Blog Cak Dum

Back in the 1980's I had a great friend who lived right next door to me.  We lived in a row of town houses and had similarly aged children.  Our husbands were both in the airforce. Her name was Mabel and I have to confess I learned a lot about cooking from her. She was one of my early inspirations.  She had three children and I had four.  Our days were busy and our hands were full, but every night after supper we would sit together on our shared door step, have a coffee together and talk about our days which had just passed. We both enjoyed cooking and food and started a supper club between the two of us. One month it would be her turn to host and the next it would be mine.  A three course dinner for four and sometimes we had themes. One month it might be Italian and another Greek. She did a beautiful German meal for us once that I still remember to this day. They had lived in Germany just prior to moving to Nova Scotia where we were all living at the time and s...

At the weekend I like to pull out the stops a bit and make my husband a delicious dessert.  We only ever very rarely eat dessert the rest of the week.  If we do have anything at all it will be pots of yogurt or once in a blue moon a sneaky mini-magnum bar or a two finger kitkat. This weekend I had some stale brioche bread that I wanted to use up and so I decided to make a small batch bread pudding, perfectly sized just for two.  Sweet Almond Bread Pudding.  And I made a sauce to serve with it as well, a blackberry sauce.  Two generous servings of decadent deliciousness.    You can use any stale brioche that you might have in the house.  I had a stale poppyseed swirled brioche that I had gotten with my grocery order. It was so yummy, but inevitably we did not get it all used up.  It was the perfect bread to use in this pudding.  Just rich enough. Not too sweet.  And the poppyseed swirl worked well with the other flavours.   You ...

  Its that time of year again. If you are a vegetable gardener you will know exactly what I mean. Its zucchini glut season!  That time of year when you have zucchini, or courgettes are they are known here in the UK, coming out your ears!  That time of the year when you think if you see just one more zucchini you are going to scream, and then . . .  you remember things like this delicious Pineapple Zucchini Loaf and all of a sudden everything is alright in your world again. I think zucchini has to be one of the most prolific of garden vegetables. You think you have picked it all and then it surprises you  with a gargantuan one, the size of a small dog that's been hiding underneat all of the leaf cover. You find yourself wondering how on earth you could have missed such a thing, but there it is. Its huge and you did actually miss finding it sooner. I'm not sure about you, but personally I like to pick my zucchini and use it when it is about the size of a large ban...

  Hamburger Gravy. This might not be the most attractive dish to look at. Most brown food isn't, but what it lacks for in looks, it more than makes up for in taste.   This classic old fashioned entree was a very common simple supper dish that was served up in many homes when I was growing up. Not only was it incredibly economical, but it was also and IS also very quick and easy to make!   Hamburger Gravy is a supper dish which has been pleasing families and their budgets for many years and still does to this day.   This week I decided to small batch my old recipe to am amount more fitting with the smaller family, and with great results.  If you are wanting to feed a larger family, you can certainly double up on everything! We are not talking rocket science here. Just multiply everything by two!    This  is  a very simple recipe, which is very quick to make and requires very simple, and humble ingredients.  WHAT WILL YOU NEED:...