This soup was inspired by one that I had a new local restaurant Florio on my last visit there, a simple butternut squash soup topped with greek yogurt and almonds. A pretty straightforward soup, but much more enjoyable than expected because of the deep lemon flavour and the clever garnishes. This is not a fancy soup by any means but the combined tang of citrus juice and the sweeter zest really lift the soup and the yogurt and almonds mean that each mouthful is slightly different, right the way to the bottom of the bowl.  Happily for once my experiments at home turned out pleasingly similar first time.

Early in the Autumn a soup can be a simple thing like this.  I’m sure that come February our collective taste in soup will become more demanding and we’ll be looking for full nutrition-in-a-bowl, rejuvenating solutions complete with protein and whole grains and fresh asian flavours.  But for now this little squash and citrus number will do just fine.

p.s if you’re after a spicier,more robust squash soup this one arrived in my inbox while I was writing up my recipe

You know my feelings about oats. They are far too modest to say so themselves, but how many other foods are wholegrain, low GI and more than usually endowed with cholesterol mopping soluble fibre?  And so versatile in the kitchen too.  I’m always pleased to find another excuse to include them in my week and hence my delight at having these spinach, cottage cheese and oat pancakes as a new savoury oaty option.

I know some people pooh-pooh cottage cheese but if you buy the normal stuff it’s actually rather nice and creamy. I think it was all the extra low fat cottage cheese (very watery and lumpy) and those strange additions like prawns and pineapple that did for its reputation. That, and all those flavour free, soul-destroying diets of the 1970s and 1980s.  But if you’re still sceptical about the merits of cottage cheese then give this Baked cottage cheese french toast with a courgette and corn salsa a whirl as a stepping stone to moving on to these pancakes (honestly, I dare you not to like them).

Those savoury oat, spinach and cottage cheese pancakes combine both of these ingredients and are literally a case of blitz and cook.  Credit where it’s due to the awesome Shauna for spotting the sheer simplicity of this recipe. We like these as brunch and making a savoury twist on the original fruity recipe makes it really easy to fit in some extra portions of fruit and veg alongside the pancakes (today a heap of salad leaves and some roast cherry tomatoes).

People with problems absorbing lactose be aware that cottage cheese has much more lactose in it than hard cheeses.

Many more ideas for including more oats in your diet over here, plus a whole host of cheese and egg recipes.

Broad beans are finally in season over here after bravely battling through an eternity of rainy days and plant-destroying gales.  I had what looked like a big paper bag full in my veg box a couple of weeks ago. Nik and I shelled them together the day before I cooked them, standing side by side in the kitchen.  Marvelling, as every year, at the thick protective cushioning in each pod.  So thick and tempting looking. But a little lavish perhaps on the bean to pod ratio – by the time we were done there were barely enough beans to fill a cup.

Starting out to make lunch for the two of us the the next day there were barely enough beans to feed one, never mind two.  I stuck to most of my original plan for the beans but padded them out with some leftover chickpeas.  This worked well so I thought I’d share the tip; chickpeas make a great substitution if you don’t have enough broad beans as the flavour and colour of the chickpeas don’t compete with the long-awaited broad beans and the texture is surprisingly similar.

There’s a very similar amount of protein in both broad beans and the chick peas (about 8g of protein per 100g) and just a little bit less fibre in the chickpeas (4g versus 6g per 100g) so they make a great nutritional substitution too.  The protein and fibre together make them a satisfying option for lunch.

I double podded my beans here. If they’re in a creamy sauce like this tagliatelle with broad beans, chicken, mustard and mint it doesn’t matter so much, but in a spread like this you want to see the splendid emerald of the inner bean, not the greyer outer casing.  Besides, by the time you’ve podded them once it’s not really so much of a stretch to do it again.

You can serve this on toast like I did (or anything else designed for spreading), or else eat it as a side dish or dip. I think it would be particularly lovely with fresh trout or salmon.

