24 November - spicy beef and noodle salad

After a week of rather uninspired and disappointing food, tonight I definitely got my culinary mojo back. I still had a pomegranate in the fruit bowl and somehow fancied it in some kind of spicy salad. With some spicy beef noodles I had at a roadside cafe in Phnom Penh in mind, I got a fabulous piece of beef fillet from Ruby & White - probably a bit bigger than intended and definitely a bit more expensive - but it turned out to be well worth it. I made a noodle salad of rice noodles with carrot, cucumber and spinach and a spicy Thai dressing from Jamie Oliver (of olive oil, sesame oil, lime juice, fish sauce, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, red chilli and fresh coriander). I fried the beef fillet in one piece and served it sliced on top of the noodle salad with pomegranate seeds sprinkled over the top. The beef was spectacularly good, really tender and tasty and with the cool noodles, sweet pomegranate and spicy dressing, it was exactly the combination I was after ...

... in fact, it was plate-lickingly good!

23 November - cheesy leeks and chicken with sumac

To use up a couple of leeks I blanched them, mixed them with some cheese sauce and a few bits of bacon and popped them in the oven for a bit. Tasty and warming.

For dinner I tried out a recipe from last weekend's Observer magazine for roast chicken with sumac. I bought some sumac powder for a recipe a while ago and have hardly used it since, so I thought I'd give this simple chicken dish a go. It wasn't wildly exciting, but with some cabbage and carrots, it made an interesting twist on a midweek chicken supper.

22 November - uninspired

After spending an uninspired five minutes hovering in front of the supermarket fresh soup section trying to choose something for lunch, when I got my pot of soup home, I didn't really fancy it. I decided to fall back on tuna and sweetcorn mayo with pasta, but once the pasta was cooking and I'd opened the tin of tuna, I realised the jar of mayo I had in the fridge was one I'd decided I didn't really like because it was too vinegary and not very creamy... extra sweetcorn just about covered up the taste.

Equally uninspired about dinner, I went for fishfingers with mixed carrot and potato mash and some homemade beans (a tin of cannellini beans with some onion, garlic, tomato and herbs). All rather orange and okay, but it didn't really hit the spot.

21 November - mackerel salad and dahl

There was some mackerel left over from the kedgeree the other night and some roasted red pepper from last night, so today I made up a lovely bright mackerel salad with some new potatoes, cherry tomatoes and spinach, all in a mustardy dressing for lunch.

After last night's rich tagine, I went for a veggie dinner of dahl (a recipe from Floyd's India), spicy cabbage and rice. Dahl always looks a bit unappetising splodged on the plate, but with lots of lovely spices and just the right amount of heat, it was all much tastier than it looked.

20 November - lamb tagine with pomegranate

I got a couple of pomegranates in Friday's vegbox, so today I made a lamb tagine (using my usual recipe) and instead of figs or dates, added the final sweet touch with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds. It was a bit messy getting the seeds out - and I ended up with bright red stains all over my white t-shirt! - but the final result looked great and tasted pretty good too.

I remembered to put the tagine on well ahead of time and let it bubble for almost two hours, so the result was meltingly tender and with some roasted squash and peppers and a pile of couscous, it was a great way to end the weekend.

19 November - a bad food day

I was feeling particularly uninspired and woolly-headed today and some disappointing food did nothing to lift my mood. We had bacon and avocado sandwiches for lunch, but although the bacon was good, the bread was a bit dry and the avocado not really ripe. Then I fell back on kedgeree for supper, but put in too large a pinch of cayenne to give it a bit of kick and ended up overpowering all the other nice comforting flavours ...

18 November - Culinara

There was some of the roast tomato sauce from earlier in the week in the fridge, so lunch was a quick dish of orecchiette pasta with the sauce and a bit of added bacon.

