It's a New Year and before I find myself bending under the weigh of my resolutions, I have decided this year that I wont make any!  I am heading for a milestone birthday this year....hopefully the weather will be good to me in August, when it is, and apart from wishing that myself and my family will remain happy and healthy  and achieve successfully what we set out to do, there is nothing more, that I should really ask for!!

After the Christmas and New Year splurge.....its back to simple healthy ish ( healthy most of the time I hope) meals.  Having thought this morning that some sort of protein with veggie sticks and dips would be nice this evening, as the hours have ticked by and its has become duller and colder....that idea has fallen by the way side and so, beef and vegetable pies with a home made pastry crust....it is!! So healthy has gone out of the window and had I made a resolution....I would have fallen foul by day 2!!

In September I entered my  mince pie recipe in the Tesco Real Food Bake Off and at the end of October, I got an email which said  

"Congratulations! After you submitted your recipe at tesco.com/realfood you have been drawn as a lucky winner in the Tesco Baking prize draw (week five) featured online at tesco.com/realfood.

Your fabulous prize is a Morphy Richards Hand Blender Work Centre, which combines the convenience of a hand blender with the flexibility of a processor. It has a powerful 700W motor with a turbo setting and an array of accessories to cater for all your food preparation needs."

In November, my prize arrived....all I can say I was well chuffed and naturally the family was very proud of my achievement.   The blender has had a good testing over the weeks, blending my home made soups and the blade attachment made light work of crushing the 300g of ginger nuts for the baileys cheesecake base, I made on Christmas Eve....so Thank you Tesco!!