Serendipity

Sometimes events just seem to unfold in a manner that works out beautifully for everyone. Isn't that lovely? I was lucky enough to benefit from a nice little moment of serendipity just a couple of weeks ago. 

One of my bigger goals for 2016 is to visit two new places.  This is because I am a territourist, a creature of habit that tends to go back to the same place, marking my metaphorical territory over and over again. As a result, after my May 2016 holiday, I will have been to Ibiza five times in the last two years. Territorial? I may as well cock my leg and piss up the wall at Pacha and be done with it.  And there's a whole world out there. A whole great big beautiful world, most of which I haven't visited.  

So it was a very good thing when, as a result of a proposal that my boss and I had submitted, my company was shortlisted to pitch our services to a potential new client.

In Los Angeles.

It was also quite fortunate that, when I looked at flights, it was quite significantly cheaper to fly home on the Sunday evening, rather than straight after the Friday morning pitch.

So I found myself in a situation where it was beneficial, both to me and the company that I work for, to spend the weekend by myself in LA. Hoorah!

I will be totally honest. LA was not on my shortlist of places to visit.  I'm not a movie buff and LA has always struck me as a place that is so film-centric that there is probably very little else going on.  Which could make it a little..... superficial?

Well, I was right, but I was also wrong.  It all very much depends on where you go.

I stayed in Venice, in a lovely little Airbnb place [side note, one of my other big goals for 2016 is to TRY NEW THINGS and staying in an Airbnb is a big tick in that box] that was located down a little walk street.

The walkway down to my little slice of Venice heaven #LA #Venice #VeniceBeach #airbnb

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 19, 2016 at 4:53pm PST

As you can see this is a lovely little path to walk down..... unless you're doing it for the first time in the dark, having got off the bus manhandling a gigantic suitcase, thinking "Is this safe?  I have no idea if this area is safe" while pondering the fact that if I were watching someone go down this poorly lit alley on TV, I'd be shouting "Don't go down there! Oh for heaven's sake, she's just asking to be murdered, the idiot".  As it turned out, it was all fine and I soon found myself installed in a cute little guesthouse that sat at the end of my host's garden.  I was pretty tired by this point and so with a brief chomp on some Cheetos for dinner, I crashed to sleep on the very comfortable and snuggly bed.

Thankfully, I had a pretty good night's sleep and woke up feeling pretty bright, which was good as it was time to go and pitch!  I put my professional face on and headed out.  I had assumed that the public transport would be like London, with a bus every couple of minutes.  Not the case.  So I ended up walking about two miles to the office in Santa Monica, as my connecting bus just didn't come along.  Thankfully I had allowed plenty of time and was still early for the pitch, which went very well.  And then at about 11am, I was free as a bird in Los Angeles!

After heading back to my Airbnb to get the heck out of my suit, I hit the streets of Venice, CA.  My first port of call was Abbot Kinney Blvd, which is an super hipster street of cute little independent shops.  I wasn't really in the mood for shopping, but I enjoyed strolling along in the warm sunshine.  Very welcome after the cold February weather that we were having in the UK.  I hit the end of the boulevard and found my way to Venice Beach, which was every bit as lively as I thought it would be, with stalls, buskers, and a great group of street dancers.

A video posted by @readyamefire on Feb 19, 2016 at 6:15pm PST

By the end of the street dance show, I was pretty hungry, as I hadn't eaten anything yet that day. Thankfully the Sidewalk Café was able to provide me with an enormous lunch before I headed on up the boardwalk.  After walking northwards up the beach for a while, Venice starts to fade away and becomes Santa Monica, which is like the classy older sister to Venice's raucous young boy.  The beach here is lovely, just like walking onto the set of Baywatch.

I feel like I just walked onto the set of #Baywatch #santamonicabeach

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 19, 2016 at 4:55pm PST

After a wander around the shops of Santa Monica, I was tired and decided to catch the bus back to Venice, collapsing in bed almost as soon as I got back there early evening. Looking at the health app on my phone, it looks like I walked about 10 miles that day, so no wonder the jetlag caught up with me!

The next day it was time to head to Hollywood.  I got the bus again, which took longer than I thought again.  That's the thing about LA, it's huge and sprawling and nothing is very close to anything else.  I wandered up and down the Walk of Fame until I found Angela Lansbury, then stopped for some lunch.

