First, I must apologise to Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks! and all his readers and followers. This post was supposed to have been up yesterday, Sunday 2 May, but I was hit by stomach flu late on Saturday night and have been flat on my back in bed until today, Monday. I hope late truly is better than never? Now, here's my treat for you today, Lazaro's eagerly awaited and slightly overdue guest post! Those who have been following me more or less regularly will know how much I admire his kitchen wizardr...

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"...

After successive days of curry in varying shades of red, green, yellow and brown...here it comes, morning, noon and night, I really, really wanted something different. Hubby's apartment kitchen however, is kitchenphobic-bachelor-basic, with a fridge that holds marginally more than 3 bottles of water and doesn't even have an oven. It's lovely having the Indian Ocean in all its turquoise and cobalt glory outside every window here, in the Maldives, but I was really starting to miss my kitchen ba...