22-25 February - The Florida Keys

As we cruised down to the Florida Keys for our last few days, the emphasis was definitely on seafood. We ate conch fritters (a bit chewy) at the Key Largo Conch House followed by some really good blackened hogfish with avocado salsa - a fairly meaty fish but still white and flaky. Then we went for surf'n'turf at the Big Chill. It was the lobster that I'd been really looking forward to, but it was actually the steak that was the real stand-out - fabulously tender and packed with flavour.

Then after a brunch of eggs and bacon with grits (a kind of corn mash that tasted a bit like rice pudding to me) at Mrs Mac's Kitchen, we headed right down to Key West. We'd heard a lot about key lime pie, but after lots of huge meals, we never quite made it to dessert. So we went for an afternoon stop instead and I think we chose a good one. It's rather like quite a tart lemon cheesecake - yummy and not too sweet.

Then for our final evening out, we went to BlackFin, a classy bistro on the otherwise rather tacky Duval Street. We started with the most melt-in-your-mouth sauted calamari in parsley butter with walnuts and some goats cheese croquettes with red onions. Then I ticked off the last thing on my list with a burger with goats cheese and mushrooms, all washed down with a cold beer.

18-21 February - Miami

Our Miami culinary experiences were a mix of traditional and trendy. We started to tick off our list of US must-haves by ordering "pastrami on rye" in a deli (Jerry's Famous Deli) - how much meat can you fit between two slices of bread?!

We had lunch at the 11th Street Diner - Caesar salad, potato skins and the best banana milkshakes.

We tried out a bit of Cuban fusion cuisine at YUCA (Young Urban Cuban American); a cool spot with great food. I had pork shanks with mojo sauce and arroz congri (rice with black beans) - really delicious. Then we had a seafood blow-out at Grillfish; fried calamari to start then a huge dish of shrimp scampi (huge prawns) with linguine in a fantastic creamy tomato and garlic sauce. There was a great crabcake salad with sweet potato fries at Serendipity 3 for lunch. And we finished off with sushi at the supercool BondSt Lounge - part of the Townhouse Hotel where we were staying. I'm still not really a convert to sushi, but I did really like the tuna tarts; slivers of raw tuna served on a kind of thin crispy cracker and drizzled with truffle oil.

17 February - a lunchtime tart

We're heading off to Heathrow in about an hour, so just a quick final post before I go. I managed to use up the few new potatoes in the fridge for lunch with a pea and ham tart from Papadeli and a bit of grated carrot salad - mmm.

Supper will no doubt be a sandwich on the train. Not sure whether I'll manage to keep a track of our holiday eating every day, but will post about surf'n'turf and burgers when I get back ...

16 February - a jacket potato and a take-out burger

From the bottom of the fridge today I managed to conjure a baked potato and a very basic Nicoise to go with it for lunch - just tomatoes and green beans with a tin of tuna on top.

By the evening, the fridge really was bare, so we got take-out burgers from the Burger Joint round the corner. Not at all bad and nice and easy.

15 February - kedgeree

As we're off on holiday at the end of the week, I'm really trying to use up the contents of the fridge. We were out at the theatre this evening, so I had a substantial lunch to see me through. I went for kedgeree to use up the rest of the mackerel and the leeks that came in the vegbox. Then it was the last couple of slices of bread as toast before we headed out.

14 February - quinoa salad and a veggie curry

I tend to rotate between potatoes, bread and pasta for lunch, with couscous and polenta occasionally. Today I thought I'd have some quinoa instead - quite similar to couscous, but with a slightly different texture and nutty flavour. There was a handful of chestnut mushrooms in the fridge, so I fried them up with a shallot and a bit of garlic and simply stirred them into some cooked quinoa and sprinkled some toasted pine nuts on the top. Not a bad combination for a change.

For supper, we had Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's bean and aubergine curry again - a top recipe!

