My husband, the Kitchen Lurker

I love being cooked for. Nothing makes me happier than watching someone beavering away in their kitchen making something lovely for me. I decided that Jimmy could possibly be the father of my future children when I was perched on a stool in his tiny kitchen in Leyton back in '94. 

It was around our third date. I was sipping white wine. He was rustling up a Thai chicken curry from scratch (in those distant days, Thai curry was exotic in the extreme). He worked within striding distance of Chinatown, and at lunchtime he'd nipped out and bought all these fancy ingredients. Lemongrass! Some kind of stinking fishy block! And coconut milk! (I'd only ever encountered coconut in macaroon form before). 

The curry was delicious. I planned to marry him as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Bear in mind that my own fridge housed a lump of Cheddar freckled with mould and a bottle of vodka.

While I am a slave to recipe books (things tend to go awry if I venture off piste), Jimmy is an instinctive cook. He chucks stuff in, utterly confident amidst all the hissing and sizzling. I do enjoy cooking, but only in my own, cautious, instruction-bound way. And this is where we come unstuck.

You see, he can't just let me get on with it. He hovers, with a worried expression, making 'helpful' suggestions. Sometimes he prods things and he's always standing precisely where I need to be. The more keenly he observes, the more my confidence plummets. He is a Kitchen Lurker, prone to the following:

- Asking, 'Does that need a bit of salt?'

- Casually giving a pot a stir, even though there's no heat on under it.

- Shaking in random dried herbs which are not part of the recipe.

 - Dredging up the memory of my Terrible Mango Chicken Debacle and honking with laughter (note that this happened 20 years ago and only because I was bloody trying to impress him). 

- Saying, 'You could add a bit of Tabasco to that. Just, you know, an idea...' 

- Asking, 'Are you sure it doesn't need salt?'

- Having a sniff of whatever I'm cooking and looking slightly concerned.

- Adjusting the gas flame under a pan.

- Actually throwing salt in, without permission!!

- Remarking, 'It's okay, I'll do this bit' and muscling in - usually to fry steaks which, admittedly, I am always grateful for as mine tend to turn out 'lightly poached.'

So yes, he is useful. And he's a far better cook than I am. But, unless steak is involved, I do wish he'd take a leaf out of my book and sit back and watch and quietly drink his wine. 

And no, IT DOESN'T NEED MORE SALT!

Edging towards veggie

I wasn't overjoyed when my 14 year-old daughter said she wanted to stop eating meat - and only have fish - soon followed by not wanting much fish at all. But then I thought, this is okay, I've wanted to do this for ages. Our two sons (aged 17) are confirmed carnivores and it's been meat, meat, meat all the way for as long as I can remember. Whopping amounts of beef and chicken and lamb - it's vastly expensive, and also feels a bit... unnecessary. Too heavy and fleshy and animally. So instead of moaning about all the extra work daughter's meals would entail, I decided to go with it and join her and it's been fine. Things may be more challenging if, or rather, when - she is a teenage girl after all - she goes fully veggie. But maybe I'll join her in that too.

We've been scoffing loads of curries. My favourite Indian cookbook is by Rick Stein, accompanying his brilliant series - here's Jimmy making daughter something spicy with peppers and haloumi (instead of paneer) which was SCRUMPTIOUS. If I'm cooking, I'll generally knock up a chicken/lamb curry for the boys and a veggie one for daughter. It's a tiny bit of extra work, but when you think about it, making any curry tends to involve raking around for about half a day to find all the blasted spices and then grating and chopping and destroying the whole kitchen and using every implement you have. So you might as well make two - or even three - curries rather than just the one. And of course, most freeze brilliantly so you can eat another day without grating more bleedin' ginger. 

Also - the wonderful Jack Monroe's carrot and cumin burgers (from her cookbook, A Girl Called Jack, but the recipe is everywhere), which daughter makes for herself. They're easy, delicious and - according to Jack - work out at 9p per burger. Although ours are frisbee-sized, compared to her dainty ones. Anyway, they beat their meaty counterparts hands down, I reckon. 

We've also plundered Leon: Fast Vegetarian - it's modern and fresh and doesn't make you feel as you've been propelled back to Crank's, circa 1983, in the days when veggie food was terribly farty and made you want to sleep, fartily, for a week. Daughter has made a yum butternut squash stew, and a sort of posh beans on toast thing, with an egg draped on top. The book recommends a kind of bean we didn't have, so daughter used Heinz baked beans with the overly sugary sauce washed off (a Jack Monroe tip). 

Fish-wise - as we still have fish about three times a week - a sort of spaghetti puttanesca-with-tuna is easy as pie (why do people say this? Pie recipes ramble on for page after page!) for teens to make. Another fave is a big slab of salmon dribbled with fish sauce, honey, a few flecks of chili and lime or lemon juice, all wrapped in a greaseproof paper parcel and baked. 

This, too, is gleaned from a Leon book. I'm a little obsessed with Leon cookbooks. Everyone's so jolly and you get the impression that no one looks at the clock and thinks, 'Christ, teatime already, I really can't be fagged cooking tonight.' And there are always faded old photos of the contributors having big family holidays in the Dordogne in the 70s and we only went to Scotland or Wales. I used to dream about being propelled into a Famous Five story and now - Christ, I must be old - I want to live in a Leon cookbook. 

Anyway, back to our food thing here in our un-Leon world. It's early days, I know, and true dyed-in-the-wool vegetarians might mock my excitement over our tentative steps towards a new way of eating. But daughter's happy, as am I. I'm more energetic, my skin's looking better and I haven't felt remotely deprived. 

Also, after 17 years of trying to control what my kids eat, it's immensely refreshing to throw in the towel and say, 'Okay then - you decide.' We've been poring over websites and cookbooks and it's been a lovely thing. Any edging-towards-veggie tips gratefully received.