Some thoughts on cooking Firstly, please don't take offence as the recipes here are really step-by-step - if you know how to cook, please just ignore the bits you already knew. But I have had feedback from children who have managed to cook following the recipes and I think that's well worth other people being a bit annoyed that I show how to chop up an onion... I really don't want to exclude anyone and if by chance, someone who has never cooked will have a go at one of the recipes, then it was well worth it. I love cooking - and I love preparing food from fresh ingredients. I do admit to the odd slip of a take-away curry - but apart from that, I do prepare a meal a day - from fresh ingredients. There are some exceptions of tinned / frozen stuff I use:

• tinned chopped tomatoes
• tinned tomato concentrate
• dried lentils, chickpeas, etc.
• dried spices - you can't grow everything throughout the year or you might not have a garden (like me). Some spices don't work dried, such as Basil - don't even bother with it. But it grows nicely on your window sill.
• frozen peas
• some tinned fish - macarel, herring, sardines ...

Tried and tested

I have also tried all recipes several times and the volumes, weights and cooking times given are accurate and work.

Apart from that, I try to get everything as fresh as I can - so I go food shopping on a daily basis. Not only does that provide the fresh stuff I want, but it also gives me the inspiration on what to cook on the day by looking at the available vegetables & meats.

Full Fat

Full fat yoghurt, milk and cheese - yes please! I don't use any reduced fat products in cooking - the stuff just doesn't taste right. Just eat a bit less.

Feedback and Rating

You can rate each recipe and leave feedback. I will only delete feedback if it contains unacceptable language - otherwise everything is left unmodified as submitted. I do have to take off a fair amount of postings and I find it hard to understand why people leave very insulting remarks - this is just a privately run site to share some recipes, no need to spill your bile here ...

Vegetarians & Vegans

I am not a vegetarian, neither am I a vegan. This site does not list any specifically vegetarian or vegan recipes. I absolutely love the veg boys leaving sour feedback on dishes like Spaghetti Bolognese because it contains meat. If you don't add meat, it's not the dish. Call it what you want, add tofu, but it won't be Bolognese. There are lots of sites for vegetarians, please just go there and don't leave silly feedback.

Salt Phobia

You need a certain level of salt in food if you don't want it to taste bland. Feel free not to add any salt to these recipes, but it won't taste right. Savoury food with a decent taste contains about 0.8 - 1% of salt by weight, and so do my recipes. I'm sure there are lots of web sites catering for the natrium chloride phobic amongst you, so please go there. And don't post comments on this site about the salt content of my recipes.

Non-Agnostics

Alcohol has a boiling point of 72 degrees celsius ... that means if you cook the stuff, it evaporates. The only thing left is the taste of the red wine. Especially in my spaghetti bolognese recipe that simmers for 2 hours ;-) Let's calculate the alcohol content here. 2 hours simmering leaves about 5% of the alcohol in the dish. I add 1 glass of wine (0.15 litres), so we started off with 18 grams of alcohol, of which roughly 1 gram remains after simmering. The total mass of the cooked dish is around 1300 grams, so we will have an alcohol content of 0.07%. Fruit juice can have up to 0.1% of alcohol. If you feel that you still shouldn't use wine in cooking, how about just not adding the wine? This is not a web site for cooking that caters for any specific belief system. If you feel offended, how about searching google for recipes that suit your beliefs?