Salad 'n' soup

What is the correct response when your husband proudly presents you with a strangely misshapen beetroot that he has discovered in the garden? One of the batch that he grew last year, which has somehow escaped being harvested with all the others?

Why, make a salad with it, of course.

So, I peeled it, then out came my trusty vegetable shredder (which looks rather like a mutant potato peeler; something like this one, and which confuses my husband dreadfully - oh, how I laughed when I heard he had been trying to peel potatoes with it once) and shredded it into a bowl along with two carrots and a finely sliced onion. The juice of a lemon, about a tablespoonful of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper went in next, then the whole lot had a good toss and was good to go.

Still in a salad-y mood, as I'd picked up a couple of cheap cucumbers and some tomatoes at the supermarket yesterday, I soaked 150g of bulgur wheat in 300ml boiling water for about 20 mins, then chopped up half a cucumber and quartered 8 cherry tomatoes to make some tabbouleh. A good squeeze of garlic puree, the juice of a lemon, another tablespoonful of olive oil, salt, pepper and a generous handful of flat-leaf parsley from the garden (with the earwigs and ladybirds carefully removed before bringing it indoors) roughly chopped, made the dressing, into which I folded the cucumber and the tomatoes and then the still-warm bulgur wheat.

And the soup: broccoli today.
One onion, chopped and fried gently in 10g butter, with 2 potatoes, diced, then added to the pan with the onion, plus the broccoli stalks from a medium head of broccoli, chopped. About a pint of boiling water, salt and pepper, then after it had simmered for about 10 mins, the rest of the broccoli, and about 8 further minutes simmering. Then a quick whizz in the pan with a hand blender, about 1/2 a pint of milk, and it was ready to serve.

All in all, not a bad lunch!