Some you win...

...but then again, some you don't. A couple of friends we hadn't seen for several months came over for dinner on Wednesday night. They walked in, admired our kitchen (which was installed with much fuss and mess over two months at the end of last year), then Tess looked at Mark and said: 'Gosh you've lost weight'.

He may well have lost the odd pound or two. But I've lost a whole stone, nobody had noticed – and I felt like chucking my toys out of the pram.

Well, wouldn't you be a tad hacked off?

Dishes that pack a punch (part two)

It got quite cold last week, and I really fancied a nice, warming bowl of chilli con carne. A little bit of what you fancy does you good, even if you are dieting, and even though I know that chilli is a really retro 80s kind of a dish, and therefore a bit naff, I've always been fond of it. Besides, I'm addicted to Chipotle chillies (a Mexican chilli with a smoky flavour that I buy in bulk from The Cool Chile Company), and I use them to liven up both the chilli itself and the guacamole that accompanies it.

Needless to say, Mark's portion was about twice the size of mine – the portion sizes here apply to my portions, not his.

Chile con carne for 6

2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
500g lean beef mince
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 large chipotle chilli, soaked in hot water for half an hour, then chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 can kidney beans, drained
200g canned chopped tomatoes
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Warm a scant tablespoon of oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and brown the meat. Remove the browned mince from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl.

Fry the onion gently in the remaining oil until it is soft and translucent. Add the minced garlic and chopped chilli, plus the spices. Fry for a further minute.

Tip the meat back in the pan and add the kidney beans, tomatoes and oregano. There should be enough liquid in the pot to keep things moving relatively freely, if not add 100mls or so of chicken or beef stock.

Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for an hour or two. Season to taste. Serve with a dollop of guacamole (see recipe below) and a spoonful of half-fat crème fraiche.


Guacamole for two

2 tbsp grated red onion
1/2 chipotle chilli, chopped
2-3 tbsp chopped canned tomatoes
1 avocado
juice of 1 lime
fresh coriander, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix the onion, chilli and tomatoes together in a small bowl. Add the avocado, then mush together with the back of a fork – it doesn't matter if everything's a bit lumpy. In fact, lumpiness is part of the beauty of a home-made guacamole – who wants that bland smooth mush that comes in tubs at the supermarket? Stir in the lime juice and coriander and season. Serve as soon as possible, otherwise the avocado has a tendency to turn brown (although that's mitigated somewhat by the lime juice).

An unexpected surprise

After yesterday's blowout (and an epic Sunday lunch here with friends that involved bunny and pancetta cooked with verjuice, a cheese board and a blood orange and rosemary jelly for dessert) I didn't really expect to have lost much weight over the past week. So I was really pleased to step on the scales this morning and see that they read 88.3 kilos. That's down a thoroughly undeserved kilo on last week. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing right, but long may it last...

Excess all areas

This modest collection of bottles should give you some idea of a regular working day (if there is such a thing) chez Hughes.

Some time late last year I hatched a plan with one of my colleagues, The Guardian's Victoria Moore, to spend a day finding the right kinds of food to match with German Riesling. Now Riesling is one of those grapes that wine buffs love but most people are uncertain about. Part of this unpopularity is due to the fact that people think all German wine is Liebraumilch, Piesporter, Blue Nun, Black Tower or generic Hock. Even if they don't bundle Riesling in with these wines (which often have little to do with the grape in any case), people think the wines are too sweet (in fact a good German wine, even though it might have some residual – ie unfermented – sugar in it, balances this sugar with crisp acidity) or, if they're not sweet, they're so acidic and mineral that they come across as being austere and unfriendly.

Anyway, Victoria's column is all about finding good food matches for good wines – and I write an occasional food and wine-matching column for www.wine-pages.com – so we decided to call in some wines and spend a day tasting them with different dishes (I know: it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it).

The day kicked off at 11.30 with a tasting of 26 Rieslings. Once we'd worked our way through them all, rejecting the ones we didn't think were up to scratch for one reason or another, we began working on finding wines that matched some of the dishes I'd prepared. We started with quail marinated in ras-el-hanout (see 'Jen, Coz, Leo and some wonderful wines' for more info), then moved on to slices of smoked goose breast served with caramelised apple slices, a Keralan prawn and coconut curry I plan on adapting for dieters (watch this space for a full recipe some time soon), grilled lemon sole and a mushroom risotto.

Not exactly ideal diet fare, although I made sure I took small portions and swallowed very little of the wine I tasted. The conclusions of the day's experiment should be up on the Wine Pages site in the next few weeks – and you'll probably find Victoria's take in the pages of the Guardian's Saturday magazine within the next fortnight.

