In near hibernation since the start of the year, trying to write a 180 recipe book, here's my favourite, fast, minimum fuss recipe I make for myself. It's been a complete godsend in this freezing weather. The courgettes give it a lovely creamy texture I would usually seek from, well, cream - or potatoes, so carbs and calories stay very low. 

Very green soup

Makes 3/4 bowls. 15 minutes prep and cooking

50g butter, 300g spinach leaves, 150g roquette, 3 courgettes, salt, pepper.

Sometimes a dish, like a piece of art, or love (arguably, food *is* both) hits you and nothing is ever the same again. Yet nothing happens completely by chance of course. Epiphanies lurk until you care to allow yourself to see them, 'the dish that changed your life', like love at first sight, is a complex emotional and sensual construct the romantic in us prefers not to unravel (unless you are Alain de Botton) and I knew SOMETHING would happen in New York last year.

A friend , recently separated, messaged me a few days ago, writing something like, "Help, 8 for dinner tonight, only 4 plates, not sure what to oook. " Unhelpfully, I growled at him for stirring my maternal/homemaker instincts whilst being too far away to let me help properly. More inconveniently, I suspected I might know how he was feeling, and didn't particularly want to be reminded.

Despite the promises of a million cookbooks, TV shows and articles,  real-life, day-in, day-out food is mostly neither pretty nor sexy nor particularly exciting to make. I’ve more or less proven this (to myself, anyway, in a sort of with-Christopher Hitchensish-self-serving-logic-but-without-the-writing-talent-way) by blogging (I've stopped now) since September about cooking for my family.