10 February - jacket potato and salad and the Townhouse

Lunch was another jacket potato today, this time with a salad made up of bits in the fridge; beetroot, tomatoes, green beans, sweetcorn and a few slices of fried chorizo.

There's a restaurant just round the corner that's had at least four different incarnations in the four years we've lived here. The original restaurant was really good, but over the past few changes of hands, it's been just average rather than special. It changed again just recently, so we thought we'd better give it a try. It's now called the Townhouse and is going for up-market English, with a rather fancy menu full of unusual combinations and food in little stacks. We both had scallops with pea puree and black pudding to start. It could have been quite nice and it was all okay, but nothing very inspiring. Then for main, I had fillet of bream with pork belly and more black pudding. Again, it sounded like an interesting combination, but the meat and the fish were presented at different ends of the plate - the rather small, plain fish fillet on a pile of spring greens and the pork and black pudding as part of a potato stack. It felt a bit like eating two different meals on one plate, neither terribly exciting and they didn't particularly work together. I don't mind a bit of fancy cooking and presentation, but I think if you're going to present lots of small little bits of food, they've got to be really special and this just wasn't. Each of the elements might have got away with being solid, English cooking in nice big chunky portions (a la the Kensington Arms), but didn't really cut it here. Not sure we'll bother going back.

28 January - montpellier chapter, cheltenham

We'd planned a grand day out to give us something to look forward to amongst the January greyness. We got the train to Cheltenham and had booked for lunch at a trendy hotel, the Montpellier Chapter. The restaurant, which has Simon Hopkinson as an advisor, got a good write-up in the Guardian, so we had high hopes for a cool, buzzy atmosphere and some good food. When we arrived at 12.30 though, there were only two other couples in an otherwise completely empty restaurant and we were all stuck in a corridor-type area rather than in the main body of the restaurant, which looked like it was set up for a big group. I was a bit disappointed to be sat in a rather unappealing corner in a draught, but expected that things would perk up when 'the others' arrived, possibly for one. I had some nice scallops to start, although the orange zest in the topping was a bit over-powering for my liking. By the time our mains arrived, the other couples had left and I'd overheard from one of the waitresses that they were actually gearing up for a big group for afternoon tea later in the day - leaving us as the lone diners in the corner of a completely empty restaurant - chilly, soulless and distinctly uncomfortable!! Our main was very good, we both had pork fillet and pork belly with creamy mash, red cabbage and apple sauce - all very well cooked and delicious. We chatted a bit to the waitress at the end of the meal and she apologised that we hadn't caught them on the best of days. I guess it was just bad luck and there wasn't an awful lot they could have done about it - except perhaps seated us in a slightly comfier spot. Thankfully, we had a great afternoon's shopping afterwards though and a good stop for tea and cake at the Swallow Bakery before we headed home.

In the evening, we didn't really need a proper meal, so I made up a few tapas-style dishes to pick on instead - warm tomato and basil salad, beetroot with toasted walnuts and some fried potatoes topped with chorizo and sliced red pepper.

20 August - the pilgrims at lovington

I'm super-behind keeping up this blog, so I'm just going to try and add some very brief posts to catch up ...

We went to a wedding reception near Castle Carey in Somerset and stayed at a great little pub called The Pilgrims at Lovington. We arrived in time for lunch which was fab - I had scallops with black pudding to start, followed by veal wrapped in sage and parma ham. Great food and a lovely room too. Wonderful breakfast the next morning and a shower you could stand in all day!

21 July - scallops with minty peas and apricots with pistachios

I've just realised that I'm a whole week behind with this blog, so I thought I'd better sit down and have a catch-up! So, a week ago today ... Tris was out for the evening, so I bought myself a handful of scallops from the fish man, them pan-fried with a bit of pancetta and ate them on a pile of crushed minty peas ... you can't beat a classic combination!

I'm not generally a big fruit fan, but I'd seen some apricots the other day and I was drawn to pop them in my basket more by the lovely colour than anything else. This evening, I got round to cooking them up for pudding. I cut them in half and baked them, covered in foil, with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of orange blossom water. Then I had them with a dollop of Greek yoghurt and a few chopped pistachios scattered over the top. It was an idea borrowed from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries and proved really delicious.

7 July - linguine with queen scallops and peas

I'd started off today with the idea of making squid linguine that I'd spotted flicking through a Jamie Oliver book the other night. But neither the fish man nor the supermarket had any squid, so I ended up doing something similar with some small queen scallops instead. I mixed the scallops with some olive oil, garlic, chilli, lemon juice and chopped parsley and left them to marinate for a bit. I fried a bit of pancetta, then added the scallops and their marinade. Then in went a couple of handfuls of fresh peas and a glass of white wine to bubble away for a few minutes. Mixed together with some linguine, it worked quite well.

18 June - scallops with peas, broad beans and asparagus

Right now, we're in that brief but wonderful window where asparagus, broad beans and fresh peas all in season at the same time. They make such a fantastic combination that I couldn't resist cooking a big pile up altogether, draining them and tipping them back into the pan with a good knob of butter and some chopped mint, just to mix. I served them with some pan-fried scallops, slices of crispy pancetta and a dollop of plain risotto on the side. Hard to beat!

6 May - a vegbox and the Lido

Continuing my recent food supplier theme, today was my first organic vegbox delivery for a few weeks. I've been getting an organic vegbox delivered from Riverford every fortnight for about 6 years now. Generally, I think it's a really good idea and I do love my veg, but I do go through phases where I suffer from "vegbox fatigue". Although I like most vegetables, there are certain things I'm less keen on and sometimes I get boxes that I just feel like I'm just trying to "use up" rather than enjoying. Back around Feb/March time, I had a few particularly uninspiring boxes in a row - it isn't a great time of year for veg anyway - so as I was going to be away a lot through April anyway, I paused my deliveries for a while.

Sadly, today's box didn't quite rekindle my excitement. It contained asparagus, spring onions, peppers and rhubarb which are all good, potatoes (not new ones) and carrots, which are unexciting but okay. But then it contained a huge lettuce - now I don't eat lettuce at all, so poor Tris is going to be ploughing his way through salad for lunch for quite some time to use that one up! And then a big bag of spring greens ... I quite like greens occasionally, but having just ploughed my way through three servings of greens in the past week using up a big bag from the supermarket, this time, their arrival provoked a rather sinking feeling! I think I'm going to have to go back to making up my own box for a while - which requires a bit more planning and a minimum order, but ensures I don't get stuck with more stuff I don't really want.

Friday night often means a meal out and this evening we went to a local favourite, the Lido; as its name suggests, a swimming pool but with a great cafe and restaurant too. The food was fresh, different and delicious as usual. We both had wood roasted scallops with herby butter to start; a bit tricky to eat without splashing butter over yourself, but fantastic with some fresh bread to mop up the leftover butter. Then roast pork with a romesco aioli - a sauce made, I think, of nuts, garlic and peppers and then mixed up into a kind of mayonnaise - difficult to describe, but absolutely delicious!