Friday 31st July 2026
Lunch
Baker’s Yard for lunch today: quiche (I can’t remember the details) and one of their amazing salads. This week it was grilled peach, Iberico cheese, lettuce, hazelnuts, honey, pickled fennel, basil and courgette.
Dinner
‘Tomato & Tofu Curry’ from Big Veg Energy by Christina Soteriou served with rice (no toasted flaked almonds on top because I’d run out).
Saturday 1st August 2026
Lunch
Baked feta with baguette for lunch.
Dinner
Our local restaurant, Freak Street, is closed for the summer but is instead doing food from the shack at The Raven (a local pub) on Friday and Saturday nights so after a very full-on afternoon buying a car we decided to try that. We love Freak Street food so it was a pretty safe bet.
We both had Kathi Rolls – I had the gobi bites and Tom had the chilli paneer – and we had a portion of their lovely tomato dahl and a paratha on the side. It was all lovely.
Sunday 2nd August 2026
Dinner
We were busy and out all day so it was good to come home and have Hazelnut and Ricotta Balls with Spaghetti using balls from the freezer. You don’t even need to defrost them – just cook from frozen.
Monday 3rd August 2026
Lunch
Carrot and lentil salad with hummus on the side which went really well. Very satisfying.
Dinner
I went to see an interesting and shocking film this evening, How to Feed a Dictator. It tells the stories of five chefs who worked for brutal dictators, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, and Kim Jong-il. A very sobering watch but quite fascinating seeing the lives people lead and how it impacts them (or not) in later life.
That meant I was in town so I met up with Tom after the film and we went to Istanbul for food. We’ve only been for their bargain lunch deals before so thought it would be interesting to try their wider menu. We went for mezze: mushrooms, halloumi, olives, aubergine dip and mixed salad. It was fine and ample portions but there’s a lot of competition for this kind of food and it wasn’t as good as the other local Turkish restaurants we go to.
Tuesday 4th August 2026
Lunch
Lunch at Gaard today. Tom had the onion bhaji wrap and I had a black bean and “feta” wrap which was really tasty. I put the feta in quote marks because Gaard is all vegan so it wasn’t actual feta cheese but it was a really nice vegan version.
Dinner
I finally made a quiche today. I’d planned to make it at the weekend but run out of time. We had chard from the veg box which I really like as a quiche filling. I wanted to do walnut pastry and thought I’d used a Hairy Biker recipe in the past but I couldn’t find it so I tried this Shortest-ever Walnut Pastry recipe. It was so hard to handle and it cracked when I blind baked it. Anyway, I patched it up and covered the base with a light sprinkle of grated cheese and put that in the oven for a few minutes to melt into the cracks and that seemed to do the trick. There was no filling leakage! It was quite crumbly to serve as well but it tasted good. We had that with salad and new potatoes.
Wednesday 5th August 2026
Lunch
Tom was out today so I had quiche for lunch.
Dinner
We had a couple of little pots of Patak’s Korma Paste passed on to use so I used that to make a simple spinach and chickpea curry for dinner (onion, garlic, ginger, crushed chillies, Korma paste, tinned tomatoes, chicpeas and spinach). It was really nice served with rice and pickles.
Thursday 6th August 2026
Lunch
I was fancying a Moroccan flavoured soup for lunch but didn’t want the Harira that I usually do from Heidi Swanson’s book Near & Far (though I do love that recipe and must do it again soon!). Instead I found this recipe for Moroccan Spiced Lentil & Chickpea Soup. I mostly followed the recipe apart from not having any celery or coriander and I think I probably substituted tinned tomatoes for the fresh ones. I also didn’t do the tahini dressing but it would be good to try that in future. I really like the soup and would do this one again.
Dinner
Running club speed session tonight meant a late dinner so we just finished up the quiche with peas on the side. It actually worked really well as a combo with the fresh peas offsetting the richness of the quiche and that short, short pastry.