2 April - goats cheese with figs and porotos granados

Rather inspired by the figs in my salad the other day, I had one of my favourite combinations for lunch today; goats cheese on toast with some fresh figs ... I just never get bored of it!

As I knew I was going to be out early evening today, I actually made up a pot of 'stew' for supper yesterday afternoon that could just be reheated when I got in. I tried another recipe from HFW's River Cottage veg every day - a kind of soupy vegetable stew called porotos granados. It's made up of pinto beans, squash, french beans and sweetcorn, along with stock and flavourings, and as the name suggests, it's South American (Chilean actually) in origin. Well, I'm not sure if perhaps I just didn't put in enough paprika, but I found the result a bit bland. The veg were tasty enough, but it did just taste like a bowl of boiled veg without much else to tie them together - definitely something missing in this one.

25 March - spicy goats cheese

With my flight not until late afternoon, I was rather at a loose end today. I'd completely run out of steam and spent the morning milling around the city, not quite sure what to do with myself. I'd decided to have a long lunch before I headed to the airport, but feeling a bit uninspired, I wandered round and round, not sure what I was in the mood for. I was just starting to get fed up when I came across Tron Bar and Kitchen - the cafe part of a theatre, tucked down a little side street. As soon as I walked past, I knew it was just the place I was looking for - light and airy, friendly but not too noisy. It was a short menu, but I had no trouble settling on Cajun goats cheese crostini with some chips on the side. It was a big slice of goats cheese in a spicy cajun coating melted in a bit of toast and served on some (non-rocket!) salad. Followed by a good pot of tea, I was able to sit for an hour plus watching the world go by until it was time to go and find the airport bus and say goodby to Glasgow.

15 March - chickpea salad and pasta with salmon

Along with some leftover couscous from last night, I made up some chickpea and pepper salad for lunch with a bit of soft goats cheese on the side.

Tris often says that we don't have much pasta for supper, mainly because it tends to be one of my lunchtime staples. So this evening I consciously went for a pasta dish - smoked salmon and leeks in a cream sauce.

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.

30 December - bruschetta and slow-roast lamb

When I had the oven on to cook the salmon yesterday, I popped some peppers and squash in to roast at the same time. I had both today on some bruschetta for lunch with a bit of goats cheese - mmm!

For dinner, I decided to try out a slow-roast lamb recipe I'd seen in the Guardian magazine a few weeks ago where you coat the lamb in yoghurt spiced with ras al hanout (the Moroccan spice mix usually used in tagines) and cook it long and slow with red wine and sliced onions. I slightly miscalculated my timing and put it on earlier than it should've been - I didn't think it'd matter too much with a 4-hour cooking time. Towards the end, I probably should have checked it a bit more, but was distracted by other things and was rather annoyed to find when I finally took it out that it'd completely dried out, so that the onions had shrivelled and burnt and there was no sauce left in the dish to pour over the meat. So all in all, the meat was a bit dry and disappointing. We had it with some couscous and a bit of roast aubergine and pepper and some extra yoghurt on the side. Not bad, but not as tasty as it should've been.

18 December - omelette and roast veg

When I asked Tris what he fancied for lunch today, he suggested an omelette. It was a chunky, sort of Spanishy affair, with some cold boiled potatoes, red pepper and a couple of mushrooms, plus six eggs and a handful of parsley - still going on the terrace. I cooked it in a big frying pan then popped it under the grill to finish off and it came out looking good and went down nicely with a good dollop of homemade sweet chilli and tomato jam.

We were out socialising early evening, but after working all weekend, I was knackered, so I came home early. Having expected to eat out, I hadn't really got anything in, so supper was cobbled together from leftovers. I still had some rather sad-looking roasted squash and beetroot, which I heated up in the oven together with some fresh red onion and garlic. I piled the veg on top of some couscous and scattered over a few bits of goats cheese and fresh coriander and the result was really quite good.

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.

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.

