31 March - a day out in Bath

We had a day out in Bath today. It being a busy Saturday, I didn't expect to get into the petite Cafe Shoon, so was pleasantly surprised when we got a table. I had a delicious serano ham, fig and mozzarella salad - three of my favourite ingredients on one dish!

After a hard afternoon's shopping, I wasn't feeling like doing much cooking, so we picked up some lamb with mint and balsamic crust from Waitrose - you can't go wrong with some garlicky spring greens and rosemary roast new potatoes.

11 January - easy lamb

I'd intended to cook fish pie, but as I was in Waitrose looking at the fish, nothing really took my fancy and I didn't feel like all that fish pie faff. So when I spotted their lamb in mint and balsamic crust in the same chiller cabinet, I decided to opt for the easy pre-prepared option instead! We had the lamb with kale and mixed mash (potato, parsnip and jerusalem artichoke) and it was as good as usual.

1 January - leftover lamb and thai curry

2012 started with leftovers ... we had cold lamb for lunch with some home-made tzatziki and a salad of the leftover squash and onion with some chickpeas. Not a bad spread for a picky lunch.

One of our more unusual Christmas presents was some grow-your-own mushrooms. I'd started off the shiitake mushrooms a couple of days ago and there were already some huge cups sprouting. Really impressive!

So dinner was a Thai chicken curry with the mushrooms and a few green beans. The curry paste always comes out a bit different and tonight it was pleasantly sharp (from the lime and a big blob of fresh ginger) with just the right amount of background chilli hum.

6 December - leftovers and no moussaka

Considering this cold seems to have killed my appetite, I'm not doing a bad job of "feeding" it! I decided to use up a few leftovers for lunch and somehow ended up with a huge plateful. There were a couple of sausages and some cold cooked cabbage that I made into bubble and squeak. It looked like it might be a bit dry, so a chucked in what I thought was just a small spoonful of leftover mushroom stew as a kind of "gravy". It was way more than I'd usually have for lunch, but very tasty and I managed to munch my way through the whole lot over my lunchtime crossword!

This afternoon I managed to talk the nice man at Ruby & White into doing me some lamb mince to make the moussaka which didn't get made at the weekend. I cooked up the meat sauce and left it to bubble, but then when I cut open the aubergines, both were brown and soggy inside.

They'd arrived in the vegbox on Friday and been in the fridge since, so not great. With organic veg, you expect the odd slug and blemish, but it's no good when it's completely inedible, especially when you're already halfway through a recipe! I added a bit more tomato to make the meat sauce a bit more "saucy" and we had it with some pasta instead.

27 November - icecream and lamb alla romana

After a morning at the Roman Forum, we headed for another recommended restaurant nearby for lunch. Unfortunately, it was all booked up and I was desperate for a sit-down, so we just plumped for a tourist joint round the corner. The food was actually perfectly passable, but it did highlight just how good all the hotel's recommendations had been in steering us away from dull tourist fare.

In the afternoon, back on message, we headed to Giolitti's, an icecream parlour and apparently a bit of a Rome institution. It's down a little alley, but not difficult to find with the buzz of the crowd outside. I don't much like icecream, but Tris ventured in to brave the crowd. He came straight back out describing the five-deep scrum at the counter rather like a city pub on a Friday night! I assured him I was happy to wait and sent him back in. He finally emerged some time later with what I have to admit, even to non-icecream lover, was a great icecream, well worth the effort.

For our final evening in Rome, we went to Grappolo d'oro Zampano, more traditional Roman food, but with a bit of a younger, funkier feel. I went for lamb alla romana, really slow-cooked lamb on the bone which just fell apart, served on a pile of greens with some crunchy cubes of roast potato on the side - great again! Finishing off with tiramisu and a couple of glasses of grappa, we needed the walk back through the city to walk it off.

17 November - fishcakes and lamb with pesto

I used the bits of leftover cod from last night to make a couple of simple fishcakes for my lunch today with the rest of the (out-of-season!) peas on the side. While I was out on the terrace snipping some chives to go in the fishcakes, I was looking at the few carrots I tried to grow back in the summer that never really came to anything. I pulled up what was left and came back in with a handful of the most miniature carrots you've ever seen to add to my peas!

