About me

Just a “wee” bit about me.

Hi, my name is Chris Turner. I’m from Bonnie Scotland and now living in Edmonton Canada.

As I introduce myself to you, here and there I will give you a little bit of history, and of where I’m from, our culture and how we eat and do things differently.

I’ve been cooking now for as long as I can remember. While growing up in Scotland, my mum and dad had a home next to the ocean, otherwise called “The River Clyde”. It was an inlet from the Atlantic Ocean.

While living there, my mum operated a Bed & Breakfast from our home called “Beach Cottage, Bed, & Breakfast” from 1961 up until 1976.

Quite often, I would help my mum in the kitchen. I learned her technique of how to fry a simple egg, to cooking the bacon and tomatoes. My mum always told me, never cook your eggs and put them into the oven, always cook your eggs last. This way, they will look nice, white, and fresh looking. I always remember this even when I cook eggs today.

As it happens, as I’m writing this, it’s Sunday morning and my family is getting ready for church. Last night I promised my oldest daughter that I would make her a bagel (homemade) egg sandwich. I nearly forgot, so I just jumped up a few minutes ago to do it.

While I was making the sandwich, I was thinking of my mum and how my mum cooked her eggs. My mum, nor I, knew what over easy or easy over meant, whatever way you want to say that. You can imagine what it was like for my mum and I the first time someone ask us this question. To be honest, we didn’t have a clue what they were talking about; a fried egg was a fried egg.  My brother, who had lived in Canada for many years, enlightened us.

When I make a fried egg, I normally use a little oil or butter. My fried eggs come out crispy around the edges, yes, one of my many failings in life, how to fry a darn egg so that it looks white. There again, I like it this way.  

When my mum used to cook her fried eggs, well, it was like an artist, but in the kitchen type of artist. I’m glad that I experienced this in my life, because I know that most people haven’t. My mum always had a gas stove or as they call it in Scotland, a cooker. She had the gas turned on low heat, the pan had a dollop of lard in it, not the healthiest thing, I know. Now, my mum has made many eggs in her lifetime, we had over two thousand people in our home, not at the one time, but between the above mentioned dates. I have my mum’s two old visitor’s books and I counted them. In addition, we only had one bathroom.

Anyway, my mum would baby all her eggs; she would never, ever flip her eggs, as this was never heard of. Whenever she would start frying the egg and just as the outsides were turning white, the excess fat (and it was fat) in the frying pan, she would gently grab a knife, and scoop or flip the fat over the egg yolk until the top of the yolk was white. The outside of the egg was perfectly white. These were the most perfect white fried eggs you would ever see. I’ve never heard of an artistic egg maker, but my mum sure was.

Well, everyone has left for church and I’m “Home Alone”, I never did watch that movie all the way through. It’s -20 and lots of snow, the sun is shining, but it’s cool. While everyone is braving the cold, I’m sipping a nice hot coffee as I’m writing my blog.

Burgers.

Everyone will come home from church thinking, that I’m cooking burgers for lunch for the whole family, NOT. I try to tell my kids not to eat burgers at lunchtime, but to have fruit or a fruit smoothie; somehow, they just don’t listen. There again, they’re teenagers, except for my two daughters, they’re a few years older. I was no different when I was younger, I used to go out drinking with my friends on a Saturday night, get up early on a Sunday morning, go buy the Sunday newspaper and go sit on the promenade to read it while I had a smoke. I used to smoke back then, but haven’t smoked now in 39 years.

I would then go pick up my friend, by 10: a.m. we were in the café eating a hamburger with greasy onions and a strawberry milkshake. When I think about it, it was kind of weird, a hamburger, of all things, at 10 o’clock in the morning, oh yuck! However, I was only eighteen and didn’t have the healthy sense then, and, I had a few cigarettes too. It was really unhealthy. In reality, I can understand my boys.

Just for your information, in Scotland, we actually have Sunday newspapers that are only published on a Sunday called “The Sunday Mail” and “The Sunday Post”. In addition, when we buy a hamburger in Scotland, it is actually that, a ham-burger, or you could call it a pork-burger. It’s made just like a beef burger, but we differentiate between the two, one is made from minced pork (hamburger) and the other is made from minced beef (beef burger). One is a hamburger patty the other is a beef burger patty. Whereas in North America, everything is generically a hamburger.