My work here is done.

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 20, 2016 at 11:37am PST

After more public transport related fun, I arrived at the Griffith Observatory, a beautiful art deco style building pearched on top of a hill, where you get the best views of the Hollywood sign.

Ok, so it looks tiny here, but if you squint, you can see the Hollywood sign

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 20, 2016 at 1:53pm PST

The observatory is sat at the edge of a park that has a load of trails just begging to be walked.  I walked up quite a way, but there was much more I could've walked, if I'd had the energy.  But this point, tiredness was setting in again (DAMN YOU JETLAG!!!) and I grabbed the bus back to my guesthouse for the evening.

The Venice canals were a lovely thing to do on my last day in California. Such a peaceful place. Why don't I live there?

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 21, 2016 at 4:43pm PST

On my last day, I spent the morning wandering up and down the Venice Canals, such a beautiful and peaceful place.  Don't go there unless you want to spend quite a bit of time wondering how your life has managed to unfold in a way that has not led to you living there. After the canals, I had just enough time for a wander about (including an extended walk up Main Street to Santa Monica in search of stamps to send out postcards, which I then couldn't find a postbox for GAH!).  It was then time to head back to my Airbnb, grab my suitcase and head back to the airport for the long flight home.

Looking back on this trip, I can definitely say that I enjoyed my time in LA, but don't really feel like there is a lot more there that I would like to see.  I preferred Venice and Santa Monica to Hollywood, as there is a much more relaxed atmosphere in those places, although one point to note about everywhere I went is that there are huge numbers of homeless people, more than I've ever seen anywhere else, which is a really sad thing, with no simple solution. 

Whole30: Reintroduction (pt ii)

When I last checked in with you guys, I was halfway through the Whole30 reintroduction protocol, with frankly mixed results. 

I still had a couple of food groups to reintroduce and next on the list was dairy.  I was very worried about this.  The longest and most meaningful relationship in my life has been with cheese, so the thought that it might send me scurrying to the lav clutching my nether regions was a real concern. Thankfully I needn't have worried.  Dairy was all fine.  Please note that there is no cheese in the picture below.  Some things are private, like the joyful reunion that cheese and I enjoyed together*

Welcome to @whole30 dairy reintroduction day! #teawithmilk #yoghurt #ALLOFTHECHEESE #whole30 #whole30uk #iamwhole30

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 6, 2016 at 3:27am PST

* OK, fine. I ate all the cheese before I could take a picture, OK? Happy now? Jeeeeeeez.

The last thing to reintroduce was gluten grains.  Cue a giant scone for breakfast, followed by my mince concoction served with pasta for lunch.  All of which (delicious though it was) was a mere prelude to the coming excitement.

It's @whole30 gluten reintroduction day! #scones #bread #pasta #pancakes #getinmamouth #pleasedontmakemystomachexplode #whole30 #whole30uk #iamwhole30

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 9, 2016 at 5:04am PST

PANCAKES! Woo hoo! PANCAKES! Oh the joy of wheat reintroduction day falling on the only day of the year that the UK gives half a crap about pancakes.  Also to note the joy of having loving parents who are willing to cook the pancakes for you. Woo hoo!

Hooray for #shrovetuesday and lovely parents who make you pancakes😍

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 9, 2016 at 1:45pm PST

And as it's the end of February, it's time to check in and see how I did on those monthly goals, which to remind you, were as follows:

PRIDE: Complete the full Whole30 reintroduction, properly, without titting about.

STRETCH: Complete at least three NTC workouts per week and swim at least twice a week

WILDEST DREAMS: Get down to 14 stone

Hmmmm. Not quite so good as January.  I completed the Whole30 reintroduction without issue, but the other two were a complete blowout.  So I'm giving myself a pass grade of C and looking forward to some new goals for March.

PRIDE: Complete the Speedo app English Channel swim goal 

STRETCH: Complete at least two NTC workouts per week 

WILDEST DREAMS: Complete at least 7,000 steps every day in March, even on working from home days where I sit on my butt all day not going anywhere.

COMING UP: Reporting back on a couple of my bigger goals for the year, including a review of my trip to Los Angeles.

Whole30: Reintroduction

In my last post, I mentioned that my first goal for February 2016 is to complete the Whole30 reintroduction properly, something that I've never done before.  So how does that work?  And why is it important?

