3 April - sausage and mushroom cassoulet

It was another one-pot stew tonight, this time because Tris was working late and I wanted something I could eat before I collapsed with hunger, then he could just reheat when he finally got in. I came up with a simple sausage and mushroom cassoulet from the Riverford website. The sauce was a little bit runny, but otherwise, it made a nice warming supper with some spring greens on the side.

12 March - lamb and beetroot salad

I finally used up the last of the chilli today for lunch on a baked potato with a dollop of plain yoghurt to tame the heat.

The vegbox always arrives with a little recipe leaflet. I usually have a glance through it, but only occasionally get inspired to try them. This week I spotted an idea for lamb and beetroot salad with a pumpkin seed and chilli dressing. You whizz up some toasted pumpkin seeds with chilli, garlic, lemon juice, parsley, mint and olive oil, then you use half the slush to marinate a couple of lamb leg steaks and keep the other half as the dressing. I made up a salad of spinach, roast beetroot and blood orange, then fried the lamb and sliced it on top. For the dressing, the slush looked a bit thick, so I added a bit more olive oil and it worked great. The dressing was really tasty, with just a nice bit of chilli kick in the background and the combination of the beetroot and orange in the salad made a really nice change.

8 January - beef stew

We had some simple baked potatoes for lunch today with some leeks from the vegbox, cooked up gently with some bacon and then mixed with a bit of creme fraiche - a classic, comfort-food combination.

For supper, I did a slow-cook beef stew. The recipe idea came with the vegbox and was originally for beef and squash stew. Having had squash yesterday though, I substituted it for some parsnip.

• Brown c. 450g diced beef in an ovenproof pan and remove.
• Add a sliced onion and cook until softened, then add a clove of chopped garlic.
• Return the beef to the pan and add 250ml red wine and the same of water (a bit more if the beef isn't covered), plus a sprig of rosemary and bay leaf.
• Cover with a lid and put in the oven at 150C for two hours.
• Add a couple of peeled and chopped parsnips and cook for another 10-15 mins - checking there's enough liquid in the pan - I had to add a bit more at this point as it was drying out.

It came out smelling great, but looking a bit grey and watery. It could have done with some nice juicy greens on the side, but the only thing I had was some more leeks. It did taste really good - the beef was melt-in-the-mouth and the sweet, nutty parsnips were great mashed into the gravy. If I did it again, I think I'd find a way of thickening the sauce a bit, maybe just a bit of cornflour stirred in at the end.

6 December - leftovers and no moussaka

Considering this cold seems to have killed my appetite, I'm not doing a bad job of "feeding" it! I decided to use up a few leftovers for lunch and somehow ended up with a huge plateful. There were a couple of sausages and some cold cooked cabbage that I made into bubble and squeak. It looked like it might be a bit dry, so a chucked in what I thought was just a small spoonful of leftover mushroom stew as a kind of "gravy". It was way more than I'd usually have for lunch, but very tasty and I managed to munch my way through the whole lot over my lunchtime crossword!

This afternoon I managed to talk the nice man at Ruby & White into doing me some lamb mince to make the moussaka which didn't get made at the weekend. I cooked up the meat sauce and left it to bubble, but then when I cut open the aubergines, both were brown and soggy inside.

They'd arrived in the vegbox on Friday and been in the fridge since, so not great. With organic veg, you expect the odd slug and blemish, but it's no good when it's completely inedible, especially when you're already halfway through a recipe! I added a bit more tomato to make the meat sauce a bit more "saucy" and we had it with some pasta instead.

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.