For the Love of Our Home-Grown Berries!

Huge thanks to Food52 for pointing out that this week is Blueberry Week and providing a fabulous selection of recipes that champion these little dark balls of deliciousness and greatness! If you don't already subscribe to the Food52 newsletters, I urge you to do so now - it's inspirational!

However, if you live 'this side of the pond' I urge you to celebrate the incredible wealth of home-grown berries that are crowding our shelves right now - particularly strawberries, raspberries and blackberries (or brambles as we call them in Scotland).

Blueberries have 'bagged' a superfood spot - they are low in calories, high in fibre, chock full of immune-boosting vitamin C, offer good levels of bone-building vitamin K and are believed to contain the highest, health-protective antioxidant capacity of all commonly-consumed fruits and vegetables BUT how often do you find 'locally-grown' blueberries on your supermarket shelf? In my experience, occasionally, but not often, WHEREAS just yesterday, the minute I walked into my 'local', I was greeted by an overwhelming, almost 'jammy' and extremely enticing aroma of strawberries, grown only around 50 miles from my city dwelling so there was no competition - the strawberries won hands down for tomorrow's breakfast! Furthermore, the strawberries were around £5 per kg and the blueberries were around £11 per kg - not a difficult decision! 

I read somewhere that not only has the European love affair with blueberries come as a direct result of health reports hailing them as one of the world's most beneficial superfoods but also that we appear to be more than happy to gorge on them because unlike strawberries, they don't require any work - you have to 'hull' a strawberry and that seems to be too big a task for some - what?? 

Just so you know... strawberries, raspberries and blackberries all offer more vitamin C than blueberries and when in season and locally-grown, pack a health-protective punch not too far behind blueberries (particularly those poor little mites that have had to travel a good many miles over a number of days to get onto our shelves)! 

Bag your home-grown berries while you can - the season is short. Have them early doors with creamy-smooth yoghurt and a handful of nuts and seeds, top a couple of crisp breads with nut butter, berries and black pepper or add them to salads for lunch, whizz them up into a smoothie with a dollop of delectable crème fraîche or have them on their own when you need a little sweetness in your world mid morning or mid afternoon or make a spicy berry sauce and serve it with meat or game for dinner (delicious) or when nothing else will do... dip them in melted, deepest, darkest chocolate and tell yourself you are benefitting from even more superfood superiority! 

Fast and Fabulous Fat Loss!

i've done it at last! completed my new, multi-touch, interactive fat loss eBook! and it's been a bit of a struggle let me tell you!

At no time during the 'planning process' did I ever imagine the whole thing was going to take me so long or involve so many sleepless nights - BUT - it's done and I'm now desperate to share it with everyone who is not only keen to lose weight but also whose lives are crazy-busy and are desperate to find a route where they can access everything they need to keep them 'on top of their diet' on a daily basis by simply clicking a mouse or swiping a screen! 

Click here to head to the 'new book' page on my site where you can learn more about it, watch a couple of videos which explain how it works in more depth, have a swatch at a few screenshots from the book plus a link to iBooks where the book can be downloaded at just £6.99/€8.99/$9.99 onto your Mac, iPad or iPhone

More excitement on the way!

Gone are the days when we can be enticed to try a recipe that merely provides a brief explanation, a list of ingredients and a method - we all want an image which prompts  us to race out and get the ingredients before we head into the kitchen now! The extremely patient and long-suffering photographer who, over the last few years  has taken all the shots of my recipes for all my books, is currently polishing his lenses and has agreed to take on the mammoth task of shooting the 40+ new recipes that feature in the Diet Secrets Uncovered series of books.

There's a lot of cooking to be done (by me!) and probably a lot of laughs to be had (by both of us!) when things don't exactly go to plan but I am well-excited about seeing the results which I hope, when you see them, will tempt you to give them a go and make weight loss a delicious and never dull experience! 

Have a look at some of Keny's other work - it's brilliant and inspiring stuff!  

It's been a busy day or two!

Firstly, huge thanks to the Mail Online and The Mirror for not only featuring articles on my new series of books but also for allowing me to contribute massively to the content. I wouldn't envy any journalist who decided to try and encapsulate the content of the 10 books into just one piece - there has been a lot of scribbling over the past year and needless to say, the bulk of it is permanently-fixed in my brain as I have been over and over and over the manuscripts more times than I care to remember!

Secondly, huge thanks to those of you who are patiently waiting for the last few to be downloadable and for the print versions of each of the books to be ready for purchase through Amazon - won't be long, I promise!

Thirdly, and most importantly to me, thanks to all who have bought and downloaded the books - I fervently hope they deliver everything you want from them and guess what? Most of them have hit the top 20 in the Kindle Best Sellers list with Menopausal Women having hit the NUMBER ONE SLOT in Diets and Weight Loss - that's a first for me! I simply can't thank you enough for your support and for the many hundreds of enthusiastic emails I have received from you over the past 24 hours. Writing a book 'aint easy, writing 10 is total madness but you, my readers keep me going even when I am so tired that I begin to wonder just how bonkers I really am and whether I am ever going to complete the massive project!