Marie Cookpad

  My mother always hated parsnips.  She used to tell a story about how, when she was a small child and during a family meal, she had refused to eat or touch the parsnips on her plate.  She simply did not like them. Her grandfather tried to tempt her by putting a nickle on the table and telling her that she could have it if she would only eat one piece of parsnip.    As you can imagine, during the Great Depression (in the early 1930's) five cents, or a nickle would have been quite a sum of money. You probably could have purchased a cup of coffee for five cents or two newspapers and a penny stamp. Eight cents would buy you a pound of beef, so five cents was quite a bit for a little girl to have.    End result, she hated parsnips so much that you could not even tempt her with five cents to eat even a tiny bite of them.    They were not something that we ever had to eat.  I can remember once when I was a teenager mom buying some and fry...

  I had a huge piece of leftover roast pork loin after Todd's Birthday lunch with friends the other day and I wasn't sure what to do with it.  You know the whole time I grew up we never had hot roast pork.  My father didn't like hot roast pork, so my mother always cooked it the day before we had it for dinner and then we would have it sliced in thin slices with mustard for our supper.   This might sound awful, but I quite liked the texture and taste of the cold white fat on it . . .  ever the glutton.  I do have to admit however as an adult I prefer my roast pork hot, and I don't eat the fat.   I could have made a casserole with it, but I also had a quantity of leftover cooked vegetables as well. Carrots, swede, Brussels sprouts.  I used them in this recipe, along with a chopped onion and some frozen veg.   Normally I would use chopped raw vegetables, but where I had these and they needed using I just used them. I did chop up the carrots and ...

  This recipe I am sharing today is one which I discovered on Pinterest, attributed to the blog Recipe Tin Eats.   I have had it bookmarked for a long time now.  I thought it was time I finally got around to making it.   Simple ingredients, put together simply, quick and easy, and oh so tasty.  I am so glad that I finally made this because it spelled WINNER!   A mix of rice, stock, thyme and garlic powder is put into the bottom of a casserole dish and covered with a thick layer of garlic mushrooms . . .   No need to cover as the layer of mushrooms serves as a sort of a jacket for the rice, covering it . . .  the juices running down and mingling with the stock and rice beneath it as it cooks . . .   The mushrooms are wonderfully flavoured, all garlicky and almost meaty in flavour.  I used a mix of brown chestnut mushrooms and button mushrooms.  It may look like a lot of mushrooms to begin with, but they shrink (as mushrooms do) as th...