28 March - crispy pork and noodles

It was a lovely sunny day, so lunch with a friend was outdoors at Browns. I had a rather chewy hot chicken sandwich, but it was okay with plenty of mayo and a few chips on the side, and it was just nice to be eating outdoors.

Tris was out this evening, so I used up the remaining cooked pork belly with some noodles, loosely based on a Jamie Oliver recipe. I stir-fried some spring onion, chilli and sliced red pepper, then added the shredded pork and a sprinkling of five-spice powder and fried until it went golden and crispy. Finally, I added some sliced pak choi and a splash of soy sauce and mixed it in with some noodles. The result was really delicious - all that lovely caramelised pork fat and spices - yum!

27 March - pork belly with spicy rhubarb sauce

We had some slightly green rhubarb hanging around that didn't quite feel pink enough for crumble, so I decided to do something savoury with it instead. I googled "pork and rhubarb" and came up with a few recipes - the below is sort of a combination of several:

• Blend two large shallots, 3 cloves garlic, 1/2 inch grated fresh ginger, 2tbsp honey and 2tbsp extra virgin olive oil to a paste.
• Coat c.750g piece of pork belly with the mixture and put it in a roasting dish with c.300ml dry cider and a red chilli just snapped to release its flavour. Cover with foil and cook at 180C for 90 mins (maybe a bit less or a bit cooler as it rather dried out) - check and add more cider if necessary (I ended up using a full 500ml in the end)
  
• Uncover and add c.250g chopped rhubarb and cook for another 15 mins until the rhubarb's tender.
• Remove the pork to rest and discard the chilli. Then bubble the sauce gently on the hob, adding a bit of cold chopped butter to make it smooth.

The resulting sauce was quite stunningly tasty and really had quite a chilli kick. Served on top of the lovely tender pork belly (we only ate about 2/3 of the meat, but all the sauce) along with some spring greens and beans, it was absolutely top!

21 March - scrambled eggs and garlicky greens

I started today with my first attempt at scrambled eggs in a microwave. Although the apartment does have a small hob, there's only one rather large pan, so I thought I'd try my hand with the microwave instead. The result - actually, not bad scrambled eggs after a good bit of stirring.

Knowing the lack of interesting lunch options at the conference centre, I picked up some couscous salad in Sainsbury's on my way in to see me through another busy day. Then it was out again for the evening, this time for supper with a fellow freelancer and an in-house editor who we've both been working for. Luckily the editor is based in Glasgow so was able to take us somewhere a bit different, in the trendy West End. It actually turned out to be a Zizzi's - a familiar chain, but actually quite a funky location. I went for roast pork belly, which was lovely and tender, and better still was served on a huge pile of garlicky spring greens - who says the Scots don't do veg!!!

3 March - the Rising Sun

Today we went down to visit my parents at their new place in Somerset. To celebrate the move and my Dad's birthday, we went out for dinner to a pub called The Rising Sun in West Bagborough. Rather annoyingly, I had a horrible dizzy spell just as we arrived (bit of an ear infection, I think, affecting my balance), so I spent most of the meal wishing the room would stop spinning and trying not to move my head too much! Which was a shame, because the food was really good. I had some chicken liver pate to start, then a huge chunk of lovely tender roast pork belly.

4 December - roast pork belly

We headed round to the Deco Lounge for brunch today - lounge eggs (poached eggs on toasted muffins with hollandaise) with smoked salmon for me.

I'd planned to make moussaka to use the aubergines that came in Friday's vegbox, but when I got to the butcher's, they didn't have any lamb mince. Lacking any other inspiration and not feeling up to trudging off to find it somewhere else (still very coldy), I had to come up with a quick change of plan. I got a piece of pork belly, which I slow-roast simply with some carrots and onions thrown in the roasting pan towards the end. We had it with some simple boiled cabbage and some gravy made from the pan juices. It wasn't bad, but although the pork was nice and tender on the inside, it was a bit too crunchy on the outside for my liking and just generally not really what I'd been in the mood for.

15 November - a baked potato and a massive chunk of pork belly

There were still some cooked beetroot in the fridge from last week. They were a bit shrivelled-looking, but once peeled and chopped and mixed with a bit of oil vinegar and mint, they made quite nice a little pile of lunchtime salad. A jacket potato with a dollop of soured cream and some bacon bits made the whole thing into a proper meal.

This evening, we were out for dinner with some friends at Aqua. I was drawn to the porchetta on the menu, so forewent a starter in anticipation of a big meaty main. It's a good job I did, because the piece of pork belly that arrived almost filled the plate and served on a pile of very rich beans, it proved to be incredibly filling. The meat was delicious and tender, but I rather wished afterwards I hadn't eaten it all as I ended up feeling overfull and slightly nauseous! A good strong espresso was definitely needed afterwards.

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.

13 August - balsamic pork belly with caramelised figs

I usually have a list when I go out food shopping, but today I just couldn't think what I wanted to eat, so I went out 'listless' hoping to be inspired. I came back with a bit of pork belly, from Ruby & White which is becoming a regular haunt, but not sure what I was going to do with it. I had a couple of figs in the fruit bowl that needed eating and wondered about combining them. I did a bit of online searching and came up with a recipe for balsamic pork belly with caramelised figs on another blog; Gourmet Recipes. I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but did something similar and it came out really rather well.

• Mix together a 1/4 cup of brown sugar, the same amount of water and half the amount of balsamic vinegar with a crushed clove of garlic and pour this over the pork belly in an oven dish. Cover with tinfoil and roast for 30 mins at 160C.
• Take off the foil and turn the heat up to 200C for another 45 mins or so.
• Cut the figs in half and dip the cut side into brown sugar, then caramelise in a hot frying pan for about a minute.

I chopped up the pork belly, drizzled over a bit of the juice from the dish and served it with the figs and some leeks and carrots. Pretty good.

27 April - a pub lunch in Mousehole

Continuing the trend for lunch out and supper back at the cottage, today we had lunch at one of the pubs in Mousehole - the Old Coastguard is a pub/hotel with a great restaurant and more fab views out to sea. I'd gone in thinking fish, but couldn't resist the crispy pork belly - it was simply served with mash and some grilled courgettes, but really tasty. Tris went for Thai green crab linguine, which looked a bit of a mush, but apparently tasted great. Could've sat with our coffees on the terrace all afternoon.

Supper was about using up the contents of the fridge in an egg salad, but after a heavy lunch, just what we needed.