Beans with Sausages, Bacon, and Poached Eggs

My husband loves sausages, bacon, and all other pork products. A few years ago I took this picture of him.

I knew that he would love this Donna Hay recipe:

• simmered borlotti and kidney beans with soft onions, rosemary, and thyme;
• sausages wrapped with bacon and then baked;
• all topped with poached eggs.

This is a pork-lover's dream! It reminds me of an English breakfast, but much more posh.

Spicy Quinoa and Sweet Potato Soup

I've got a bad cold and so I'm craving spicy food. When I can't smell much, the heat of chilli seems to cut through the fog a little. Plus spicy food makes my nose run and cleans it out! (Too much information?) Thankfully I made some of this soup a few weeks ago and had several portions in the freezer.

Before freezing (as pictured above) this was a thick, chunky soup. After thawing and reheating, it was more like a warm salad - all the liquid had been soaked up or evaporated. It was delicious both ways.

Quinoa, Broccoli, and Bacon Fritters

You might not know this about me: I am obsessed with correct punctuation. It began as a young child. Thanks to my book-loving parents, I owned more than 200 books by the time I was nine, and they were alphabetised and organised on my bookshelf.

My father took a break from his work to do a PhD when I was ten, and he moved our family to Scotland to complete it over five years at the University of Aberdeen. It involved a huge thesis and he talked about it constantly with our family. I was old enough to understand a little of the subject matter. His thesis later became a 380 page book called Attributes and Atonement: The Holy Love of God in the Theology of PT Forsyth.

Bacon, Leek, and Potato Soup

This is not your usual pale, creamy, and smooth leek and potato soup. This is a chunky, flavourful, heartwarming dish with big bits of bacon, diced potatoes, and sweet leeks. It needs about 20 minutes to simmer, which is the perfect amount of time to make some rolls or a salad to go alongside. (Recipe for cloverleaf rolls coming this weekend.)

Corn and Bacon Cakes

It's Wednesday, so that means I'm posting a recipe from Donna Hay's vast collection of work. Our bloggers' group chose to make corn cakes this week. My version is based on Hay's, though loosely, since I have replaced all the "pancake" ingredients. My version is gluten-free and grain-free, similar to many of recipes I have made lately. But I stuck with the original corn and bacon flavours; yum.

Carrot Salad with Spiced Bacon Topping

Here's the easy kind of food I like to make and eat. This is just some chopped vegetables and a bacon topping. But it tastes special because the bacon is fried with garlic and a few aromatic spices in butter.

Carrots and courgettes (zucchini) are such simple and cheap vegetables, but I really love finding ways to make them seem new again. I chopped them into tiny pieces in my food processor, and made this little bacon topping to go with them. There's just enough butter to coat the vegetables very lightly; you may like a bit more butter or olive oil. I ate the whole lot for lunch one afternoon.