The reason you'll not find any recipes here

It's because I can't cook.

Least ways I can't cook without following a recipe. Tonight's tea is a case in point.

We had originally planned to make up a cottage pie last night - well my wife intended to do all the complicated stuff - which meant all I had to do was bung it in the oven and cook it through for tea. For what ever reason that didn't happen, so I said 'I'll make the pie when I get in from work' After all, I can make corned-beef hash shepherd's pie, so surely this couldn't be much different, could it?

Well the problem was Mrs Chook gave me the recipe over the phone. 'You fry some minced beef, then add some vegetables - onion, carrot - a bit of tomato sauce, a stock cube and some flour, a bit of water; cook it through then spoon the mashed potato on top.

Now I ask you 'How much is a 'some' or a 'bit'?? That's the problem, there's no setting on the scales for 'some' . Consequently,  I never seem to be able to judge the proportions right. The potatoes were fine, but when I'd prepared the mince filling and spooned it in to the dish

well, you can see for yourself, it barely covered the base. We'd be eating quite a lot of fresh air in this pie. I struggle to balance meat and veg content first time. Luckily because there was oodles of time, I could salvage things. So I quickly chopped up some more onion, another carrot, and rooting around in the fridge found the remnants of a rather sorry-looking celery. That was chopped up and chucked in as well. This went back in the pan for another fry,

then when soft enough I spooned the meat mixture back in to mix through, as well as a dollop of pasta sauce from a jar we'd opened last night (see, I understand what a 'dollop' should look like). I won't show a photo of that stage, you may be eating your own tea. Once mixed through it went back into the dish and this time - as you can see a much better coverage. Look, I even captured the steam rising off it, I bet you can almost smell it!

Then the potatoes on top, farrowed with a fork and ready for the oven (I think that's my finger wandering in to shot on the left there)

'Andsome, as my old dad would say. Just need to bung it in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes and tuck in! But look at the kitchen now, a bit of a bomb-site; if you look closely you may notice one of the pans hasn't been used. Neither was the bottle of beer hiding on the left, by the way; that was last night's mid-week tipple on its way to recycling. Honest.

I have since tidied up of course, and even wiped down the hob. I'm good at tidying up my messes, it's just there's always a lot to tidy up in the first place.

Mind you the final product didn't turn out too badly:-

So as you see, don't look to me for cooking advice, apart from studying me carefully and doing the exact opposite.

Or read a cook-book.