Bad timing

Poor James. Yesterday morning he found out the hard way that I'm not much of a morning girl. It's not that I'm bad tempered or taciturn in the mornings, and I can certainly crank out an article in the early hours if under pressure of a deadline. But physical activity before about 9am doesn't seem to agree with me.

However, because James' schedule was packed, we were booked in for a session at 8 yesterday morning. I woke up early enough to have my morning muesli at the right time to provide fuel for my muscles (about an hour or so before exercise is the best time to eat complex carb-based breakfasts – if you're short of time fresh fruit will do just before exercising, at a push). But I was sluggish. Even worse, I whined more than a mosquito does on a hot summer's night when you're trying to get some shut eye.

Just how do those high-powered execs manage to work out at 6 in the morning before a big day of meetings?

A great spring salad

I'm rather partial to a bit of beetroot, love walnuts and yearn for soft, tangy goat's cheese. So it isn't that surprising that one of my new favourite dishes (especially as the weather seems to be warming up slightly) is a salad that combines these three ingredients.

A couple of points worth noting: beetroot, delicious as it is, is also packed with sugars, so go easy on it. You can buy beetroot ready-cooked, but make sure it hasn't been preserved in vinegar. Alternatively, buy uncooked beetroot, the smaller and more tender the better. I like to cook mine in the oven at around 200C, wrapped in tin foil with a few drops of water sprinkled around the beetroot to stop it drying out. Depending on the size of your beetroot, it will take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to cook through – if in doubt, take it out of the oven and poke a skewer through it. If it slips through easily, it's done. If you meet with resistance, the beetroot probably needs to go back into the oven a bit longer. Don't forget to peel it before slicing it up for the salad – the skin slips off fairly easily.

It's also worth paying good money for decent walnuts. I nearly fainted when I saw the price of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Chilean walnuts (nearly four quid for a bag), but they're so moist and flavoursome in comparison to anything else I've found that I've decided I'd rather have slightly fewer, tastier walnuts than a larger quantity of dried-out nuts.

You can use any kind of goat's cheese, from the hard and tangy kind to soft goat's curd that needs to be spooned onto the salad. Feta, although it's a sheep's milk cheese, is another good alternative.

Beetroot, walnut and goat's cheese salad for one

a good handful of salad leaves (I like the ones with aromatic herbs mixed in)
75g cooked beetroot, sliced
a handful of walnuts, roughly chopped
50g goat's cheese, crumbled

Dressing:
Walnut oil
Tarragon vinegar
Dijon mustard

Making this salad, once you've cooked your beetroot according to instructions, couldn't be simpler. Just chuck the beetroot, nuts and cheese on top of the leaves, dress and serve.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't given any quantities for the dressing – I'm crediting you with enough smarts to make a dressing all by yourself. Just go easy on the amount you use to keep the calories down.

A word from James...

When I first met Natasha late last year, and she told me about her weight-loss plan, I was immediately interested. Here was someone who didn't want a quick fix and wasn't interested in following the latest fad diet. Instead this was someone who wanted to do it the only way I'd recommend. Slowly but surely.

When we actually started our sessions early this year, she didn't try and con me about her abilities. She was very honest and told me straight that she was hard pushed to run for a bus without collapsing or, at best, being very out of breath. Everyone has to start somewhere and Natasha's first and hardest step had already been taken: deciding to do something about the shape she was in.

The initial tests I asked her to do (steps and squats) proved hard work. In fact, half-way through the step test, Natasha had had enough. However, she persisted and managed to complete the three-minute routine.

Over the past few weeks, I've got her to increase her workload bit by bit, moving through basic exercises (lunges, high knees, split squats), upping the intensity in terms of frequency, time, speed and numbers of repetitions – and I'm pleased to say that, thus far, I haven't needed a resuscitation kit.

In terms of increasing Natasha's aerobic fitness, we first started with walking, then fast walking, then added short bursts of jogging. Once she'd become a dab hand at that, the ratio of jogging to walking increased. Walks became shorter, jogs longer and faster, with less rest before the next activity (bench steps, for example, that she now takes in her stride).

The important thing to remember when you're getting fit is progression. Often clients ask me: 'Shouldn't I be getting better at this by now?' If I'm doing my job as a trainer properly, adjusting each session, the answer is no. There are many tools that trainers use to gauge a client's progress and the fact that Natasha asked me this question the other day was a clear indication that not only was she getting fitter and stronger, she'd not noticed me turning up the heat on our sessions. (Well, not unless I really go for it – then she knows all about it!)

My aim (and it's a highly achievable one) is that by the end of March Natasha will be able to run a comfortable lap of the park where we train, just over half a mile.

At this rate, given the traffic levels on our streets, she'll be beating the bus home any day now!