Marie Cookpad

  I confess that I am a Pizza lover.  Aficionado.  Pizza hog. Treasurer . . . . maybe even obsessed.  If its Pizza, I am there.  I have been carrying on a great love affair with it for most of my early teen years and adult life.  I can't help myself.  I just adore the stuff.      As luck would have it, I am married to a man who is not fond of Pizza.  He just barely tolerates it.  Pizza (or any Italian food), chocolate or lemon.  His three dislikes . . .  oh and pasta.  He barely tolerates any of those things. I know . . . .  unbelievable.    Every once in a while I torture him with it however. I really can't help myself.  The heart wants what the heart wants.    And yesterday that was pizza.  New York Pizza.  With foldable crisp slices, a delicious sauce and lotsa lotsa cheese.    Have I ever told you my cousin owns/runs a Pizza place back home?  Yep, he does...

  The way to my husband's heart is surely through a big plate of "Bangers and Mash."  He is a true meat and potatoes kind of a guy, and this kind of meal is surely one of his favourite ways to have both of his loves all on one plate.   More often than not he likes things to be quite simple . . .  pan fried sausage and ordinary mash, all topped with Bisto onion gravy granules.   I don't do gravy granules. Sorry Todd. It was not something that I was brought up with. My mother always made her own gravy, from scratch, and we never had it with sausages.  At best my father would ask for a jar of mayonnaise to be on the table so that he could dip his sausages in that.     I have to confess that I was never very fond of sausages for supper when I was a child.  I think the first sausages I really enjoyed was at my SIL's in Toronto one weekend.  She had bought some lovely British "Bangers" at a local butcher's.  That is when I learnt tha...

  I have not baked these delicious cookies in a very long time now.  They are really big cookies and I am not supposed to be eating things like this.  They are so darned tasty, I find them quite impossible to resist!  I am really, really naughty.  😟    I have little to no will power when it comes to things which are delicious.  I try to only bake things like this when I have people coming over, or when I know that I can give it away.     I can't say for sure, but I believe that I may have gotten the original recipe from a Martha Stewart magazine.  Don't quote me on that however, because as I say, I never bothered in the old days to copy out the source of my findings.  I never dreamt, way back then, that I would one day be able to share my favourites with the world!  Isn't life amazing!   These are incredibly tasty cookies  . . .  with lovely soft ginger cookies, well flavoured with molasses and the warm ba...

  One of my very first Christmas's as a young bride my Mother In Law, Elizabeth Ramsay, sent me a gift that I have treasured for over 40 years now.  It was a handwritten notebook in which she had copied out all of her tried and trues and favourite recipes.    It is old now and pretty much careworn and falling apart . . .  pages splattered and stained . . .  the handwriting is fading in many places.  I really need to copy it out into another notebook before all is lost.    This delicious Pumpkin Bread is one of the recipes that she shared.      It is one of my favourite recipes from out of the book, and one that I find myself wanting bake every year at this time of year  . . .  it is truly a holiday type of bread.    I have made a few changed to it over the years, but not many and none that would change the integrity of this bread.  The basic recipe remains the same.    She did not add any...