Morrocan Lamb Tagine

This is a very easy and delicious alternative to a winter stew. Really tasty and so simple to make.

To serve 4 you will need:

1 or 2 tbsp oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tin chopped carrots (bit of a cheat but works just as well!)
400-500g of lamb, chopped into chunks about 2cm squared.
1/2 tsp of cumin
1/2 tsp of mint
1/2 tsp of parsley
1/2 tsp of ground ginger
1 tsp of cinnamon
2 garlic cloves, peeled, crushed and then finely chopped
1 tbsp of honey
100g of chopped dried apricots
1 vegetable stock cube, crumbled

Then to bulk it out I usually add 1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced. You could even add a parsnip. Not strictly Moroccan but this works really well!

Begin by softening the onion in a heavy based pan. I used a casserole pot for this dish.

Once soft add the carrots and diced lamb and cook until brown and then add all of the herbs and spices and the garlic and cook for another few minutes. I mixed all of the spices/herbs/garlic together before adding to the pot so they were more evenly distributed.

Add the honey, apricots, sweet potato (and anything else you might want to add) and the stock cube and cover with boiling water and bring to the boil.

And now the easy bit. Turn down the heat, cover the pot, sit back and relax for about 1 hour or even 2 if you have the time.

Serve with cous cous and enjoy! (Sorry for the rubbish photo! It's so hard to find good light at this time of year.)

No7 Eyebrow Palette

I love Boots 3 for 2 Christmas offer. Since the cheapest product is free I usually buy myself a little something as a reward for all of the hard work of Christmas shopping. This week I bought myself the No 7 Eyebrow Palette.

This palette comes in a very cute little box and contains four eyebrow powders, an eyebrow pencil, a mini applicator brush and a (very) mini pair of tweezers.

I can have quite unruly eyebrows at the best of times so I need all the help I can get.

The eyebrow powder come in four different shades. Two browns (one dark, one just a little lighter), a browny grayish shade and a pale nude/pink shade, which is probably more of a highlighter. The pencil is a light shade of brown.

The tweezers are actually a nice surprise. i was worried they would be difficult to use as they are very small but they are great. They made me wonder why tweezers really need to be any bigger!

The pencil is a little bit too light for my brows but the texture and ease of application are both really good and the powders do the trick too.

Despite this I think the palette really misses a mirror. With one it would be great for on the go brow touch up but without I'll probably end up just using this occasionally at home. It would also have been nice if there were colour options for the brown pencil (e.g. blonde, brunette etc.) because the pencil i pretty much useless to me and I'm sure it would be to a lot of people.

This product is pretty good and at £10 is also pretty cheap but there is not enough I love about it to make it a make up routine staple.