If you are a keen cook and want to start your own recipe or cooking site, it is now easier than ever – and it can cost you nothing.

I set up a quick demo here: The Cooks Pantry

It uses free hosting (from Sqweebs) and a free cms called Nanocms – all so easy to set up that a complete beginner could manage it.

Why not give it a go?

Its not all doom and gloom though.

Sadly for restauranteurs, but happily for the rest of us, people are starting to cook ‘proper’ meals at home again.

Previously, large sections of the population ate junk food and TV dinners at home and went out to enjoy a ‘proper meal’ – but not any more.
People are now opening there recipe books or searching for recipes online (try this collection of free recipes) and preparing tasty and nutritious meals at home.

Not only that, but they are finding it is far easier to cook than they first thought, far cheaper, and far more nutritious.

No offence to restauranteurs, but lets hope it continues.

This will be a sort of womens portal with a womens blog built in – she has some interesting ideas, particularly when it comes to women’s politics, so give it a read.

Wordpress is very well suited to use as a CMS, there are some really nice plugins and templates that can emphasise the ‘CMS-ssy’ side of it over the blog, and it was real fun getting it together.

added:
She has just added a section on inexpensive wedding favor ideas – worth checking out if you are about to get married and need to save a bit of cash on the wedding reception.

I moved office and, due to a cash windfall decided to upgrade everything – office furniture, computers… everything.

Been a long time since I did anything like that – I used to order locally, but now we have e-bay
Although, I must confess, I didn’t first think of e-bay, I went searching on google for ‘bureau desks for sale by auction‘ and found an e-bay aggregator site (is that what they are called?), which collated e-bay results on one page – I found what I was looking for, and a whole lot more.

I ended up buying a new main desk, office tables & chairs and even a new coffee perculator – thats e-bay for you I guess – its a damn gold mine of temptingly priced gear.

Not sure where to go this year, I narrowed it down to a villa in Portugal (The Algarve), Barbados or Menorca.

The Algarve is particularly interesting to me, as I have been there before and had the holiday of a lifetime.

I stayed in a villa in Vale do Lobo, but this time I fancy one of these villas in Vilamoura or Almancil, both have a good mix of vacation essentials – near to the nice rural portuguese countryside, great beaches and excellent nightlife!

A villa in Carvoeiro is also an option, there are some gorgeous looking villas at VillaRetreats.com.

Well, somewhere like those places anyway – depends on the price of the flight out there I guess – which pretty much rules out Barbados.