26 March - lamb's lettuce and chilli

I've had some lamb's lettuce growing under fleece all winter, but with the recent burst of warmth and sun, it's really started flourishing, so I thought I'd better start picking some.

I mixed it into a hot salad of new potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, chorizo and a poached egg.

While I was away over the weekend, Tris had made up a big pot of chilli which meant that I didn't have to worry about shopping and cooking for this evening, which was really nice as I was completely wiped out after my week away and had a load of other stuff to sort out.

28 February - a chilli wrap and chicken with mushrooms

For lunch today I used up the leftover mince from the bolognese and some borlotti beans from last night to make a quick chilli:

• I fried up some onion, garlic and yellow pepper.
• Added the beef mince + a pinch of allspice, cumin, chilli and a stub of cinnamon stick
• Once browned, I tipped in some tinned tomatoes, the borlotti beans and a bit of fresh coriander

I made it up into a wrap with a few spinach leaves and a dollop of yoghurt - great lunch!

This evening, I just had a fancy for a basic "meat and two veg" type supper. I pan-fried a couple of chicken breasts and then in the same pan made a creamy mushroom and tarragon sauce to pour over them. Served with some new potatoes and cabbage, it was just what I'd been after.

27 August - roast chicken

A busy day of marking was rounded off with a good old-fashioned roast chicken, cooked with butter, garlic, a bit of sage and some lemon, the juices boiled up with a glass of wine to make a lovely sharp gravy. We had it with a bit of cabbgae, some little carrots, a handful of beans and some simple boiled potatoes to soak up the gravy. As good as ever.

17 June - pork with gooseberry sauce

I got a box of gooseberries in today's organic vegbox; small, pinky-green and face-pullingly sharp! I ordered them on a bit of a whim when I was choosing this week's box contents and I wasn't quite sure what I planned to do with them. I rather fancied them as an accompaniment to something savoury, perhaps pork, rather in the vein of apple sauce. I found a recipe for gooseberry sauce to go with savoury dishes on the Riverford website, then I came across a recipe from another food blogger (Girl Interrupted Eating) for pork with gooseberry and sage sauce. I went for a combination of the two as below:

Gooseberry sauce: I put c. 150 g gooseberries, a tablespoon of sugar, a small knob of butter, a splash of water and some chopped sage into a small saucepan and heated it gently until the berries were starting to burst and collapse, but a few were still just keeping their shape. Because the gooseberries were quite pink in colour, the sauce came out a fairly nice yellowy-pinky colour, not the nasty green snot colour my fellow blogger found!

When I tasted the resulting sauce, I not only pulled an incredible face but did a little dance at the exquisite sharpness! I was a bit cautious about dolloping a big blob onto our pork chops, but somehow the sweetness of the caramelised pork managed to balance out the tartess of the gooseberries wonderfully and made a really top combination served with some simple new potatoes and summer greens. Definitely one I'd recommend and to try again.

13 June - homegrown spinach

Back home, after a good long sleep in my own bed, today's been all about the veg! I had a good pile of asparagus for lunch with a bit of parma ham and some new potatoes. While I've been away, apparently there's been a mix of sun and rain which has made some of the veg on the terrace go mental, especially the spinach:

So this evening, we had a chicken and chorizo salad with freshly picked spinach leaves as a base, plus some cherry tomatoes, blanched green beans and beetroot. I cooked a chicken breast in the oven (just one between two), then gently caramelised a red onion in a frying pan, added some sliced cooking chorizo and a bit of sliced garlic. Once the chorizo was browned, I tipped in a splash of balsamic vinegar to make a lovely hot dressing to pour over the salad and sliced chicken. The whole thing was served with some saute new potatoes on the side. I could almost feel all that green goodness flowing back through my veins!