There aren't many Bristol eateries that we haven't tried, but until now we hadn't got round to visiting Culinaria - just 10 mins walk away. It's a small bistro with a short menu of carefully chosen food and interestingly, is only open over the weekend (Thu-Sun). It has a lovely atmosphere with friendly, interested staff, which was a great start. We both went for the fillet of brill with leek and saffron sauce, served with spinach, beans and new potatoes and it was, well, brill! To go with it we had an English wine by Limney - one we hadn't tried before but comes from Horsmonden, a village in Kent not far from where I grew up. Much like Chapel Down (from the same area), it was a lovely light wine with quite an elderflowery feel. I don't often go for a dessert, but having skipped a starter I finished off tonight with a lovely rich chocolate mousse. Culinara will definitely be added to the list of regular haunts.

17 November - fishcakes and lamb with pesto

I used the bits of leftover cod from last night to make a couple of simple fishcakes for my lunch today with the rest of the (out-of-season!) peas on the side. While I was out on the terrace snipping some chives to go in the fishcakes, I was looking at the few carrots I tried to grow back in the summer that never really came to anything. I pulled up what was left and came back in with a handful of the most miniature carrots you've ever seen to add to my peas!

I was totally uninspired about dinner and as I wandered down the veg aisle in Sainsbury's, the only thing that caught my eye was some baby leeks - must be a thing for small veg today! Anyway, they seemed like something to go in a meat and two veg kind of supper, so I went for a favourite standby of lamb steaks with fresh, homemade pesto (I knew there was still some basil in the fridge). I was still a bit unconvinced when it came to supper time, but there is something quite therapeutic about making pesto and as soon as I'd dipped my finger in it, my tastebuds perked up. In the end, lamb and pesto with baby leeks and a blob of mashed parsnip turned out to be spot-on and exactly what I wanted after all!

16 November - a mexican-inspired lunch and cod with roast tomato risotto

Lunch today started off with the packet of corn tortillas I bought earlier in the week. I had a small tin of refried beans in the cupboard, so it was a Mexican-inspired lunch of warm tortilla with the refried beans, a couple of poached eggs and a blob of soured cream.

When I'd asked Tris last night what he fancied for dinner today, he'd said "fish", so I headed to Fishminster this afternoon to see what they'd got. I'd started off thinking of scallops with pea risotto, but they didn't have any, so I went for a big piece of cod instead and changed the accompaniment to roasted tomato risotto - inspired by a HFW recipe I saw a little while ago. I roasted a whole pile of halved tomatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, some chopped garlic and fresh rosemary for nearly an hour. When they were done I whizzed them up in a blender and stirred about half the resulting sauce into a plain risotto with some whole basil leaves. I trimmed the messy edges off the cod (and cooked them up in a bit of milk to use tomorrow), then popped the two resulting neat pieces in an oven dish with a little drizzle of oil and a squeeze of lemon and popped them in a hot oven for about 15 mins. The final combination was warm and tasty, but still quite light and fresh, definitely one to repeat.

15 November - a baked potato and a massive chunk of pork belly

There were still some cooked beetroot in the fridge from last week. They were a bit shrivelled-looking, but once peeled and chopped and mixed with a bit of oil vinegar and mint, they made quite nice a little pile of lunchtime salad. A jacket potato with a dollop of soured cream and some bacon bits made the whole thing into a proper meal.

This evening, we were out for dinner with some friends at Aqua. I was drawn to the porchetta on the menu, so forewent a starter in anticipation of a big meaty main. It's a good job I did, because the piece of pork belly that arrived almost filled the plate and served on a pile of very rich beans, it proved to be incredibly filling. The meat was delicious and tender, but I rather wished afterwards I hadn't eaten it all as I ended up feeling overfull and slightly nauseous! A good strong espresso was definitely needed afterwards.

14 November - pasta and baked squash

I picked up some out-of-season fresh peas in Waitrose this morning for a lunch of pasta with bacon, peas and cream - a bit against my usual seasonal principles, but sometimes you've just got to go with what you fancy!

Lacking inspiration, I was flicking through my folder of old recipes I've collected over the years and plumped for baked squash and corn with goats cheese by Jane Baxter from Riverford (who I get my vegbox from) I think cut it out from an old Guardian magazine. The baked squash is quite straightforward - just roasted cubes of butternut squash mixed with sweetcorn, garlic, chopped chilli and some goats cheese - but it's the pumpkin seed dressing that makes it worth digging out the recipe. You blend together:

• 40g toasted pumpkin seeds
• 1 clove garlic
• a chopped tomato
• a handful coriander leaves
• a chopped green chilli
• a splash of good olive oil

Served with corn tortillas, with the dressing drizzled over the veg mix, it's a really different, tasty supper with quite a kick.