13 February - mackerel salad and pork hotpot

Lunch today was a bit of an experimental winter salad; smoked mackerel with new potatoes, leeks and sweetcorn. It wasn't one of my best, but not bad.

To use up the leftover pork chop, I came up with a pork and cider hotpot, partly inspired by a WFI recipe, using the slow cooker. I softened some onions in a pan, then browned the pork,chopped into chunks. I put the onion and pork in the slow cooker with 250ml dry cider, some chestnut mushrooms and a bit of yellow pepper, plus some thyme and a bay leaf. Then I popped it in the oven for a couple of hours (at 180C). It was the first time I'd used the slow cooker without using one of the recipes that came with it and I was a bit nervous when I lifted the lid. It initially looked like it'd dried out quite a bit and I quickly added another slurp of cider, but later realised, it probably just needed a stir. With a spoonful of mustard stirred in at the end, it came out quite well and was really tasty with some mash to soak up the juices and some kale on the side.

12 February - curry twice

For lunch, I used the giant parsnip from the vegbox to make some Thai-spiced parsnip soup. It's always a good recipe (from Sophie Grigson), but today it came out just spot-on - just the right consistency, the right blend of flavours, the right amount of chilli hum.

It was curry again for dinner, but this time of an Indian leaning. I did Madhur Jaffrey's chicken in red pepper sauce, which is always delicious and to go with it tried out her Gujerati cabbage with carrots - strips of cabbage and grated carrot, lightly stir-fried with subtle spices (asafetida, black mustard seeds and just a few chilli flakes), lemon and fresh coriander - crunchy and delicious.

11 February - huge pork steaks

We got potatoes, parsnips and a huge bag of red Russian kale in the vegbox on Friday, which seemed to suggest a meat with mash and veg type dinner. I was out all day at a screen-printing workshop, so I asked Tris to get some pork steaks at Ruby & White. He suffered the same issue that I've come across there lately and came home with two absolutely huge steaks, half a plateful each! As we're trying to cut down, I decided to use just one of them and cut it in half - it still made a couple of very presentable little pieces. I was a bit knackered when I got in, so I just simply fried the pork to have with some rosemary jelly, mixed mash and the kale just wilted in a bit of butter and a squeeze of lemon juice.

10 February - jacket potato and salad and the Townhouse

Lunch was another jacket potato today, this time with a salad made up of bits in the fridge; beetroot, tomatoes, green beans, sweetcorn and a few slices of fried chorizo.

There's a restaurant just round the corner that's had at least four different incarnations in the four years we've lived here. The original restaurant was really good, but over the past few changes of hands, it's been just average rather than special. It changed again just recently, so we thought we'd better give it a try. It's now called the Townhouse and is going for up-market English, with a rather fancy menu full of unusual combinations and food in little stacks. We both had scallops with pea puree and black pudding to start. It could have been quite nice and it was all okay, but nothing very inspiring. Then for main, I had fillet of bream with pork belly and more black pudding. Again, it sounded like an interesting combination, but the meat and the fish were presented at different ends of the plate - the rather small, plain fish fillet on a pile of spring greens and the pork and black pudding as part of a potato stack. It felt a bit like eating two different meals on one plate, neither terribly exciting and they didn't particularly work together. I don't mind a bit of fancy cooking and presentation, but I think if you're going to present lots of small little bits of food, they've got to be really special and this just wasn't. Each of the elements might have got away with being solid, English cooking in nice big chunky portions (a la the Kensington Arms), but didn't really cut it here. Not sure we'll bother going back.

9 February - miso lamb and eve's pudding

Along with the recipe for the tuna tataki I tried from Waitrose Kitchen magazine the other day was another for miso-marinated lamb. You marinate the lamb - used leg steaks - in a mix of brown miso paste, sugar, sake and mirin for 24 hours, then you scrape off the marinade and grill them. Rather frustratingly, we've got a bit of a rubbish grill that takes ages to get hot, then keeps cutting out, so things don't cook very well under it. Thus, the lamb didn't get quite as nicely caramelised as it should have done, but it was still quite tasty and worth another try, perhaps in the summer if we can get a little barbecue going on the terrace. We had the lamb with some steamed green beans and pak choi tossed with a bit of soy sauce, lemon juice and a sprinkling of wasabi powder - another good combination.

