I am the author (or was) of Miss Friday’s Feast, a food and cookery blog. I worked hard for five years to establish a blog that became home to many of my own recipes and ideas. The blog provided me with a space to air my views and share my love of food with the world.

Recently, for one reason or another (work, my two-year old, or just lack of enthusiasm), I had neglected writing my blog and allowed my hosting account to lapse, which meant my blog was taken offline – a bloggers worst nightmare. I had various issues trying to reinstate it. Alas, it’s gone – the domain name, the website, the posts, the recipes, my photos and five years of hard work to establish something I was immensely proud of.

Having spent a few days/weeks grieving the loss, I figured I’d turn the negative into a positive. You’ve heard the phrase right… ‘your set-back is a platform for your comeback’. So, here I am starting a fresh with Nicole’s Kitchen Diary.

I’m reading an interesting book at the moment about how success happens, it’s called Black Box Thinking (by Matthew Syed) and I have to say, it’s true that a progressive attitude towards failure  turns out to be the cornerstone for success. So I’ve made sure that I apply the lessons I’ve learnt from this set-back. I have set my domain subscription to auto-renew, meaning it will not lapse if I (foolishly) forget to pay the renewal. I have also decided to keep my own back-ups of my recipes, photos and posts, something I should have done from the start.

When deciding to start a new blog I did what you would expect, I read articles and watched YouTube videos “10 things to consider before starting a blog” and “how to set your blog apart” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point. I had to find my niche… or did I?

The web is saturated with healthy living blogs – In fact, run a quick Google search and you’ll get 5,480,000 results. I’m not knocking them, heck I read plenty of them, but that’s not me. I love cake too much, but I’m not the best baker, so that’s not going to work either. Veggie, vegan, raw food, free-from? – Let’s just stop there. Whilst I am a huge fan of healthy food, I’m not even entertaining the idea of cutting any food group out of my diet. So finding a niche was proving difficult. However, something I am hugely passionate about it a balanced lifestyle, one that involves fruit, vegetables, proteins, carbs, dairy, sugar (in moderation) and staying active. I think I just found that niche – beautifully balanced.

I decided on the name of Nicole’s Kitchen Diary as a total rip off of Nigel Slator. I’m a big fan of his general attitude towards food, a seemingly relaxed, non fussy approach. He eats what he has in the fridge or garden and experiments with flavours and textures. I also love his writing style – it’s free-flowing and liberating. I like the idea of being able to dip in-and-out of something like a blog. I’m not nearly disciplined enough in my personal life to operate to a schedule or routine. I have a two-year old which often makes the very notion of routine a laughable idea.

So, take me as you find me, haphazard, unscheduled and unapologetic.