This is one of the many stew variations that cowboys used to eat back in the day. The stew is easy to make, and uses basic ingredients and spices from your pantry. Cowboys would have eaten their stew with sourdough bread or hard tack, but if you prefer serve yours with rice, couscous or quinoa.… [read more]

When you fancy a chocolate pudding that does not require going out to buy chocolate slabs, nuts or cream, then this is the perfect pudding to make from store cupboard ingredients that you can whip up within an hour for unexpected guests, or as a family dinnertime treat. The great part is that the finished… [read more]

Scottish housewives have been making these delicious little cakes for centuries. The name rock cake comes from the fact that they are shaped like little outcrops of rocks, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the texture, which should be soft and melt-in-the-mouth sweet once you bite into them. In the Harry Potter series Scottish… [read more]

There’s nothing quite like the smell of fresh baked eggplant to get your mouth watering. While many people gravitate toward fried eggplant to satisfy their need for an eggplant fix, frying eggplant can not only be a messy, cumbersome way to eat it, but it also adds a lot of extra calories. Baking eggplant serves… [read more]

Instead of buying the ready to roast potato wedges in a bag at the supermarket it is really easy to make them at home, using fresh potatoes from the homestead. You also know there are no hidden additives and are not adding to the plastic epidemic! The best potatoes for wedges are Yukon Gold and… [read more]

Corn fritters made with cornmeal are a traditional Native American dish. These fritters, however, make use of what you have grown on the homestead – succulent freshly picked sweetcorn, red peppers, cilantro, and lemon. Add the cucumber from your kitchen garden for garnish and you’ll have most of the fresh and organic ingredients to make… [read more]

Dandelions and wild violets are some of the first blooms of spring. Wouldn’t it be lovely to preserve that beautiful freshness to remind you the wonders of spring even in the middle of the bleakest winter? How about other beautiful flowers such as peonies, lilacs, lavender, and bee balm? You may already be cultivating these… [read more]

The Scots certainly love their oats and for good reason – oats is low in fat, fibre-rich and high in energy. An Englishman observing a Scotsman settling down to his breakfast of oats porridge said scathingly, “Why do you Scots eat oats – in England we feed that stuff to the horses.” The Scotsman looked… [read more]

The name is certainly a weird one. The first part of the name comes from the fishing town of Cullen in North East Scotland, while the second part refers to a soup. Although originally it referred to a shin or knuckle bone used in soups, over time ‘skink’ was applied to any soup. In this… [read more]