Cooking, my passion. 

My mum would have me prepare vegetables, salt everything, and put them all into the pots. Potatoes always had to be halved and quartered. Carrots had to be sliced and sometimes grated (especially for soup), my mum would never, ever, put whole sliced carrots into soup, as they had to be grated.

Of course, I don’t follow all of my mum’s techniques as I’ve developed my own over the years. My mum peeled almost everything, whereas, I use my food processor. My mum would say, “We never had those in our days”. I said, “Well, we have them in my day and I’m using them”. I love appliances and I love technology.

Cooking and baking is something that I’ve done for many years and I love it. It helps me relax and I never see it as a chore. The worst part of cooking is, you’ve guessed it, “Clean-up time”. There again, I don’t mind this either. I love washing dishes.

Quite often when I’m cooking, the dishes and utensils pile up in the sink. In our family, and I have four kids, two daughters and two sons. We have always had our kids rotate dishwasher and dishes chore, all since they were very young. Each kid spends one week on dishwasher detail which rotates from Sunday to Saturday evening the following week it seems to work.

Not without complaints though, sometimes the person on dishes won’t finish all the dishes on the Saturday evening, so the next person who starts their week on Sunday morning becomes a bit disgruntled because the dishes weren’t all done. We try to make it a rule, that on Sunday morning, the dishwasher should be empty for the next person starting.  Most times it works out pretty good.

What else do I do besides cooking?

The past forty years, I have mostly worked at construction. I have been a painting contractor since arriving in Canada in 1979. I lived in Ottawa for three years before moving out west to Edmonton Alberta.

I am an avid tennis fan and I enjoy playing approximately ten hours each week. I’m in a meet-up group and play with lots of great friends. Sometimes I play indoors in the winter, this year I haven’t at all. I’m sure I will struggle when I start up again in the spring. I also love soccer, love watching most soccer games, but especially British soccer.

I am an author, writer, poet, lyricist, and songwriter. I have written well over one hundred songs and over one hundred poems. I play guitar and enjoy composing songs, some secular, and some religious. I have recorded some of my songs on You Tube, though I’m not a professional singer, I enjoy singing my own songs. I keep hoping that one day I may get a break as a songwriter with a production company in California or somewhere warm like Florida. Oh yeah!

I have written a short novel called “I just want to be loved” available on Amazon as an e-book and also as a soft cover. The book is available also at Smashwords as an e-book only.  I have also written my autobiography called "Life is...but a memory"and this also is available as an e-book only on Amazon and Smashwords. I have many other books that I would like to write, including a non-fiction of my autobiography. My next book may be “Hatred between Catholics and Protestants” where I currently have an article on my other blog called “Chris Turner’s Memoirs”.

I have three other blogs on the go besides this one. The one that I just mentioned “Chris Turner’s Memoirs”, “Chriscraft Wood Crafts”, and “Christians loving Muslims”. I also have a science fiction in the works called “Invasion of the Ingroids”. This one is about organisms in the ground which come to life, related to the U.S. nuclear testing that was conducted in Nevada during the 1950’s. The organisms were disturbed by the nuclear testing and came back to life. They try to take over the world, but there is a power struggle as to who will lead them in this endeavor.

In my spare time, I also make wood crafts, I have unique designs that you cannot buy in stores. I try not to duplicate that which is already out there. My crafts can be as small as a Cross Necklace, or as large as a Horse and Carriage for over a fireplace. Currently, finance is a problem, so I keep hoping for a break in one of these areas. I also do router carving as in “signs” etc. I will add a link and you can see what I make.

I enjoy making blogs, writing articles on my blog and short novels like this “about me” page. I was trying not to make it too long, as I realize, most people are looking for recipes and not the life story of the blogger, and anyway, it’s here just in case someone may be interested.

I hope that you enjoy browsing my “Healthy Scrumptious Cooking Blog”. If you have any questions, contact me at my current e-mail  address chrispaints4u@gmail.com I will be creating a new e-mail address for this blog in the near future.

If you're looking for great appliances for your cooking, click on the link below. 

Thanks for visiting.

Chris Turner.