4 April - a kitchen gardener's tantrum

I had a bit of a kitchen gardener's tantrum this morning, when I went out onto the terrace to find that a cat had poohed in my tray of lamb's lettuce, digging up most of the lovely little plants in the process of trying to cover it up! Of all the places it could've chosen ...

After initially throwing my hands up in despair, I steeled myself to rescue at least some of the lamb's lettuce and after giving it a really good wash, added it to a warm salad of roasted squash and mushrooms.

Supper was a slightly odd combination of tuna steaks with some lime mayo, French-style peas - cooked with butter and lettuce - and a few saute potatoes. Not a classic, but actually not too bad.

14 February - quinoa salad and a veggie curry

I tend to rotate between potatoes, bread and pasta for lunch, with couscous and polenta occasionally. Today I thought I'd have some quinoa instead - quite similar to couscous, but with a slightly different texture and nutty flavour. There was a handful of chestnut mushrooms in the fridge, so I fried them up with a shallot and a bit of garlic and simply stirred them into some cooked quinoa and sprinkled some toasted pine nuts on the top. Not a bad combination for a change.

For supper, we had Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's bean and aubergine curry again - a top recipe!

23 January - polenta and beef stir-fry

I was at a bit of a loss what to have for lunch today. I'd had eggs and pasta yesterday - two lunchtime staples - and after a late-morning swim, I didn't have time for a jacket potato. I had rice planned for dinner and didn't really fancy couscous, so I settled on a different carb base in polenta. It's not something I've really cooked much, but a dish of simple soft polenta topped with a creamy sauce of mushrooms and bacon actually worked really well. I think it might become part of my lunchtime repertoire.

This evening, I used up the last chunk of the beef fillet, slicing it wafer thin and stir-frying it really quickly with spices (dried chilli and toasted, ground cumin), some soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine, then stirring in some spring onions and lots of fresh coriander at the end (a recipe from Ching-He Huang's Chinese Food Made Easy). There wasn't a huge amount of beef, so I served it with a big pile of rice and some stir-fried green beans with sesame seeds. It was really tasty, especially with the wonderful melt-in-the-mouth beef - just wish there'd been a bit more!

22 January - not fish pie

We were out again for lunch today, making the most of a bit of brief sunshine at Mud Dock. I was feeling a bit sicky after painkillers for a really sore back, so I didn't really appreciate my scrambled egg with smoked salmon, but it was a still a nice place to hang out on a Sunday lunchtime.

I'd got the ingredients to cook fish pie for supper, but I was feeling too pained and horrible to be bothered with the faff. Instead I used the prawns I'd got to go in the pie with some mushrooms in a simple creamy sauce with linguine. Easy and tasty and a good base for more painkillers.

26 December - simple pasta

After a lunch of cold turkey and salad, we headed home this afternoon. Oddly, despite all the mounds of food on offer over the past couple of days, I didn't feel as if I'd actually eaten much and got back quite hungry and craving something simple and tasty. Pasta with a creamy mushroom and bacon sauce did the trick nicely!

10 December - easy food

I was having to do a bit of weekend working today, so food was simple again. We had the bit of leftover leek tart with some salad (spinach, beetroot and roasted red pepper) with small jacket potatoes.

Then we were out to a friend's Christmas party in the evening, so inspired by the pasta my mum used to feed me before I went out drinking as a teenager, we had a bowl of pasta with bacon, mushrooms and cream.

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.

19 October - another beetroot salad and orzo with mushrooms

The salad leaves were looking distinctly sad and starting to go a bit slimy, so it was another salad for lunch, this time a variation on a favourite that involves new potatoes, chorizo and a poached egg. Today's other ingredient was the last of the beetroot, a surprisingly good combination.

I caught a bit of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on the telly the other night, talking about his quest to eat only vegetables again. His arguments do strike a chord, but Ruby & White, our lovely local butcher's, keeps luring me in and all my veggie intentions go out the window! Having spent the past couple of days eating up the meat in the fridge, tonight I was determined to have something veggie. As I was looking through HFW's new veg cookbook in a bookshop the other day, a recipe for orzo with mushrooms caught my eye, so I jotted it down quickly on the back of a receipt ... on the principle of "try before you buy"! Yesterday, I managed to pick up some lovely wild mushrooms, so I mixed them with a handful of chestnut mushrooms and fried them up in butter, added some garlic, a tsp of balsamic vinegar, a splash of white wine and some double cream. Then I mixed the mushroom suace with some cooked orzo (rice-shaped pasta) and sprinkled some parsley over the top.

