12 March - lamb and beetroot salad

I finally used up the last of the chilli today for lunch on a baked potato with a dollop of plain yoghurt to tame the heat.

The vegbox always arrives with a little recipe leaflet. I usually have a glance through it, but only occasionally get inspired to try them. This week I spotted an idea for lamb and beetroot salad with a pumpkin seed and chilli dressing. You whizz up some toasted pumpkin seeds with chilli, garlic, lemon juice, parsley, mint and olive oil, then you use half the slush to marinate a couple of lamb leg steaks and keep the other half as the dressing. I made up a salad of spinach, roast beetroot and blood orange, then fried the lamb and sliced it on top. For the dressing, the slush looked a bit thick, so I added a bit more olive oil and it worked great. The dressing was really tasty, with just a nice bit of chilli kick in the background and the combination of the beetroot and orange in the salad made a really nice change.

9 March - a jacket potato and leftover chilli

I got some baking potatoes in today's vegbox, so lunch was a good old-fashioned jacket potato with tuna mayo and a big pile of salad on the side - can't be beaten!

Tris has gone away for the weekend, so it was a solo supper of some of the leftover chilli con carne, this time with sweetcorn fritters. The chilli was possibly even better for being a few days old and the fritters were yummy as usual.

8 January - beef stew

We had some simple baked potatoes for lunch today with some leeks from the vegbox, cooked up gently with some bacon and then mixed with a bit of creme fraiche - a classic, comfort-food combination.

For supper, I did a slow-cook beef stew. The recipe idea came with the vegbox and was originally for beef and squash stew. Having had squash yesterday though, I substituted it for some parsnip.

• Brown c. 450g diced beef in an ovenproof pan and remove.
• Add a sliced onion and cook until softened, then add a clove of chopped garlic.
• Return the beef to the pan and add 250ml red wine and the same of water (a bit more if the beef isn't covered), plus a sprig of rosemary and bay leaf.
• Cover with a lid and put in the oven at 150C for two hours.
• Add a couple of peeled and chopped parsnips and cook for another 10-15 mins - checking there's enough liquid in the pan - I had to add a bit more at this point as it was drying out.

It came out smelling great, but looking a bit grey and watery. It could have done with some nice juicy greens on the side, but the only thing I had was some more leeks. It did taste really good - the beef was melt-in-the-mouth and the sweet, nutty parsnips were great mashed into the gravy. If I did it again, I think I'd find a way of thickening the sauce a bit, maybe just a bit of cornflour stirred in at the end.

6 January - the clifton sausage

I spent all morning waiting in for the vegbox. It usually arrives at around 11, but today, with a different driver, it didn't turn up until mid-afternoon. That meant there was very little in for my lunch, so I ended up making my version of the Greek dish "gigantes" - big white butterbeans cooked up in a tomato sauce with a few onions and some oregano. I had the beans with a few boiled potatoes and the rest of the parma ham - an unlikely combination, but not too bad.

In the evening, we went to the Clifton Sausage. As its name suggests, the menu's heavily sausage-oriented. I started with potted pork with spiced pear chutney, then as I'm not a big sausage fan, I went for the specials , which today included one of my favourites, brill. It came on a big pile of spinach with a creamy saffron sauce - mmm!

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!