3 September - steak and homegrown tomatoes

We grabbed a quick lunch on our way out to do stuff at Rocotillos, a great little diner nearby. We had a simple bacon sandwich and one of their fantastic milkshakes - banana, made with real bananas, of course!

The tomatoes from the terrace are coming thick and fast now and tasting really great, so dinner tonight was planned around a big warm tomato and basil salad. Served with fillet steak and rosemary roast new potatoes, the tomatoes were just perfect!

2 September - fast food

Today was spent whizzing around doing lots of things and food had to be fast. For lunch, I grabbed a baked potato from a local sandwich shop and took it home to eat with a bit of goats cheese and the rest of the beetroot dip.

I was out at the pub for drinks early evening and when I got home about 8.30, a couple of glasses of wine had gone right to my head! So a quick bowl of pasta with peas and pancetta was needed to soak it up!

1 September - chicken soup and soy baked salmon

For lunch I tried out a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe from the Guardian magazine from a couple of weeks ago for chicken and buttermilk soup. It was meant to be a cold soup, but did say you could heat it up if you were really careful not to let it curdle. Rather frustratingly though, after lots of messing about and then being super-careful, it still curdled and tasted rather nasty and sour ... still, if you don't try ...

Thankfully, dinner was rather more successful. I was wandering round Sainsburys at a complete loss for ideas and was so uninspired, I ended up in the ready meals section ... yes, I know! I did spy some crispy seaweed (actually crispy shredded greens) though which gave me an idea. I got some salmon fillets and pulled out a really old recipe for soy-baked salmon. You marinate the salmon in c.100ml mirin, 80ml soy sauce, a good chunk of grated ginger and a couple of star anise, in the fridge. The original recipe said for 6 hours, but I only had a couple of hours today, which still did the trick. Then you bake the whole lot (the salmon in the marinade in an ovenproof dish) for about 15 mins at 200C. Served with the crispy seaweed (yes, I did succumb), some purple sprouting broccoli and a bit of boiled rice, it came out great, with just a bit of the sauce drizzled over the top.

31 August - a meze selection

Tonight's meal was partly inspired by an article I read by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Saturday Guardian magazine. He was writing about how he'd gone over to eating largely veg, but for me one of the most interesting ideas was the influence this had had on the way he planned meals. He wrote that rather than trying to recreate a typical meat-based meal, he'd started to eat in a more 'meze' style, with various different dishes that everyone picked at and didn't necessarily go together to make a set planned meal-on-a-plate. I'd like to cook more vegetable-based meals, but I do often struggle to come up with ideas that will conform to that idea of a "proper" meal. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of cold food, so I don't think I could shift to his suggestions of humus, salad and bread type meals, but the idea of something more Mediterranean in style did quite appeal. I used to live in Greece and there when you ate out, you just ordered a selection of stuff and everyone tucked in.

As I had rather an odd selection of stuff in the fridge, it seemed like a good chance to put the idea into action. Perhaps ironically, the main ingredient was cold leftover chicken (!), but rather than trying to put it into some kind of dish, I just dished some out onto the plates, then put out some broad beans with chorizo:

Some wonderfully vivid beetroot dip (a couple of fresh, cooked beetroots whizzed up with some Greek yoghurt, spices - a teaspoon each of toasted and crushed cumin and coriander - and a squeeze of lemon juice) and some warm pitta bread.

Perhaps not something I'd do every night, but certainly really nice for a change.

30 August - chilli and guacamole

Tuesday again, so Tris was cooking - this time a chilli con carne (to a Jamie Oliver recipe) made the night before. Nice and tasty, with just the right amount of heat and served with fresh guacamole and sweetcorn fritters (my contribution). Can't go wrong!

29 August - lunch out and chicken risotto

We went out for a Bank Holiday lunch down by the harbourside. Riverstation has been a favourite for a long time, partly for it's location overlooking the water with it's lovely big windows and also for the usually reliable food. We don't seem to be having much luck eating out lately though. It was quite busy when we arrived, but no more than on a usual weekend. I ordered eggs Florentine and Tris ordered savoury tart. We happened to be right next to the kitchen, which is partially on view, so as time ticked by and I was feeling more and more hungry, I was watching the orders as they came out with an eye open for ours. I spotted what looked like our order appear and was waiting expectantly for a waitress to bring it over. There seemed to be some confusion about orders though and she kept taking other dishes, leaving ours sitting there.

If I don't eat regularly, I tend to get quite wobbly and irritable, so the longer things went on, the more annoyed I was getting. Then one of the chefs picked up the eggs from the top of the eggs florentine, dumped them somewhere out of sight, then a couple of minutes later, dumped another couple back on top (I really hope not the same ones just dunked back in boiling water to reheat them!) and drizzled more hollandaise sauce over the top. I was a bit taken aback, but by this point, I just needed something to eat asap. The plates sat there for another 10 minutes, before I finally managed to grab a waitress and she brought our order over -that had been sitting on the counter for around 20 mins by this point!

I did complain about the wait and what I'd seen, but was so hungry, I tucked into the eggs anyway. My hands were shaking so much by now, I could hardly even hold my knife and fork and the food went down so quickly, it hardly touched the sides! The eggs were pretty solid, the spinach was cold and the bread pretty soggy - all round, not up to the usual standard.

Unlike on Friday night at Cote though, the manager did come over to apologise. He immediately said that they'd take my meal off the bill and offered coffees. He was apologetic without being over-the-top and just generally dealt with the whole situation really well. He took the problem seriously, but was friendly and smiley so we didn't go away feeling negative. I'm happy to take it as a one-off and won't be put off going back.

At least we managed to get some fantastic coffee cake from Papadeli on the way back to go with an afternoon cup of tea!

Dinner was a simple, and to be honest not wildly tasty, chicken and pea risotto made from some of the leftover cold chicken. So all round not a great culinary day, only just saved by the cake!

28 August - baked mushrooms and supermarket salmon

We got more nice big mushrooms in the vegbox on Friday, so for lunch I cooked them up Jamie Oliver style, baked with garlic, thyme, oil and lemon. It's always a good recipe but today somehow the balance of flavours was just perfect. With a bit of parma ham and some saute potatoes, they made a yummy lunch.

After lunch though, I spent the rest of my Sunday working, so Tris cooked dinner again - a simple, supermarket "cheat" - salmon en croute from Waitrose. Despite getting stuck together in the packaging and being cooked upside-down, they didn't come out too badly.