I know it sounds a bit silly, buit the result was possibly a bit too mushroomy! I don't know if I got the quantity of mushrooms right, but there seemed to be a lot for the amount of pasta and as the wild mushrooms had a really strong flavour, it was perhaps a bit much. It was a good recipe though and definitely one I'll try again. The orzo made a nice change too, kind of a midway between risotto and pasta.

24 August - quick mushroom pasta

Another busy day at "school", so tonight was a real quickie; pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce, made with chestnut mushrooms and a good shot of garlic.

14 August - cold pork, a baked potato and orange polenta biscuits

For lunch today I had the leftover pork from last night, which I think was even better cold as the sticky sweet-vinegary coating stood out without the other strong flavours. It went went with some vegetable couscous; with tomatoes, green beans and broad beans.

I really like a baked potato, but I rarely cook them because it seems such a waste to put the oven on for an hour plus just for a single potato (and we don't have a microwave). This afternoon I was baking biscuits though, so popped a potato in at the same time and didn't feel quite so guilty! I had it with a mix of leeks, bacon and mushrooms in a creamy sauce - basic food but tasty and comforting.

The biscuits were little orange polenta biscuits from a Jamie Oliver recipe. As I'm teaching at the moment, I often take a flask of tea with me to slurp through the day. My flask has a funny little compartment in the lid, just about 3cm across. I'd often thought that it'd be fun to slot a couple of tiny biscuits in to snack on. In the book, these looked just right, but I found that getting them to come out the right size was more of a challenge. The recipe was supposed to make 25 biscuits, but in the end it made double that number! I had to bake them in two batches as I only have one large baking tray. The first batch came out really too big, so I tried to make the second batch smaller. I ended up with a handful just small enough to fit in, put some in a tin and took the rest in to leave in the staffroom. They disappeared pretty quickly!

• Mix together 170g butter, 170g sugar, 255g polenta and 100g plain flour, followed by the zest of two oranges and 2 eggs. I did it all in a food mixer.
• Cover the mixture and put in the fridge for an hour.
• Spoon small teaspoons of mixture (a rather variable measure!!) onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake for c.6mins at 190C.

Very easy and tasty.

29 July - a new butchers and a pork chop

Over the past few days, I've been watching as a new shop was fitted out just across the road and today I was very excited to venture into a new local butchers for the first time. It's called Ruby & White and it's a very classy-looking outfit - all Farrow & Ball woodwork and cool branding. It has a very impressive main meat counter, with just about everything from the usual pork, beef, lamb and chicken to venison, veal and pigeon. Then there's a deli counter with cold meats and cheese (although not a huge range), a bit of wine and things like marinades, spices and sauces. I've been losing interest in supermarket meat for some time and the other nearby butchers are neither very nearby nor often seem to have what I'm looking for. So this is quite an exciting development.

I was so overwhelmed by the choice, not to mention all the staff who were a bit overeager to tell me all about what they were doing, I played it safe with just a couple of pork loin chops to start off - all nicely wrapped in classy waxed paper - okay, so I'm a sucker for some nice packaging, esp. when it doesn't involve nasty plastic trays!

I fried them up with some chestnut mushrooms, took the pork out of the pan (to a warm oven) and added a good glug of pear cider, followed by some cream to make a sauce. Served with baby leeks and new potatoes, not only was the sauce tasty, but the flavour of the pork really shone through. A very promising start.

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.

15 May - pork with creamy mushroom sauce

To finish a meaty weekend, I cooked pork loin steaks with a creamy mushroom sauce. I fried the pork, slightly coated in flour, in a bit of oil and butter. When just about cooked, I transferred it to the oven to keep warm, then fried sliced mushrooms and some sliced garlic in the same pan, added a good slurp of Marsala, let it bubble down, then added half a small pot of single cream. Not forgetting to add the juices collected in the dish the pork was warming in at the last minute. It's a favourite sauce combination and as usual, it was really tasty. Served with some new potatoes, asparagus and the last of the spring greens.