Pea, lettuce and lovage soup; beetroot and walnut salad with garlic yogurt dressing; tomato and chilli jam - and Scrabble...

There have been so many great meals lately that I've built up something of a backlog. First there was the tomato and chilli jam that I cooked the other day - the first successful chutney I've ever made, sweet as heaven and spicy as hell, and I already couldn't imagine cheese, not to mention life, without it:

Then there was the delicious pea, lettuce and lovage soup that Sam made last night, with lovage from our herb garden and stock from the other night's chicken:

Which was followed by a beetroot and walnut salad with a dressing made from yogurt, lemon juice, garlic and chives:

We ended that meal with a wonderfully fungal Tomme de Savoie, complemented by figs and the tomato and chilli jam. Or rather, we thought that was the end - until I hit on the idea of making a dessert out of the surplus lemon icing from the carrot cake I'd made for our tea party with the neighbours on Sunday (just mascarpone, lemon and sugar, so really a lemon mousse), topped with crumbled up homemade ginger biscuits, also leftover from said tea party:

It was one of those evenings where the food had been so good that I couldn't bear for it to end. Afterwards we played a game of Scrabble (our first in German), which is still on hold halfway through because we were too tired to finish it before bed (I'm currently winning by a long way, having cleared my rack on my very first go with 'reintun', simultaneously making 're' off the end of Sam's 'Wege' for a whopping 62 points...)

Tonight Sam was working and a girlfriend of mine came over - she brought pork medallions, which we grilled and served with a garlic, mustard and cream sauce, and bacon (the Germans don't half do good pork products), which we fried up with red cabbage and chestnuts - delicious.