Becoming mindful teaches you that the nothing is the same twice.  Each breath we take is different and though it might seem the same each cup of tea that we drink is subtly different in multitude of tiny of ways.  Same for those regular meals that we cook week in, week out.  So what has this got to do with leftovers and frittata I hear you ask? The same is true for portion sizes also. Cooking and eating mindfully includes deciding how much is enough today. Not the amount that’s usually enough or what worked last week but what seems enough today, at this particular one-off mealtime.

With these two lovely new chickens taking us up to five girls in total, we’re regular frittata eaters in our house.  The recipe I’ve posted below is for the amount that I always make. It’s a variation on this ever adjusting Parsnip, Red Onion, Kale and Gouda frittata which in turn is from this basic frittata recipe. I am forever indebted to Kathryn Elliott for pointing out the simple beauty of a frittata for those days when you don’t have anything planned. So long as you have some eggs, an indiscriminate assortment of vegetables and a few scraps of cheese then you have dinner.

A 6 egg frittata isn’t the right portion for two people every time. Sometimes it’s just perfect, other times it’s a bit too much.  Which leaves the happy accident of leftovers for breakfast or lunch.  Sometimes enough for two people, sometimes enough for one and sometimes none at all.

This post is for Helen’s Breakfast Club Event, hosted by Monica at SmarterFitter.  As I’m a big fan of Monica, Helen, breakfast and leftovers I thought I’d join in!

For three years in a row I have tried to grow my own brussels sprout ‘rubine’, the beautiful crimson flecked cousin of the common green brussel, and for three years I have failed. Brussels sprouts need care, love and attention right from sowing the seeds in March, through planting out the baby brassicas in early summer (protecting them from our cheeky chickens and the slugs until they are strong enough to stand alone), and then onwards to the first frost for that all important flavour boost. After three years of failure  I thought that it was just not meant to be.

My humble thanks and admiration then go to Marks and Spencer for putting in a lot of effort themselves into figuring out how to grow these little beauties so that I could buy them. Apparently it has taken them a few years of practicing too.  Happily I can finally chuck out my sprout seeds and stick to the simpler but still exciting stuff like funny coloured courgettes and oddly shaped carrots.

The red sprouts don’t taste particularly different to the usual green varieties but unlike many purple veggies they do keep their colour when you cook them.  All brussels sprouts are a great source of Vitamin C for people eating and shopping sustainably through the British Winter and the purple colour of these particular sprouts is because they have a high anthocyanin content, a group of antioxidant molecules with potential anti-cancer properties (that old nutrition advice to eat a rainbow has some pretty sound science behind it).

I was so excited to finally get my hands on these little chaps that I thought this was time to make good the final stage of my brussels sprout acceptance journey from being a long-time sprout hater; eating a raw sprout. Long time readers will know that I was planning to reach this last sprouty frontier way back in 2008, but somehow it never quite happened.

Anyway, if you’ve been holding off trying them raw (like I have), then don’t. There’s nothing scary about them – they just taste like raw cabbage. That raw brassica tang is lovely with the sweet, nutty gruyere cheese and creamy almonds I used in my little salad, and I bet they would make a brilliant winter coleslaw with dried cranberries and a mayo and yogurt dressing. What’s stopping you?

p.s I keep forgetting to tell you that I’ve made Facebook page for Mostly Eating.  It’s another way of following the blog (links to all new posts appear on there) but in addition I’ve been posting a small selection of links to other recipes and nutrition articles on there.

Scrambled eggs are home-cooking at its most glorious. Quick, delicious, comforting, frugal, familiar.  And almost never nice when eaten out, with catering establishment incarnations ranging from watery through to bouncy. And then there are those diet police versions, throwing away yolks and with them a whole load of flavour, protein, Vitamin D, iron and beta carotene.