I was totally uninspired about dinner and as I wandered down the veg aisle in Sainsbury's, the only thing that caught my eye was some baby leeks - must be a thing for small veg today! Anyway, they seemed like something to go in a meat and two veg kind of supper, so I went for a favourite standby of lamb steaks with fresh, homemade pesto (I knew there was still some basil in the fridge). I was still a bit unconvinced when it came to supper time, but there is something quite therapeutic about making pesto and as soon as I'd dipped my finger in it, my tastebuds perked up. In the end, lamb and pesto with baby leeks and a blob of mashed parsnip turned out to be spot-on and exactly what I wanted after all!

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!

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.

11 September - lamb chops with salsa verde

The parsley's still going strong so I thought I'd make a last salsa verde of the summer. I got a couple of lamb chops to go with it and some baby leeks. I think I dolloped rather too much mustard into the sauce and it came out a bit sharp for my taste. The lamb was nice though and the leeks were lovely and silky.

19 August - lamb and aubergine stew

I've been meaning to have a go at this slow-cooked lamb and aubergine stew from For Every Season for a while. Stew is generally a wintry dish, but the recipe promised this one was more summery and in the sense that it's got quite a North African feel to it, I think it is. The original recipe includes black olives, but as I'm not a big fan, I just left them out.

• Fry c. 300g cubed lamb in oil and remove to a dish.
• Do the same with a cubed aubergine.
• Next fry (in the same pan) a sliced onion until soft, then add 2 crushed cloves of garlic and a bit less than half a tin of chopped tomatoes.
• Stir in 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp ground cumin, then add a glass of water.
• Return the lamb to the pan, cover and simmer gently.
• After about 1/2 an hour, add the aubergine and continue to simmer for another hour or so. So a good hour and a half in total, so that the lamb goes wonderfully tender.
• Sprinkle with chopped coriander and serve with couscous.

It smelled great while it was bubbling away and once on the plate, lived up to expectations. Definitely one to do again.

3 August - lamb with salsa verde

Another wonderfully sunny summer day meant dinner on the terrace; lamb and salsa verde (using a bit more of the still prolific parsley), with homegrown beans, carrots and new potatoes.

We also got a delivery of Camel Valley wine today, so it seemed only fitting to have a chilled glass of Atlantic Dry in the evening sun.

14 July - italian cookery course at bordeaux quay

For my birthday, my friend Ange passed on a spare voucher for the cookery school at Bordeaux Quay, so this evening I went along for an Italian Provincial Cookery workshop. I went to another workshop there, on Spanish tapas, last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like then, this evening was really more interesting for the little hints and tips picked up from seeing a professional chef at close quarters than the actual recipes. Last time, I completely changed my chopping technique and this time, I think it was a better technique for crushing garlic that I think'll stay with me.

The evening started off with a demonstration - linguine with crab and chilli - looked quite good, but perhaps a bit too crabby for my taste!?! Then we moved onto some fresh pesto - made with basil and hazelnuts (as pine nuts are super-expensive and difficult to get at the moment). I've made my own pesto before, but it was really good to learn a bit more about balancing the flavours and the result I mixed up together with my partner was great. We then made a chunky minestrone soup which was served with a good dollop of the pesto on the top - really tasty and one to remember for summer lunches.

Next came more herb chopping, with a salsa verde to go with some lamb. It was a bit ironic that I'd made a salsa verde just back at the beginning of the week, but again interesting to see the balance of ingredients suggested for this one.

After polishing off our efforts with a glass of wine, the evening finished off with some delicious lemon polenta cake. Unfortunately, we'd run out of time for a proper demo, but there was "one he'd made earlier" to taste and the recipe to take home and try.

All round, a really enjoyable evening and a few culinary nuggets of inspiration brought home with me. Thanks, Ange!

