I seem to be surrounded by soda bread all of a sudden. First, we received a care package of soda bread and raspberry jam from Paddy the Baker (he’s one of the Irish expats in this month’s Celebrate story) that had the Feast team in paroxysms of delight. Who knew that toast and jam could be this good (and collectively we’ve eaten a fair bit in our time)?

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I love cooking first thing in the morning. This weekend found me in the kitchen at 7am on Saturday, gathering ingredients for a banana cake. That was followed by setting a bolognese a-simmering and pork ribs a-braising. It was all systems go. So Shane Delia’s 12 hour lamb with pistachio tabbouleh was a perfect addition to the early morning mix.

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I recently attended a birthday party with the Kerestes family, who originally hail from Hungary. The meal was packed full of Hungarian flavours and the highlight was the cake that Noti, the family matriarch, has been making for years. I so enjoyed it on the night, that I thought I’d better try to recreate it at home.

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People have literally been stopping me in the street to rave about how much they loved the chocolate peanut butter brownie that’s our April cover start. And by “street” I mean the corridors at work, and by “rave” I mean “RAVE”. They’re all mad for it – the taste, the texture and how easy it is to make. I had, ahem, tried this brownie during the testing and shooting process, but figured I’d better make for myself as well.

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Still enjoying the last vestiges of a recent mini-break to Bali, I decided to recapture the moment at home with this recipe for Indonesian satay from the Food Safari mini cookbook that comes free with this month’s copy of Feast. It had many of the hallmarks of recipes I like – meat, ingredients that I already had in the cupboard, and grilling (meaning that I could legitimately get Mr Ed to help with dinner).

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I’m mad for Northern African and Middle Eastern flavours at the moment. Well, not really at the moment, for quite a while now. Ever since I was lucky enough to attend a five-day cooking school in Morocco. Well, even before that – I would hardly have travelled all the way to Morocco if I wasn’t pretty sure I liked the food. But that certainly sealed the deal.

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Given my druthers, I could quite easily live on salad. Not nasty, limp little side salads, but big butch ones with lots of ingredients, crunchy bits and plenty of protein to keep me feeling satisfied. I love them in all their forms and, whenever I visit the US, I love a bit of downmarket-diner dining for the Cobb salads, Chinese chicken and everything in between. So it was no contest when it came to cooking something for the blog – a main course salad. The only decision was which one to make.

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After two weeks of eating out every night, I recently put my foot down and told Mr Ed that I wanted to cook – dangnabbit! – not just eat. The concept that someone might want to cook is a foreign one to him, but, happily, he went along with the idea and even invited friends over to join us for dinner. This gave me the perfect opportunity to make the blackberry pie.