1 March - courgette pasta

Sometimes the simplest, made-up dishes are the best and today's lunchtime pasta was one of those. Courgette, bacon and a small blob of cream stirred into some penne pasta ... yum!

This evening, I was out with friends at the Lounge. I went for the chicken and chorizo salad, mainly because it's usually not very salady - chicken, chorizo, peppers and potatoes. It was clearly a different chef on tonight though because it arrived as a huge dish of rocket (which I hate!) with a few bits of chicken and chorizo on the top - very disappointing :(

29 February - veggie curry

Another veggie dish tonight, this time a Southern Indian vegetable curry from Anjum Anand's Indian Food Made Easy . It had lots of yummy veg - potatoes, carrots, courgette, green beans and cabbage - and plenty of spices, but somehow came out a bit disappointingly bland. At least it felt healthy though ...

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.

13 January - calamari in valetta

I ventured into Valetta today, determined to have some proper Maltese food for lunch. The places with tables out in squares were tempting, but despite the sun, I was feeling a bit too chilly to sit outside. So I fell back on my guidebook and sought out Rubino, a restaurant recommended for modern Maltese cuisine. It was a bit tucked away and difficult to see in from the street, But I just took the plunge anyway. It was full smartly-dressed businessmen taking clients out to lunch - a good sign - and the waiters were welcoming.

I went for just a main from the menu scribbled on a blackboard in a mix of English and Malti. As I waited for my calamari, I was served with bread and little crackers to dip into some bigilla - a Matli dip made of spiced crushed beans - tasty and quite moreish. When my squid arrived, it was huge - three whole grilled squid with a herby sauce and spicy roast potatoes. It was very good and great to have some fresh seafood. I didn't quite manage to clear my plate though and needed a good strong espresso before I went off to spend the afternoon exploring the city!

While I was out, I managed to gather a few bits and pieces of food, so supper back at the apartment consisted of some couscous already mixed with Mediterranean spices, some fried courgette, cherry tomatoes and a bit of mozzarella. After a filling lunch, it was all I needed and with more Maltese wine ended the day pretty well.

3 January - lamb "kedgeree" and salmon teriyaki

I was trying to decide what to do with the last little bit of leftover roast lamb for lunch and after rummaging in the bottom of the fridge, came up with some curried rice - kind of a cross between kedgeree and biryani! I cooked the rice with some cardamom pods, then fried up an onion and some courgette, added some curry powder and stirred in the rice and lamb. Sprinkled with a bit of coriander, it made a really rather yummy plate of lunch.

Tris picked up a bottle of teriyaki sauce while we were in the supermarket the other day, so for dinner I made some salmon teriyaki. I gently heated 3 tbsp teriyaki sauce, a tbsp honey, a clove of chopped garlic and half a tsp ground ginger to make the glaze. I spread it over a couple of salmon fillets to marinade for a few minutes, then popped them in a hot oven for 10 minutes. We got some rather odd green rice for Christmas, so I cooked up some of that along with some steamed pak choi and a few green beans to make a rather oddly green and pink plate of food!

26 October - more bruschetta and pasta with pesto

It was another HFW-inspired bruschetta recipe again for lunch today, this time broad beans boiled, podded then swooshed around with some melted butter and garlic before being blended to a paste. I spread the paste on toast, crumbled over a bit more goats cheese and this time a sprinkling of fresh mint. Another great combination and a great colour!

I was going to do just simple pasta with fresh pesto this evening, but decided to add some gently fried red pepper and courgette to make something a bit more substantial. It seemed to work and the pesto was spot-on - leaving that fabulous rounded taste in your mouth long after you've cleared your plate ... mmmm!

9 August - vegetable splodge!

It's a busy day and I'm a bit uninspired about dinner. I've got some nice cooking chorizo in the fridge that I bought the other day and a rather oversized courgette left in the vegbox, which somehow leads to a big pan of what I can only describe as 'vegetable splodge'! It's sort of 'ratatouille plus'; made up of onion, garlic, pepper, courgette, aubergine and tomatoes, plus some chorizo and a tin of cannellini beans. It's not very attractive, but it makes a tasty bowl of vegetably stew.

7 August - vegetable Thai green curry

There's so much veg floating around the kitchen today, it really has to be a vegetarian dinner. Lots of it seems to be green, which by a process of association leads me towards a green curry! I use a Nigel Slater paste as my base, mixing up in a blender:

• a stalk of lemongrass (centre bit chopped)
• a couple of cloves of garlic
• some galangal from a jar in the fridge
• a shallot
• half a green chilli
• a handful of fresh coriander
• a squeeze of lime juice
• a splash of fish sauce

I fry up a chopped courgette and a couple of spring onions, then add the paste, some veg stock and a small tin of coconut cream. Then in go some sugarsnap peas, green beans and some fresh sweetcorn (just to add a bit of yellow). It all comes out as a fairly tasty bowl of flavoursome green stuff and the sauce doesn't overwhelm the individual flavours of the veg.

