My beloved baby sister, Alison, (who makes THE BEST Curried Minced Beef and Vetkoek in the world)her husband, Marius, and 2 children are now living in New Zealand which is a real bummer for me as I haven’t seen her in over 3 years. My wonderful niece and nephew, Bianca and Martius (who clearly take after me!) are also sorely missed by their crazy aunt. My darling sister suffered a bad stroke last year at the (very young) age of 38 (and yet another this week), but is pulling through with humour and charm. Headline: Strokes and sex changes. Read more to find out what this means….

Today's recipes are: Corned Beef 101; and American Corned Beef Dinner

We generally spend St. Patrick’s Day (the 17th of March) in the USA. For those of you who have had the (mis)fortune of receiving group mails from me over the years, you would know this. But I am relying on the fact that most of my friends won’t remember this (alcohol, age……and no, I haven’t quite finished reading “How to make friends and influence people”). We were in the mid-west for the celebrations two years ago and our barman wore a green wig, our waitress had drunk far too much of the green beer (yes, all beer is green on this particular day) and brought us warm beer, cold corned beef & cabbage, and the Irish soup (should have been stew) after the pudding….. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Today's recipe: Asparagus Goulash

I don’t know about you, but we love asparagus. We used to have a very prolific asparagus bed, but it had past it’s sell by date and was delivering less and less each year. And then it got overgrown and I forgot where it was and mowed over the bed a couple of days ago. Oops. You could smell the asparagus, but you couldn’t see it. So I decided to put some in a vase and take it into the garden. If you can’t make the garden come to the asparagus, then you have to take the asparagus to the garden…or something like that.

Today’s recipe: Sausage Pie

I am absolutely terrible at remembering birthdays. A couple of years ago we were invited to one of my absolute best friend’s birthday parties and I completely forgot that it was her birthday on that day. We arrived at their home, chatted a bit and one of the other guests (who had flown from England to France for the event) mentioned that she had brought a special birthday cake with her. From another country, through 2 airports, 2 hour security checkpoint lines, with the icing still intact and no slices missing.

Today's recipes are: Fruity Moroccan Lamb Tagine; and Couscous 101
Sally, my bosom buddy, and I went for lunch in Auch last week. Auch is our department/state/province’s biggest city and is the birthplace of d’Artagnan, the 4th of the 3 musketeers. I don’t get it either. I thought that there were only 3 but it seems I was wrong. Maybe he was like a reserve one or something, incase one of the others got hurt and couldn’t do whatever it was they did. Hey, it’s been a while since I read the story.

Today's recipe is: Spicy Sausage on French Bread
Everybody loves French markets and we are no exception to this rule. In fact, I am no longer merely an enjoyer, I am a believer of this tradition. This belief may involve ruining my liver and lead to early alcoholism and an early death, but if this is the price to be paid to preserve the French traditional way of life, then I shall have to sacrifice myself.