13 November - leek and potato soup and beef goulash

There were a couple of leeks hanging around in the fridge, so I made up some simple leek and potato soup for lunch. I gently sweated the chopped leeks in butter with a couple of whole cloves of garlic, then added a finely diced potato and some chicken stock and let it simmer for about 15 mins. I whizzed up about half the soup, returned it to the pan, added a splodge of cream and seasoned with salt and nutmeg. I served it with a bit of crispy streaky bacon and chives on top and some lovely toast rubbed with garlic and a drizzle of olive oil. The soup was good and the garlicky toast even better!

With a fancy for something warming, I made some goulash for dinner. I used a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe from the Guardian, adding a bit of parsnip as well as the potato, which worked really well, absorbing all those lovely flavours. I was a bit late putting it on and rather skimped on the timing, so the meat wasn't quite as tender as it could have been, still really tasty though with a dollop of soured cream on the top mingling with the sauce to make it rich and creamy.

As we'd only had a smallish dish of goulash without lots of carbs, there was room for some rhubarb crumble with fresh vanilla custard - an excuse to use some more of the vanilla we brought back from Madagascar. As is often the case, a quickly knocked up crumble turned out to be spot-on and the pale creamy custard was so much better than shop-bought stuff.

12 November - tapas and a huge pork steak

It was Saturday lunchtime tapas at the Lido again today - humus, squash and feta salad and some posh ham - a great relaxed start to the weekend.

For dinner I got some pork steaks from Ruby & White, which turned out to be absolutely huge. I did some cream and tarragon sauce and we had them with a small splodge of potato and parsnip mash and some spinach. As I was cooking them, and struggling to squeeze them both in a large frying pan, there was talk of leaving some meat to have cold tomorrow, but somehow we managed to clear our plates after all!

11 November - eggs florentine and dinner with friends

I quite like eggs Florentine for lunch, but it's such a faff to make fresh hollandaise sauce and there's always too much for one. I usually just end up having spinach and poached eggs on toast. Today I thought I'd try a dollop of hollandaise from a jar as an easy cheat. I suppose it did just add a bit of something to the eggs, but it was a bit sharp and vinegary tasting, so not completely convinced.

This evening, we went to visit some friends for dinner. Hannah always comes up with really good, tasty home cooking and tonight was no exception with a great dish of Catalan chicken (cooked with tomatoes beans, peppers and olives), followed by apple cake and custard - yum! And of course, a few glasses of wine and lots of good chat.

10 November - chicken and leek pie

I got some lovely fresh beetroot yesterday, both regular purple and golden, so I roasted them to have warm on some bruschetta for lunch with some soft goats cheese and sprinkling of mint - looked great and tasted lovely.

I cooked up the remains of the roast chicken with some leeks in a creamy tarragon sauce and made some pastry to make a pie for dinner. It was a bit of struggle to find the right size pie dish, so it ended up in rather a deep oven dish which looked great when it came out the oven, but was a bit of a struggle to get out! Half a pie on each plate looked a bit comical, but tasted great.

9 November - warm mushroom salad

Waiting in for a plumber today who was due to be coming between 1 and 2, so rather than get caught in the middle of cooking, lunch was just a quick bit of toast and the rest of the pate.

It was Book Club tonight with an autumnal food theme, so I made a warm mushroom salad with lemon ricotta; a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe I cut out of an old Guardian magazine. I got a couple of huge portobello mushrooms, which I sliced, some chestnut mushrooms and a handful of wild mushrooms, which together with shallots, garlic and a big pile of herbs came out really tasty and went down well with the girls.

