Scrambled eggs and (cold) ham. Distinct lack of carbohydrates available this morning, so I whipped up some eggs.

Lunch:

Covent Garden Co. chicken soup, with a ham baguette.

Dinner:

Home-made burgers (made simply with minced beef and a pinch of salt) and potato wedges (McCain, not home-made).

Bread, ham, cheese, boiled egg, blah blah blah.

Lunch:

Salad including sweetcorn, tomatoes, mozzarella, butter beans, &c.

Dinner:

Stuck in Berlin airport, with my flight delayed by two hours (yes, British Airways, and Terminal 5-bound), so had a crappy sandwich which, I think, contained some cheese, along with some token salad to bulk it out. On the plane, a horrible coronation chicken/cheese & chutney combination. I really don’t know why they bother.

The usual hotel stuff.

Lunch:

A mixed bag – potato salad, sweetcorn, tomato, butter beans, kidney beans, cucumber, along with some chicken nugget type things, cheese-filled chili peppers, and breaded mozzarella.

Dinner:

Italian place called Malatesta (which, I was told by my linguist colleague, means ‘headache’). Lovely restaurant, and food was ok. The Italian in our party reckoned it was pretty close to the real deal. I had fried squid to start with, followed by a main of linguine con vongole, which was well-seasoned and gave a nice hint of the sea. My review on Qype

Bread, meat, cheese, yoghurt, boiled egg.

I like staying in continental hotels. The breakfast is substantial enough to be satisfying, yet not artery clogging. Yes, I could try to avoid the cooked breakfasts, but I find it very difficult to do so.

Lunch:

Chicken meat balls, cardamom sauce, rice, from the work canteen. Surprisingly tasty, despite its appearance.

Dinner:

We went for a Thai meal at a place called Kori & Fay. My review on Qype gives more details but I had some of the mixed appetisers and a main of a green curry.

Scrambled egg on toast.

Lunch:

Meatloaf and mashed potato (bought by P from M&S). I do make home-made versions of these (which are tastier) but with a flight to catch, needs must.

Airplane:

Tuna and mayo / ham, cheese & pickle half-sandwiches, and a breakaway chocolate bar thing.

Dinner:

Arrived late (c’mon, I was flying from Terminal 5 – what do you expect?) so had to order some bar food from the limited menu. The hotel, in an effort to be all fusion-y, had a weird menu so I ended up with a salmon and wasabi bagel. Unfortunately, the wasabi had been spread like it was cream cheese, so every bite was a tearful experience, much to the amusement of my colleagues. If I hadn’t been so hungry, I’d have sent it back.

A soggy hot cross bun at home, then various pastries at work.

Lunch:

Tepid meat-feast pizza (leftovers from a meeting), and a couple of half-baguettes (one containing chicken and bacon, t’other containing ham and egg mayonnaise).

Dinner:

I’m helping run an induction course this week, and tonight we set up a drinks and food buffet for everyone (since we had a lot of people travelling from outside the UK), so I pigged out mainly on sushi, and then some cheesecake.

Toast with ham, although A, as usual, decided my breakfast was more interesting than hers. I managed to barter with her (no mean feat, since she is only 16 months old) and got a strawberry in return for a piece of ham.

Lunch:

A fry up, consisting of sausages, streaky bacon, fried eggs and fried bread. Heart-attack-tastic.

Dinner:

A stew I made just after breakfast and had left in the slow cooker all day. Stewing steak was chucked in with onion, swede, new potatoes and chicken stock. Not one of my best, I must admit.

Breakfast:

A rare cooked breakfast, although it was only scrambled egg on toast. Amélie had some, too, although I obviously over-cooked her egg just a bit to make sure it wasn’t too wet. Oh, the other difference was that she didn’t have toast: she had scrambled egg instead.

Lunch:

Decided to try a home-made version of KFC today. Major difference between my version and KFC’s version would be the fact that the chicken I bought was free-range (or so the packet said).

So, I had 8 chicken drumsticks (dark meat obviously being the tastiest part of the bird – I really can’t understand the English obsession with chicken breast), which I marinated for a couple of hours in a concoction of lemon juice, garlic paste, basil and chilli powder. I then dipped the chicken in some flour that had been seasoned with salt, loads of cayenne pepper, a dash of ground cumin and another dash of chilli powder.

You’ll notice in the photo that some of the drumsticks are darker than the others. That’s partly because I cooked the chicken in two batches and the second batch didn’t have quite the same amount of time in the fryer. However, I also double-dipped the second batch, so after coating the drumsticks in flour the first time, I then dipped them into a lightly whisked egg (let down with a bit of water), then dipped them into flour again.

The double-dipped batch had an undeniably crispier and crunchier skin and you definitely got a bigger kick from the spices. For me, that makes it a winner but P said she preferred the single-dipped batch.

Dinner:

We were supposed to have a Sunday roast (beef) but since my mum and sister came round to see us, I didn’t really have time to prepare it properly. Also, the spuds I was hoping to use were somewhat sprouty, so we deferred the beef until Thursday. Instead, I made use of the char siu, pak choi and bean sprouts that my mum brought round. I added onion, sprouting broccoli, spring onions and some fried noodles to the mix, and knocked up a stir fry. As usual I made too much.

Lunch: After flicking through the Lazy Brunch recipe book (full of recipes from my current favourite tv programme about food: Something for the Weekend), I decided to give the much-discussed (on SFTW) scotch eggs recipe a go.

The recipe’s actually fairly simple. Basically, it’s sausagemeat – well-seasoned with salt, pepper, spring onion, parsley, and thyme – wrapped around a hard-boiled egg, coated in breadcrumbs, then deep-fried and finished off in the oven. The recipe worked like a dream and the whole family, including Amélie approved of the results.

Polly decided she also wanted me to try out the stuffed beef tomatoes recipe from Lazy Brunch.That, too, was a simple enough recipe – hollowed-out beef tomatoes, filled with a mixture of toasted flaked almonds, breadcrumbs, tomato juice and parsley, roasted in a medium oven for 10 minutes or so – and was equally well-appreciated.

Amélie’s always been good about eating fruit and veg, but she seemed particularly to appreciate tomatoes done like this.

Dinner: We’re trying to establish some sort of family tradition that we all eat together on a Sunday. What better way to do that than with a Sunday roast?

This week I roasted up an organic, free-range chicken from Waitrose. Yes, it costs more, but blimey, it tastes so much better.

I normally follow Nigel Slater’s method for roast chicken (involving lots of lemon juice and garlic) but I forgot to buy the lemon and garlic (duh). So I improvised and used the remainder of the pack of sausagemeat, left over from the scotch egg cook up, and stuffed that underneath the skin of the chicken.

Worked a treat, although I would probably use less sausagemeat in future. Skin crispiness was assured by smothering the bird in masses of butter and lots of salt & pepper.

Served with roast spuds, cauliflower and sweetcorn, and a ‘proper’ gravy, made simply using the juices in the pan, water, a smidgen of flour and salt.

All the water used to cook the veg was reserved, and has gone into the stock pot, along with the chicken carcass, four fresh chicken wings, an onion, a carrot, a couple of tomatoes, bay leaves, peppercorns and herbs left over lunch. Topped up with water and left to simmer for a couple of hours, the chicken stock will contribute at least one other meal for the family.