A Valentine's Dinner for Two

How are you and your loved one spending Valentine's Day this year? Are you paying a fortune for a meal at an expensive restaurant? Are you still trying to get booked at a quality restaurant but finding that you have perhaps left it too late and the ones you may wish to go to are fully booked? Are you intending spending the evening together at home but have no idea what to cook?

The Squidoo lens linked to below is dedicated to providing simple, Valentine's dinner for two ideas. From the starter/appetizer, right through to the coffee and mints, this lens will cover everything between now and Valentine's Day, which is less than two weeks away. Take a look at it today and come back soon for lots more ideas to make your special evening a total success.

A Valentine's Dinner for Two

How to Make Forfar Bridies

Forfar Bridies are a fairly straightforward type of meat pastry, made in Scotland and originating in the town of Forfar. The way in which they are made varies slightly, both in the type of pastry used and the ingredients which are added to the meat, dependant upon in which part of Scotland one finds them. This Squidoo lens goes in to very great detail, explaining how to make Forfar bridies in the comfort of your own home.

How to Make Forfar Bridies

Best Toasted Sandwich Recipes

Toasted sandwiches are a very quick and tasty way of preparing lunch whenever we are perhaps short of time, or simply cannot be bothered preparing anything more extravagant. Equally, however, they are an enjoyable snack at any time of day.

Unfortunately, most people tend to have but two or three recipe ideas for preparing toasted sandwiches and never venture beyond those horizons. This Squidoo lens aims to provide fresh ideas for making toasted sandwiches to help your experiences be as varied and enjoyable as possible.

Best Toasted Sandwich Recipes

Healthy Pork Recipes

Pork is of course a very common foodstuff and cooking ingredient. How often, however, do we go out of our way to ensure that we cook pork in a healthy fashion? All too frequently it is fried in saturated fat, or roasted in fat and a whole host of other sugary, high cholesterol concoctions.

There is no requirement to cut pork out of a healthy diet in most cases, merely the requirement to cook and prepare it in a slightly different fashion. The recipes which are contained in the Squidoo lens linked to below will show you just how easy it is to make pork recipes which are both delicious and healthy and will help you to improve the quality of your family's diet for the better.

Healthy Pork Recipes

Attention All Pork Lovers!!

If you are a lover of pork and are looking for even more great pork recipe ideas, the book featured below on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk is almost certainly just what you are looking for. This incredible book looks at pigs in great detail from all over the world - and far more importantly, how to cook them to perfection! Snap up your copy today and get, "Pig Perfect," in your cooking tomorrow!

(NB If you prefer to browse the Amazon Book Stores for yourself for books on pork, cooking or anything else and take advantage of what are often huge discounts, simply click on the relevant link: Amazon.com Bookstore or Amazon.co.uk Bookstore)

New Year's Eve in Scotland is Hogmanay

Hogmanay in Scotland is traditionally the biggest celebration of the year. Songs are sung, whisky is drunk and Steak Pie is eaten. The revelling continues in many cases all night and right through New Year's Day. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that January 2nd is also a public holiday in Scotland...

Hogmanay in Scotland

Santa and his Reindeer

As Christmas draws ever closer, millions of children's thoughts are turning to reindeer, sleighs - and of course, Santa. How many people, however, can actually name all of Santa's reindeer? How many can in fact name only one?

The video to the right provides an appropriate preview to the informational site linked to below:

Santa and his Reindeer

Christmas Dinner Ideas for One Person

The idea of spending Christmas alone is extremely unlikely to appeal to many but the reality is that for a lot of people, there simply is no other option. The reasons why anyone may be spending Christmas alone will of course vary hugely but will very often lead to them either treating it as any other day or sitting wallowing in a fugue of self-pity.

The good news is that Christmas Day spent alone need not be all about doom and gloom, or spent just like any other day. There are a plethora of ways in which the day can be enjoyed without other human company, not the least of which is in the preparation of an excellent Christmas dinner for one!

Christmas Dinner Ideas for One

Scharffen Berger Chocolate

Scharffen Berger chocolate is a luxurious chocolate brand, originally made in California using imported chocolate making equipment from Europe. The different Scharffen Berger chocolate types can be used to make a whole range of delicious chocolate recipes which are higher in cacao content and lower in sugar and saturated fats. This site includes a number of video recipes, detailing very precise preparation instructions.

Scharffen Berger Chocolate

Charity Event for Yorkhill Children's Hospital Raises Eight Hundred Pounds

Last night - Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 - saw a charity event held in aid of Yorkhill Children's Hospital in Glasgow at The Horseshoe Bar in Motherwell. The event was but one part of The Five Dollar Vacation which has been documented on this blog previously and is a worldwide charity project designed to raise as much money as possible for a great many deserving charities.

I am delighted to be able to report that the event raised a total of £800.00 for The Royal Hospital for Sick Children (Yorkhill) and hopefully sets the scene for further charity events which will take place in this respect. The full details of the night can be accessed via the link below.

The Five Dollars Go to Charity

Featured Guest Lensmaster - Sandy Cruckshanks

Sandy Cruckshanks is one of the newest members on Squidoo and I thought that as I haven't featured a Guest Lensmaster on this blog for a while, he would make an excellent choice.

Sandy has created his first lens on Property to Let in the UK and it features lots of very valuable advice for landlords and tenants alike. As one who has personally been stung as a tenant in this respect, I wish I had read it some time ago. The link below is to Sandy's lens.

Property to Let in the UK

The Five Dollar Vacation Takes in Glasgow

The Five Dollar Vacation is a charity project which began in the Spring of 2009 and will conclude on December 31st, 2009. It has seen five US Dollars tour much of Europe and even beyond in an attempt to raise as much money for a huge variety of charities as possible.

The site linked to below is a sub-site of The Five Dollar Vacation and is presently relating their adventures in Glasgow on an ongoing basis.

The Five Dollars' Glasgow Vacation

Healthy Vegetarian Recipes

Healthy vegetarian recipes are often perceived as being dull, bland and tasteless. The reality is that this need not be the case and it is entirely possible to prepare healthy vegetarian recipes which will appeal to vegetarians and omnivores alike. All that is required is a little imagination, a little innovation and a little experimentation.

Healthy Vegetarian Recipes

Healthy Lamb Recipes

Lamb is a delicious meat and one of the most tender we can eat if it is cooked properly. Healthy lamb recipes, however, have to take account of the way in which we cook the lamb and what we add to it if we are not to spoil its nutritional value.

Lamb may not quite be as versatile as such as chicken but there are still a great many healthy lamb recipes which we can prepare in a variety of different ways.

Healthy Lamb Recipes

What is Thanksgiving?

Any Americans or Canadians reading this post may be forgiven for thinking that I must be living in some form of timewarp. The reality is, however, that Thanksgiving is an exclusively North American celebration in the particular form in which it is celebrated and there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who have no idea whatsoever what it symbolises, or even of its existence.

The site linked to below is therefore designed to give all we non-North Americans an insight in to the origins and the meaning of Thanksgiving.

What is Thanksgiving?"

Coltness Primary School - My First School

Coltness Primary School is located in Wishaw, North Lanarkshire. It was my first school and I attended it from August 1974 until June 1981. Regrettably, I recently learned that Coltness Primary School is to close in 2010 to make way for a new school which will be built upon the existing site.

I deemed that it was therefore appropriate - being in the line of work I am in - to construct online a permanent memorial to the school and to its pupils and staff of yesteryear. The site linked to below is what I have come up with.

Coltness Primary School