8 November - couscous salad and chicken noodle soup

Lunch recently seems to have alternated between something toast-based and pasta, so today I went for some couscous to mix things up. Yesterday I picked up a pack of little mini peppers in the supermarket, mostly because they looked neat. I roasted them this morning to mix in with the couscous and rather wished I'd just gone for a normal pepper because they were a bit too thin and tricky to peel. Mixed in with a bit of fried chopped chorizo and all it's nice paprika juices, they tasted fine though.

This morning I also cooked up the chicken carcass to make some stock, then used some of it this evening to make chicken noodle soup - dead quick and easy after being out early evening. What I chuck in the 'soup' varies, but today I used a chopped red chilli, which gave it quite a punch, some lemongrass, ginger and a star anise, together with some of the leftover chicken, some pak choi and the noodles, it was really tasty and warming, but fresh and light too.

7 November - pate on toast and roast chicken

Since we had some really yummy pate as a starter at the Kensington the other day, I've had a bit of a fancy for pate, so today I picked some up for a simple lunch. To go with it I made up some very quick red onion marmalade; gently fried up half a sliced red onion in some butter until it softened (about 10 mins), then stirred in a teaspoon of dark brown sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar. It worked quite well, although I think I let the onion crisp a bit more than I should have done. With some toast and a few vegetable crisps, it made a nice lunch.

Knowing that it was going to be a bit of a busy week this week, I did a roast chicken this evening, so I can quickly cook up the leftovers without having to plan and shop too much over the next few days. To go with it, I combined some leftovers from last week - some cabbage still looking good after a fortnight in the fridge (!) and the rest of the packet of chestnuts I bought for the stuffed mushrooms. I briefly blanched the shredded cabbage, then fried up a few bits of pancetta in a pan, added the chopped chestnuts and the drained cabbage, just long enough to combine all the flavours. It all sounds a bit much for a week night, but with no spuds, the chicken and cabbage made a lovely Monday night supper.

6 November - a sunday pub lunch

Today, we all went for a proper Sunday lunch in a pub; the Red Lion in Histon, just outside Cambridge. I went for roast beef, which arrived pleasantly pink in the middle with great crunchy roast potatoes, gravy, Yorkshire pudding and a nice big dish of fresh veg to share - what more can you ask for?!

Then it was the long drive home and more service station snacks to keep us going - although we did do a bit of celeb-spotting at Reading Services - Mark Cawardine (wildlife photographer) and then Gareth Bale (Spurs footballer) - it was clearly the place to be on a Sunday evening!

5 November - a thai curry at the wrestlers

The day was spent catching up with old friends in Cambridge, culminating in fireworks on Midsummer Common and then a Thai curry at the Wrestlers. It's an old haunt that was just as good as ever. I had a really good Penang pork curry - just the right amount of spice, although a bit too much raw onion and pepper for my taste. A great evening though with great company!

Tris and Clive trying to choose their curry.

4 November - pasta and a service station sandwich

We were driving over to Cambridge this evening, so it was substantial bowl of pasta for lunch. I chopped up a leftover portabello mushroom from last night and cooked it up with a bit of bacon and cream - can't go wrong!

Dinner was less exciting - a sandwich and a packet of crisps from a motorway services.

3 November - pasta and stuffed mushrooms

There was some roast tomato puree leftover from last night's curry, so I cooked it up with a bit of chopped bacon and a spoon of mascarpone to make a really delicious pasta sauce for lunch.

Inspiration for dinner came from another TV cookery programme, this time, Nigel Slater's Simple Cooking. I'm usually a big Nigel Slater fan and his style fits very much with my taste and style of cooking, so it's unusual that I don't get on with one of his recipes, but tonight I tried out his chestnut stuffed mushrooms and I can only say, they were horrible! As I was going along, it didn't seem to be working out well - the mushrooms I found were a bit too flat to really stuff and the stuffing came out very dry and crumbly, so just sort of got piled on the top like 'rubble'. The recipe said to cook it for an hour, but after about 30 mins, it was looking so dry and burnt, I couldn't face leaving it any longer. Maybe it was the 'too-flat' mushrooms and maybe it was the sausages I used that somehow had the wrong consistency, but the final result was very dry and unpleasant. Won't be doing that one again!

Yes, there are some mushrooms under there somewhere!

