If you can't stand the heat...cook Chilli con Carne!

Well, to have achieved one of my annual resolutions by 7 January 2007, can't be too bad.

Less impressive was the fact that by cooking one meal actually constituted “cooking more” than in all of 2006. That is not to say that I hadn't previously prepared meals of a “convenience” type - but these couldn't really be considered to be cooking -a more accurate description would be “heating”.

The first meal was Chili con Carne, made with natural (rather than tinned) products - so the dried kidney beans had to be soaked, the steak diced etc - and it was pretty good. The pudding was even “created”, (comprising of banana, grapes, brown sugar, Greek yogurt, vanilla essence and lemon juice) and seemed to be appreciated.

However, given that this “event” only occurred a couple of hours ago, and food poisoning can take 24 hours to kick in... maybe I shouldn't comment further for a couple of days.