With single person booths, a big table in its own curtained corner, and turquoise splendour everywhere, BBR is the right place to treat yourself. An everyday treat or something more spectacular, that’s your decision to make…

Of course, that's the beauty of pressure cookers – turning slow-cooker recipes into weeknight doable recipes. And not requiring the oven to be on. I have never quite managed the melt-in-the-mouth texture that you expect with these kinds of dishes except in my pressure cooker. I am much too prone to forgetting to check on my slow-cooking casseroles/whatever and they invariably get a layer of dried out meat on top that no amount of turning around in sauce later will fix. 

A quick google for 'lamb tagine pressure cooker' turned up this lovely recipe for Pomegranate & Date Lamb Tagine. I urge you to go take a look at the recipe. I'd offer the following observations:

• If you're feeding a small person, this is a good meal for everyone. I go into more detail on how to adjust for little people over on my mum blog, Mummy & Monkey.
• I found this a bit too sweet and would have maybe halved the pomegranate juice and either added stock or just water. This coming from a person who loves sweet and meat together.
• The recipe describes browning the meat in batches, which is all well and good but if you have a baby and a small terrier playing tug of war through your legs and maybe left getting dinner going until you were too hungry and cranky, if you just throw all the meat in there and it stews a bit but doesn't really brown it's fine. The sauce covers any less-than-appetising looking meat chunks, and the pressure bit of the pressure cooker covers many sins. Just don't do it for too long. 
• As I hacked off chunks of lamb leg, I lost steam as I got closer to the bone. So I figured, whatever, and tossed the inexpertly cleaned bone in with meat hanging off it. That was the best course of action because when I cracked open the pressure cooker, all the remaining meat fell off and I'm sure that bone added a bit more flavour. 
• I picked some chocolate peppermint from my garden to finish this, and it was such a perfect match I had to mention it. I've never seen it sold in bunches, but mint is so simple to grow, I'd highly recommend planting one of these – try Jekka's Herb Farm. Remember, mint is a bully in the veggie patch or herb garden, so plant in a planter and then put that in the ground, or keep it in a container. It also makes lovely chocolate mint syrup, which in turn makes loooovely cocktails.

There are prettier shops than Kitchen Ideas, I'm the first to admit. Shops with beautiful dishes, in-store cafes, cookbook aisles, demos and lots of staff. This place doesn't have any of that. However, if I need a mini whisk, an ice lolly mould, Cake Release and a slightly smaller casserole dish, they have it and for a price I will be unlikely to beat anywhere else. The staff do know their stock, to be fair – I've heard many an in-depth conversation about the specifics of certain brands of stock pots or whatever. That there always seems to be someone in kitchen whites in there with a list bodes well too. 

I love the piles of stuff lined up against the walls, pots hanging from the ceiling, piles on the ground against the shelves. Though my very favourite thing about these shops is there doesn't seem to be a dud in the whole place. It's stacked to the rafters with Useful Things. Whisks in every size, thimble-sized measuring cups, a glass two-person salad dressing jar that looks nice and costs £3, a sand castle cake mould, every size of milk-steaming jug you could ever conceivably need, cutting boards of all sizes and shapes and construction. Just, everything.

Kitchen Ideas
70 Westbourne Grove W2 5SH
 &
20 New Broadway W5 5AW

I've been thoroughly uninspired lately. Nothing like travelling for three weeks with a baby, and then coping with the ensuing jetlag to make me groan every time a meal time comes around. 'What, you want me to think of something else? AGAIN?'

Now that I have to feed a small person as well as myself, the standing in front of the open fridge eating things from containers style of solo meal planning is not feasible anymore. I have to think of things, balanced things, three times a day. To make it easier on myself, I've signed up for vegbox delivery again, if for no other reason than it forces me to eat a wide range of things rather than the triumvirate of broccoli-peas-carrots I will unending return to if left to my own sleep-deprived devices.

 So, lunchtime today found me lying on the carpet while Elliot used my knees for standing practice and the dog brought me the same damp sock 14 times in a row, depositing it in my hair. But once I dragged myself to the kitchen, I collected bits and pieces – and what emerged was actually quite good. Wet garlic is just fresh garlic when it's first pulled out of the ground and looks like giant salad onions with big bulbous ends. Let me sing the praises of the Waitrose own-brand garlic oil – I love love love it. I hate peeling garlic, I hate chopping it, and I hate prising it out stinky garlic crusher things. This garlic oil does away with all that crap, and you still get a lovely garlicky flavour, and in most contexts I was going to add olive oil anyway. So, onto the details.

Double garlic, radish & seafood noodles
serves 1, generously

Glug of garlic oil
1 small courgette
handful frozen king prawns (or fresh, I just happen to keep some in my freezer for protein emergencies)
1 salmon fillet
About 2 tbsp wet garlic chopped (I used the green bits and some of the white bits)
Tsp of butter
1 nest of fine egg noodles
1 radish sliced thinly
Salad onion sliced thinly
Sea salt
Extra virgin olive oil

1. Heat the garlic olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Slice the courgette into coins, thinly enough it won't take a year to fry them until al dente and browned nicely. Remove the courgette to a plate. Meanwhile, boil the water for the noodles.

2. In the remains of the garlic oil, add your frozen prawns, butter and wet garlic. Tuck your piece of salmon on the side there. Your water is boiling, so dump the noodles in. They take no time at all, so drain them after a minute or so. Add a tiny bit of garlic oil to the drained noodles to keep them from turning into a hideous mass.