2 November - veg soup and aubergine curry

I made up a pan of chunky vegetable soup for lunch to use up some of the veg still in the fridge from last week's vegbox plus a few borlotti beans from Monday's chilli. I cooked up some red onion, carrot, courgette, garlic, chopped bacon, diced potatoes, borlotti beans and shredded cabbage and covered it all with chicken stock. I simmered it for 10-15 mins until everything was tender, then blended about a third of the soup and returned it to the pan - just enough to make it thick and creamy. It came out more of a vegetable stew, perhaps a bit saltier than it could be from the combination of the bacon and some rather salty chicken stock, but still tasty and warming with slice of toasted sourdough.

In the evening, I tried out another recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Veg - this time for aubergine and green bean curry. It took a bit of time to make, but was definitely well worth it. It ended up cooking a bit longer than it should, but that meant the aubergine came out wonderfully soft and silky - really delicious and definitely one to try again.

1 November - mackerel and bacon salad

Lunch on the run today was a rather dull M&S prawn sandwich. For dinner, we had a big bowl each of mackerel and bacon salad; new potatoes, smoked mackerel, bacon, spinach and French beans - still a nice combo.

With the dark evenings, it's getting more and more difficult to get good food shots, without lots of faff (and cold dinner!) to find the right light. Will have to try and figure something out over the winter.

Salad for dinner justified pudding - Nigel Slater's plum crunch with cream.

31 October - cheese on toast and beef chilli

With fresh Turkish figs still in season, I bought a lovely crusty sourdough loaf from Hart's this morning to make some goats cheese on toast with figs on the side for lunch.

There was a chunk of beef from yesterday in the fridge which I somehow fancied slow cooking. I stopped in Smith's on my way to the supermarket to flick through Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple. I really ought to buy a copy, but for today, I settled for just memorising a recipe for beef chilli. It's a pretty long list of ingredients, but I think I managed to get home with them all still in my head it more or less the right proportions and order!

• Blend an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic.
• Brown a chunk of beef on all sides in a pan- I used about 150g topside - and remove.
• Fry some chopped cooking chorizo in the same pan, then add the onion and garlic mix.
• Add a tsp cumin and a tsp allspice, a few cloves, a cinnamon stick and a bay leaf.
• Stir in a couple of chopped red chillis, a few bits of jalapeno (from a jar), a splash of balsamic vinegar, a squirt of tomato ketchup, some dried oregano and half a tin of tomatoes. Stir it all around to cook for a while, then return the beef and top up with about 150ml water.
• I transferred the whole lot to a casserole, covered it with foil and popped it in a low oven (150C) for a couple of hours.
• Towards the end, stir in half a tin of borlotti beans.
• When you take it out, break up the beef with a fork into shreds.

The result wasn't particularly photogenic, but it tasted absolutely fantastic! All the flavours came together wonderfully to create a real 'surround-sound' kind of taste that lingered long after the last mouthful! Rather than rice or tortillas, I served it with some cubes of roast sweet potato and a blob of guacamole.

30 October - thai beef curry

I think dinner tonight was unconsciously inspired by a bottle of Gruner Veltliner that Tris bought from our local wine shop, Corks of Cotham, when he was stocking up the other day. It's quite a sharp, 'green' tasting wine, but it goes fantastically with Thai food. Mulling over the thought of a Thai curry, I somehow didn't fancy the usual chicken or prawn, so decided to try out a less conventional beef version instead. I went into the Ruby & White asking for some really lean beef that I could slice up into thin strips. The butcher came up with a piece of topside which once he'd cut the fat off the outside was perfect for the job.

I made up a version of my usual Thai curry paste (with red chillis instead of green), fried it up with some spring onions and sliced mushrooms, then added some vegetable stock and coconut milk. Once that had come up to the boil, I dropped in some julienned courgette and finally the beef. I let it bubble for a couple of minutes added a splash of fish sauce, some lime juice and some more fresh coriander. Served with Thai sticky rice, it made a really nice combination, one I'd probably try again, possibly adding the beef really right at the end when I had everything else ready to go (I probably spent a good five minutes faffing today after the beef was already cooked) so that it came out even more tender.