30 March - prawn noodle soup

After using up the last of the chilli on a jacket potato for lunch, I fancied something a bit lighter for supper. There was some pak choi in the fridge, so I went for a prawn version of the Asian-inspired noodle soup that I often cook.

• Bring about 500ml vegetable stock to a gentle boil, add some chopped red chilli and a smashed stick of lemongrass.
• Add some raw prawns and simmer until they turn pink, then some chopped pak choi and a sprinkling of fresh coriander.
• Season with a dash of soy sauce, fish sauce and fresh lime juice.
• Served spooned over some cooked noodles.
  
  

It came out with a great zingy flavour - really tasty, but fresh and light too. It must've been good because Tris couldn't resist slurping up the last dribbles in the pan!

22 March - microwave curry

Today's been another fairly full-on day. I was giving a presentation this morning, then just grabbed a jacket potato for lunch. By the time I left the conference around 6.30, I was absolutely shattered so was quite happy to just head back to the apartment for an evening in and an early night. I didn't have the energy to think very far about supper, so I popped into M&S again and picked up another microwave meal - this time a chicken curry. It wasn't bad with a glass of wine, although the whole apartment now smells of it!

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.

9 March - a jacket potato and leftover chilli

I got some baking potatoes in today's vegbox, so lunch was a good old-fashioned jacket potato with tuna mayo and a big pile of salad on the side - can't be beaten!

Tris has gone away for the weekend, so it was a solo supper of some of the leftover chilli con carne, this time with sweetcorn fritters. The chilli was possibly even better for being a few days old and the fritters were yummy as usual.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

5 January - a jacket potato and a burger

For lunch, it was a jacket potato with some roast red onion, goats cheese and a couple of slices of parma ham. Then this evening, we were out at the Lounge meeting a friend. I wasn't inspired by any of the specials so after lots of deliberation, I went for burger. Lounge burgers used to be fantastic, wonderfully juicy, but recently, they seem to have gone downhill and become rather dried out, burnt offerings. I was hopeful that they might be back on form, but sadly, it was rather dried and disappointing. I won't bother trying again.

10 December - easy food

I was having to do a bit of weekend working today, so food was simple again. We had the bit of leftover leek tart with some salad (spinach, beetroot and roasted red pepper) with small jacket potatoes.

Then we were out to a friend's Christmas party in the evening, so inspired by the pasta my mum used to feed me before I went out drinking as a teenager, we had a bowl of pasta with bacon, mushrooms and cream.

5 December - a mushroom stew

A regular combination for lunch today of fresh beetroot (roast while cooking yesterday's pork) with goats cheese and a baked potato.

There were some huge Portobello mushrooms in Friday's vegbox, so I got some lovely wild mushrooms and a few chestnut mushrooms to go with them in a warming stew. The pale purple wild mushrooms looked so beautiful, it almost seemed criminal to cook them up!

The recipe is sort of a combination of Yotam Ottolenghi's warm mushroom salad and a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall mushroom stew - with most of the ingredients of the former, but the stock/sauce of the latter. We had it with mixed potato and parsnip mash for which I tried out the rather faffy HFW method (cooking the parsnips in milk which you then use in the final mash) - don't think the result's any better than my usual boil-it-all-together-and-mash-it technique. With a blob of creme fraiche on the top, it all tasted great though - a great winter warmer supper.

29 November - bakery closed!

Disaster this morning - I pottered down the lane to Hart's Bakery to get some bread for my lunch, only to be faced with a notice saying it was closed for relocation. It turns out that Laura's had to leave her current premises and hasn't got a new place to go to yet. Such a shame as it's such a great little business - fantastic products and clearly really popular - keeping fingers crossed she finds somewhere new soon (preferably nearby!) and normal yummy bread/custard tart service is resumed before too long!

With the bread plan scuppered, I ended up with a couple of small jacket potatoes (for speed) for lunch to go with my fresh figs and goats cheese.

After all the rich, meaty Roman fare over the weekend, I went for a tasty but fresh veggie curry this evening:

• Whizz together in a blender some chopped fresh chilli (usually green, but red today), half an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and about the same amount of fresh ginger.
• Heat some oil in a large pan, add a tsp cumin seeds and half tsp turmeric, stir around then add the puree and fry for a minute or so.
• Add a chopped tomato, a squeeze of lemon juice, 3 cardamom pods, 3 cloves and about 150ml veg stock.
• To this add a small cauliflower broken into florets and a medium potato peeled and cubed - simmer for 20-25 minutes until the potatoes are cooked through.
• Either stir in a good splodge of natural yoghurt or drizzle it over the top, together with a good handful of fresh coriander.

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.

20 October - chowder and coffee cupcakes

Today was rather a domestic affair - gardening and baking cakes! I decided it was finally time to take down the beans and had fun on a chilly but sunny afternoon unwinding the plants from their canes.

