Marie Cookpad

  When I was around 6 or 7 years old, I discovered Enid Blyton Books.  I was totally enthralled with her stories.  At first it was the fairy stories but then I graduated into the adventure books and the books about boarding schools.   The children in the adventure books didn't seem to have much supervision and they travelled all around the countryside, solving mysteries and getting in and out of scrapes.  I longed for adventure.   The children in the boarding schools also had adventures, and tuck boxes and  midnight feasts. All of her books were filled with lot of deliciously exotic sounding foods . . .  huge coconut macaroons,  billowing meringues, meat paste sandwiches, sausage rolls, cherry cakes and ginger beer . . .   Oh how I longed to go to Boarding School and have a tuck box filled with treats from home . . .  to gather together with the other girls and enjoy mutual midnight feasts of a gargantuan proportions.  How my h...

  I was sitting here yesterday morning doing Christmas Cards and I was trying to think of what my first Christmas memories were of myself and my sister.  I am three years older than my sister, and I wasn't exactly very happy when my mom brought her home from the hospital.  I wanted my mom to take the baby back, probably because I was used to being on my own and the baby was taking up far too much of my mothers attention.   For a week the only glimpses of my mother had been through a hospital window when my father had taken me to the hospital to see her and then to have her come home only to be accompanied by this small squealing attention getter was not exactly what I had been hoping for.   It was only when my mother explained that if the baby went she would also have to go as the baby needed someone to take care of it that I relented and decided the baby could stay.  Little did I know then that my mother had brought home to me the best and most beloved fri...

   My mother made beautiful bread and rolls.  She used to make them weekly before she started working full time, but only ever very infrequently after that.  You knew you were in for a real treat when you got home from school, and just outside of our house  . . .  and  the air was filled with the smell of baking bread. Oh boy, but my heart did skip a beat with joy!     I am not so great at making bread. My ex husband used to make all of our bread. With five children we went through a lot of bread and so he took it upon himself when he was home to make it all.  He made big beautiful big fluffy loaves.  He would dance our kitchen table  across the floor when he was kneading it, flour would be everywhere . . .  a huge mess for me to clean up, but I never minded because his bread was flawless.  He would bake six loaves at a time. One loaf used to disappear almost as soon as it came out of the oven.  Everyone had...

  You are probably wondering why I am showing you a fish recipe on a Monday.  Two reasons really.  First, as it is Canada Day back home I wanted to cook a typically Canadian dish, and not just Canadian, but a Maritime type of dish, and secondly  . . . it will take you a few days of preparation to get this dish put together, so I am giving you a heads up!    Down East Fish Cakes.  There isn't a Canadian Maritimer worth their salt that doesn't love or know how to cook these fish cakes.  They have been a Maritime staple for many years.  These delicious potato and fish cakes use a traditional down east kitchen staple, Salt Cod.  It hails back to the years when the fishing industry was really big in the Maritime Provinces. Humble people are the Maritimers, and in years before refrigeration they would salt their cod to use in the off season.  This was a great way to keep the cod. All they had to do was soak it to regenerate it and it was ...