Drum rolls and fanfare be silent. The day has come. Yep, the I Quit Sugar Chocolate Cookbook is available today. And thank you for being so patient!

My love of chocolate has seen me experiment madly with different densely nutritious and satiating recipe ideas for two years now. It’s not a bad experiment to sign up for, mind you. This cookbook, as with my previous books, evolved as an experiment as I explored sugar-free living for myself. I say this often: I’m not a scientist. I don’t pretend to be. I’m someone who gave this way of living a crack, found it did great things for my wellness, and now I love sharing what I’ve learned.

To grab the Chocolate Cookbook, click on the button below. If you’ve pre-ordered, your copy will be delivered to you today via email. Stay tuned!

I’m hoping you’ll love it. Here’s what you’ll find inside:

Blogger at The Stone Soup and food scientist Jules Clancy has been in my orbit for a while. She shared some nifty recipes using five ingredients or less here a while back. Recently we shared our love of meat. From a sustainability POV, it uses up perfectly good off-cuts. From a budget POV, it’s cheap. From a convenience POV, it’s radical. Jules also adds that from a cooking POV, it’s “forgiving”. Which is to say, it’s hard to fork it up!

Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry, recipe below

Here she shares six ways to max your mince experience, beyond the spag bol usual.

1. Stir fry it.

Mince is brilliant in stir fries because it cooks quickly and has lots of surface area to absorb the flavours of your sauce and other ingredients. It also saves you from having to thinly slice your meat.

Next time you’re planning to cook your favourite stir fry, use minced meat instead of your normal chicken breast or thighs.

Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry

Serves 2- 3

• 500g ground (minced) beef
• 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
• 2 heads broccoli
• 4 tablespoons oyster sauce (soy or Tamari, if you’re sugar free)
• 1 bunch coriander, chopped

Preheat a large wok or frying pan on a very high heat. Add a few tablespoons neutral flavoured oil and stir fry the beef. While the beef is browning, finely slice the broccoli stems and chop the head into bight sized trees. Add garlic to the beef and continue to cook until well browned. Add broccoli and a few tablespoons water and cover the pan. Continue to cook on a high heat with the lid on, stirring every 2 minutes until the broccoli is bright green and tender but still a

A few weeks back I shared my recipe for slow cooked lamb shanks with lemon and cinnamon. Have you tried it yet? Today, I’m getting slippery swift ‘n’ efficient and sharing a shank trick that’s fast, versatile and can stretch ingredients further. Oh yes, you’ll be shanking me for this shanky share!

Par-slow-braised lamb shanks…recipe below

So. It works like this. Shanks can be rather large, often 400g each. Which, even when the bone is removed from the equation, I personally think is too much meat in one sitting, for both sustainability and health reasons.

Also, one often buys shanks in bulk and one might not want to cook up a whopping great casserole with six or eight of the buggers. One might, instead, want to use the meat in different ways. Or one might only have two shanks to one’s name, which you can’t really justify slow cooking for 8 hours in a slow cooker.

Which is why I’ve played around with this idea:

par-slow-cooking the shanks first…

…then splitting up the meat, freezing it and using it in a variety of dishes.

Yeah, I love the idea, too.

The recipe below uses three shanks, which can then make 5-6 different meals (recipes below). Here’s how to do it:

Par-Slow-Braised Lamb Shanks