Well, for the duration of the Whole30, you're essentially clearing down your digestive system, eliminating all food groups that are widely acknowledged to cause issues for a number of people.  These are sugar, dairy, grains (gluten and non-gluten) and legumes.  So when the 30 days are up, your system is well clear of these foods and their effects, and you're essentially a real, live, walking, talking test environment.  You are your own control group.  Pretty cool, huh?

So on day 31, you reintroduce one food group in isolation. Just one.  And you need to go to town on it a bit, really dose yourself so you can make sure that you've eaten enough of it to measure any effects. Then you go back to eating Whole30 for the next two days, so that you can be reasonably sure that any effects you experience are as a result of eating that food group. And those effects could be on your body, your digestive system, your energy levels, your mood, anything at all.  You then repeat this for each of the food groups, with the exception of sugar, because really, it's probably best not to reintroduce that at all if you can bear not to, except things like a little added sugar in shop bought ketchup, bacon or smoked salmon that has sugar used in the curing process, that sort of thing.

Now the Whole30 website recommends that you introduce the food groups in order from the least likely to affect you (legumes) to the most likely to affect you (gluten grains).  I decided that I would use one of my Whole30 staples, a beef mince chilli, as the carrier for my reintroduction, so on Sunday I ate some with a metric fucktonne of peas and beans. Oh and some peanuts, but not with the chilli, just by themselves as a snack.

It's legume reintroduction day! The food on the left is a @whole30 staple for me and I'm going to use it as the basis for reintroduction. It's beef mince with onion, peppers, chilli, grated carrot and tomatoes. Today I'm having it with edamame, runner beans and peas. On Wednesday, I'll have it with rice, on Saturday with grated cheese and on Tuesday with pasta #healthhabitsrelationshipwithfood #januarywhole30 #whole30 #whole30uk

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Jan 31, 2016 at 11:33am PST

Doesn't that look delicious?  Peas and runner beans and edamame. Nom.  Given that legumes are listed as the food group that affects the smallest number of people, I was not prepared for what happened the next day.

Which was when my digestive system emphatically and indeed explosively demonstrated that it does not like being filled up by that amount of legumes. BAD TIMES. Aside from the suddenness with which I went from feeling slightly queasy (not that unusual for me first thing in morning) to legging it to the loo, I was really surprised by this, as I don't recall ever having had this issue before.  But I did eat more beans than any normal human being would eat in one sitting, so I think that once I'm done with the rest of the reintroduction, I'll do a bit more experimentation with (less) beans to see if it was just the quantity that I ate.  Please note that this experiment will be done on a day when I know I'll be spending all of the following day within ten metres of my toilet.

The good news was that in one giant incident all of those legumes were *ahem* out of my system, so I soon felt normal and ready to proceed to the next reintroduction on day 34, which was non-gluten grains.  I was very excited by this as I really missed rice during my Whole30.

@whole30 reintroduction day four: non-gluten grains. Really hoping my digestive system is ok with this, I really missed rice! #whole30 #januarywhole30 #iamwhole30 #whole30uk

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Feb 3, 2016 at 5:03am PST

Oh look at that lovely fluffy rice. Delicious fluffy white rice.  Lovely lovely rice that my stomach had no issue with at all.  I also ate some lovely sweetcorn and my stomach doesn't mind a bit.  Hooray!

So I'm halfway through the reintroduction process and at the moment the score is non-gluten grains 1 - 0 legumes.  Dairy will be reintroduced on Saturday (OMG CHEESE) and then gluten grains on Tuesday (OMG gluten grain reintroduction day is on Shrove Tuesday PANCAKES PANCAKES PANCAKES!!!!).

January 2016

It’s February already, if you can believe it.  Actually, having just typed that, I’m now pondering the point, as January seems to have simultaneously zipped by and lasted FOREVER.  It’s been a month of sadness, as we lost icon after icon. Bowie, Rickman and yesterday, in the dying embers of the month, Wogan.  But January is also a month of newness, rebirth, optimism and goal setting.  And on that front, I’m really happy with how the month went.

This year, as well as setting big annual goals, I’ve set smaller monthly goals to achieve.  I’ve never been very good at sticking to things for a long time, so I think the smaller goals are a better idea for me.  Further, I have set myself three achievement levels for each month. 

