I love cooking and making great simple dishes for every day meals. I try and do something different every day and try to keep the cost down while still dishing up delicious meals.

There have been three big influences in my cooking, but primarily it was my Mum buying me Carrier's Kitchen as a weekly magazine in the early 80s. I learnt a lot about what herbs and spices go together with what meats and knowing that has made conjuring up meals from what you have to hand fairly simple.

The second has been watching great TV foodie programs and giving the recipes I think look exciting a go. I think too many people just lick their lips and are too scared to try. It doesn't matter if it doesn't look as great as on TV, but most times it certainly tastes as good.

The third was when Helen and I went to university as mature students in our late 40s and had to make do on a severe budget. We found the cheapest way to do this was to cook fresh every day and go and only buy the ingredients required every day. Frequently what we had for supper was determined by what was on special when we got into the shop. The big secret here is very little ever goes to waste as we only buy what we need for that day.

The basics

I figure that people will go to McDonalds and order a Big Mac, which is a quarter pounder or 125g of meat, and be quite happy with their "meal" so budget the same amount of meat roughly per person when cooking. You can always fill people up with veggies!

Have a good selection of herbs and spices available and some staple veggies at hand. Frozen peas, tinned Italian tomatoes, onions, potatoes, mushrooms, olives, garlic, ginger (in the freezer), basmati rice and tomato paste in a tube are the basics I always have. Olive oil and sunflower oil are essentials and I reckon life is too short to live and cook without real butter. If you can get ghee that will do the job just as well and will last much longer in your fridge (You want buttered popcorn? Cook it in ghee. Job done awesome taste!).

I also have a philosophy of trying to put a obligatory bit of the garden into every dish I make and so have a herb garden where I can go and get the fresh herbs I need. Not entirely essential, but taste so much better than dried herbs and not too difficult to achieve. The window sill in the kitchen works just as well, but you keep on having to buy new plants.

What this site is all about

Guess what? It is about cooking! I have an awesome recipe book called The Silver Spoon. Apparently every Italian Mama gives this to their daughters when they get married. Not only are all the recipes my favourite cuisine, Italian, but the best thing about the book is there are very few pictures so no preconceived, studio set up expectations as to what your food should look like on a plate. Consequently you are not going to find many pictures here.

All the meals here are family favourites that everyone says "oh goody we are having that again".  Most have had the tongue in cheek comment "That was truly disgusting" added to end of the meal and the sparkly clean plates afterwards testament to just how dreadful the meal really was.

Enjoy giving these recipes a try.