10 November - chicken and leek pie

I got some lovely fresh beetroot yesterday, both regular purple and golden, so I roasted them to have warm on some bruschetta for lunch with some soft goats cheese and sprinkling of mint - looked great and tasted lovely.

I cooked up the remains of the roast chicken with some leeks in a creamy tarragon sauce and made some pastry to make a pie for dinner. It was a bit of struggle to find the right size pie dish, so it ended up in rather a deep oven dish which looked great when it came out the oven, but was a bit of a struggle to get out! Half a pie on each plate looked a bit comical, but tasted great.

31 October - cheese on toast and beef chilli

With fresh Turkish figs still in season, I bought a lovely crusty sourdough loaf from Hart's this morning to make some goats cheese on toast with figs on the side for lunch.

There was a chunk of beef from yesterday in the fridge which I somehow fancied slow cooking. I stopped in Smith's on my way to the supermarket to flick through Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple. I really ought to buy a copy, but for today, I settled for just memorising a recipe for beef chilli. It's a pretty long list of ingredients, but I think I managed to get home with them all still in my head it more or less the right proportions and order!

• Blend an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic.
• Brown a chunk of beef on all sides in a pan- I used about 150g topside - and remove.
• Fry some chopped cooking chorizo in the same pan, then add the onion and garlic mix.
• Add a tsp cumin and a tsp allspice, a few cloves, a cinnamon stick and a bay leaf.
• Stir in a couple of chopped red chillis, a few bits of jalapeno (from a jar), a splash of balsamic vinegar, a squirt of tomato ketchup, some dried oregano and half a tin of tomatoes. Stir it all around to cook for a while, then return the beef and top up with about 150ml water.
• I transferred the whole lot to a casserole, covered it with foil and popped it in a low oven (150C) for a couple of hours.
• Towards the end, stir in half a tin of borlotti beans.
• When you take it out, break up the beef with a fork into shreds.

The result wasn't particularly photogenic, but it tasted absolutely fantastic! All the flavours came together wonderfully to create a real 'surround-sound' kind of taste that lingered long after the last mouthful! Rather than rice or tortillas, I served it with some cubes of roast sweet potato and a blob of guacamole.

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!

25 October - squash bruschetta and chicken with cider

Inspired by Hugh and his veg the other night, lunch today is butternut squash and goats cheese bruschetta. While I was cooking up the veg last night, I popped the rest of the squash and half a red pepper in the oven to roast. Today I warmed both through in a pan with a bit of melted butter, tipped them onto a couple of slices of nice toasted bread (from Hart's), added some crumbled goats cheese, a few chopped walnuts and popped it all under the grill to melt the cheese a bit. Well, worth a bit of forward planning!

There were still some mushrooms from Friday's vegbox in the fridge that needed eating, so I made up some chicken cooked in cider with mushrooms, potatoes and cream - based on a Nigel Slater recipe that's a regular favourite. Served with some plain boiled cabbage, the sauce is both creamy and tangy.

18 October - pork and chorizo stew

There are some salad leaves and beetroot in the fridge bought to go with the weekend's burgers, so lunch today is a salad made up of beetroot, grilled red peppers and goats cheese.

I'm still working my way through the meaty leftovers and tonight it's a bit of pork cut off the joint we had roasted (because it was a bit too big). I cook it up with some chorizo, the other half of the red pepper, onion, tomato and chickpeas, plus a few flavourings (garlic, thyme, saffron and parsley) and cook it long and slow to make a tasty, comforting stew. It's actually a "recipe" I came up with last winter based on the list of ingredients on the back of a "stew pot" at the supermarket that appealed but struck me as overpriced!

7 October - mackerel and bacon salad

The other day I was watching Nigel Slater's Simple Cooking and was quite taken with his mackerel and bacon salad, so I made up my own version for lunch. I mixed together some boiled new potatoes, with a smoked mackerel fillet, some crispy bacon, roasted red onions leftover from last night and a small handful of green beans from the garden. I turned it all over in a simple dressing of white wine vinegar, mustard and olive oil and sprinkled over some chopped chives. It was a really good combination and I think could become a bit of a lunchtime favourite.

