Slow cooked beef in red wine sauce, with lots of onions and big chunks of potatoes, or whole baby potatoes. That's my latest fad.

Cauliflower & bacon soup - sounds ordinary but it isn't. Made with some onions, cauliflower, bacon & stock and then puree it. Pretty simple, but the first time I had it was at a local cafe, after a meeting straight after work so I had had no dinner, and it was teeming with rain, and cold outside.

Sandra, try chopped dates and chopped banana, mixed into cream and left in the frig for a couple of hours. The dates and bananas "soggify" and the dates release their spicy fragrance into the cream.

Turkish green beans on rice - slow cooked in tomato mixture with paprika and a couple of other flavours. I add carrot chunks too. I haven't quite got the trick of making them taste like the ones at my favourite Turkish restaurant, though.

Chopped up sausages, fried briefly then mixed with tomatoes and onions and slowly cooked in a frypan until the sausages soak up the tomato and onion flavours. Even my mostly vegetarian Dad liked that for a change.

Helen