My name is Paul James and I just want to say a big thank you to Cookpad for inviting me to tell you a little about myself in their Community Spotlight.

Here we go then! I’m a retired professional chef from Birmingham, I’ve been retired for 3 years, since I had to give up the career I loved at the age of just 45, due to a serious illness that nearly took my life.

For the next two years I totally fell out of love for cooking and the industry, mainly due to being bitter about having to give up my career that I loved so dearly.

Then last year on a short trip to Kassiopi in Corfu, something just connected....seeing the culture and beautiful scenery on show, but mainly the amazing food that was on offer.

So I decided to get involved again, I started my own food and travel blog called “RECIPES FROM MY TRAVELS.” To be honest it started off by just recreating recipes from places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit.

I am not very social media or computer savvy, and to be honest I am still only learning to spell swear words upside down on a calculator! However, the blog has now grown to over 2500 followers and well in access of 2 million reaches in a year.

I have my first book due to be published soon with Austin Macauley, as well as my first ebook being available on Amazon. All of the proceeds from the ebook are going to the Cancer Centre in Birmingham, who were marvellous in successfully treating my eldest son Mark last year. My blog is going from strength to strength as RECIPES FROM MY TRAVELS continues to promote businesses in the hospitality and tourism industry. I love collaborating with individuals or businesses on many projects within this industry, setting them up to progress further.

I adore cooking all types of food, but being brought up in a very close knit family with close friends, my main love is homemade comfort food, especially stew; a recipe which gets better by the day. I’m planning on posting a stew recipe on the Cookpad #mycookbook project in the next few weeks.

I love sharing my recipes on Cookpad and enjoy looking at other peoples dishes, that’s the beauty of Cookpad, you can never stop learning.

Travel the world with RECIPES FROM MY TRAVELS, and try some of Paul's delicious recipes here!