Succulent meatloaf recipe
“Have you ever cooked meatloaf, Conchita?” Meatloaf sounds so vile. It has never jumped out of the cookbook pleading “Cook me, eat me.” “What I mean is that we haven’t got a meatloaf recipe on the website. I had it once in America and it was good. It’s supposed to be economical…” “OK I’ll give it a go.” I have a vague memory of being served cold meatloaf as a child. The hostess whipped off its cover with a flourish. It lay on a giant oblong serving plate, looking very large and brown and dead. I can remember the...
read moreRaspberry recipes on The Cottage Smallholder site
I love raspberries. Could eat them every day. When I was working in London and dining out a lot, I would often order fresh raspberries with a sprinkle of castor sugar for dessert. Friends tucking into waist expanding desserts would think that I was mad or on an impromptu diet. They didn’t realise that each savoured mouthful took me into the heart of a long summer’s day. Luckily for me, raspberries are packed with vitamins and minerals and are classed as a super food. But the time that it takes to harvest them makes them rather expensive to...
read moreRecipe for oven braised celery – how to love/hate celery
Celery is so good for you. Apart from many other benefits it helps to lower blood pressure naturally. Danny suffers from high blood pressure but actively avoids celery. Even when I buy a delicious blue cheese and munch it on beautifully prepared sticklets of washed and de-strung celery to try and tempt him to give celery a go, he reaches for the crackers to enjoy his share of the blue cheese. “I just hate celery. The crunchiness, the strings – everything about it. Yuk!” It was an impasse until I introduced him to stove top braised...
read moreUpdate on the superb easy Yorkshire pudding recipe
I was waiting in a check out queue at Tesco yesterday when I spotted that the check out lady looked familiar. I was 95% certain that this was the person that had shared her foolproof Yorkshire pudding with me. I was impatient to get to the top of my queue, not to check out my shopping quickly and motor home but rather to thank her for the recipe and find out her name. “Were you the generous lady that shared your Yorkshire Pudding recipe with me?” She was initially a bit evaisive. “It could have been me.” “The fabulous recipe with the...
read moreThe ultimate spaghetti and meatballs recipe in a rich tomato sauce. Slow cooker/crock pot method
“Wow! This is the best spaghetti and meatballs that I’ve ever tasted.” Danny was reaching for seconds before he’d even finished his first portion. Now before you reach for your shopping list I just want to make one thing clear. I have never sampled American spaghetti and meatballs. My recipe tasted pretty good to me too but this recipe is just how I imagined perfect American spaghetti and meatballs should taste. As a child I’m certain that we didn’t eat spaghetti with meatballs. I’ve always thought of it as an American dish....
read moreEasy recipe for Yorkshire puddings - the puffiest in the world
I’ve always been rather proud of my Yorkshire puddings. But this recipe new puts my usual offerings totally in the shade. These puds puff up, keep their shape and are 100% guaranteed to be a success. I was given this recipe by a checkout lady at Tesco many months ago. It is such an easy, no fuss recipe that I didn’t even bother to write down the measurements of ingredients. This weekend I decided to finally test it out. I put the trays into the oven to heat up. It’s well known that the secret of great Yorkshire puds is to have the fat...
read moreHow to make dried breadcrumbs and a few recipes that use them
90% of people throw out the ingredient for homemade dried breadcrumbs every week. I mean of course stale bread. White bread is best for breadcrumbs and if you include the crusts you will get a good colour in the crumbs. The bread needs to be dried in a warm place for several days before being turned into breadcrumbs. My mum used to have an oven with a slim drawer at the base to store roasting pans and so on – she used to pop hers in there. I put my bread to dry under the grill/broiler pan. We use our grill to make toast in the morning so the...
read moreRecipe for delicious breaded cod and a simple love story
I must have been about five or six years old when I first noticed The Man. We were on holiday in Hunstanton. A favourite family holiday destination when I was a child. My childhood memories are of weeks of sun, shrimp nets and feeling a bit embarrassed about my knitted woollen bathing suit. I hated that knitted suit. When it was wet it would droop in heavy folds towards my feet and the thin straps cut into my shoulders as I exposed my chest to the world. In fact these holidays were just a long weekend and once a whole week. It was during this...
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