18 August - homegrown tomatoes and a rabbit burger

The tomatoes on the terrace are ripening nicely and I'm now picking a good handful every couple of days. They've been building up a bit, so today I had a nice big Nicoise salad for lunch with lots of tomatoes, some green beans and some fancy tuna from a jar instead of a tin. The tuna was quite nice; a kind of halfway house between tinned and fresh.

This evening, we had an easy meal out at Deco Lounge, just round the corner. They always have good specials and today they were even more interesting than usual. I had a rabbit and pancetta burger! I have to say it tasted more porky/bacony than it did really of rabbit, but it was still really nice and a bit different.

17 August - double lunch and kedgeree

We have a staff meeting on a Wednesday lunchtime. I knew I wouldn't make it through to after the meeting without something to eat, but I hadn't been organised enough to get anything in for a packed lunch, so I stopped off at Hart's on my way in this morning and picked up a courgette and feta danish. It made the perfect savoury snack just to get me through. It wasn't quite enough to last through the rest of the afternoon though, so after the meeting I went into Chandos Deli for a goats cheese and red onion tart which I had when I finally got home at about 3.

Dinner was another quick favourite, kedgeree with smoked mackerel, spinach and peas. I think I've complained before that my kedgeree hasn't been as good since Sainsbury's changed their smoked mackerel. Tonight, I used some new curry powder though, from Steenbergs, which gave it just the right amount of kick and flavour. I think it went some way to making up for the less flavoursome fish.

16 August - being cooked for

Tuesdays are my busiest teaching day, so last night I made up a packed lunch; saffron rice salad with dill and broad beans. I was intending to have it with a splodge of yoghurt, but then discovered this morning there was none left in the fridge. I'd feared it might be a bit dry, but was actually spot on for a quick lunch break.

Tris was cooking this evening, quite nice to just sit down and have my dinner put in front of me for a change - salmon wrapped in proscuitto with spinach and lentils - a Jamie Oliver recipe and tasty as always.

15 August - pea & ham soup and harissa chicken

Yesterday evening, along with all my other baking, I made up a batch of fresh pea and ham soup for lunch today. Really nice to come home to after a busy morning before heading out again.

With lots of other things on my mind, I was feeling a bit uninspired about dinner. Tris had requested something "without meat or cheese" after he'd overdosed on both during his trip to Switzerland. I came up with some quick and easy harissa chicken together with corn on the cob and a nice big pile of spinach. It was really tasty, but by the time I went to bed I realised I was still a bit hungry after having no carbs all day.

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.

12 August - frittata and shepherd's pie

After my slightly crumbled attempt at frittata a couple of weeks ago, I had another go today and did it properly this time, cooking the top under the grill, rather than trying to flip it in the pan. I used a couple of cold potatoes, some bits of bacon and a big pile of fresh peas, with a couple of eggs and some mint. Looked much better this time!

I know it's rather unseasonal, but this evening I used up a little bit of leftover mince to make an individual shepherd's pie. I cooked the mince up with some onion, garlic, mushrooms and a bit of diced carrot, plus some beef stock (thickened with a bit of flour), popped it in a mini oven dish with some mash on the top and Bob's your uncle. With some homegrown beans on the side, it was fantastically tasty in a retro sort of way :)