This colourful Beetroot and Edamame Bean Salad combines chopped fresh vegetables with pickled beetroot and has a delicious crunch. Updated 2026 · Originally commissioned by Haywards The coal fire is blazing and opening bars of Howard’s Way are playing when we’re called to fetch our Sunday evening supper from the room next door. The old […]
Christmas Bread Sauce Tips and Turkey Talk VIDEO
Christmas Bread sauce is my favourite component of Christmas Dinner. This post and video were originally commissioned by Bernard Matthews in 2014 to cook a frozen turkey and do a recipe for one of the side dishes. They say Christmas comes earlier each year in our house this year that meant a full dress rehearsal […]
Mini Tropical Christmas Cakes
My mini tropical Christmas cakes are a fast Christmas cake recipe for when you forgot to spend two months making one. I’m of a mind that life is complicated enough without feeding a booze soaked cake from October 1st every year. These mini models only require fruit to be soaked overnight and the traditional marzipan […]
5 Soya Yogurt Breakfast Ideas
Soya was originally served to me in the form of “Bean Feast”, a dried soya mince product available in the 1980s. My mother seeking to reduce her cholesterol had honed in on this product and served it up a hell of a lot. What’s for dinner? Bean Feast. Again? Yes. It was a good job […]
Slow Cooker Beef Bone Stew (Rich Beef Bone Soup Option)
Slow cooker beef bone stew is a low effort family dinner; satisfying enough for a Sunday lunch but without the faff of a roast, easy enough for midweek dinner. It also makes a deeply nourishing beef bone soup, thanks to long, slow cooking of oxtail and marrow-rich bones. Updated 2026 · Recipe originally commissioned by […]
Pumpkin Mug Cakes with Chocolate Sauce
These pumpkin mug cakes are ready so fast but you may need to order pumpkin puree. I don’t know if I ever would want to write another book but it strikes me that one full of mug cakes would be a good wheeze if I did. Making Mug Cakes in the Microwave A microwave is […]
Chooks Chicken Restaurant
Did I ever tell you about my time in EastEnders? For twelve months during the mid nineties, supposedly as a hand to mouth living student, I lived in north London’s leafy affluent suburb Muswell Hill. I could relate numerous things that happened that year but will focus on the Albert Square connection for today. I […]
Chocolate Semolina Pudding – My Grandma’s Greatest Dessert Ever!
Chocolate semolina pudding was always my favourite dessert. Whenever my grandmother telephoned me, and asked what I’d like most for pudding that Sunday, I always asked for this. My grandmother had an old style GPO red telephone with a dial long after everyone else had switched to push buttons. She persisted in keeping it right […]
Nescafe Dolce Gusto machine VIDEO REVIEW
Can you grow into liking something a food or drink? Few foods have ever fallen into the bracket of “won’t eat, can’t eat” for me; only pomegranate, marrow, and eel*. Whereas with drinks I have always been supremely fussy. As a child I was surrounded by tea drinkers. The more they persisted in offering me […]
10 foodie confessions as a parent VIDEO
I was never the kind of mother I imagined I’d be. No mini bricks of frozen vegetable puree rattling in the freezer, no banning of television or gadgets. As part of their Voice of Mum campaign promoting Baby Bath to Comfort Snuffles (a mentholly bubble bath equally good for unstuffing any family member with a […]
Pumpkin Mashed Potato with Goat’s Cheese
Speedy supper mashed potato recipe with pumpkin and goat’s cheese. I’m not sure if this counts as mashed potato credentials and I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it before but my auntie used to make Cadbury’s Smash martian costumes like these seen in the famous advert: I don’t think they were the original ones actually in […]
27 Thrifty Autumn Recipes
There’s a nip in the morning air, I’ve bought my first pumpkin and autumn is well and truly here. This month it was my turn to collate the many Credit Crunch Munch entries received and I have thoughtfully divided these thrifty autumn recipes into type: Soups and Sandwiches Avocado, pea and goats’ cheese bruschetta by […]