2 August - courgette and goats cheese tart

After finishing a big batch of work late afternoon, I had a bit of time to potter about in the kitchen, so I made a courgette and goats cheese tart from For Every Season. It's actually a combination of two of the recipes in the book. The courgette and goats cheese recipe contained both cream and creme fraiche, but I settled on just eggs and cream for my filling, as per another tart recipe. The pastry was super-easy to make, although quite tricky to handle as it was so crumbly, it completely collapsed on first attempt and I had to squidge it back together and try again.

• Whizz 110g plain flour with 55g cold butter (cut into chunks) and a pinch of salt together in a blender until like breadcrumbs. Then dribble in a tbsp of good olive oil through the hole in the top. It forms a lovely shiny ball. Wrap in clingfilm and pop in the fridge.
• Line a smallish flan case with the pastry and bake blind (filled with baking beans on a piece of greaseproof paper) for 15 mins at 180C. Remove the beans and cook for another 5 mins.
• For the filling, mix together 2 eggs, 2 egg yolks and 150ml double cream.
• Fry 2 small sliced courgettes in olive oil and add to the filling mix.
• Pour the filling carefully into the pastry case (I actually had a bit too much, so maybe one less egg and a bit less cream). Crumble 50g goats cheese over the top.
• Bake for 25 mins, sprinkling a few pine nuts over the top 10 mins before the end.

It came out looking fantastic. We had it with a salad of beetroot, broad beans, peas, mint and peashoots - back out on the terrace on another lovely summery evening. The crumbly pastry was just wonderful, well worth the challenge of getting it from board to tin!

25 June - courgette & feta salad and fillet steak with Thai dressing

The theme for today was definitely "home-grown"! My first courgette was a bit small and misshapen, but I wanted to pick it to encourage more to grow. It wasn't quite worth eating on its own, so for lunch, I mixed it in with some shop-bought golden courgettes. I sliced them thinly and griddled them to make a simple salad, dressed with a little lemon juice and scattered with chunks of feta cheese and toasted pine nuts.

For dinner I wanted to do a favourite dish of beef fillet with a Thai dressing from Jamie Oliver's The Return of the Naked Chef. After visits to several butchers, I couldn't get the right-sized piece of beef fillet to cook as one chunk as I usually do, so I had to go for a couple of chunky ready-cut fillet steaks. I find that supermarket steaks tend to be a bit tasteless, but these ones from Waitrose were actually pretty tasty. The Thai dressing has a long list of ingredients, but they just need all mixing together and the result is well worth the effort:

• 2-3 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
• pinch of brown sugar
• 1/2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1/2 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
• some chopped red chilli (I only use about 1/3 a big one)
• lots of chopped coriander and mint

I made up a salad of freshly-picked spinach and the first of the home-grown mangetout (just very briefly blanched in boiling water), with some thinly-sliced, grilled red pepper.

I griddled the steaks for about 5 mins, then sliced each one, laid it on top of the salad and poured over the dressing. Served with a bowl of home-made chunky chips, it made a scrummy meal - such a wonderful combination of flavours and textures. And the spinach and mangetout really were completely different from those you buy in the shops, or even the stuff we get in the vegbox - just so much greener-tasting and absolutely melt-in-the- mouth tender!

12 May - roast veg salad and garlicky chicken

When I was making the pasta last night, I bunged some bits of pepper and courgette that I wasn't using in the sauce in the oven to roast and I had them as a roast veg salad for lunch today, combined with some cherry tomatoes and served with some new potatoes and a few slices of mozzarella.

For dinner, it was another Nigel Slater favourite; chicken thighs browned in a frying pan with a little butter and some oil, then turned down, covered and cooked very slowly over a low heat for about 30-40 mins with some whole cloves of garlic and some thyme leaves. Then I took out the chicken, poured off most of the fat, put the pan back on a high heat and poured in a good slurp of white wine. I let it bubble, scraping up any bits from the pan and squashing the soft garlic cloves. Usually, I add a bit of butter at the end to make a really rich sauce, but today, still on a health drive, I just added a squeeze of lemon juice and poured it over the chicken - less rich, but lovely and sharp and garlicky. No potatoes tonight either, just a plateful of veg; spring greens (from the vegbox), asparagus and a few green beans.

11 May - with chives

I've got some fantastic chives growing out on the terrace, so today it was potato salad for lunch, just to make use of them! I made it with creme fraiche instead of mayo, just to be healthy, which was a bit uninspiring, but the chives made up for it. With some beetroot and egg salad to go with it.

Dinner was 'student pasta' - onion, pepper, courgette, some bacon bits and a tin of tomatoes all cooked up and served with pasta - more-or-less exactly the recipe I lived on as a student and still just as tasty.