novel34

It's no secret.  I love, LOVE potatoes.  Low carb doesn't work for me.  I cannot live without potatoes.  It's as simple as that.  They are my favourite vegetable.   I love them any way I can get them . . . boiled, mashed, steamed, fried . . . but my favourite of all is BAKED!  I just adore baked, or jacket potatoes as they are sometimes called.  In fact my very first meal here in the UK back in 2000 was a jacket potato topped with cheese at a little cafe in Euston station whilst we were waiting to catch our train up here to Chester.   So as you can imagine I was thrilled when the Bannisters' Farm people asked me if I would like to try some of their frozen potato products.  I am no stranger to the 4 ready baked potatoes packet.  I've been buying them regularly since I first spied them in the shops a couple of years ago.  I just adore them.   You can have one baked and on the table in 6 minutes, which is pretty handy, but i...

Do you like chicken wings and chips as much as I do???  Do you hate the mess, agro and smell caused from deep frying???   Well, have I got a great kitchen gadget for you!!   We recently got a Tefal AW950040 Family ActiFry Fryer   in  Black from Argos.  This was something I had wanted for a very long time.  My friend Angie (may she rest in peace) had gotten one a couple of years ago and raved about how good it was. The Actifry Fryer is a machine that uses new cooking technology to create crisp fries and other foods with virtually no oil.  I love chips, but I don't love all the fat and calories in them, so they are a very rare treat in this house. The first thing I cooked in the ActiFry Fryer was chips.  I just had to see if they were as good as promised.  I apologize ahead of time for the lousy photos. ( I hate the problems I  with natural light in these late autumn/winter months.)  Egg and Chips was on the menu.  Normal...

    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...