My son and hopefully, protege, Joseph, turned 12 two days ago and he requested his all time favourite dessert, Oreo cheesecake, like he's done every year, since he could speak.

I usually make a single large 23 cm (9 in) cheesecake. It's big, beautiful, and such a temptation, though I don't favour it above all other desserts, that I often will skip at least one  meal when I know cheesecake is coming to dinner ;) Then, I wantonly have three servings of it! For shame, for shame, except, I'm to...

You'd never induce me to buy a jar of ready made pasta sauce, or a box of cake mix but there are two commercially prepared foods I love, and am hardly ever without; canned tuna and canned condensed soup. They're fabulously versatile ingredients and just looking at them standing proudly full frontal, on supermarket shelves, almost fries my circuitry because of the lunch or dinner ideas that start to flood my mind.

In our house, there's no such thing as "tuna surprise" or "captain's casserole"...