Since I had a particularly yummy piece of "cappucino cake" a few weeks ago, I've been craving coffee cake and as I haven't come across any again, I decided to bake my own. I didn't want a big slab of coffee and walnut cake, but little light, coffee fairycakes. I did a bit of searching online and came across a promising-looking recipe on a blog: Afternoon Tea Total. I got the ingredients together and was a bit suspicious when it said to mix the small amount of butter into not just the sugar, but the flour too. As suggested, I started trying to mix the butter into the huge pile of dry stuff using an electric whisk and created a fantastic flour cloud! I ploughed on undaunted though and eventually it did all come together and looked just like ordinary cake mix. The cakes came out pretty well, if a little crunchy on the top (cooked a bit too long/too hot?) and the butter icing was fantastic. Just what I needed with my afternoon cup of tea.

I'd planned to have a jacket potato with tuna and sweetcorn mayonnaise for lunch, but to my immense disappointment, when I opened the cupboard there was no sweetcorn ... so it was just plain old tuna mayo in my jacket.

Perhaps to make up for the lack of lunchtime sweetcorn, I made a smoked cod and sweetcorn chowder for supper ... after a trip to Sainsbury's obviously. I rather seem to have missed the sweetcorn season this year, I think it must've peaked while we were away. The chowder wasn't bad, although I'm not doing very well at cooking for one and I made far too much. I really didn't want more leftovers to eat though, so I ended up having seconds and felt a bit sick by the time I'd polished it all off!

11 October - a jacket potato and late tapas

With some fresh figs in the fruit bowl that need eating up and some ricotta in the fridge, I decide to pair them for lunch; after all figs generally go well with white cheese (goats cheese, mozzarella ...). I go for a jacket potato with the ricotta dolloped on the top and the figs on the side. The ricotta's a bit too runny and tasteless though to be up to the job and even with a good grinding of sea salt, it doesn't really work with the figs. Oh well, you live and learn ...

I'm out early evening and drop into the Lounge on my way back about 9 to meet up with Tris and a couple of friends. It's a bit late for a proper meal, but a bit of tapas goes down well with a glass of wine.

6 October - a jacket potato and a hot lamb salad

It's feeling distinctly autumnal now, so a nice hot jacket potato seemed perfect for lunch. I made an avocado left from the other night into a basic guacamole to dollop on the top and topped it with some bacon - proper bacon, that is, from the butchers, so there were nice crispy rinds to chew on too.

I'd bought a couple of big chunks of lamb neck fillet to make up another batch of curry for my Dad, but I had a bit more than I needed, so I cut off a length to have for dinner. I marinated it in some yoghurt with chopped mint and a squeeze of lemon juice, then grilled it and sliced it on top of a hot salad of spinach leaves, roasted cherry tomatoes and roasted red onion. I made up a yoghurty dressing to drizzle on the top (yoghurt mixed with some tahini). A really nice combination.

For pudding, I tried out a Nigel Slater recipe from the weekend's Guardian, some fresh figs baked with a drizzle of honey, then some ricotta mixed with yoghurt, icing sugar and fresh vanilla (that we brought back from Madagascar) dolloped on the top.

2 September - fast food

Today was spent whizzing around doing lots of things and food had to be fast. For lunch, I grabbed a baked potato from a local sandwich shop and took it home to eat with a bit of goats cheese and the rest of the beetroot dip.

I was out at the pub for drinks early evening and when I got home about 8.30, a couple of glasses of wine had gone right to my head! So a quick bowl of pasta with peas and pancetta was needed to soak it up!

14 August - cold pork, a baked potato and orange polenta biscuits

For lunch today I had the leftover pork from last night, which I think was even better cold as the sticky sweet-vinegary coating stood out without the other strong flavours. It went went with some vegetable couscous; with tomatoes, green beans and broad beans.

I really like a baked potato, but I rarely cook them because it seems such a waste to put the oven on for an hour plus just for a single potato (and we don't have a microwave). This afternoon I was baking biscuits though, so popped a potato in at the same time and didn't feel quite so guilty! I had it with a mix of leeks, bacon and mushrooms in a creamy sauce - basic food but tasty and comforting.

The biscuits were little orange polenta biscuits from a Jamie Oliver recipe. As I'm teaching at the moment, I often take a flask of tea with me to slurp through the day. My flask has a funny little compartment in the lid, just about 3cm across. I'd often thought that it'd be fun to slot a couple of tiny biscuits in to snack on. In the book, these looked just right, but I found that getting them to come out the right size was more of a challenge. The recipe was supposed to make 25 biscuits, but in the end it made double that number! I had to bake them in two batches as I only have one large baking tray. The first batch came out really too big, so I tried to make the second batch smaller. I ended up with a handful just small enough to fit in, put some in a tin and took the rest in to leave in the staffroom. They disappeared pretty quickly!

• Mix together 170g butter, 170g sugar, 255g polenta and 100g plain flour, followed by the zest of two oranges and 2 eggs. I did it all in a food mixer.
• Cover the mixture and put in the fridge for an hour.
• Spoon small teaspoons of mixture (a rather variable measure!!) onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake for c.6mins at 190C.

Very easy and tasty.