We followed a relatively light supper with some comforting Eve's pudding. As I was making it up, I wasn't sure if I'd made enough sponge mixture, but it came out spot-on with a blob of creme fraiche on the top - mmm!

8 February - salmon with spinach and lentils

After a jacket potato with tuna and sweetcorn mayo for lunch, it was more fish for supper, with a couple of wild salmon fillets. To go with them I used a Jamie Oliver idea for spinach with puy lentils, herbs and a drizzle of yoghurt. It's always a good combination and with the hearty lentils, you don't need any other carbs.

7 February - egg on toast and sausage pasta

Sometimes the simplest things are best. Poaching is one of my favourite ways of cooking eggs, but it can be a bit hit-and-miss. I've tried various gadgets for poaching eggs, but have reverted to just dropping them into a pan of gently boiling water. For me, the key to getting a nice, neat poached egg is having the water boiling just enough but not too vigorously. Today they came out just perfectly and were great on a couple of slices of malty brown toast.

I was out early evening, so I made up some quick sausage and pepper pasta sauce before I left that was quick to heat up with some pappadelle when I got in.

6 February - vegetable couscous

I got round to using up the last of the pork bolognese sauce today in a jacket potato for lunch. Tris was out for the evening so I settled for a simple veggie supper based on the seven/five vegetable couscous I've cooked before. Tonight the veg was red onion, courgette, carrot, red pepper, white cabbage and a few chickpeas left over from yesterday, plus all the spices (garlic, ginger, toasted and ground cumin and coriander, saffron, paprika and dried chilli) and some stock. Once I'd chopped up the veg, I realised there was too much for one, so made enough for Tris to take for his lunch tomorrow as well. With couscous and a sprinkling of fresh coriander it made a tasty and healthy-feeling supper-for-one.

5 February - pork and chickpea stew

Recently, we've rather got into the habit of going out for lunch at the weekends as an excuse to get out on otherwise rather grim wintry days. It's quite nice, but it does get a bit pricey and we tend to overeat a bit. So today we went for a slightly cheaper and lighter option with lunch at Lahloo Pantry, a little tea shop in Clifton. We each just had a small slice of goats cheese and chorizo tart rather than a huge plateful of food. It was perfectly enough for a light lunch and incredibly yummy. Followed of course by a good pot of loose leaf tea and a bit of a wander to get there and back.

For supper, I cooked up a warming, wintry favourite; pork, chorizo and chickpea stew. It's simple (and not particularly photogenic!) but always tasty after a good long bubble.

4 February - tuna salad and kedgeree

I had a small chunk of fresh tuna left over from last night, so we had tuna salad for lunch - a vague nicoise, with new potatoes, salad leaves, tomatoes, beetroot and some boiled eggs.

For supper, we weren't sure whether we were going to be in or out, so I just got the ingredients for a simple kedgeree. After a very cold, snowy day, we decided to stay in and felt very brainy after two servings of fish in one day!

3 February - tuna tataki

I used to get Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine every month - I've got a shelf of more than 10 years of copies! - but I gave up buying it when it changed to Waitrose Kitchen a couple of years ago and became not much more than an advert for Waitrose with a few basic meal ideas rather than properly interesting recipes. I picked a copy up the other day again though just to see if it had changed at all. They had at least stopped the annoying habit of naming Waitrose products in all their recipes, but it still didn't have a lot of real interest. The only exception was a few pages of Japanese-inspired recipes. This evening I adapted a recipe for seared tuna tataki salad, a starter, into a main course with stir-fried veg instead of the salad. You very simply roll a whole chunk of tuna fillet in a mix of toasted sesame seeds and salt, then sear it briefly before slicing it thinly and pouring over a dressing of soy sauce, pink grapefruit juice and honey.

