kellyjackson2102

*This post contains affiliate links.

If I have learned one thing about my lovely blog readers throughout the lockdown, it’s that you are all nosy bastards. Only kidding. I’ve recently been doing some giveaways to grow my Twitter account and I’ve built a community of really nice, kind, engaging people. Something I promised myself I would do more when I changed my blog from a lifestyle blog to a food blog was to ask on my various social media account what content you guys want to see. Imagine. Writing content for the readers instead of me. Haha, only joking again. I like to think you like reading my posts because I like writing them so much. I’ve also noticed how much I need new plates since I started taking more pictures of my food so watch this space! 

So, onward to the serious business of, what is in my fridge?

Party sausages

I’m a savoury kinda gal. As much as I enjoy chocolate at “that time of the month”, the rest of the time I LOVE savoury like party food and crisps. I’m not sure how buying cocktail sausages without a cocktail party to accompany them started, but it is now a tradition to get party sausages on shopping day. Because let’s face it, shopping day is like a party day.

Quiche

So the party food niche continues. I enjoy quiche. Quiche Lorraine is the best one for me. Simple, yet effective. A lot of people don’t like quiche because of the texture, and I get that, I do, but it is SOOOOOOO tasty. The texture doesn’t come into it for me. Also, eggs are a great source of protein so if anything, quiche is healthy.

Starbucks Skinny Latte

Is there anything better on a hot day than an ice-cold latte? Well yes. Sitting at the Anemos beach bar in Greece with an ice-cold latte. But seeing as that is out until 2021, a Skinny Latte iced coffee it is. I’m not sure how many calories are in the skinny one because I never look because I refuse to acknowledge that the thing keeping me awake is also the thing making me fat.

Mango juice

One of the most repetitive conversations I have with my Mum is the old “where has all of your money gone?” chestnut. What my Mum, who has never worked or lived in London, doesn’t understand, is that you only have to sneeze and you have spent a tenner. One of my little extravagances is a daily hotshot from Pret. I can’t remember how much they are now but I think they are easily £2 per day. The reason I liked them is that they apparently kick-start your metabolism and they also wake me up. It was one of a few little things I’ve been missing from my morning routine going up to the office, so when I found out we were not returning until 2021 I decided to make them at home. They are super easy, all you need is:

• Mango juice or orange juice or both
• Chilli powder (I have mine VERY spicy)
• Ginger powder 
• Turmeric powder
• Lemon juice (Jif lemon is fine)
• Apple cider vinegar

All you need to do is pour out a shot of the juice and mix one teaspoon of each ingredient into the juice. Then shot it.

Potatoes

For anyone that thinks it is weird to keep potatoes in the fridge, I don’t disagree with you, but they do last longer in there in the summer months when the UK gets quite warm. Potatoes are pretty much one of my favourite foods. Mashed potato with cheese and mustard is number one on my top ten things to with potatoes. If you have read my easy Gratin Dauphinoise recipe you’ll know it is the joint top spot with mashed potato.

Steak and Mince

As you would have heard me banging on about it on my social media channels, I have endometriosis which makes me severely anaemic. And I don’t mean that they just sent me away with the advice to eat some more iron. One of the other levels is meant to be between 130 and 180 and mine were 89. Currently, I am taking liquid iron but it doesn’t hurt to eat some iron where I can. My Mum is a vegetarian who hates touching meat and she’s been cooking bolognese and steak for me when I’ve been too unwell. 

Yoghurts

Ain’t even mine mate.

Pasta for Ron

Whenever I do dinner, I make some for me, and some for Ron. Later Ron. Seriously though, is there a knack to measuring out pasta or spaghetti? My friend has a spaghetti measuring tool which looks super handy but I have never used it. When this picture was taken I had last night’s spicy tomato pasta was being saved in the fridge for today’s lunch. I cheated and used an Asda spicy sauce which was just like standard Arrabiata sauce, tomato-y and a bit of a kick. 

Fresh orange and mango

For my aforementioned “hot shot”. I do think it is a bit mad you can buy stuff like the coffee syrup from Pret but not the hotshots.

Diet Coke

O.K I have an admission to make: I will only drink cans of coke. I’m sorry but bottles go far too flat. It’s one of my little extravagances in life and I won’t make any apologies for it. I very rarely drink any more than one per day.

