flying saucer eggs with grilled vine tomatoes, mushrooms and red chard

Healthy breakfast with grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, red chard and flying saucer eggs

I wanted a substantial breakfast to set me up for the weekend. This one does the job and is surprisingly healthy. Of course it would have been even healthier if I had left out the butter, but mushrooms and butter are a marriage made in heaven and I couldn't resist.

love your leftovers! spaghetti frittata

spaghetti frittata

There are two insights I have always wanted from Italian cooks. The first is, is there a special gadget (other than elbow grease) to remove baked on mozzarella cheese - you know those times when the lasagne dish looks like a relief map of the Moon with cheesy encrustations) and the second is, what do Italians do with leftover pasta?

I am yet to find the magic de-cheeser (and if anyone knows of one, please let me know), but I have discovered that Italians, being a thrifty bunch, have a fabulous way of using up leftover pasta by using it in frittatas including a little leftover sauce too.

stuffed mushrooms with lentils, bacon, parsley pesto and Stilton

stuffed mushrooms with lentils, bacon, parsley pesto and Stilton

I think I must have inherited my late Scottish mother's somewhat parsimonious approach to food waste - a little part of me dies every time I open the kitchen compost canister to throw away anything other than vegetable peelings, tea bags or burnt toast. But a frugal approach to food, waste and in particular, in leftovers, doesn't have to be austere, puritanical or even joyless. It can be fun. No, really. It really can.

This is not so much a recipe, but a suggestion of how to use up several spoonful’s of leftovers and a few forgotten inhabitants of the fridge.

chocolate and cherry loveliness: black forest cupcakes

black forest cupcakes

I like to forage, mostly in green open spaces across London, although recently discovering new treasures at the bottom of my own garden. But I have also been known to forage in other people's kitchen cupboards, ferreting out interesting tins and jars that have languished forgotten, gathering dust and exceeding their use-by dates.

to warm the cockles of your soul: spicy parsnip soup

spicy parsnip and ginger soup

You may not have known your soul's cockles needed warming, but even if they don't, this spicy soup (adapted from Nigel Slater's Tender I) will definitely give them a bit of a tune-up and put a zing in your step on a chilly day.

Last weekend I hiked up to Birmingham, to attend the BBC GoodFood Show (more of this tomorrow) and to stay with an old friend of mine from days of yore.