Hi and welcome. So glad you dropped by!
I'm Veronica (otherwise known as VJ). I live with my husband, the lovely Graham, in a little market town in Lincolnshire.
Although I was born in England, I lived in South Africa for many years, and I think it's safe to say, a lot of South African influence has crept into my food. Twenty years ago I returned permanently to the UK where I've enjoyed rediscovering traditional English cookery!
I've also been lucky enough to travel quite extensively to various countries around the world. Wherever I go I sample as much of the local cuisine as possible and try to pick up ideas that I can incorporate into my recipes.
I've always done a lot of cooking
Cooking has always been a big part of my life. With three children and their husbands and wives, four grandchildren and one great-grandson, it's safe to say I spent a good deal of my time in the kitchen.
Most weekends saw us entertaining, and it wasn't uncommon to have 15 to 20 people around for a barbeque. I remember one memorable Christmas when we had 30 people for a sit-down Christmas dinner which I cooked myself. We moved all the furniture out of the lounge, hired in some tables and set up a mini restaurant.
It was great fun, especially when Santa popped his head in.
What I like to cook
I love to cook food from scratch! Yes, you can open a jar and tip it into whatever you're cooking, but in my opinion, there is nothing more satisfying than combining a mixture of fresh ingredients to create delicious meals.
I don't specialise in any particular type of cooking. My ambition is to give all busy mums (and dads) easy ideas to get healthy and wholesome food on the table in as little time as possible.
Here are a few of my favourite meals:
I also love baking and making desserts. These are a few of the recipes that my readers are currently loving.
My style of cooking
My style of cooking is simple wholesome food. But I have to say I prefer to cook things from scratch. I don't use jars and packets of instant food from the supermarkets.
Even my curries are made with my own blend of spices. You wouldn't believe the number of spice bottles I have in my spice rack. I find it so satisfying to know that if a meal tastes good it all down to my own efforts and not just from a packet that anyone can open.
My two concessions to this would be frozen peas and puff pastry. Let's face it, even famous chefs use shop-bought puff pastry! And unless I'm snacking on fresh peas straight out of the pod there's no way I'm going to spend hours shelling peas when frozen petit pois taste so good!
What you will find on this site
I have almost 500 recipes on this site, all nicely categorised in an index so you can easily find what you are looking for.
There's even a 'how to' category where I show you how to make basic pantry staples from scratch. A few examples are:
If you don't know exactly what you are looking for and want to look around for inspiration, you can browse all my recipes in date order from newest to oldest.
Each recipe comes with easy-to-follow steps, with images showing you what to do, and explaining why I do things in a certain way. So there's absolutely no danger that a recipe won't turn out exactly as it should.
If you are a more experienced cook and don't want all the details, there's a Jump to Recipe button at the top of every post that will skip past the blurb and take you straight to the printable recipe card.
There is also a comment section at the end of every post. If you've made a recipe and enjoyed it I'd love it if you would leave a star-rating and a comment so other readers can see how it turned out.
Social and contact
I have a facebook page where I publish all my recipes as and when I make them. You are welcome to follow me there.
There is also my regular newsletter that I send out to notify readers whenever I post a new recipe. If you would like to subscribe to my newsletter I have a free cookery book containing 50 pages of some of my favourite dessert recipes that you can download.
I don't accept guest posts on Foodleclub. These are all my own original recipes. However, I am open to developing recipes for brands. If you are a brand looking for this service, please email me at [email protected].
And of course, if you have any questions or would just like a chat you can contact me on the same email! I'd love to hear from you.