January 2024

Hello and welcome to ten years of sharing recipes.

I began my Cookery website in March 2014 and then in April 2018, it had grown in size that meant that it needed to be turned into a dedicated Cookery Website with a new website host.   The link to this website can also be found on my main Music Art & Cookery website - www.susiedrage.com

I am simply a housewife and am a home cook with a passion for trying new ideas that we have tried and liked and hope you will enjoy experimenting with them as well.   

 I was given huge encouragement and inspiration by my Mother who was a fabulous cook and happily this love and enthusiasm is now very much a part of the ethos adopted by my own children - and I love the constant competitive dishes proudly shared on WhatsApp with my family.

In addition to my own love of cooking, I am also a musician and artist and you can look at the videos and music I have produced in my studio, as well as commercially produced albums available on all global download sites, including Spotify, iTunes and Amazon, etc.   The rest of my time is taken up as a Wildlife Artist specialising mainly in pastels and watercolours.    www.susiedrage.com and www.susiedrage.co.uk

The recipes on this website are a variety of my family's, friend's and my own creations or simply shared on from other sources in magazines, news articles, or on the internet, where we have tried them, tweaked them and enjoyed them! 

Interestingly, many online recipes are inspired or simply shared on by other cooks and where I have been able to find provenance, it is important to give credit to the original chef or cook and listing these as GUEST RECIPES.   I also have a LINKS page for other cookery sites.

Although we enjoy eclectic tastes, my daughter has greatly influenced our preference for more vegan and vegetarian dishes.we tend to eat more and more vegetarian or vegan based recipes and now, where possible, without sugar, usually substituting this with a more healthy alternative.   

During the Summer months, we take huge pleasure in growing a variety of vegetables in our super veg garden and we also grow a variety of soft fruits like red, white, black currants, red gooseberries, mulberries, apricots, peaches, nectarines and various types of cherries and several varieties of espaliered apple trees.   In addition to the usual potatoes, we grow the heritage carrots and beetroots, sugar snap peas, runner and French beans, Pan Choi, spinach and so the list goes on.   In the greenhouse, we are growing all sizes and shapes of heritage tomatoes, different types of lettuce, magnificent cucumbers and even melons as well as a variety of herbs both in the greenhouse and specially built raised beds which only contain herbs.    There is something extraordinarily exciting about nurturing and harvesting your own produce and the planting starts in March and we are still usually harvesting up until about Christmas, so rewarding.

Like so many people I know, I have a huge collection of cookery books, but the style of cooking has dramatically changed over the years with a tendency now to eat as healthily as possible and using fresh ingredients.   Although, just a kitchen cook - nothing beats eating totally fresh produce from your garden as well as cooking with all fresh ingredients and trying to avoid eating processed food.

Browsing through some of my very old cookbooks, I feel it is a tragedy for some really lovely ideas to go forgotten and so very often these are tweaked and some ingredients replaced to make them healthier and less rich.

I do all my own photography and occasionally use library photos until I can replace temporary library stock with my own images.   I try to keep the Index up to date and unfortunately, this website host doesn't support linking my 600 recipes to the actual recipes themselves - so for now, it means searching the category on the Home Page and then scrolling down the alphabetical index until you find the image you want and then click on that.

On LINKS, above, I have another website - DO TAKE A LOOK!

Susie Drage Music Art and Cookery