A bit of a bleak week – rain battering on the skylights at night, cold winds whistling around the pushchair in the day. Highlights included a first run with my proving baskets from Bakery Bits (above), and some nice veg-centred cooking, including soup, roast vegetable salad, and tacos.

Recipes:

• Pain de Campagne from Brilliant Bread by James Morton
• A version of squash, black bean and feta tacos from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
• Braised chicken with pears and rosemary from All About Braising by Molly Stevens – truly delicious, that one.
• Carrot, sweet potato and ginger soup, in the Thermomix, a Riverford recipe

This week’s reading:

• A lovely, sane, contrast to the usual ‘2015 food trends’ pieces, Diana Henry runs down what she thinks we will see more of this year. Wise words.
• An old LA Times piece, carefully researched, on why there’s no need to soak your beans before cooking them. Of course, as Catherine Phipps (author of The Pressure Cooker Cookbook) pointed out on twitter, this is something pressure cooker cooks have known for years.
• I can’t remember where I first learned that you should peel and cook broccoli stems, not throw them away. This NY Times recipe for sliced and fried broccoli stems sounds delicious.
• One I have just caught up with – Bee Wilson reviews Anna Jones’ book ‘A Modern Way to Eat‘, and describes her approach to vegetarian eating as an eight-step process. Something that’s useful to bear in mind when you’re used to composing meat-and-two-veg meals.