PRIDE: This is the minimum that I want to achieve to finish the month with my head held high

STRETCH: Taking it to the next level, pushing it just a little further

WILDEST DREAMS: Superstretch! Go on, dream big

So what did this look like for January, and how did I do?  Let’s find out……

PRIDE: Complete a January Whole30.  A big tick against this one, although midway through the month, this result felt entirely uncertain.  I had got to around day 14 and I was ready to give up.  However, I was not ready to give up before I’d been to the first ever UK Whole30 seminar that Melissa Hartwig was hosting on the 16^th. Imagine turning up there with the knowledge that you’d fallen off the wagon the day before. Mortifying.  And it was a good choice to hang in there, as I left the room full of motivation, with a picture of myself with Melissa and her signature in my copy of It Starts with Food.  Gigantic win.  

@melissa_hartwig describing chocolate cake in excruciating detail at the @whole30 #whole30uk seminar #invisiblechocolatecake #whereisit? #rightthereonthelecturn

A photo posted by @readyamefire on Jan 16, 2016 at 3:11am PST

This was not my first Whole30.  I’ve done a few before and certainly haven’t finished all of them…

1. September 2014. Finished 30 days, but epic fail at the reintroduction phase.  I chose to reintroduce dairy first and fell face first into a cheese induced coma. With icecream. And more cheese.
2. January 2015.  Quit partway through.  A friend of mine died at the beginning of January last year and his wake was held at the restaurant where he had been head chef.  The food served was from his menu, and honouring him felt significantly more important than sticking to the Whole30 plan.  It was a definite, mindful choice and I have no regrets about it.
3. April 2015. Epic fail. Woeful.  I went and gave blood and afterwards dove into the crisps and chocolate bars in a face stuffing frenzy of monumental proportions. Oops.
4. September 2015. Success! (ish).  Finished the 30 days, just didn’t bother with the reintroduction.  I think I was so ready to be done with it and desperate for some of the foods I’d been craving that I just stopped.

So this was my fifth attempt at a Whole30 and I think it’s the one that has affected me most (so far!).  A lot of that is to do with listening to Melissa speak, so I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to do that.

STRETCH: Get under 15 stone.  15 stone! FIFTEEN STONE?!?!?! Deary me, where did things go so wrong?  Last year was a really difficult one.  I found myself in a really difficult and emotional situation with a member of my team at work, which really affected me.  Aside from that, we relocated to the London office, meaning a significant lifestyle change, all with the ever present, looming threat of redundancy.  Fun times.  When I’m in a bad place, food is my go to place for comfort.  There is not a single emotion that isn’t made better by smothering it in a soothing layer of cheese.  Then a layer of crisps. Then some chocolate. And then some more crisps.  And why not make it fizzylicious by pouring some Pepsi Max with cherry over it?  Go on, you’re worth it.  So I ended the year about 2.5 stone heavier than I started it and frankly, I wasn't in tiptop shape to begin with.  WOE.  So although Whole30 is much more than a quick fix weight loss plan, there’s no denying that it’s a great kickstart to healthy eating and therefore weight loss is a cheery side effect.  Again, I can put a big tick next to this goal, as I lost a total of 11lb in the last 30 days.  WHOOP.

WILDEST DREAMS: Fit back into walking trousers. Due to being such a gigantic fatso last year, I spent the second half of the year walking Murdoch wearing tracksuit bottoms in all weathers, finding myself completely unable to fit into my walking trousers.  EXTREME WOE. The good news is that I tried on the walking trousers yesterday and although they are still quite snug, I can put them on and do them up.  WINNING.

So all in all, I’m counting January as quite a success.  And I’ve already got my goals together for February too.

PRIDE: Complete the full Whole30 reintroduction, properly, without titting about.

STRETCH: Complete at least three NTC workouts per week and swim at least twice a week

WILDEST DREAMS: Get down to 14 stone

Watch this space............

Six things I learned over the festive period

Well that's Christmas over and done with - hoorah! I had a very lovely time with my family and I learned a few things along the way, which (in the spirit of festive giving) I'm going to share with you all.

1. Do not get involved in playing games. Your brother in law might tell you that the Post-it note game * only takes 15 minutes.  This is an outright lie.  It takes at least an hour, by which point you will silently hate everyone in the room, including yourself.