Salad vegetables

My Mum eats pretty healthy food, and I enjoy it myself. My favourite salad vegetable is tomatoes, little sweet cherry ones. I also like peppers and think that a little side salad made with peppers and cut finely with a salad knife gives any meal a lot more depth. If you are anything like me as well, you will NEED a salad spinner before you even think about putting your salad on your plate. 

*This post is sponsored by Design Bundles.

Writing a food blog is the perfect outlet for anyone who has a strong passion for all things food, but might just fall short of a career being a gourmet chef. One of the reasons I love blogging about food is that you get to eat it and I also get to share quite a lot of my favourite recipes with all of my readers. But anyone reading this thinking that all you need to do if you run a food blog is to eat things and write about them would be incredibly incorrect. So much work goes on behind the scenes with a food blog. Recently I wrote a post touching on how you can use different fonts to make your food pictures stand out. In this post, I will be going through a few tips on how you can brand your food blog. If you take just that one step further from a food blog by turning it into a brand, you’ll get a lot more blogging opportunities, traffic and ultimately you’ll probably enjoy your blogging experience a lot more.

Think about your favourite food

It’s unlikely that one single food will ever provide you with enough content for an entire food blog, but you can still incorporate what your favourite food is and market yourself as a particular expert of this food. The ideal scenario would be that when someone is looking for a recommendation for a certain type of cuisine, they pick your blog because they associate you with that cuisine. One of my favourite foods is the very basic (but very tasty) fried chicken. I have a whole section on my blog called “tried chicken” which is specifically for this food. Creating a separate category for one food alerts your reader to the fact you eat it a lot and you might be the best person to go to for advice on it in a certain area.

Create a logo

Many people will tell you that a logo is the most important thing you’ll need to create a brand, and they would be more or less right. Although there are a number of things that are important when you are creating a brand, a logo is one of them. You can use websites like DesignBundles to make a mockup logo to see what it is like. You don’t necessarily need to overdo your logo by using it on every post. You can just use it on your blog theme or header and then put it in other places that feel appropriate down the line. Another benefit to creating a logo early is that if you look to sell printed merchandise to your fans down the line, you’ll already have something designed.

Think about your average reader

When you think about your average reader, the idea you might have of who they are and who is actually reading your blog could be completely different. Start by going through your blog stats and then look through your social media followers and ask yourself a few questions like “how old is my average follower?” and “which tow or city does my average follower live in?” and most importantly, what content they are consuming. The more you understand about your audience holistically, the more you can create content that is intended to resonate with them.

Schedule regular interaction

One of the best things about writing a food blog is how easy it is to write content that is useful to people. Things like restaurant reviews and recipes are frequently searched for using search engines, and even people that do not have a particular interest in food probably Google at least a few recipes per year. A good way to help with branding your food blog is to move that usefulness from your written content to your social media channels. Also, people love regularity, so make this a regular thing and it will quickly become associated with your food blogs “brand”. There are a number of ways you can do this. Perhaps you will release a recipe on a certain day each week, and then always do a live Q&A session a couple of days after so that you can see how your readers have go on with making the dish. Or, you could set aside a time to eat the food you are an “expert” on once a week and rotate through different places so that your followers always get new content.

*This post is a sponsored post for font bundles. It contains a sponsored link whereby the company paid me to use this link in the text. 

If you have ever used a recipe website like BBC Food, you’ll notice that although the recipes are good, the pictures and imagery are more than a little dull. This is one of the reasons more people are turning to food blogs to get their recipes. One of the ways you can cash in is by creating a popular recipe with some great imagery that draws in the reader. Posts of this kind are often more popular the more simple they are. There are so many great things you can do around food. It is an unlimited source of content. Many food bloggers now also rely on tools like social media to publicise their blogs. Instagram and Snapchat stories are a great way to do short, sharp recipes. Having a lot of time at home means you can experiment and cook more, so this is a great time in general to have a food blog.

If you write a food blog and you are looking for some inspiration for your layout, there are a few options you might consider.

Text over the finished food

Sometimes there might be instances where you can only share one photo. As well as several blog layouts only allowing you to have one picture, this method also works well for Instagram and Twitter. Bold, simple fonts always work well on this type of recipe imagery. This is also a technique that works on Pinterest. Pinterest is a great place for cooking content as food tends to be naturally photogenic in general. The final product should be written on the food picture so that people can tell what it is. That might sound silly, but if you are photographing something from above that has cheese on top, there could be anything underneath. Pictures shot from above tend to be very popular with people who read food blogs. I like these pictures myself because they are very neat and tidy.

