Cola isn’t healthy – it is one giant sugar bomb. My lovely husband and I are fully aware of that.

Still, we do like a little drop of cola every now and then. Only as a treat, of course, we mainly drink sparkling mineral water.

Why am I telling you this? Well, Harry likes to try out new things in the kitchen. And sometimes, he has done so by accident. 😄

My hubby once told me about an incident when he wanted to make a salt-crusted roast but accidentally rubbed the meat with sugar instead. And then ended up surprised that the roast still tasted really good. 🤣

So, we thought why not use cola when cooking a roast? Continue reading →

I don’t need to introduce Bud Spencer to my German friends because he was (and has continued to be) huge in Germany.

For everyone else: Bud Spencer (born Carlo Pedersoli) was an Italian Olympic swimmer turned actor.

In the latter role, he was one of my husband’s greatest childhood heroes as one half of the brilliant comedy-film duo Bud Spencer & Terence Hill.

Particularly, there are two movies – “Zwei außer Rand und Band” (“Crime Busters”) and “Vier Fäuste gegen Rio” (“Double Trouble”) – of which Harry can speak along Bud’s and Terence’s lines from the German edits start to finish. Continue reading →

Way back in the last millennium, “home economics” was a compulsory subject at the secondary school my husband and my sister-in-law attended.

Naturally, this was for girls only; the boys had to take “handicraft”. Ah, the good old days when gender roles were still clearly defined… *sigh* 🙄

“Home economics” included cooking lessons. And one day, so my husband told me, his sister brought a dish home from school that they called “Schinkenreis”. A dish dominated by rice and ham.

It was relatively simple to make, so her mother ended up cooking it quite often for lunch. Continue reading →

After making Ped Pad Prik Gaeng the other day, we had some Asian vegetables and curry paste left over. And as we fancied a pasta bake, we improvised a bit.

As we had run out of coconut milk, we used ordinary cow’s milk instead. We found out that, this way, it needed a little more curry paste and also a bit more sugar.

We had also run out of lime, so we used lemon juice concentrate instead. Please be aware that it is important to measure this out very carefully. Just one or two small squirts will do.

To ensure it really is a vegetarian dish, you need to bear in mind that not all curry pastes are automatically vegan. Continue reading →

My lovely husband once told me about his first visit to a Thai restaurant and how he was initially a little overwhelmed by the menu.

Harry ended up ordering “Ped Pad Prik Gaeng” – mostly because he thought it sounded funny. 😄

But he also knew that he liked baked duck and coconut flavour. And that he likes things spicy – even in the kitchen. 😉

When we don’t feel like cooking, we like to order baked duck with coconut-curry-creme as takeout from our local Thai. But we thought it was about time for us to try to cook it ourselves.

And what can I say – delicious! Continue reading →

Remember my recipe for “Tuscany Chicken Wraps” which, under “what we need”, mentioned a sachet of a “fix product” for Meatballs Toscana?

It said that, if you did’t want to use a “fix product”, you’d surely find a recipe for a Tuscan sauce on the internet. Well, this is the internet – so, here we go. 🙂

Meatballs Toscana is a German-Italian fusion dish featuring seasoned meatballs baked in a creamy tomato sauce with Italian herbs, topped with mozzarella.

My lovely husband had made this dish for us many times before but always using a “fix product” for the sauce. Continue reading →