5 February - pork and chickpea stew

Recently, we've rather got into the habit of going out for lunch at the weekends as an excuse to get out on otherwise rather grim wintry days. It's quite nice, but it does get a bit pricey and we tend to overeat a bit. So today we went for a slightly cheaper and lighter option with lunch at Lahloo Pantry, a little tea shop in Clifton. We each just had a small slice of goats cheese and chorizo tart rather than a huge plateful of food. It was perfectly enough for a light lunch and incredibly yummy. Followed of course by a good pot of loose leaf tea and a bit of a wander to get there and back.

For supper, I cooked up a warming, wintry favourite; pork, chorizo and chickpea stew. It's simple (and not particularly photogenic!) but always tasty after a good long bubble.

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!