Food to eat every day – I think I could live on kedgeree, which I’m making tonight. And bean or chickpea salad.

Ooh, and masala omelettes – do you make them? Chop a red onion or shallot and fry, add a chopped tomato and a chopped green chilli. Then add the eggs and some salt. Before you put in the eggs you can put in a bit of ground cumin if you like. Wonderful, and only takes 5 minutes and if you have a cold, put in loads of chilli and your sinuses will clear right out. If anyone doesn’t like chilli, just leave it out and put in a bit of green pepper instead.

Oh, and I made eggs Florentine a while ago and couldn’t think why I did it more often – basically, chop and cook spinach, top with poached eggs, then with flavoursome cheese sauce.

Also, something we call African Kale Pasta. Which is a tomato sauce with the normal onion and garlic in it only you also add in loads of lemon zest, lemon juice and a hot little chili, chopped up. And of course cooked chopped up kale. It’s freakishly comforting. And I mean comforting, inexplicably comforting. Bewildering.

Two favorites:

Pasta-a-la-cupboard (i.e. what’s in my cupboard and I can’t be bothered to shop): saute onion and garlic (fresh. both. to taste) chop: sundried tomatoes in oil (sub roasted red peppers if desired), artichoke heats, kalamata olives. Stir in chick peas. Loosen with good slog of chicken broth (until it looks nice and sauce-like – add small splash of dry vermouth if desired) and, in winter or to taste, add goat cheese and stir until melted. Toss with cooked pasta – shaped stuff (aka whatever is left in the cupboard after the last pasta meal!)

Bruschetta – slice baguette into rounds (I do it on the diagonal but whether this is due to actual recipe value, laziness, or artistic merit I have no idea). Mix: spring/green onions (about… 2? 3? well chopped), garlic (about 2 cloves or so dep of taste and chopped ditto), diced fresh tomato, salt and pepper (fresh ground if poss) to taste and a good slug of balsamic vinegar, let rest. Sprinkle baguette rounds with olive oil and put in oven until crisp – top with tomato mix. I know it’s totally obvious, but it’s SO GOOD – oh, and a grating of good cheddar or other sharp cheese is totally worth it. Other variations: hummus, diced roasted red pepper, capers; pesto, curl of Parmesan, Prosciutto. And for decadent dessert – smear of Nutella and half a fresh strawberry (or berry/fruit of your choice). Simple, gorgeous.

Oh, like jo I keep a simple spreadsheet of everything I try, then look it over when I am uninspired. For inspiration and ideas, I use a free software called Evernote which I love–it easily “clips” recipes and images from web pages, or you can also scan things in and take photos; then you can tag everything and search on tags as well as words contained within the recipe. So if I am looking for something that uses quinoa I can search on that word or on the “grains” tag I have appended to certain recipes. Incredibly handy.

Finally, I love foodblogsearch.com for, well, searching food blogs–again, particularly when I have an ingredient I’d like to use up.

If you come across anything else you enjoy, please post it!

Warm up some milk. Above 130. Let it cool a bit, below 110. Chuck in some live-culture Yogurt. Let it sit out in a warm place (I swaddle mine in dark dishcloths and leave it in the sun) for a while. 8 hours? 4 over an oven that’s roasting dinner? Whatever. Easy, and it is great for milk that’s threatening to go bad. Chuck in some flavoring at the end if you want it.

1/4 the cost of purchased yogurt.

As to good things you can eat daily – when I am motivated to cook something that takes longer than 3 minutes a simple pasta sauce is always a good standby:

[Use quantities to suit taste and the number of consumers] Gently fry chopped onion and garlic in a suitably sized pan, add tinned tomatoes (blended first if preferred); add assorted herbs and spices (personally I like oregano and a bit of paprika and drown everything in black pepper) plus a dollop of tomato puree and/or wine/worcester sauce/soy sauce or similar; chuck in whatever other vegetables you want – sweetcorn and broccoli; leek and mushroom; whatever is mouldering in the bottom of your fridge or vegetable box and cook till vegetables are done. You can add anything* so it never tastes the same and you cook the pasta at the same time. And it does make you feel virtuous – in fact, I shall do it tonight.

*I confess to having made it with sausage and baked beans once for a particularly fussy brat.

And what I do to avoid forgetting all the things we like to have is a simply spreadsheet. It just says the name of the dish and a list of ingredients. I find that is enough to trigger my memory and makes it easy to be sure I have everything. It’s up to 79 things and it helps me to not cook in a rut.

It has really spurred me on to try new things. Like your pizza – might be trying myself a pizza this weekend when my youngest comes home from camp – thanks for recipe!