This meal is a regular in our house thanks to our girls. Cooking the eggs like this is a good way of enjoying your scrambled eggs while introducing a little healthy monounsatured oil and vegetable.  We use olive oil to cook the eggs and then a little knob of butter to finish them off with that silky texture. Zucchini are mild enough to let the taste of the eggs shine and cutting them into thin ribbons lets the vegetable meld into the soft scramble, rather than introducing unpleasant lumps.  I add the merest hint of a mint for a little whisper of freshness (any more and it will be overpowering).

Anyone who is a gardener has an abundance of courgettes this month.  Even I have one plant, despite drastically reduced home growing this summer in deference the aforementioned house move.  If I can recommend one piece of equipment to you it would be a julienne peeler – thin courgette strips have myriad of uses and a peeler is a doddle to use and clean, plus much less dangerous than a mandoline (I don’t think my cuisipro peeler is available any more, but you’re looking for something along these lines).

More ideas to use up zucchini / courgette

• Baked cottage cheese french toast with a courgette and corn salsa
• Ricotta, courgette, lemon and mint summer sandwich
• Chicken with courgette, halloumi and honey
• Spaghetti with courgette, lemon and goats cheese
• Aubergine, courgette and tomato stew with quinoa and feta

I don’t seem to be able to make up my mind what to call them. I’m starting to prefer using the word zucchini instead of courgette –  wonder if this is down to the hours spent hanging out in this multicultural space, or a nod to the fact courgette were probably my most hated vegetable as a child, whereas I really rather like them now. You’ll have to excuse me for the to-ing and fro-ing between the two for now.

This salad recipe uses my new crush, gorgeous Tarocco oranges from Sicily, accompanied with peppery watercress and baked tofu.  When I first started trying to eat more sustainably choosing fruit in Winter was a big shopping headache. After all, there is pretty much no fruit that grows in the UK between November and the first forced rhubarb in February.  My attitude to this has relaxed rather over the last year, after all, part of sustainable eating needs to be about sustaining ourselves too don’t you think?  I buy fruit from Europe with two caveats; first, if it grows easily in the UK I’ll wait and buy it locally and seasonally instead and second, forgetting to use this fruit and letting it go to waste is not an option.  This feels like a good compromise given the massive environmental impact caused by food waste. There are so many stunning varieties of citrus are in season across Europe right now and none of them are ever available “homegrown” (whereas buying apples from New Zealand just doesn’t feel like such a good compromise).

Grab a bagful of these Tarocco Sicilian oranges if you see them for they are both beautiful and delicious. Sweet, refreshing and less acerbic than most varieties, they also have a delicate red speckle through the flesh for which they are known in Sicily as “half-blood” oranges.  The red colour is due to beta-cryptoxanthin, a compound similar to beta carotene and which our bodies can convert into Vitamin A as well as acting as an anti-oxidant in its own right.  The baked tofu is surprisingly savoury because of the garlic and shallots, a good contrast to the sweet orange segments.  Cooking yourself an extra block of tofu is a great idea so that you can put it into sandwiches, salads and wraps later in the week.

Being able to segment an orange is fantastic kitchen skill to have and a doddle once someone has shown you how. If you’ve never done this before check out Tea’s photographic instructions on How to supreme an orange or grapefruit. And while you’re there take a look at her Winter Survival Citrus ideas which I’m sure burrowed its way into my greedy subconscious and winded up where I am now (with a fridge full of oranges, lemons and clementines).

Nutrition highlights: superstar green leafy veg, vitamin C infused Citrus fruit and calcium rich tofu.

