Winter warmer: slow cooked pork and cider casserole

Adventures with my slow cooker continue. I still can't quite get over the wonder of chopping a few things before breakfast, flicking a switch, and coming home to a beautiful smelling flat several hours later.

This week, I tried pork, apples and cider, with a little thyme. The results were absolutely delicious - tender pork and sharp apples in a lovely rich, scented, sweet and savoury sauce. Again, much too much sauce - I would recommend using half the amount of cider I did - although eating my supper of stew and mash with a spoon only served to increase the comfort food factor. The apples disintegrate, but it serve to thicken the sauce (slightly).

I also used more meat than usual - about twice as much. For some reason, I instinctively serve more pork than other meats. You could halve it - this was a very generous, even snooze-inducingly large portion - but I'd add a littlemore root veg to bulk it out if so.

Knitting: baby hat and bootees

So. Someone I'm very fond of is pregnant. Once the screaming, squealing, and congratulating (and the three month mark - I'm superstitious) was past, I did what came naturally, and got out my knitting needles and some very brightly coloured yarn, knowing that this baby's parents won't want pastels.

Slow-cooked beef stew

I've been flirting with the idea of getting a slow cooker for a while now, but wasn't sure if I'd actually use it. I was pretty certain we didn't have space for it.

But when we went to visit my aunt and cousins a couple of weeks ago, my aunt served up the most delicious, sophisticated lemon and lamb stew. Which cooked in her slow cooker while we drank and caught up. My aunt, and my cousin, who is a student, talked about how useful their slow cookers were. My cousin will put a stew on for her housemates before going to lectures.

Not knitting! Emily Peacock Cross Stitch kit

When I was little, I loved counted cross stitch. I loved carefully following a diagram, and turning a blank sheet of fabric into a picture. I loved how complex shapes could be made from lots of tiny squares, and how the texture of the fabric could be completely changed as each square was replaced with a stitch. And I loved the calming effect of carefully putting the needle through the fabric, again, and again, and again.

A soup so scrumptious it got me blogging again: Thai carrot and coriander

The weekly huge batches of soup started up again about six weeks ago. Once again it's cold enough in Edinburgh for a huge mug of warm, comforting soup to be the best possible lunch option.

Up until this weekend I'd been repeating myself, cooking things I'd done (and usually blogged) before. One week the weekend was so busy we bought a stack of cans of soup instead. The world didn't end, although gratifyingly they weren't as good, as healthy or as cheap as the ones I make.

But this one is so good I had to share. It's based on one my aunt gave us for lunch when we went to visit last weekend - a delicious bought fresh soup. The budget's too tight for us to buy fresh soup for weekday lunches, so when we got home we decided to experiment, and came up with the following. It's got a kick to it, and is thoroughly warming and filling on a cool day. Lovely. And if you care about such things it's very low fat, and only one propoint a portion.

Simply scrumptious: lemon sole with chive butter

Sometimes, I crave simple, clean flavours. After a heavy weekend, being spoilt rotten, by Monday night I would have happily eaten nursery food

But on reflection, I decided that what I wanted most was the delicate flavour of white fish.

I know you shouldn't buy fish on a Monday, but I decided I trusted our local supermarket to only sell us something fresh, and sent the husband to investigate while I was at work. He returned with two lovely lemon sole fillets, some new potatoes, and some broccoli. This became a delicious 15 minute meal.

Guacamole-ish

I've been having some luck with the special offers corner in my local Waitrose lately. After the £1.11 beef joint which yielded two steaks and two rather yummy salads, I've been casting my eye over it every time I walk past. I've never got that lucky again, but for one, wonderful week, it became apparent that someone was putting the ripe and ready to eat avocados into the discount shelf at 6pm on the day they went out of date. As ripe and ready to eat avocados rarely are, I grabbed them thinking they'd be good - and most of them were. Bizarrely, though, one pack of two consisted of one gorgeously soft avocado - and one so hard it could have been made of rubber.

I'd planned to make this guacamole recipe, one from the hairy bikers that I picked because it didn't contain cream or mayo or anything else odd - I wanted it to taste super-fresh, not like a dip. But the recipe calls for three avocados. I'd planned to make it with two, reducing things slightly - I used a couple of chillies, rather than four, and just one tomato - which would have been fine. But after the rubber avocado, I found myself with a pile of chopped other ingredients, and just one av. So I shrugged and ended up making it with one.

It worked. The result was light, fresh and zingy. It still had the creaminess of the one super ripe avocado, but in texture it was more like a salsa. As someone who's never been that fussed by most salsas - I'm not the world's biggest tomato fan - it was like a perfect blend of salsa and guacamole.

It tasted so light and fresh I didn't want it with tortilla chips or anything greasy - so instead, we use lettuce leaves. They were perfect - little scoops. And because they were so healthy, I didn't feel in the least bit guilty about polishing off a lot of guacamole in one go!