CHILLI BLOOMS

The decision to write this book came from the moment I began to tidy up the multitude of hand-written recipes I had floating all over the house. There were scribbles on old till receipts, notes on top of newspaper cuttings - not to mention the numerous ink-soaked napkins in my kitchen drawers... Grouped together, they marked my life as a wife and mother to my three children. Every recipe tells a story... And so I began the painstaking task of typing up each and every one, archiving them in colour co-ordinated files. Unfortunately, I had typed them up in jargon that only I could understand! At around this time my daughters, who were both living abroad, would phone me every so often wanting a recipe or asking how I cooked their favourite dishes. So, once again, I found myself re-working those same bitty recipes in a more orderly fashion - thus sparking the desire to publish a cook book for my children and future generations.