17 October - sweet potato soup and shepherd's pie

The week has started using up what's in the fridge. For lunch, I had the last of the sweet potato and red lentil soup. As well as a dollop of soured cream, I scattered a few fried lardons on the top and had a couple of slices of soft, fresh bread from Hart's.

I ummed and erred about what to do with the leftover lamb mince (from yesterday's burgers), coming up with lots of different options - meatballs, moussaka, stuffed peppers - but in the end, I went for some old-school shepherd's pie. I cooked up all the mince and came up with a bit more than a single helping, so it looks like I'll be eating leftovers for a while yet!

14 October - sweet potato soup and monkfish with cardamom and vanilla

I'm realising that I really overdid it with the root vegetables in last week's vegbox! For lunch today I cooked up some sweet potato and red lentil soup - another Sophie Grigson recipe from Vegetables.

• Sweat a large sweet potato peeled and cut into chunks, together with a chopped onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, some peeled and chopped fresh ginger, a star anise and a glug of sunflower oil over a low heat with the lid on.
• Add a blob of tomato puree, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon and about 75g red lentils, cover just under a litre of water and bring to the boil.
• Simmer until tender (20 mins or so), remove the star anise and blend.
• Return to the pan to reheat gently, season with salt and the juice of a lime.
• Serve with a blob of soured cream and a little fresh mint.

I'd been looking for a savoury recipe to use some of the vanilla we brought back from Madgascar. I found a recipe for monkfish with creamy vanilla and cardamom sauce on the Waitrose website. It was quite a faff and I ended up with not quite enough fish and a rather runny sauce that I wasn't completely convinced about. Oh well, you've got to try these things.