This week the cookbook club is on tour – we’ve headed “oop north” to visit our families, so we didn’t try many recipes this week. That said, we did three lovely recipes from the “Mary Berry of New Zealand”, Annabel Langbein. The book is “The Best of Annabel Langbein: Great Food for Busy Lives”. We bought this book in New Zealand when we went there years ago, though it is available on Amazon UK. The book is packed with recipes, sometimes three or four per page! That density of recipes makes it a little mind-blowing when trying to decide what to cook, but the recipes are straightforward and just work. The book even has a section on breakfast and a selection of cocktails—all in all; it’s a cracking little book. So, to this week’s recipes. We cooked her Lamb Navarin for Sunday lunch, which should have had turnips in, but we couldn’t get any so substituted leeks. It was a straightforward recipe, packed with veg (perhaps a little heavy on the peas and broad beans) but delicious from a few simple ingredients. We followed that with a cracking Spiced Apple Cake. This was a delicious, simple, slightly gooey cake but so easy to make, we’ll do it again. The final recipe of the week was a Low Fat Granola. This was oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, baked with apple juice and honey. To finish the recipe, you add, once cool, the dried fruits of your choice. For us, we used sultanas, apricots and bananas. This was lovely when service with natural yoghurt. The visit to the north continues next week, so were borrowing a recipe from my mum’s cookbook shelf: A Pinch of Nom.