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I'm back from my holiday, and it's time to get this Chocolate Baby under control. Fruit and veges are my materials, and my kitchen is the tool . How dorky does that sound? Anyway, I've got Mr B on board. Here's what we had for tea tonight:

This is the most simple roast vegetable salad you can imagine. It contains the following things and serves 2 hungry people as a main.

• Two medium potatoes - leave the skin on.
• One big kumera - peeled in this case because it was a bit rough. Leave skin on if it is good enough.
• One fat carrot.
• About 1 cup pumpkin.
• One big onion.

Chop into even pieces about 3cm across. Heat a roasting dish in the oven. When hot pour in about 1 tablespoon of oil (I use olive oil) and throw in all of the veges except for the onion. Mix around. Cook for a while until the veges soften up. Add your onion (it cooks quicker than the other things). Sprinkle on seasoning. I used smoked garlic seasoning salt, but you could keep it simple and just use salt and pepper, or flavour with something exotic like Cajun or Moroccan seasoning. Mixed herbs give you a good flavour too. Once everything is browny and soft you are ready to eat.

Serving: I shredded some rainbow chard and put the roasties on top. Then I sprinkled with parsley. Mr B chose a balsamic vinagrette and I chose a traditional vinagrette (both in bottles from the fridge!-I will have to work on dressing production).

Now onto pudding. Take a look at these beauties:

Now that manky looking apple is pure organic- growing on a tree on the farm. It is smothered in them, so I headed up through the long grass and picked myself a few. I picked up the walnuts from under a tree on the farm too. I wouldn't want to eat the apples as they come off the tree, although they would probably come up ok with a good scrub. It just shows how we are so used to perfect fruit and veges in the shops. I have to admit I don't buy organic fruit and veg from the supermarket because it is just so much more expensive. I do think it is well worth seeking out sources of spray-free or organic items that have been overlooked, or are madly producing and are going to waste. I'm going to check out the markets too.

Here's my apple crumble before I baked it:

And after:

For this crumble I used about 1/2 cup flour, 1 heaped tablespoon butter, 1/3 cup muesli, 1 tablespoon sugar and a few walnuts. I rubbed the butter into the flour, then added the rest of the ingredients. The best thing was cracking the walnuts. I discovered that I can poke a knife into the seam at the pointy end and twist it (like shucking an oyster). I baked it for about 1/2 an hour on fanbake at 170 degrees celcius.

Before I forget- I sweetened up the apple with a big tablespoon of sugar too, before I added the crumble. This is a two person crumble, so it is pretty little.

I hope my instructions are clear enough for Mrs CT. My a bit of this, and a bit of that recipes needed more explanation. These are super basic things to cook. And yummy.

Now for my words on health - and why I'm going to be going mad over fruit and vegetables. I've got a history of breast cancer in my family. My dear Auntie Jenny died of breast cancer after a seven year fight. The latest thing I read about breast cancer protection said I should be having nine servings of fruit or vegetable a day. I think everyone would benefit from a diet heavy on fruit and vegetables and very light on the processed foods. I've got a terrible habit of turning to nasty processed junk foods when I'm feeling stressed or down. So I'm working to improve my diet. I hope you can join me. XXX