17 March - roast chicken and the last cavalo nero

I dug up the last of the cavalo nero on the terrace today to free up the container for some new spring planting. It had rather gone to seed, but I managed to get enough decent leaves to put it together with some spring greens to make a 'mixed greens' side to go with some roast chicken. I did the chicken in a bigger roasting dish than usual to make space for some roast carrots, which turned out to be a bit too big for making up the gravy so that it came out tasting rather 'watered down' - will go back to the old dish next time.

29 January - roast chicken and homegrown cavalo nero

I'd bought some humus to go with last night's tapas which we didn't eat, so that made a simple lunch today with a bit of pitta bread and some chopped carrot.

I was back on the painkillers today and not feeling much like cooking or eating, so it was a simple roast chicken for dinner with garlic, some roast new potatoes and home-grown cavalo nero still growing on the terrace. All delicious and comforting and just what was needed.

16 December - waiting in and going out

Today I was waiting in for a delivery - which frustratingly, never arrived!! - and having been down in London yesterday, there was nothing much in the fridge for lunch. The best I could come up with was the old student cupboard standby - tuna and sweetcorn mayo with pasta.

Tris had managed to get us a rare Friday night booking at Prosecco, a great local Italian, with lovely food and a really nice atmosphere. We started, of course, with a glass of Italian bubbly and I had bruschetta with roasted wild mushrooms and parmesan - delicious! We both went for venison fillet for our main - and although it was quite good, it was a bit too peppered for me which meant I ended up leaving the sauce that came with it, which was a shame. It was served with polenta chips and the most fantastic crispy cavalo nero - I'm not sure exactly how it was cooked, but it was in whole long leaves, but had the kind of taste of Chinese "crispy seaweed" - salty and sweet and very moreish!

7 December - baked salmon and rhubarb cakes

I picked up some rhubarb at the supermarket this afternoon and without much work on, I spent a bit of time pottering in the kitchen, making up a batch of rhubarb upside-down cakes. And now I know why my cakes always come out pointy - apparently, it's to do with cooking them in a fan oven.

Tonight's dinner started off with the cavalo nero still left from Friday's vegbox. I went for some simple baked salmon fillets with a dollop of minty creme fraiche on the top, then I cooked the cavalo nero up with some bacon and we had it all with some new potatoes. Simple, but tasty for a midweek supper.

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.

9 October - kedgeree and lamb with quince/apple

After an early start watching the F1 and World Cup rugby, we had an early lunch of kedgeree using the bit of smoked mackerel in the fridge from my lunch in the week. I used my usual kedgeree recipe, but substituted leeks instead of spinach. It amazes me how you can cook the same dish time and again, but each time it comes out slightly differently - today, it was just spot on and absolutely delicious, a perfect brunch with a couple of boiled eggs on the top.

For dinner, I'd planned to try out another Guardian recipe, this time from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for hot lamb and quince salad - using the quince I'd picked up the other day. Sadly, after the lamb had been sitting in its marinade all afternoon, I cut open the quince to find it was all brown and horrible! With the lamb half ready, I decided to plough ahead and to use an apple instead of the quince. Rather than having it as a salad, I wanted it as a main dish with some roasted new potatoes and cavalo nero from the garden. The recipe turned out to be a bit long-winded, messy and stressful as it seemed to involve lots of stuff going on at the same time and juggling lots of dishes and pans. I'd been a bit pissed off about the quince and by the time I'd got the food on the plates, I was feeling a bit hot and hassled. Was it worth it? Well, the lamb was quite nice and I might use a similar marinade again, but the rest of the faff probably wasn't worth the effort. The homegrown cavalo nero was great though!

15 September - sausage stew and an empty fridge

We're off on holiday early tomorrow morning, so today really is a case of trying to use up what's left in the fridge. Lunch involved a dish of boiled new potatoes mixed with some tomatoes and basil and a poached egg on the top. Not quite a proper meal, but it sort of worked!

There's still quite a bit of cavalo nero from yesterday, so I'm making it up into a version of a sausage and kale stew for dinner, together with the last few potatoes. Hopefully, that'll leave us with a nice empty fridge.

We're going to be off in Madagascar for a fortnight, so I won't be posting for a while. I don't think I'm going to keep a day-by-day record of what we eat, but I'll try and do a single holiday post when I get back to report on Malagasy cuisine!

14 September - pork with creamy chanterelle sauce

We're off on holiday at the end of the week, so I'm trying to make the most of the last few veg on the terrace. Lunch was another couscous salad, with some smoked salmon flakes and homegrown beans and tomatoes.

It was a lovely sunny afternoon, so in-between chores, I wandered up to a nice veg shop in Clifton that I'd spotted the other day had lots of wild mushrooms. I came home with a bag of yellow chanterelles and a tall spike of cavalo nero that poked out of the top of my backpack and raised a smile in Ruby & White on my way home getting some pork loin steaks.

I fried the pork steaks until nice and brown on each side, then popped them in the oven to finish off. I then used the same pan to gently fry a shallot, added the chanterelles, followed by a glug of white wine. I bubbled it down a bit, added some double cream, bubbled a bit more and poured the sauce over the pork. With some potatoes and the cavolo nero, it tasted wonderfully autumnal.

22 August - pork chops and homegrown kale

I planted some black kale, cavolo nero, from seed some time ago and the little kale plants have been growing healthily on the roof terrace.

The little plants were getting a bit crowded though, so I pulled up a few little plants in order to thin them out. I decided to cook up the young leaves for dinner. I blanched them for barely a minute, but they reduced to almost nothing. I still tossed them with a little oil and garlic and served them with some pork chops and a blob of rosemary jelly. Looking forward to some more substantial kale later ...