Lauren Gemmell

Food, Fitness, and Technology

Category: Recipes (Page 3 of 6)

Tourists and Packed Lunches

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.

Growing Your Own Food

Last summer there was a spate of food blog posts about eating food you had grown. The beautiful photos of produce and salads made with home grown vegetables, hit something that I never knew I had. The urge to grow things, to eat local produce, to get back to nature. I was shocked at my reaction a little bit, and more than a little jealous of those who could. The best I could hope for was my occasional attempts at a windowsill garden.

My basil, tomato and strawberry seeds

Of course the problem is, by the time you see the photos and read the posts, it’s too late. It’s unlike almost anything else in the food blog world – you can’t just go and make it yourself tomorrow. (I guess the closest thing is Mincemeat the week before Christmas). Growing food doesn’t happen overnight and if you want to have your own tomatoes during the summer you need to think about planting them in March or April.

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Knitting a Mini Christmas Stocking

Bet you didn’t know I could knit?

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And the winner is…

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…

Cook in a Bar

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.

Gin & Tonic with Elderflower Cordial

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).

Gin & Tonic with Elderflower Cordial

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…

Blueberry and Spinach Smoothie

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.

Blueberry and Spinach Smoothie

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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First Award!

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).

Happy 101 Award

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Happy 1 Year

Today is a year since I wrote my first blog posts here on CoffeeMuffins, and I am so proud of my baby. I feel that with this blog I have created something from nothing, in much the same way I did when I made my first loaf of bread or when I had my first dinner party.

No Knead Wholewheat Boule

With any sort of anniversary it gives you that nudge to take stock of where you stand and what you have accomplished. To see all the successes and the failures, and hopefully to allow you to learn from them.

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Atlanta

I am finally home, and after almost a week away there is only one thing I want. A home cooked meal, and maybe if you’ll give me a second option – some sleep!

Atlanta was wonderful and I met so many great people, including Nancy a fellow food blogger from The Dogs Eat the Crumbs. As some of you may know I am an almost anonymous blogger, so it was lovely to meet another food blogger – to be able to talk about what we do.

Nancy and I

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Celeriac Mash

This week posts may be few and far between, I am on holiday! No this isn’t a pre-recorded message, but I have found myself with enough free time to pull this recipe from my “To Be Blogged” pile.

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