I got a butternut squash in today's vegbox, so dinner was pasta with squash, sage and goats cheese. Unfortunately, the pasta took a bit longer than expected to cook, so the squash got a bit dry and overcooked, and I didn't really have enough goats cheese either, so not my most successful supper!

3 October - turkish figs and singapore noodles

There are lots of lovely big Turkish figs in the shops at the moment, so it was a favourite for lunch today of figs and goats cheese with a few boiled potatoes on the side.

For dinner I fancied something tasty with lots of veg, so went for a version of Singapore noodles (roughly from Ching-He Huang's Chinese Food Made Easy) - stir-frying the following:

• a blob of grated ginger
• chopped red chilli (homegrown!)
• spring onions
• chestnut mushrooms
• a tsp turmeric
• a sliced leek
• a sliced red pepper
• a few bits of chopped bacon
• large raw prawns
• a few chilli flakes
• cooked noodles
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar

It's a long list of ingredients, but very easy as you just throw them all in a pan and you end up with a yummy bowl of yellowy noodles in a few minutes.

5 August - more goats cheese and singapore noodles

We seem to have fridge full of bits of leftover cheese; goats cheese, halloumi and mozzarella! So for lunch today I used up the goats cheese with some of the roast peppers left over from last night, mixed with some chickpeas, tomatoes and basil.

Dinner was Singapore noodles based on Ching-He Huang's recipe in Chinese Food Made Easy.

• Tonight I fried a couple of chopped spring onions with some grated ginger and a tsp turmeric.
• I added a red pepper cut into strips, a carrot and some sugarsnap peas that came in today's vegbox.
• Then in went a few small chunks of bacon and a chicken breast cut into thins strips.
• Meanwhile I boiled some noodles, drained them and then added them to the wok with a few chilli flakes, 2 tbsp light soy sauce, 2 tbsp oyster sauce and a tbsp rice vinegar.

Tasty with just a hint of a chilli kick in the background.

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!

1 August - goats cheese on toast and pasta with spinach

Another cheesy lunch today, this time goats cheese on toast with a pile of salad. And a quick supper of orecchiette with spinach, pancetta and a slurp of cream to make a simple sauce.

22 July - Cafe Maitreya

This evening we were booked in for dinner at Cafe Maitreya. It's a vegetarian restaurant that we've been meaning to try for as long as I can remember, but because it's a taxi ride away on the other side of Bristol and we've got so many good places nearby, we never seem to get round to it. It's won lots of awards and came well recommended by friends, so I was quite excited about going.

I love my veg, but I was actually quite surprised when I checked back through this blog so far at how many actual vegetarian meals I cook. Looking just at main evening meals, over the past three and a half months, only 5% of my meals have been properly vegetarian. Another 14% have been predominantly veg, with just a bit of pancetta or chorizo added. 21% have been fishy, leaving a shocking 60% of meat-based meals!

Anyway, my verdict of Cafe Maitreya was a bit mixed really. My starter of courgette flowers stuffed with goats cheese was really nice and the wine, a South African chenin blanc, really stood out. But my main course had that rather 'mushy' texture about it that makes me think of nut roasts and baby food and often puts me off "vegetarian" dishes. It was described as "aubergine escalope", which was slices of aubergine fried in a couscous coating - not bad. But it was served with a rather large dollop of mushy, slightly sweet pepper and almond pate and rather too much sweet cherry sauce (even though it was described as 'sour' on the menu). By the end of which I just felt a bit sicky. Which was a shame as it was a really cool spot, with a nice atmosphere and really friendly staff. If it was nearer, I'd probably give it a second chance, but as it is, I don't think we're likely to spend 20 quid on taxi fares to get over there again.