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.

27 January - eating out

It turned out to be a day of eating out today. I was out for lunch with a friend in Thornbury (just outside Bristol). We went to Meze - which unsurprisingly, has a menu of lots of small dishes. I actually went for two dishes that made more of a standard meal, with Moroccan chicken tagine and couscous. It was very tasty, although the tagine was oddly creamy and a bit more like a curry than anything Moroccan. A good spot though and perfect for a good old natter.

When we'd planned to go out for Friday night supper, it hadn't occurred to me I'd be out for lunch too. So I was a bit less hungry than I'd have liked when we headed to the Thali Cafe in Clifton. The food was excellent as usual, although my lamb koftas in curry sauce were right on the edge of my spicy tolerance level! As the name suggests, the food arrives in lots of little bowls rather than as a single dish. As well as my koftas, there was rice, dahl, a yoghurty dip, a salad and another bowl of something saucy. They all look deceptively small and you work your way through, chatting away happily, then suddenly it hits you that you're absolutely stuffed! We were both glad of the 10-minute walk home to walk everything down a bit.

19 January - back to my own kitchen

I travelled back from Malta today - picking up a rather odd "pea pasty" for my lunch at the airport. It's been really good for the soul to have a break and a bit of sunshine - it felt horribly grey under the drizzly tupperware sky on the bus back from Bristol airport. But it's good to be back home to central heating and my own kitchen!

Tris was out this evening, so I cooked myself a simple supper of garlicky chicken thighs with a creamy sauce, new potatoes and a big pile of spinach - definitely my favourite comfort food!

7 January - prego and a hot chicken salad

It actually wasn't raining for a change, so we headed out for a bit of fresh air and walked up to the Downs, then on to Prego for Saturday lunch, an Italian place we'd talked about trying, but which is usually just a bit out of walking distance. We were a bit thrown by the menu initially - we'd both had in mind something light, maybe a salad, and everything was looking a bit big and heavy. We both went for pasta though and by the time it arrived, happily tucked in. I had ravioli filled with ricotta and served with beetroot tops and hazelnuts - really delicious and fantastic subtle flavours. Whilst the food was excellent though, the place was so full of families with young children, it felt like trying to eat in the middle of a nursery! I'm not sure if the restaurant is actively family-friendly (it did have a kids menu) or whether we were just unlucky with our timing, but with small kids screaming, often in stereo, as soon as we'd finished our food, we just asked for the bill to escape and went somewhere a bit more peaceful for our post-lunch coffee.

As we didn't get our salad at lunchtime, I cooked a hot chicken salad for supper instead. I marinated some strips of chicken in yoghurt mixed with some ras al hanout for a while, then cooked it on a hot griddle pan. With it we had roast beetroot and butternut squash on a big pile of spinach (to make it a salad!) and I drizzled over a dressing made of more yoghurt mixed with lemon juice and a bit of cumin. The chicken rather stuck to the griddle pan, but once I'd got it off, it tasted really good and with the dressing, it all went together really well. I also roasted a whole garlic while the oven was on which we had on the side - a bit messy to get out of their skins, but wonderfully soft and sweet.

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 July - jamie's italian

A branch of Jamie's Italian opened on Park Street in Bristol a while ago, but we've been avoiding going there because you can't book and there always seems to be a queue. But we thought that a rainy Sunday evening might be a good time to get in, so we took a big brolly and ventured out. We'd reckoned right and got a table straight away.

I'd been to the one in Bath a couple of times for lunch and really enjoyed it, so I was a bit disappointed as I looked through the menu and nothing jumped out. In fact, I really struggled to find anything I wanted to order at all. There was a lot of fish, of which I'm not a huge fan anyway and which I wasn't in the mood for tonight. Everything else seemed to involve chilli - in almost every dish, even including the vegetable side orders! I know Italians like a bit of punch to their food, but what's wrong with letting the natural flavours of the ingredients speak for themselves?

I started off with some crispy squid, which was nice - once I'd picked off the huge chunks of raw red chilli it was garnished with (and which wasn't mentioned on the menu - bit of a pet hate!). For my main, rather against my better judgement, I went for feather steak. The meat itself was pretty chewy and tasteless and it was only rescued by the sage garnish. It came with a tomato sauce which the waitress assured me was made of roasted tomatoes, but I'd be very surprised if the pile of sliced tomatoes I had were anything other than raw.

Tris had sausages and lentils which were much tastier, but would've been too peppery for my taste. As we chatted and tried to decide why we were unimpressed, we decided that perhaps had we popped in for lunch, it would've been fine - and we probably would've been been happy with different dishes - it just didn't quite cut it for a proper evening meal out.