This week has been Holiday week – a week of staycation. We have romped around Kew Gardens, been swimming, had some time together as a family, and some time to ourselves too. It’s been a good week. Lots of leftovers building on each other, quite a lot of quick cooking. Tomorrow we have friends visiting for lunch, so there has been a bit of preparation for that, to make tomorrow as effort-free as possible (including the trifle above). E has tucked into bolognese, a lot of yoghurt, nectarines and doughnut peaches, as many cherries as she could get her hands on, and for the first time today, an ice lolly.

Recipes:

• Tagliata – with a beaten out piece of topside, from Nigella’s Feast
• Fish curry, approximately from Curry in a Hurry in Nigella Express

Without a recipe:

• Pork with green lentils
• Bolognese from the freezer with pasta
• Takeaway chinese
• Pizza with courgette, tomato, yellow pepper and bacon

Reading:

• Debora Robertson (@lickedspoon) has an excellent set of 10 kitchen tips to improve your cooking
• Amanda Hesser tells us how to organise a pantry. I hadn’t seen the advice to organise by frequency of use instead of type of ingredient before, but it makes a lot of sense.
• After Bake Off this week, you might want to try your hand at a baguette. Master baker Eric Kayser’s recipe is in a new Larousse book, or you can try the America’s Test Kitchen version I tried a few weeks ago. Either way, it’s all in the shaping.
• Jennifer Perillo makes dairy-free crispy vanilla waffles
• Gin and Crumpets makes a Hot Chocolate cake to celebrate Matilda
• Food intolerances – fact or fad?
• The Food52 podcast, Burnt Toast discusses cooking for and with kids, and the World Service programme The Food Chain talks about food and expressing love for those you cook for.