3. Toss your courgettes with the noodles, then dump prawns, salmon and garlic mixture on top. I broke up my salmon a bit at this point. Sprinkle the salad onions and thinly sliced radishes on top, then add some nice extra virgin olive oil and sea salt to taste. 

When I moved to England six years ago I promised myself not to be one of those people who surrounds themselves with people and things from the old country, unwilling to engage with their new home. It took me two years until I even visited the Canada Shop. 

But every time we go back to visit, I can't help but draw up a list of the foods I miss. As I prepare to go back not only to Vancouver but Toronto as well in less than a week, I have been making my list:

Toronto

• Montreal smoked meat sandwich
• Diner breakfast (two eggs, toast, streaky bacon and filter coffee with cream)
• Diner grilled cheese and fries
• Club sandwich
• Nachos
• Street vendor hot dog with fried onions and sauerkraut (see above)

Vancouver

• Sushi, sushi, sushi and more sushi
• Coho and chinook salmon as they'll be in season
• Seafood and more seafood
• Salad

Salad seems like an odd one to be on the list, but if you've ever been to California, you will understand. West Coast people make salads that are incredible meals in their own right, that make you crave green things and fresh flavours, not wilting iceberg and yellow tomatoes with salad cream. 

By the time our three weeks are up I will be craving sausage and mash, a good Sunday roast and proper tea no doubt. That's what happens when you feel at home in two quite different countries, I suppose.

What food do you miss that reminds you of a favourite place?

I have never been good with yeast. Baking projects involving the mysterious brown pellets would either work magnificently or fail miserably with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Obviously I had done something like used water that was too hot, not given it/them (?) enough food or the yeast was just dead before I even started… but being at the mercy of some tiny forms of fungi drove me crazy. People who are good with leavened baked goods have my eternal respect.

When I was small, my mum regularly baked our bread. I remember if I got to stay up a bit late, I would get a slice of squidgy, warm loveliness at the table in the darkened house, Canadian winter wind whooshing snow around outside. Now that I'm going to be home full-time, and keen to wrap Elliot in that same warm fuzzy feeling, I started trying to make my own bread.

I began with spelt, and failed miserably. I tried Signe's recipe over on her Scandilicious blog, even pestering her on Twitter with a million questions, but to no avail. My loaves were like bricks. Granted the first attempt was blighted by a chaotic morning of post deliveries, which makes Gusdog go ballistic therefore waking Elliot in a chain reaction of frustration. The first rise went on about three times as long as it should have, and there were other ways I messed it up but I can't even remember them now. The second time around, I did do everything according to plan, but it just didn't rise much at all only to entirely sink in the oven. I'm entirely sure these setbacks were all of my own making and not the fault of Signe's recipe, but after tossing out two inedible loaves I couldn't face any more spelt experiments.

I came across an excellent description of what exactly strong flour is and what it's for over at Dan Lepard's blog. I admit I have been using whatever kind of flour is called for in a given recipe, but if I don't have it, I use whatever I have indiscriminately in blissful ignorance. Armed with this new knowledge, I approached my hefty copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible, ready to tackle some basic white. The recipe is four pages long, and there is no Nigella-style waffling in there. This lady means business. Over two days, despite a baby with a temperature, an overactive terrier and not much sleep, I did it. I stood at the kitchen counter at 11pm last night and had a slice of my own heavenly white bread. 

The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Menu planning might seem like a massive pain, but it's much less stressful when you've got a small number of recipes to choose from, and you don't have to worry whether you have the ingredients on hand. It's cheaper and more efficient, with less waste – just pick recipes so you use up what you buy. 

Entering babyland threw my menu planning out the window for awhile, but now that Elliot is starting to eat proper food I realise I need to get back into it or risk losing my mind. Lunches fall through the cracks at the moment, and I'm not sure how to incorporate them – they are a bit less formal, but now that it's Elliot and I together I do have to actually make something. Not just stand in front of the fridge eating forkfuls of things from various plastic containers. 

This is how I go about menu planning now, which is definitely not perfect. 

At some point on Thursday or Friday I sit down with my laptop, my food magazine clipping files and some cookery books with a text file open and Ocado loaded (see above). As I plug in the meals, I go through the recipe and add the ingredients straight into my grocery order. I check Eat Seasonably to see if there's something in season I'd forgotten about, and scroll through recipes I've starred in my Google Reader in case there's something in there I want to make. 

Before Elliot arrived, I would also have a dish or two at the bottom of the list I would make at the weekend purely for portioning up and freezing. I like the idea of make two, freeze one – but the reality is we just end up eating more and not saving a whole lot. 

As I was researching menu planning, I found a good tip: just make a list of meals for the week, don't specify which day. That way if you can just decide that day what to make, you should have ingredients for all of them. 

Any other good menu planning tips are welcome, especially getting lunch planning into the mix. 

I wanted something different, less utilitarian than your average banana bread. I love banana bread, but I wanted something cakier, sweeter, more like a treat and less like I-have-three-blackening-bananas-on-my-counter. Of course, that was also the case, but you know. I highly recommend the Banana Bars from My Baking Addiction blog, with the cream cheese icing. In the photo, you can see one piece with sugared rose petals on top and one with hundreds and thousands. 

The brownies are truly an easy bake from the always-reliable Smitten Kitchen – super fast and requiring practically nothing you probably don't already have in your kitchen. Helpfully using cocoa and no actual chocolate, you can make this in one bowl. I've made them twice, once in a non-stick bakeware and once in a bendy silicone 'dish'. The silicone doesn't transfer enough heat to totally cook the middle, so I won't do that again. It still worked though.

The mums preferred the Banana Bars – as you can see!

[image borrowed from Everybody Likes Sandwiches]