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What a completely miserable yukky day!! It's windy and rainy and not nice at all. Not fit for man nor beast as the Toddster would say . . . a bit depressing wot! Just the perfect day for a fruity pudding . . . served up all warm and stodgy from the oven. This is one I found in the Good Granny Cookbook, by Jane Fearnley Wittingstall. This is a favourite book of mine. It's chock full of traditional, family friendly and delicious recipes. Our kind of food. No pretention. Just plain and simple ingredients presented in a plain and simple way. Tried and true's of a Granny. Wholesome and delicious. Just the kind of food for a rainy day. Comforting and tasty. This pudding apparently is a Devonshire favourite! That's probably why they recommend Clotted Cream to be served with it. Mmmm . . . you can't beat a buttery pudding, filled with tart apples and sweet blackberries (my addition) topped with a healthy dollop of rich clotted cream. This was like a little ray o...

One thing my mother always made at least once during the holidays was peanut butter fudge. It was never chocolate or any other kind . . . always peanut butter, but we didn't mind because we loved it so very much. It was a real treat! She always made it in the same pot, an old aluminum one that she had gotten in her original set of Wearever cookware back in 1955. I think it cost almost as much as a house, but here we are 2011 and she is still using it. Money well spent, I'd say! She never measured anything. She didn't need to . . . it was all done by memory, and she knew exactly how much of each thing she needed to add by sight alone . . . and it always worked like a charm, every time. (Me . . . I made fudge sometimes for my children when they were growing up, and 9 times out of 10 they'd end up having to eat it with a spoon. We'd watch her as it went together . . . as if by magic . . . and then sometimes she would let us beat it when it was ready, with her ...

      When I was growing up it was a Christmas Tradition each year for my mother to make Tourtiere.    My father is French Canadian and the Tourtiere was a tradition in his family.  Tourtiere is a type of a meat pie which is served in French Canada during the Christmas Holidays, normally on Christmas Eve during their Reveillon celebrations, which last pretty much all night.  My father is from the Saugenay Lac St Jean region of Quebec. My mother was English however and staying up all night was not an option in our home.   Neither was meat pie on Christmas Day, and so we always had it on Boxing Day.  Truth be known  it was a very important part of our Christmas holiday celebrations no matter when we ate it and it was something all of us looked forward to each year. I do believe that there are as many recipes for Tourtiere as there are families that eat it.  Some opt to use finely chopped meat . . . pork, or veal . . . and o...

  These are my favourite of all the Christmas Cookies.  Dutch Speculaas cookies, or what I grew up calling windmill cookies.   They are a type of spiced shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on or just before St Nicholas' feast in the Netherlands.  In recent years they have become available pretty much all year round. Speculoos are thin, very crunchy, slightly browned and crisp and spicy.  Traditionally they are stamped with pictures . . . which is why I called them windmill cookies growning up as the ones we bought were always shaped like windmills. Most Christmas's I have been able to buy them at Lidl, but we don't have a Lidl in Chester, only Aldi, so the last couple of years I have been missing them.  They are actually quite dangerous to have around the house because I can eat them like potato chips . . . they are so crisp and delicious and moreish. I found a recipe to make my own on Pinterest the other day.  It comes from www.sal...

    Back during the war years there wasn't a lot of meat to go around and so families often dined on such favourites as Woolton Pie, which  was an adaptable dish of vegetables, created at the Savoy Hotel in London by its then Maitre Chef de Cuisine, Francis Latry. It was one of a number of recipes commended to the British public by the Ministry of Food during the Second World War to enable a nutritional diet to be maintained despite shortages and rationing of many types of food, especially meat.   It wasn't named after the chef, but after the 1st Lord Woolton, Frederick Marquis, who became the Minster of Food here in the UK in 1940.  It was a simple  recipe which involved dicing and cooking potatoes (or parsnips), cauliflower, swede, carrots and, possibly, turnip. Rolled oats and chopped spring onions were added to the thickened vegetable water which was poured over the vegetables themselves. The dish was topped with potato pastry and grated cheese and...

  The Toddster grew up during the War years.  He was born just before the beginning of WW2, and was only 7 years old when it finished.  His mom was a very traditional cook, and of course there was rationing for all of his growing up years.  He has very fond memories however of the dishes his mother made.  He especially loved her meat puddings. When I talk about a meat pudding here I am not talking about a sweet pudding, but a very delicious steamed savoury pudding, stogged full of meat and gravy.  Some might think it a bit stodgy . . . but then again dishes which were popular during those years were designed to fill em up with less meat and more stodge. Todd was longing for a meat pudding and so I did a search online to see if I could find a good one.  I found a fabulous one on BBC GoodFood .  It was called Beef, Ale and Parsnip Pudding and it looked fabulous! Since it was my first time making a meat pudding, I followed the recipe exactly this fir...