Everybody knows too much cheese is bad for you and full of calories and saturated fat. Except that really this isn’t true at all – yes cheese is fairly high calorie but it’s also a good source of protein, calcium and above all JOY!  Eating well sometimes involves taking a bit of a step back and seeing the wood for the trees.  It’s actually fine to have a moderate portion of cheese now and again, especially if it helps you to eat more of the good stuff along side it.  I’m a firm believer in the salad splurges philosophy of eating:

Not cool – a block of cheese gradually nibbled away until you realise that you’ve eaten half of it in one sitting, probably with slice of plastic bread on the side

Not cool – a huge bowl of just salad for lunch – unadorned and protein free except with nothing but a drizzle of fat-free salad dressing

Cool – a little bit of cheese as part of a well planned meal that also includes a huge portion of lovely veggies and some of those good fats too, like nuts and olive oil

This salad tastes best when made with some lovely smooth mature stilton, not the standard factory offering with its astringent, tongue-burning properties (great use for any Christmas leftovers).

This wintery saute has been on regular rotation this autumn, in fact pretty much every week there’s been a good savoy cabbage available.  It’s ready in less than 15 minutes (including prep) and uses only one pan, a chopping board and knife. There’s plenty of plant based matter here and carbohydrate from the chestnuts and protein from the chickpeas.  And you don’t even need a pan of boiling water.

I’ve said before that you can make a stir-fry right from your store cupboard – pretty much all of the ingredients here in this saute are pantry friendly with the exception of the cabbage.  The end result isn’t at all fancy but it’s healthy and tasty and strikes the right balance of autumnal sweetness and spice without being overfilling.

Savoy cabbage, sweet chestnuts and the subtle lemony warmth of nutmeg are decidedly comfort food territory. The chickpeas (garbanzo) might not be the obvious pairing with chestnuts and cabbage but add substance, nutrients and texture to your meal without competing overpowering the other
flavours. We like this saute topped with a poached or fried egg to turn it into a more substantial meal.  I have mine with a drizzle of truffle oil and hubby likes his with a splash of soy sauce.  A dusting of grated parmesan might also work well.

Related recipes
Chestnut, parsnip and orange soup
Italian lentil and chestnut stew
Brussels sprout stir fry with egg, chilli, ginger and garlic
How to make a quick stir-fry from your store cupboard

If there’s one thing guaranteed to get me back in the kitchen it’s a brand spanking newly turned Autumn. All those lovely warm, cosy soups, stews and roasts.  And this seasons vegetables are just the best; pumpkins, squash, carrots, parsnips, onions, leeks, beetroot, celeriac. All the real sweeties and perfect for roasting. 

People tell themselves funny stories when they’re faced with the everyday work of eating well. One of my favourites of that I hear often is this one: “it’s so easy to eat well in the summer – salads are so healthy”.  Roasted vegetables are the perfect ‘salad’ for Autumn and Winter.  Yes, there is ten minutes of chopping involved, but that’s pretty much it. Same as a salad. 

A tub of roasted vegetables have become of a staple in our fridge again this month.  These are my three favourite ways to prepare roasted autumn vegetables.

Three easy flavour additions for roasted vegetables
(take it as read that all three involve copious armfuls of veg, olive oil and a good grind of pepper)

• scatter with finely chopped red chillis and tuck very thin, deseeded slices of lemon among the veg (my current obsession, from Sarah Raven’s Food for Friends and Family book)

• chuck in a few sprigs of rosemary and a handful of garlic cloves (separated but unpeeled).  Once cooked, squeeze the garlic straight from their skins into the veg

• coat with maple syrup and generous amounts of grated ginger (as inspired by Eat Me, Delicious)

The trick to successful vegetable roasting is similar to that for drama-free stir-frying.  Cut your different veggetables to different sizes according to how long they will take to cook; smaller pieces for those that take longer to roast. It’s also helpful to give them a stir occasionally during cooking to avoid the tops of the vegetable pieces becoming overly charred.

It’s always worth making a big batch of roasted veggies.  Once you’ve got ‘em, there are endless ways to use them.

• add a protein source such as meat, fish or tofu for an easy meal
• cook up a wholegrain to serve along side and top with a small amount of feta, chopped nuts or a poached egg
• Add vegetable stock or hot water and blitz to a soup
• Stir through wholemeal pasta, add a handful of spinach and top with a little grated cheese