What a ridicuous few months, my work has been crazy and not in a pleasurable way. It has been gritty and exhausting, life is too short for much more of this. My thoughts turn to my imaginary deli, I resolve to move things forward…

Meanwhile, yesterday was a beautiful day and whilst today I am in pyjamas, looking out at the rain, flicking between music on the Sonos, Glastonbury on the red button and re-runs of great cookery programmes on the telly… I reflect on last night’s supper.

Beautiful dover sole from the Kennington Farmers market – simply baked with a splash of left over prosecco, a little butter salt and pepper some fennel seeds and sat on a little bed of shaved fennel, shallots and lemons. A typical ‘me’ dish, which I’m happy to say popped out of the oven after 25 minutes, beautiful clean white moist fish.

In amongst these weeks of turbulence without respite, we decided to re-make our small urban garden. It was previously, unusable, but with the aid of some hard work and a couple of tons of gravel we made a tidy patch. I will admit, it’s lacking in panache at the moment but it’s a beginning – and provides a little spot for  glass of wine after work or weather permitting a meal outside. Rocket, being more the gardener than I (me being a consumer of gardens and not a developer or maintainer of them) created some veg and herb beds, toward which end he has been growing things from seed in the former wilderness since late winter. This all means we have a few treasures coming through to use in our meals and last nights addition was nasturtiam leaves and flowers to our summer veg dish. Shortly we shall have some baby courgettes, cavalo nero and tomatoes….yay!

I doubt our neighbours have embraced our new found outdoor livin’ as we pottered around to the sounds of various of our favourites but the track of the day for me was George Ezra singing ‘Girl from the North Country’. The only thing being wrong with the track for me is that I am, of course, a south country girl – but I love a bit of folk and adore Dylan so listen along whilst I ramble?

Anyway, a catch up on ‘Saturday Kitchen’ showed the sorts of veg I wanted include to go along with the fish, so I took my dish in a slightly ‘Angela Hartnett’ direction by adding an orange vinaigrette to my chargrilled apsaragus, shaved fennel, broad bean and wild organic cress salad. I was also influenced by some delicious chargrilled asparagus I had at ‘The Duchy Arms’ in Kennington last week, hence the decision to grill instead of simply blanching it. Wild cress, I discovered, has a very woody and inedible stem – so I picked the leaves off. I used some olive oil that had been pressed from olives grown in Sicily at the home of a colleague of Rocket’s and which this kind chap gifted to Rocket in return for a small favour. I tossed some nasturtiam leaves and petals through at the end and lightly dressed the veg. Rocket did his crushed new potatoes, this time giving them a coating with a little tin of ‘dressed lobster’ mixed with softened butter, that made them richly delicious.

Sittng outside in our new found space, relaxing in the heat of the sun….the crappy european audit to which charities are subject – in particluar  to which myself  and latterly Marmoset are subject…seemed a long, long way away. As I write now, it’s creeping closer again.

Happy ‘Pride’ by the way….