2. Despite the fact that your mother spent many hours pushing you out of her vagina and even more hours wiping your bottom, she will not hesitate to fuck you up by writing the name "Big Ears" on a Post-it note and sticking it to your forehead, thereby dooming you to an hour of evermore hopeless questions and guesses, at the end of which, your sister will essentially be forced to just tell you that you're Big Ears.

I hate you, Big Ears

3.  If you ask the question "Am I a humanoid?", you will mean "Am I human-shaped?".  However your sister will think you mean "Am I a robot?", she will answer no, and you will NEVER EVER guess that you are Big Ears, who is pretty much human shaped, when compared to, say, a car or maybe a tree.

4.  You will get to the end of the game and discover that your parents have no idea who the people stuck to their foreheads are, despite the fact that you may have been discussing them just prior to commencing the game (Aled Jones - Dad). Alternatively, they may have entirely forgotten what this person was famous for, rendering half the questions and answers completely useless ("Rusty Lee did cooking? I only remember her laugh!" - Mum)

* if you don't know what the Post-it note game is, you can find more information here

5. If you buy your family a cuddly reindeer that sings "We wish you a Merry Christmas" through the medium of fart noises, prepare to hear it A LOT throughout the festive period, especially if your four year old niece finds it hilarious. I can only imagine that by now it must have "run out of batteries" possibly forever.

6.  Other things small children find hilarious (apparently), include being hit repeatedly in the head by a dog's tail.  As a result we kept finding my two year old nephew bent over with his head by Murdoch's bum (a dangerous game in anyone's reckoning) getting whacked in the head by Murdoch's wagging tail and giggling.


As you can imagine, after all of the mayhem, it was really nice to get home and sit silently stroking Murdoch's ears for a bit, while staring blankly into space and wondering whether you will ever be capable of living with another human being ever again.

Fridge Soup

Sometimes life doesn't entirely go to plan. Take this weekend, for instance. I should've been in Nice running a marathon. I'm currently at home in a onesie making soup. So you see my point?  I'd like to get upset about this and throw some outrage at the situation. But I'm a firm believer in owning up when you've managed a situation poorly.  

I currently have an injured leg.  My knee is painful, which has been caused by my IT band tightening, which was caused by physio intended to fix my overloaded hamstrings.  My hamstrings are overloaded because my glutes are horrendously lazy and do not fire at all.  They just don't activate.  So here's my confession.  I found out about the issues with my glutes over a year ago when I had a biomechanical assessment as part of my membership induction at Charlotte Ord Academy. And I have done nothing about it.  So I can't get angry about not being able to run this marathon.  I'd love to be able to pass the blame for my poor performance onto someone, something else. But I can't.  It's all my own doing.  I have got better at doing my rehab exercises over these past few weeks, but it was far too late to be any help.

I had secretly held out some hope that I'd get to Nice and feel just fine on the day and glide along 42km of the Riviera coastline like some kind of bad ass, but walking around a golf course for nearly six hours in the pissing rain on Friday put paid to any of those notions.  My legs were fine at the start of the day, but as time went on and I creaked around 18 holes as an auctioned caddy for my friend's memorial golf day, it became clear that my legs would not be up to the task of a marathon.  I headed home afterwards to pack my bags and get an early night before my 06:25 flight to Nice.  

It was as I dithered around the flat in a desultory fashion that I realised that I didn't want to go.  I had been determined to go to Nice anyway, as my flights and hotel were non refundable.  And it's a nice place, Nice. But I didn't want to go there. On my own. In November. To not run a marathon.  So I decided to stay home for the weekend. And immediately felt less anxious.  I felt even more cheerful as I headed to Guildford to collect Murdoch from the Dog House and started to look forward to a weekend spent snuggling with the mutt. Perfection.

Which brings me to this week's exciting batch cook up

Fridge Soup

This is a simple recipe, with no need for a sous chef, which is handy, as mine is nowhere to be seen.

Where's Murdoch?

This soup is basically another really simple way of using up whatever veg you might have lurking in the fridge.  I had plenty, as I have started getting veg boxes from Abel & Cole again.  I am a big fan of the veg box, especially as Abel & Cole have changed things up to give you more control over what you get in each box.  However, with that said, there are times when the amount of veg in the fridge reaches panic levels.  Especially when you've spent all week shoving the veg aside to get to the pizza and eat that instead.  Come on, we've all been there.  