Step by step posts

Step by step posts are a great medium for Instagram or Facebook stories or Snapchats. You can use  freebies fonts to do this, to make your step by steps stand out from other bloggers. Using specific fonts on a step by step post will make your cooking storey stand out from any other content. Clear and concise fonts work the best here, because there may well be people following along and trying to cook the dish as well. There is also the option for you to tie the steps posts together to make a Youtube step by step video. If you are not verbally explaining the instructions of how to cook the dish, you can use a free font to write at the bottom of each image what the step is and how to do it.

Youtube thumbnails

I think we’ve all stood and filmed a cooking vlog or a “cook with me” post and imagined having our own cooking show. People tend to veer towards the visual when it comes to content, so fonts can be used to make your thumbnail stand out. Imagine how many cooking videos there are for things like shepherd’s pie and spaghetti bolognese? These fonts do not need to be necessarily as clear and concise as a step by step or a story post, so you can afford to be a little bit adventurous here. This is also a good opportunity to play around with some bold colours, as Youtube thumbnails tend to be a bit “in your face”.

The actual recipe

If your website allows, you might consider using a free font to write your recipe. As soon as a user clicks on your link, they will instantly judge your blog by how pretty it looks. This is also why the images are so important. If you have a good enough image at the top of your blog post, people will stay on your page and continue to read. Make sure the image isn’t too big though, or too covered in ads. This will turn many people off of a website instantly.

Where should I get my freebie fonts?

Free fonts are easy to find if you look in the right places. Font Bundles is a good place to start as they have loads of free fonts and you don’t need to provide a huge amount of personal details to register. You can also upload your fonts to design tools like Canva, which is incredibly helpful.

*This article contains some affiliate links. 

First and foremost I just want to warn you: this list is going to be controversial. I don’t share takeaway tastes with the majority. I go a bit rogue here, but if you read on I will fully back up every choice and it’s ranking. 

Kebab

I know what you are all thinking. You are all thinking of that “end of the night” kebab when you stumble out of the club after 11 proseccos. That’s not quite the kebab I mean because I don’t even drink. I’m talking about a healthy chicken shish from my local posh kebab place. The reason it has been promoted to a “posh kebab” place is because you get cous cous AND rice (yes I am that easily pleased, fuck knows why I am single). By nature, I am not a healthy person, but this is my favourite because it isn’t greasy and fried.

Fried Chicken

Look at me contradicting myself and saying I like one thing because it isn’t greasy and fried and then the next thing on my list being fried. The trick is, if you get good fried chicken, it shouldn’t be greasy. I don’t go in for KFC, I prefer places like Wing Wing in Hammersmith. Fried chicken isn’t just a passion of mine, it’s a way of life. You’ll notice that I have an entire section on my blog dedicated to fried chicken called “Tried Chicken“. If you want a less greasy alternative you could always make your own with my fried chicken recipe. My secret weapon is a wok.

Indian

Seeing as I love spicy food so much, it’s not a surprise that my third favourite takeaway is Indian. I’ll usually opt for a Phal or a Vindaloo because I crave validation and want to look hard in front of (or on the phone to), the takeaway people. Once I went to an Indian near ours and they started bringing me glasses of water when they realised the Phal was for me.

Chinese

Chinese in a restaurant is fantastic, but Chinese from a takeaway not so much so. It breaks my heart when I see people bragging about how good their Chinese takeaway is because I’ve still not found one up to restaurant standard near me. I just find everything from a takeaway soggy to be honest with you. Especially dumplings. Absolute horror show from a takeaway. 

Pizza

I have a secret and I feel like admitting it will make me seem like a weirdo. I don’t like pizza. There, I said it. I don’t DISLIKE pizza, but it is just such an average takeaway for me. It doesn’t jump out enough for me to love it or hate it. It is neither here nor there. 

Burger King/McDonald’s

Burger King is another one that is hit or miss for me. Sometimes you get a good Burger King and sometimes it seems like they fried the onion rings for 37 years. Their burgers are just “ok”, and their chips are disgusting. McDonald’s is a lot better than burger king, but in general I can live without it. I know Fiat 500 Twitter lose their shit over chicken nuggets but they ain’t as good as a nice chicken shish.

Fish and Chips

All I’m saying is mushy peas. End of. 

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