Hairy Dieters and Diet update

It’s been a slow start (blogging wise) to 2013, I’ve got loads of stuff I want to write about different things including our trip to the Isle of Skye, the new walking gear that’s replaced the stuff I sold on ebay and I’ve loads of beer and food stuff to share. I’ve just not had time and we are already nearly at the end of January. The good news is I’m back  on doing the Hairy Dieters, I put on 6lbs over the Christmas Period which i’ve now just about lost. I’m still doing cooking plenty from the Hairy Dieters book but am also mixing it up with some other options and home made recipes. One of the best things I’ve had of late was the Marks and Spencer Baji Balti Cod which is currently on offer at £6 for 2 meals,...

Read More

Hairy Dieters Week 10

I honestly can’t believe I’ve now been cooking recipes from the Hairy Dieters book for 10 weeks and there are still recipes I’ve not cooked and want to cook, granted I’ve cooked a couple of things more than once and frozen some bits and cooked them later but I’ve tried to cook a new recipe or two every week. This week saw the return of the deliciously simple Harissa Chicken plus two new recipes. First up was the beef in ale casserole, I pretty much followed the recipe for this one although I did add some mushrooms and cooked it in the slow cooker instead of cooking it on the hob as per the instructions. It worked really well and the gravy was thick and full of flavour, I couldn’t decide which ale to use so went for Guinness...

Read More

Hairy Dieters Week 9

Well this week was a bit of a crazy one as I was away for most of it, firstly in the final of the Sharp’s Connoisseurs Co competition (you will be able to read more about that here), then the day after getting back from the 800+ mile round trip I was in Manchester for a beer festival. As a result I only ended up cooking 1 new dish from the Hairy Dieters book, It was the Spanish chicken bake, I had to use chicken breasts instead of thigh’s as I couldn’t get any thighs. Even with the breasts the dish worked really well, it tasted great, was really filling and had a nice level of chilli heat from the chorizo, It was really easy to make although did take an hour to cook. I also used a mix of different coloured tomatoes from the garden to brighten it...

Read More

Self Employment Part II

Well that’s it, the end of my first month of self employment!! It’s certainly been a roller-coaster, we’ve sorted out a fair bit of stuff between the 4 of us  but we still have an awful lot to sort. One of the highlights was launching our first client site in Brew Star, a cracking little new brewery up in Morpeth who asked us to build them a new website (which you can check out here).  Along with their website we also completed some branding for new Middlesbrough based  brewery, Trueffit Bewing Co which I for one can’t wait to see on the pumps in pubs. We also launched our own website, which you can find at www.lemontopcreative.com it’s still a work in progress so keep checking the blog for latest updates, also keep an eye on the...

Read More

Self Employment

For those of you that read the blog on a regular basis will have noticed that my posts have dropped off since the end of January. The main reason for this was I was unfortunately made redundant so spent most of February searching for a job, going to interviews and wondering what I was going to do next. It’s not the first time I’ve been made redundant, the first time was just about 5 years ago and at the time we’d just got our first mortgage on our first house. Luckily I found a job pretty quickly and haven’t looked back, until now. This time the redundancy came even more out of the blue and at possibly an even worse time as in November we decided to get married…in April. As with most things, there’s not much you can do in these...

Read More

It’s been a while

I’ve just realised how long it is since I have posted a blog on here, It’s been way too long,  To be honest I’ve been busy writing posts for Beer Reviews and Chilli Up North so have neglected this place a little bit. Fear not those of you who like the walking routes I’ve got  couple of crackers nearly ready to go so watch this space!! In the meantime head on over to flickr and take a look at my pics from our recent trip to Santorini

Read More