8 July - a savoury tart and supermarket lamb

I had lunch with a friend today at the new Papadeli cafe at the RWA. It's a nice spot and my warm goats cheese and red onion tart was just what I fancied for lunch.

I was a bit rushed to think about dinner, so I went for the nearest to pre-prepared food I ever really get - lamb with a herb and balsamic crust from Waitrose. Quick, easily and tasty, and all the better with a big pile of home-grown veg!

2 July - Clifton Kitchen

We were out this evening for a friend's birthday at a local restaurant that we haven't tried before, the Clifton Kitchen. It's actually the site of Keith Floyd's first restaurant in Clifton. It's a tiny little place, rather tucked away and although it's gone under a couple of different incarnations since we've been in Bristol, we've never got round to going there. As a big group, we had more-or-less the whole of the little basement room to ourselves, which was nice and the food started off well. I had a nicely-presented boiled duck egg with tenderstem broccoli soldiers; fun and tasty too.

Sadly, my roast lamb came in a particularly peppery sauce. I struggled through most of it, but ended up leaving the last bit as the peppery taste built and built. It's one of those things I've sort of got used to being a pepper-hater. I try to remember to ask for no pepper on things that I know often have it sprinkled over the top (like eggy brunch dishes) or if I spot it liberally added to other diner's plates. But you just can't predict when it's going to be in a sauce. I wouldn't have let it put me off the restaurant (it's not their fault I don't like pepper!), but Tris's sole was rather uninspiring too - a bit plain with just a few capers for flavouring and no veg to speak of. Would we go back? With so many good restaurants about, we probably wouldn't make a special effort to revisit.

11 June - a fjordside barbecue

Our last day at Hardangerfjord today and thankfully, it was a brighter evening, so we were able to eat outside again for a barbecue of salmon and fantastic lamb with rosemary – tender and really tasty.

Rupert examines the wine bottle, while Pat gets on and drinks it!

Sadly, it only came with a salad of mostly lettuce and raw spring onion which I passed on, because raw onion disagrees with me. As interesting and tasty as the food’s been since I’ve been here, I’m really looking forward to getting home to some decent amounts of veg!

9 June - slow-cooked lamb and frogspawn

Today was soup again for lunch; this time a creamy cauliflower soup, perfect for a slightly damp, chilly day.

Sadly, the cold and rain drove us indoors for dinner this evening, but a hearty dish of slow-cooked lamb with swede and potatoes warmed us up after a busy afternoon snapping outdoors. A huge glass dish of lumpy white stuff arrived for pudding that none of us felt quite sure about. Venturing the first taste, my instinctive description was that it felt a bit like frogspawn, which didn't really inspire the rest of the group to try it! It was actually a chilled creamy pudding, a bit like rice pudding, but made with barley instead and although we were all a bit uncertain about the texture on first taste, it grew on us and with a fruit sauce made from cherries and strawberries, we all ended up with a good bowlful.

30 May - a rescued hollandaise and lamb with mint sauce

I had a fancy for a proper bank holiday brunch, so made up a batch of hollandaise sauce to go with poached eggs on toast and asparagus. Making hollandaise can always be a bit stressful, but using Nigel Slater's Appetite recipe as my guide, I usually get through. I use the yolk of one egg in a Pyrex bowl over a pan of gently boiling water, then whisk in about 60g cold butter, a few cubes at a time until it's all melted into a thick yellow sauce. I add a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of salt and cover until needed. The problem usually comes when the eggs are cooked and the toast toasted ... when I go back to uncover and stir my sauce, it can, as it did today, split into a nasty-looking, curdled mess. Nigel's solution of adding a splash of cold water and whisking again, worked a treat as always! Unfortunately, all that rich sauce and eggs seems to have given me indigestion for the rest of the day ... probably serves me right!

