What are your favorite recipes either to cook or to eat?

Now here's a question that I can really get my teeth into! I have always loved to cook since a child and I remember having to cook Christmas Dinner one year when my mother was quite poorly and could not move from her bed. In later years after moving to Canada I had no choice but to fend for myself and honed such talents as I have cooking for myself and my roommate, Mike Williams now known as Uncle Michael to our children and a number of the grandchildren.

However it is only since retirement that I have had time and the inclination to go a bit further and develop my skills. I now have two main areas of interest. One is Indian cookery, usually known as curry but actually is not the right word as a curry is only one of the types of Indian Cooking. The challenge is in learning the totally different blending of spices that influence the cooking of the various dishes, spices or ingredients that are not regularly used or familiar in Western Cooking.

My favourites are too many to list but if I had to pick one today it would be Hyderabad Lamb. The other interest that I am still working on is bread baking, not so much recipes as there are so many ways that flours, yeast, oils and water can be put together, but rather in baking techniques which can make the same dough mix come out quite differently depending on how it is baked. Fortunately all the failures can still be eaten - nothing goes to waste!

The only recent failure that turned out inedible was a sour dough loaf, using a home grown starter made from grapes, flour and water. That disaster was so awful to taste it was sent to the compost bin and so might eventually be of some use to me providing the worms don't die of indigestion! Other favourites that I still cook are for my own eating (as Rhona won't touch them) such as Liver and Onions or Tripe and Onions. I also enjoy a good Meat Pie and Pork Pie - home made of course.