finally! i have finally managed to take a photo of miso soup that looks vaguely appealing.

miso soup is something we eat often, in various guises, and i’ve been wanting to write about it for quite a while. however, steaming bowls of soup are tricky to photograph so it’s taken a while to get a photo i was happy with.

delicious and nourishing, it is the perfect healthy comfort food. as a result, this is my contribution to meeta’s monthly mingle which has comfort foods as its theme. meeta, i hope you like it!

miso soup is also very quick and easy to make and can easily be adapted to what you have in. this recipe has prawns as the star of the show but we also make it using chicken or, for a veggie version, a mixture of interesting mushrooms. give it a try or, if you’re already a fan, let me know which combination is your favourite.

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as you’ll know, i’m a sucker for pears in a salad. this salad combines the traditional flavours of sweet pears with salty parma ham and creamy goats cheese.

it was a lovely starter for our new year’s eve meal and is definitely something worth trying if you’re not already familiar with these flavours. it was also the perfect homage to last year’s italian holiday – ham from parma and aged aceto balsamico from modena (balsamic vinegar aged over 20 years to create a rich, sweet but slightly acidic syrup – apparently it’s also good with vanilla ice cream…).

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jen, the canadian baker chose this month’s daring bakers challenge – lemon meringue pie. this is not a dish i’ve ever made although it is something i remember eating when i was growing up.

as ever, the rules meant that we had to stick to the recipe we were given and very little variation was allowed, which wasn’t a problem as i love both lemons and meringue, and my memories of the combination of the two in a pie were pretty good. i decided mini pies would be one variation.

so, how did i get on?

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strangely enough, i spend quite a lot of time thinking about food. increasingly this includes thinking about this blog and different things i’d like to write about.

i do try and make sure that i only write about things which excite or interest me which means that inevitably there are a reasonable number of meals which are never going to be featured. the same is true of restaurants which, for whatever reason, just didn’t wow or inspire me. or where there’s simply nothing particularly interesting to share.

but the fact that i only write about some of the places i eat is only part of the picture and increasingly it feels that i should be sharing more, including the bad, the ugly and the mediocre. it also appeals to my general nosiness – i like reading the minutiae of what people eat.

so, as a trial i’ve been keeping a diary of the different places where i eat when i’m not eating home-made (by me or friends) food. this is what it is looking like, with a few comments.

if people find this interesting i’ll try and do a quarterly update as i'm intrigued to see what patterns emerge . let me know if there is any extra info you’d like. apart from financial that is - i'm not feeling brave enough to add up how much money i spend on eating out!

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