Ex fussy eater. Cookery show addict. Recipe collector. Wannabe cook.

I was an extremely fussy eater growing up. We're talking potato shapes and M&S potted beef sandwiches with the occasional packet of crisps being the only foods that would cross my lips. Fish? No way. Meat that wasn't cremated? Absolutely not. Even something as simple as mashed potato was more than I could bear. It's only since I've become an adult that I've really started to experience and appreciate food in all its glory.

Most of the women in my family are obsessed with cooking programmes (we could literally sit together and watch the cooking channel all day, every day, if we had the option!) and everyone in my family can cook. Members of my family are living all over the world so I've been exposed to all kinds of different cuisine and find myself eating all kinds of interesting meals whenever I'm dining with my family. 

Last year I bought myself a recipe binder and decided to wade through dozens of cookbooks that belong to my parents and grandmother to start building my own collection of recipes and I'm proud to say it's filling up fast! I realised however that looking through cook books was not the only way to find new and innovative recipes - why not invite people to send me theirs too and create one huge online recipe binder full of different peoples tastes and ideas?

And so this blog was born. I'll be picking the brains of my family for their favourite recipes and invite you to send me your recipes, photos, cooking tips, anything at all that you can contribute to the recipe book that's for everyone out there who like me, just wants to be a better cook.

And the name by the way? It's from Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children which happens to be my favourite book.

"The taste of chutney was more than just an echo of that long-ago taste - it was the old taste itself, the very same, with the power of bringing back the past as if it had never been away... Once again an abracadabra, an open-sesame: words printed on a chutney-jar, opening the last door of my life."

I have no idea why but it seemed appropriate!