I have a cucumber! A very small one, but there is a bona fide cucumber on my cucumber plant, so that must mean that summer is just around the corner, no? And my strawberries are covered in flowers. It could be a bumper crop, if I can keep the pigeons off them. It’s been a plain and simple kind of food week – lots of Americana. And probably not enough fish or veggies. But it’s all a work in progress. Isn’t every week?

Recipes:

• Roast peppers – April Bloomfield’s ‘A Girl and Her Pig’ (served with burgers)
• Brixton beans in the slow cooker, (another winner from Slow Cooked) with added chunks of pork shoulder
• Excellent white bread from the NY Times – it really is excellent, the ideal sandwich bread.
• Carrot fritters – My Lovely Little Lunchbox – for baby, although I’ve eaten most of them so far
• Easy banana oat cookies – My Lovely Little Lunchbox

Without a recipe:

• Beef shin stew – from the freezer
• Grilled salmon, mashed potato, chard
• Takeaway pizza
• Leftover dal
• Burgers and grilled vegetables, excellent white bread rolls
• Roast chicken, new potatoes, asparagus

Reading:

• Hand-me-down cookbooks show which recipes their owner’s loved by the splatters on the pages.
• Michael Pollan writes that ‘natural’ food, as desirable as it sounds, doesn’t really mean anything.
• There’s an app that will connect to your scales and help you to bake. (Despite the title, it’s not ‘baking without measuring’ – adding things to a scale is the definition of measuring!).
• Skye Gyngell’s recipes from her new book (and restaurant) ‘Spring’ look very enticing (although I don’t think anything would persuade me to cook octopus at home).
• Tempted to make this lovage syrup for drinks with the plant in my garden – but I could really do without another jar of stuff in my fridge.
• This recipe for rhubarb-orange compote, via Orangette and Lottie + Doof, seems like a must-make. You can feed orange liqueur to babies, right?
• More rhubarb: rhubarb and rose tea cakes. I’m tempted to work out a way to put marzipan into these too.