It was very simple, but really delicious. I probably should have served it with rice or maybe some noodles, but I just had a fancy for chips. So I sauted some parboiled new potatoes and we had them on the side with some wasabi mayonnaise to dip them in (just a few dollops of mayo with some wasabi stirred in) - turned out to be an inspired combination!

2 February - squash soup, pork bolognese and wonderful rhubarb

There's been a large squash hanging around for weeks and the last chunk was starting to go a bit mouldy, so I finally used the last of it up in some soup for lunch. I roasted the squash, then added the flesh to some sweated onion in a pan, added some chicken stock and liquidised the whole lot before adding a slurp of cream. With a few bits of fried bacon on the top, it actually wasn't too bad.

I went back to Ruby & White as they'd said they'd put some pork mince aside for me today. As usual though, I somehow managed to come away with more than I really wanted. I was going to use half and keep the other half for something else, but then I was a bit late getting started on dinner and in my rush to get it going, I dumped all the mince into the pan - d'oh! So rather than using up the half a tin of tomatoes I'd specifically kept from yesterday, I had to open a new tin and we ended up with more bloody leftovers! The pork bolognese recipe from my Mum was quite simple and not much different from my usual bolognese - apart from substituting pork mince for beef and red wine instead of white. It was quite nice though and made a little bit of a change.

I'd wanted to keep the pasta portions small because I had plans for pudding. With a bit of a glut of milk in the fridge, I made some rice pudding and also cooked up some lovely new season rhubarb, using a recipe from the weekend Guardian. You bake the rhubarb with some sugar, dessert wine and vanilla - with some chopped pistachios sprinkled on top it was absolutely delicious and great with the creamy rice pudding!

1 February - pinto bean chilli

For lunch today, I finished off the very last bits of chicken left over from the weekend, with some stir-fried noodles and a few green beans.

I'd planned to try out a pork bolognese recipe that my Mum had sent me this evening, but the butcher's didn't have any pork mince and the supermarket only had huge packs. So I had to quickly change plans and instead tried out another Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall veg recipe, this time for pinto bean chilli. It's pretty much the sort of standard veggie chilli I would've cooked without a recipe, but still tasty with a bit of guacamole and some warm pitta.

31 January - a very orange pie

There was still plenty of cold chicken to eat, so I came up with a leftovers pie, using the rest of the puff pastry and some squash in the bottom of the fridge. I wasn't completely convinced about chicken and squash combination, but I came up with a filling of fried onions, a few lardons, cubed cooked squash, some chicken stock, the chicken, a bit of chopped sage and a splodge of cream. It looked quite alarmingly orange, but seemed to taste okay! I put it in a pie die with a pastry lid and popped it in the oven. We had it with some purple sprouting broccoli and it actually wasn't too bad. I think there was probably a bit too much squash for the amount of chicken, but otherwise, quite tasty.

30 January - a tart and chicken paella

We got given a very large jar of sticky onion marmalade for Christmas. It's quite nice, but these things to tend to end up at the back of the fridge going mouldy. So I used some to make a couple of little goats cheese tarts - just circles of puff pastry with a bit of the onion marmalade and a circle of goats cheese, popped in the oven for about 15 mins. Yummy with a bit of salad on the side.

For supper, I used some of yesterday's leftover roast chicken to make a basic paella. Not particularly authentic, more a savoury rice really, with red pepper, green beans, a few peas, some chorizo and the chicken. Tasty and easy though for a midweek supper.

29 January - roast chicken and homegrown cavalo nero

I'd bought some humus to go with last night's tapas which we didn't eat, so that made a simple lunch today with a bit of pitta bread and some chopped carrot.

I was back on the painkillers today and not feeling much like cooking or eating, so it was a simple roast chicken for dinner with garlic, some roast new potatoes and home-grown cavalo nero still growing on the terrace. All delicious and comforting and just what was needed.