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.

3 December - very spicy parsnip soup and sausage and kale stew

Still trying to blast through my cold, I made up a batch of spicy parsnip soup for lunch. I went a bit heavier than usual on the chilli, so it came out really very spicy! Also feeling a bit woolly-headed and not concentrating, the final result was rather thick and looked more like semolina than soup! I'm feeling so unfussed about food at the moment though, it actually went down okay.

Having got some lovely cavalo nero in the vegbox yesterday, I used it to make up some sausage and kale stew. Always good and great comfort food.

10 October - thai-spiced parsnip soup and cod with chorizo

With the first parsnips in this week's vegbox, it seemed like time for some Thai-spiced parsnip soup; a fabulous recipe from Sophie Grigson's Vegetables. It's a bowl of sweet, tangy, spicy creaminess - although today without quite as much kick as intended as I used one of the chillis from the garden which don't seem to have much heat to them. Still a great lunch nonetheless.

• Sweat together in a pan a couple of chopped parsnips, a chopped onion, some ginger, a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, a chopped red chilli and a bashed stick of lemongrass with a glug of oil for about 10 minutes.
• Add around 250-300ml vegetable stock and a tablespoon of Thai fish sauce and simmer for 10-15 mins.
• Take out the lemongrass, add 200-300ml coconut milk and liquidise.
• Gently reheat, add a good squeeze of lime juice and serve with a pile of freshly chopped mint and coriander.

For dinner, there were more root vegetables to eat up, so I started off with the idea of some mixed mash (potato and carrot). I didn't really fancy anything meaty, so I got a couple of chunky bits of cod and cooked them with some chopped chorizo and a few cherry tomatoes that were hanging around. It was quite a nice combination, but the tomatoes were a bit watery, so perhaps a proper rich tomato sauce might have been better. Nice chorizo-y juices though to mop up with the mash.