Firstly, I chopped up a couple of leeks, a couple of onions and some garlic.

Vampires can't get within 200 yards of me right now.

Then I warmed up some butter in my most enormous saucepan and chucked them in on a low heat to gently soften.

I've sprung a leek!

While that was going on, I chopped up some more veg: parnsips, carrots (including some lovely purple carrots, so nice to get the different kinds to mix it up a bit) and threw that in the saucepan.

A lovely, colourful mixture of root veg

 I chopped up some cabbage and threw that in too.

Cabbage

Then I threw some potatoes in, what's the point of soup without potatoes? Hell, what's the point if life without potatoes?

If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, it would probably be the humble potato.

I grabbed a couple of handfuls of lentils to add some bulk, rinsed them thoroughly and put them in the saucepan too.  

Adding a bit of bulk

I seasoned with plenty of sea salt and black pepper, chucked in a couple of vegetable stock cubes and lots of boiling water and left it all to bubble away on a low - medium heat for an hour or so.

Bubbling soup

Because I hate having chunks in my food, I got my hand blender out and blended the soup until smooth.

Smooooooooooooth soup

As I was feeling decadent, I served with a swirl of single cream and a buttered slice of granary bread. 

Hearty

As I write this, the soup is still hotter than the surface of the sun. So I haven't put it into portion containers yet. But I think it'll be around 6 - 8 portions, which will see me through most of the week.

Hearty Mince

I'm not a chef. I'm not even much of a foodie. I could quite happily eat the same five meals between now and when I die and not really feel too worried about the situation. Which means that cooking gigantic vats of food to eat across the week really suits my temperament, as well as my schedule.

And there's something about this time of year, just after the clocks go back, that makes me feel all autumnal and jolly and quite in the mood to batch cook the crap out of something. So tonight I cooked..... well I'm never entirely sure what to call it. Is it a bolognese if you're not serving it on pasta? Is it a chilli if it has no kidney beans? I have no idea. So instead, I'm going to call it 

Hearty Mince

The first thing to note about making hearty mince is the invaluable nature of the sous chef. Mine is quite keen on veg preparation, but soon loses interest thereafter.

Murdoch loves raw carrot

There is no set recipe for this meal, not really. I look at what veg I've got in the fridge, pop to the supermarket to add what else I fancy and chop it up quite finely, as I don't like having big chunks of stuff in my food. This time round I had onion, garlic, leeks, chillis (with seeds left in for a bit of ooomph), carrot, courgette (not chopped in this picture as I ran out of room on the chopping board), fresh peas and edamame.

Chop veg finely. Or don't. It's your dinner, have it how you like.

Once you've got your veg ready to go, heat up a bit of butter (or olive oil) and chuck the veg in a big pan to soften on a low heat. I left the peas and edamame out at this stage, to be added later.

Probably at least fifteen of your "five a day"

Next, turn up the heat a bit and add some mince. I bought two large (750g) packets of extra low fat beef mince from Tesco and forgot to take a picture of it cooking, mostly because my pan isn't really big enough to accommodate that much meat, so there was quite a bit of unseemly swearing at this stage. Please imagine a picture of a metric fucktonne of beef mince browning off with the veg. Thanks. After it was all browned off, I drained it a bit, as there was quite a bit of liquid at this stage.

Starting to look quite tasty

Add some herbs, stock cube, salt and pepper (and if you fancy it, a spoonful of Marmite. But not coffee, as Sainsbury's seem to be suggesting. WTF Sainsbury's?! Give it a rest), some tomato purée and a couple of cartons of chopped tomatoes. Lower the heat again and let it bubble away for a bit.

Add the peas and edamame

Near the end of the cooking, I added the peas and the edamame. They only need a light steam, so best add them towards the end, otherwise you risk ending up with green mush.  I popped the lid on so that all of the steam stayed in and left it alone for about 10 minutes.

Everything tastes better with cheese on it. FACT.

This made eight nice sized dinners, which you could serve with pasta, rice, quinoa, couscous, veg or even eat just by itself. As you can see, I've popped some grated cheese on top to serve.

My final top tip is to decant into individual dinner sized containers, especially if you're a greedy bugger like me.  Then you have ready to go portions, rather than spooning gigantic helpings out of one big tub and wondering why it only lasted a day (come on, we've all been there).