Dinner started off with the jar of homemade mint sauce still in the fridge from the week before last, which I thought I ought to use up, so it called for lamb, again. I quickly sealed a couple of chunky, Welsh rump steaks in a frying pan, then popped them in the oven for about 8 minutes to cook through. I did some braised, French-style veg - a leek, some fresh peas and broad beans, softened gently in some butter with a sliced clove of garlic and some chopped mint, then I added a slurp of white wine and let them cook gently, covered for about 15 mins. Together with some new potatoes - briefly boiled, then squashed and roasted with some sea salt and chopped rosemary - and of course, the mint sauce. Spot on. Sorry, it's a bit of a blurry photo, but I was eager to dig in!

27 May - the Muset

As usual, we'd left it a bit late to book a Friday evening meal out, but as I was flicking through the Eating Out West Guide, I came across a place we'd been meaning to try and was pleasantly surprised when I rang and they had a table. The Muset is a nearby restaurant that's been there for ages, but we'd never been to, partly because it's a bit tucked away and we always forgot about it. It's recently been taken over and revamped though and is now called The Muset by Ronnie. It's got a fairly ordinary interior and a simple, relaxed atmosphere, but the menu definitely pushes it into the 'fine dining' slot.

Straight away, it passed the 'bread test' with some delicious, fresh, warm fig and walnut bread. To start, I chose Jerusalem artichoke soup - it arrived as a big dish with an arrangement of pickled mushrooms and brown shrimps in the middle, then the waiter poured in the soup from a little jug. The flavour was just as impressive as the little flourish in the service!

For my main, I went for roast canon of lamb which came with pearl barley (I think), leeks, olives and anchovies. I was a bit thrown when the lamb really didn't taste like lamb at all! When I asked about it, apparently it's a cut of lamb that's particularly lean, so doesn't have the same fatiness and texture that lamb normally does. It was really interesting to have something completely different, but I'm not sure I really liked it and together with the slightly bitter flavourings of the barley and olives, it just wasn't my thing. I'm not going to let it put me off the place though, because there was really nothing wrong with it, just the wrong menu choice for me. And what with excellent service and lots more on the menu to try, I think we'll be going back.

19 May - slow-roast lamb ... again!

Tonight was Book Club - a gathering of friends to chat, eat, drink and exchange a few books. We usually decide on a food theme and all cook something, and today's was 'seasonal spring food', so I offered to do lamb to go with everyone else's spring veggies. Because the food has to be transported round to a friend's house, it's easier not to go for something that has to be cooked and served straight away, which made nice pink, rare lamb tricky. So I went for the slow-roast option again, but this time with lots of herbs and garlic. The herbs on the terrace have been going mad recently, so I was happy to give them a bit of a prune to provide a big pile of rosemary, thyme and oregano to sit my shoulder of lamb on. I threw in a bulb of garlic, some white wine, a bit of olive oil and then topped up with water to about halfway up the lamb. It went in the oven for half an hour at 180C to brown the top of the meat, then down to 150C for about 4 hours, basting regularly and topping up the water when it boiled down too far.

Keeping with the home-grown herbs theme, I also made up some fresh mint sauce; a big pile of chopped mint, mixed with a couple of spoons of sugar and some boiling water to dissolve it, then 3 tbsp white wine vinegar when it's cooled.

The smell all afternoon from all those herbs was wonderful and the lovely tender, aromatic lamb went down really well with the book club girls. It was even better served with some great veggies, including Ros's delicious peas with cabbage and spring onions, braised French-style - have to give that one a go myself.

16 May - leftover lamb and chicken noodles

The last chunk of Saturday's lamb was still in the fridge, so for lunch I cooked up some rice and peas, friend an onion and mixed it altogether with the cold lamb and a few spices. Not very attractive, but very tasty.

This evening's stir-fried chicken noodles were loosely based on a recipe from Ching-He Huang's Chinese Food Made Easy.

• Boil some dried noodles with some fresh peas - 5 mins.
• Stir-fry some chopped spring onions, half a chopped red chilli, some grated fresh ginger, a sliced chicken breast (just one for two people), half a sliced pepper, some quartered mushrooms and half a teaspoon turmeric.
• Add the drained noodles and peas, add a pinch of dried chilli flakes, 2 tbsp light soy sauce, 1 tbsp oyster sauce, 1 tbsp rice vinegar and stir together.