11 July - fresh tuna with salsa verde and homegrown beans

The veg on the roof terrace are still flourishing; the mangetout are, I think, coming to an end now, so I picked what will probably be the last decent picking, with a few starting to get a bit overlarge and misshapen. The beans are coming along though and even though the dwarf French bean plants have never really got going, they're still managing to produce some decent-sized beans on really pathetically weedy plants! The climbing beans look much healthier, now reaching up to the top of their canes and producing their first handful of beans too.

To go with the veg, I had in mind some kind of fish with a variation on salsa verde, to use up some more of the parsley, which is starting to take over. Again, I wasn't very inspired by the fish on offer, so ended up with a couple of tuna steaks, which wasn't really what I had in mind, but actually worked okay. For the salsa verde, I whizzed together in a blender:

• a large bunch of flat-leaf parsley
• a small handful of mint
• a good tsp smooth Dijon mustard
• a couple of anchovy fillets
• a good glug of extra virgin olive oil
• juice of half a lemon

Very green and tangy dolloped over the tuna steaks.

6 July - homegrown tomatoes and chicken noodle soup

I've been holding out until a proper handful of tomatoes were ready to pick and today I harvested six cherry tomatoes (a mix of red and yellow), which definitely constituted a handful! So they went in a salad for lunch with some beetroot, new potatoes, goats cheese, bacon and pine nuts.

For dinner I used up the last of the cold chicken together with a decent picking of mangetout with some noodles in a soupy broth made from the rest of the stock, flavoured with chilli, lemongrass, ginger, soy sauce and Thai fish sauce. Tris was late home from work again, so it was made in two batches. I'm definitely not going to keep this up for much longer!

3 July - roast chicken with lemon, sage and garlic

I didn't consciously plan to cook a Sunday roast, but roast chicken is a a regular favourite and it makes sense to cook it when you've got a bit of time to potter around. It was a fabulously sunny afternoon, spent mostly out on the terrace doing some gardening and DIY, so it was nice to have a meal that I could pop in the oven then just wander in occasionally to check. I usually do variations on the same theme with roast chicken; sometimes I use butter, sometimes olive oil and the herbs vary too thyme and sage both work well though.

• I mix some chopped sage with some slightly softened butter and a bit of finely grated lemon zest. I smear it all over the chicken and pop it in a roasting tray. I slice a lemon in half, put half inside the chicken, then squeeze the other half over the top and throw the shell in the tin.
• I roast it for an hour and a bit (depending on the size), in a hot oven (c.200C) basting occasionally and adding a few whole, unpeeled cloves of garlic about half an hour before the end. If you put them in from the start, they just go brown and shrivelled.
• When it's cooked, I take the chicken out and leave to stand covered in foil, while I make the sauce. I put the pan on the hob and add a glass of white wine, stirring up the sticky bits from the bottom, and squeezing the lemon shell and garlic.

The moist white chicken with the sharp, rich sauce is great as usual. Today we have it with more home-grown mangetout and some carrots, plus some new potatoes to mash into the juices - yum!

1 July - peach and mozzarella salad and a pork chop

The peaches still don't feel wonderfully ripe, but are at least a bit softer, so I go for that peach and mozzarella salad. I try a slightly sweeter dressing this time; oil with raspberry vinegar (home made by popping a handful of fresh raspberries into a small bottle of white wine vinegar), which works better. It looks so lovely, I can't resist another picture and it tastes pretty good too, even with slightly crunchy peaches.

Tris is out for the evening, so I have an easy pork chop with some creamy mushroom sauce and a big pile of fresh veg; homegrown mangetout and peas, broad beans and new potatoes from today's organic vegbox. Still can't get over how amazing the homegrown mangetout taste!

28 June - Thai green prawn curry with noodles

Tris is working late quite a bit at the moment, so my challenge is to come up with dinners that I can cook and eat at the normal time (before I fade away!), but can then sit happily for him to reheat when he gets in. Last night's pasta worked well and tonight I decided to go for a Thai green curry. The mangetout are growing by the day, so I wanted to include some, but didn't want to overcook them. So I made the curry, adding half of the picked mangetout right at the end. When I served up my half, I fished out all of the cooked mangetout, leaving the remaining uncooked ones in a bowl for Tris to add to the rest when he heated it up. A bit of a palaver, but worth it to appreciate precious home-grown veg at its best!

The recipe I use for the curry is based on one from Nigel Slater's Appetite. When I was buying some of the ingredients for the paste, the girl behind me in the queue commented on what exciting shopping I had. I explained that I was making Thai green curry, to which she exclaimed "What! You make the paste from scratch?!". It's actually really not that difficult, you just bung everything in a blender and I think it tastes so much better than ready-made paste. being a bit of a chilli-wimp, it also means I can control the heat - a bit less chilli, lots of other lovely flavours coming through.

Thai Green Prawn curry
For the paste, blend together:

• two cloves of garlic
• a knob of peeled fresh ginger
• a stick of lemongrass (soft centre bit only)
• some fresh red chilli (I used about 1/3 a big one)
• a big handful of fresh coriander leaves
• a few coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• a little groundnut oil (1-2 tbsp) - enough to make a paste

1. I fry a few chopped spring onions in a little oil in a big wok-like pan, the add the paste and stir it about a bit.
2. Add about 100ml chicken stock and a tin of coconut milk. Simmer gently for about 5 mins.
3. Add a handful of fresh peas - simmer another 5 mins.
4. Cook the noodles (50g per person) in boiling water (according to the packet) and drain under cold water.
5. Add the prawns and the mangetout to the sauce and cook for just a couple of minutes till the prawns turn pink.
6. Season with a squeeze of fresh lime juice, a pinch of salt, a tsp of Thai fish sauce and some fresh mint leaves.
7. I pile the noodles in a deep bowl and pour over the curry.
8. Eat carefully without flicking the sauce because of the bright yellow turmeric!!

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!