When I was a child, one of my favorite cartoons was Popeye the Sailor Man. He was really strong and that was because he ate lots of Spinach.  My sister, brother and I  were always amazed to watch his muscles bulge out and expand as soon as he squeezed that open can of spinach into his  mouth. We wanted to be strong too.  My brother kept begging my mother to buy some cans of spinach for us to eat.  She tried telling him that he probably wouldn't enjoy it, but he insisted that he would. We all did. We promised absolutely that we would eat it.  ..read more

  It is not very often that you find a casserole recipe out there that doesn't use canned cream soups in it. I don't have anything against them, myself, but when I am cooking for just one or two people it is a bit of a waste to open a full can. I found this recipe on a blog called Skinny Spatula and it did not have any soup included in the recipe.  Instead you created a creamy sauce with some very simple ingredients. Chicken stock and cream cheese.     This gets stirred into some diced cooked chicken, onions and garlic, and then the whole lot gets tossed toget ..read more

  Its easy to whip up these weeknight dinners which are perfectly sized for just two people!  With more and more people becoming empty nesters or just starting out in their lives, cooking for two people can often present a challenge. If you are an empty nester,  you may be used to cooking for four or five people every night. You may be newly wed and lacking in inspiration or the know how to tailor your meals just for two people. Most recipes out there are tailored to feed four to six people and it can be difficult to get your mind around the math required to reduce the quant ..read more

    I can't believe that it is Sunday again. The weeks just seem to roll around very quickly. I think that is true of anyone who leads a busy life and that is me. I do lead a very busy life. This past week was filled with medical appointments and the like. I think that the only day I had free really was Wednesday and I ended up taking my sister to have a shot at the local pharmacy on that day as well.  I am not complaining!  Not by a long chalk. I like to be busy.  A busy life is a life filled with goodness.  I have no time to be bored!  I could not stand ..read more

  Weekends in my house are always time for baking and cake.  I love to have a good cake in the house at the weekend, and this lush Peanut Butter Sheet Cake is a really lovely one to have in!   The recipe is for a largish, 9 by 13 inch sheet cake, which cuts into 12 squares.  Having said that you could cut the cake in half and freeze half for a later date if you don't think you will eat it all in one go. The frosting is a lovely almost Mousse-like Peanut Butter frosting. The cake itself is vanilla flavored.  The peanut butter flavor is all in that frosting!&n ..read more

  The first Christmas I was married, in 1977, my mother in law Elizabeth gave me a small handwritten notebook  containing all of her favorite recipes. It was just a small notebook, nothing fancy. In most cases the instructions were very brief.   They were the recipes that she had brought up her family on and recipes which had been passed down to her, in some cases, from her mother.  This was a real treasure to me. It is old and faded now, and covered in splotches and splashes from all of the use it has gotten through the years.   This salmon cassero ..read more

  It was several months back now that someone e-mailed me and suggested I try to make London Cheesecakes.  I am always open to suggestions.  I did some research and discovered that London Cheesecakes are not cheesecakes at all, but beautiful puff pastry bakes, topped with a bit of jam, some almond frangipane cake topping and a glazed icing with a coconut sprinkle. They sounded delicious. I am a huge lover of anything which includes pastry and jam.   I also really love the flavor of almond so I was all in with this!  I did some querying and found a recipe tha ..read more

  One thing I really loved about living in the U.K. was their penchant for tea and tea time treats.  They are a nation that stops everything it is doing a couple of times a day to enjoy a nice hot cuppa and if that cuppa is accompanied by a nice bit of cake or a biscuit, then so much the better! I love British bakes and cakes.  So much so that I wrote a book about it several years ago, which you can find here.  It contains some 60 different bakes, most of which are perfectly delightful served with cups of hot tea.   This Old Fashioned Tea Cake Slices recip ..read more

  One very well known and beloved bake shop in the U.K. is Greggs.  They serve hot drinks, toast, sandwiches and are very well known and loved for their puff pastry bakes. Cheese and onion, sausage rolls, steak bakes, etc.   People love LOVE their puff pastry goodies.  They are served piping hot in a paper bag that you can roll down and eat from.  The perfect food for anyone on the go!   I always loved their Cheese and Onion Bakes. I would rather have had one of those than anything else on their menu.  They were delicious, and actually a grea ..read more

  I am always looking for ways to use my Air Fryer. I probably don't use it enough and I need to use it more.  When I saw this  Honey Garlic Chicken Skewers Air Fryer Recipe the other day I immediately bookmarked it as something I wanted to try. Not only would I be able to use my air fryer and justify my having it, but the flavors were some of the flavors that I enjoy the most!  I love LOVE Asian flavors.   Juicy chicken pieces infused with the flavors of soy, honey and garlic and then air fried to sweet and sticky perfection. What's not to love about that com ..read more