Archive for September, 2009

A curry beats a bunch of flowers

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

You know when you have done something completely out of order? You are in the wrong and you can make many excuses: bad day at work, awful traffic on the way home, nothing in its right place at home. But really, I’d had a stressful day and I just went bang!

It happened to me last week and when I took it all out on my nearest and dearest (my husband) he rightly wouldn’t speak to me all night. So rather than getting into a big debate about it the next day, I decided to take some radical action.  I went home the day after (another long day) with a completely new recipe – and cooked his favourite, an Indian Curry.

I was looking through the MyDish recipes and different sections and couldn’t decide what to make and then I knew that the only thing that would work was a curry.  I like Thai curries but am only just getting into Indian Curries: I have never cooked an Indian Curry at home and have definitely never done one using all the spices from scratch. But I thought it was worthy of the apology needed – I chose Anitak’s Authentic Chicken Curry.

It wasn’t as tricky as I’d feared and the results were sensational, so I’m looking forward to trying some more Indian recipes. Thankfully my husband Kenny accepted my apology and it shows the way to a man’s heart – and forgiveness, is through his tummy. Mission accomplished.

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Hooray! The kids are back at school!

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

The kids are back at school and all I can say is “Hooray!” I have 3 boys of school age (four in total if you include my husband) and I’m glad that we’ve returned to the structure and reality of term-time.

I know this might annoy some of the ‘mummy brigade’ but I think the Summer holidays are just way too long. The kids get bored and start nidgering each other and when they are back at school they are with their friends doing lots of fun stuff. School challenges them and they return happily tired at the end of the day.

What does it mean for me from a food point of view? I have only one kid at primary school now so I’m only making a packed lunch for 1. It’s tricky keeping them healthy and interesting and I’m always on the look out for new ideas.

But where I really need inspiration is with the evening meal. They come home after Rugby training starving hungry and as they walk through the door the first thing they want to do is eat. I struggle to get them to try different things. I often use MyDish for ideas and tonight I’m searching the family favourite recipes and we are going for beef casserole - enough to feed 4 hungry boys!

We will all sit down together for our meal around 6.30 ish and afterwards it is a marathon of homework and showering and reading with the little one. But we still manage to eat together and stop for half an hour to catch on each others day.

Posted in - Opinion | 4 Comments »

Farewell Keith Floyd

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Hi there, Dan here. I wanted to take over Carol’s blog and write a post about the legendary Keith Floyd who died yesterday aged 65.

As someone who grew up in the eighties, Floyd was often on the box cooking up elaborate and exotic meals from all over the world. It was before the current vogue for British cuisine so it was natural that Keith Floyd would look overseas for inspiration.

And in so many ways that’s what attracted me as a young boy. He’d race off to somewhere wonderful in a car or a boat or a plane. We weren’t usually being taken to meet a Prince or an illustrious personage but rather the proprietor of the local taverna. The aristocracy can’t be trusted with the proper grub Keith had his eye on rustling up. Floyd cooked his dishes up in the village square and not the squire’s kitchen.

Keith Floyd was so different from the other chefs on the TV at the time. Most were cooking everyday domestic stuff and it was all aimed at housewives. It was usually little more than a home economics lessons on the telly. Floyd was different.

For a lot of chaps I know, Keith Floyd single-handedly persuaded them to cook. Here was an exuberantly dressed bloke, with a fine command of language, putting together amazing hearty meals. Chaos often ensued.

Floyd was flames and flamboyance to us little boys of the eighties. And as we’ve grown up, we have come to love his philosophy. It’s one glass of wine for the pot and another for the chef. Up here, Clive. Let’s have a little drinky!

But at the heart of his cooking was authenticity. Amazing ingredients cooked well and served up with pride. I was flicking through one of his books earlier and was not surprised to see how many of his dishes are served up simply with fresh bread, salad or seasonal veg and that’s how it should be

A clip is in order, and I looked at loads before choosing this one. Unusually it’s indoors and with an another chef. But it captures Keith Floyd’s blustering, saucy style so well, I couldn’t resist it.

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Back to Business as Usual

Friday, September 11th, 2009

It has been an amazing few weeks since we were on Dragons Den. During and just after the show, the site traffic surged and for the week afterwards we saw a massive increase in visitors. Even though we did not enjoy a spike from a repeat (this was cancelled because of the athletics) the ‘iplayer effect’ definitely meant that people were watching throughout the seven days after the show.

We’ve also received thousands of email and calls from people who saw the show. Many were just wishing us luck and saying how they enjoyed the programme but there have also been some promising leads for business partnerships and developments. We’ve just about cleared the backlog and I’m overwhelmed by all the lovely messages you sent.

Since then we’ve been thrilled to be featured in a whole host of blogs and forums as well as in traditional media. There was a good piece in the Sunday Telegraph featuring some of my previous blog post.

Emma Jones of EnterpriseNation, a resource for people running home based business, also interviewed me and you can find that here.

I was also interviewed by eCommerce blogger Trevor Ginn on his blog, www.trevorginn.com. Like us, he’s based at the Truman Brewery in London. As well as blogging Trevor also runs the online baby business Hello Baby and likes cooking Shepherds pie, lasagne and moussaka.

And now as the excitement of Dragons Den fades into the past, we’ve got plenty to be getting along with. And we’ve got so many more recipes to try too!

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