Cous cous with blood orange, kale and toasted cashews

I'm not quite sure what's happened to me. Suddenly I'm craving, making and enjoying salads. (I'm not pregnant again). I've always liked them, but they were never in quite the same league as a steak for me. I'm not a converted health food freak quite yet, as I realised while bewilderingly watching some friends salivate over granola, but, I certainly have a different outlook. Maybe pregnancy did change me, as it did my feet, now 1 size bigger, all my beautiful heels squeezed on like Cinderella's ugly sisters trying on her slipper. I suspect, though, that the recent rediscovery of the joy of toasting nuts has prompted this change and the fact that throwing them onto just about anything makes it instantly better.

A 'Harvest Festival' thankyou dinner and yoga

I don't have a lot of success with growing things on my tiny balcony, it being quite shaded, but I do have enough to consider the plants' welfare while I'm away. Tomatoes, chillies and herbs seem to thrive out there and after tending something from seed, the last thing you want is to watch it suffer through neglect. Cue the friends who watered the tiny garden every day and kept the plants healthy and productive while I was away. A thank you was in order with the original idea being to make a dinner including produce from my own balcony which the friends had helped to keep alive. I have chilies, herbs and Swiss chard all waiting to be harvested. This developed into an idea to create a menu based on the 100 mile diet principle, formulated right here in Vancouver. Find more info here. But, this was so difficult I abandoned the idea and just tried to make a semi healthy dinner instead, full of late Summer / early Autumn foods and colours. (Imagine having to harvest your own salt because the shop bought version is sourced too far away. l do live next to a beach though.....)